From: Pilgrimpub@aol.com
Sent: Friday, August 12, 2005
11:23 AM
Subject: SPURGEON REBUKES
"ULTRA-CALVINISTS" [08/12--2005]
Does God Hear the
Sinner's Prayer? --
SPURGEON'S REBUKE OF SOME "ULTRA-CALVINISTIC"
BRETHREN REGARDING GOD'S HEARING PRAYER [08/12--2005]
From
Brother Emmett O'Donnell / Spurgeon's Gems' website:
>http://www.spurgeongems.org/vols10-12/chs672.pdf <
By C. H. SPURGEON
From "The
Ravens Cry"
Volume 12, Year 1866, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, page
56.
Perhaps you have been puzzling yourself to know whether your cry
is a natural or a spiritual one. This may seem very important, and
doubtless is so— but whether your cry is either the one or the other, still
continue to seek the Lord! Possibly you doubt whether natural cries are
heard by God. Let me assure you that they are.
I remember saying
something on this subject on one occasion in a certain Ultra-Calvinistic
place of worship. At that time I was preaching to children and was exhorting
them to pray. I happened to say that long before any actual conversion I had
prayed for common mercies, and that God had heard my prayers. This did not suit
my good Brethren of the superfine school! And afterwards they all came
round me professedly to know what I meant, but really to cavil and carp
according to their nature and practice.
“They compassed me about like
bees. Yes, like bees they compassed me about!” After awhile, as I expected, they
fell to their usual amusement of calling names. They began to say what rank
Arminianism this was! And another expression they were pleased to honor me
with, was the title of “Fullerist”—a title, by the way, so
honorable that I could heartily have thanked them for appending it to
what I had advanced!
But to say that God should hear the prayer of
natural men was something worse than Arminianism to them, if, indeed,
anything could be worse! They quoted that counterfeit passage, “The
prayer of the wicked is an abomination unto the Lord,” which I speedily
answered by asking them if they would find me that text in the Word of
God, for I ventured to assert that the devil was the author of that
saying, and that it was not in the Bible at all.
“The
sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination unto the Lord” is in the Bible,
but that is a very different thing from the “prayer of the
wicked.”
And moreover there is a decided difference between the word
wicked there intended and the natural man about whom we were arguing. I
do not think that a man who begins to pray in any sense can be considered as
being altogether among “the wicked” intended by Solomon, and certainly he is not
among those who turn away their ears from hearing the Law, of whom it is written
that their prayer is an abomination.
“Well, but,” they said, “how could
it be that God could hear a natural prayer?”
And while I paused for a
moment, an old woman in a red cloak pushed her way into the little circle
round me and said to them in very forcible way, like a mother in Israel as she
was, “Why do you raise this question, forgetting what God Himself has said! What
is this you say, that God does not hear natural prayer? Why, doesn’t He hear
the young ravens when they cry unto Him? And do you think they offer spiritual
prayers?”
Straightway the men of war took to their heels—no defeat
was more thorough—and for once in their lives they must have felt that they
might possibly err!
Surely, Brethren, this may encourage and comfort
you! I am not going to set you just now to the task of finding out whether your
prayers are natural or spiritual—whether they come from God’s Spirit or whether
they do not—because that might, perhaps, discourage you. If the prayer proceeds
from your very heart, we know how it got there, though you may not. God
hears the ravens, and I do believe He will hear you, and I believe,
moreover, though I do not now want to raise the question in your heart, that He
hears your prayer, because though you may not know it—there is a secret work
of the Spirit of God going on within you which is teaching you to pray.
>http://www.spurgeongems.org/vols10-12/chs672.pdf <
***************************************************************************
Other
Internet Resources on Spurgeon:
Spurgeon Gems
>http://www.spurgeongems.org/<
SingleVision Ministries
>http://www.seegod.org/<
Spurgeon.US
>http://www.spurgeon.us/index.php<
Spurgeon Archive
>http://www.spurgeon.org/mainpage.htm<
"The Prince of Preachers
Live!" >http://www.charlesspurgeon.net/<
Christian Classics
>http://www.ccel.org/s/spurgeon/<
Spurgeon sermons in
SPANISH >http://www.spurgeon.com.mx/<
Spurgeon's Devotionals
>http://www.gospelweb.net/table1fcb.htm<
CHS' Sermons on
Cassette >http://www.chspurgeon.com/<
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