How much the future has before us

How much the future has before
us! What is hidden in this year on which we shall soon enter, if the Lord
tarry? We know not what a day may bring forth. But we do know this, that there
are good things to come in the future. The good things of Christ will be
sufficient for us for the rest of our lives. Look on down the whole vista of
your life until the very last moment when you will be ushered into the presence
of the Lord. Is it not only good things to come all the way through? And then,
dear brethren, as faith looks upward, and we think of the glory that is just
beyond, where He is, that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have
entered into the heart of man, surely the good things are yet to come. As
eternity rolls on, we will never, never exhaust the fulness of blessing that
the heart of God and the love of Christ have secured for us. And you can write
over the portals of heaven itself, GOOD THINGS TO COME. There will be perennial
enjoyment and fresh surprises as we share with our blessed Lord the fruits of
what He has won for us.

Contrast
those "good things to come" (Heb, 9:11), the fruit of redemption,
with that awful word of judgment, "wrath to come." {Luke 3:7). (Some
may need just such a word.) You remember John the Baptist said to those who
insincerely came out to his baptism, "Who hath warned you to flee from the
wrath to come?" There is wrath to come. Fortunes may be increased,
pleasures may be indulged in, but there is "wrath to come." Years of
God’s patience, years of mercy despised, of warnings unheeded are treasuring up
wrath against the day of wrath. And when comes the end of time, looking back
upon a Christless life and forward into a Christless eternity, oh awful
thought, it is wrath to come! Ah, dear friends that place of wrath, in the outer
darkness where there is weeping and the gnashing of teeth, is no temporary
banishment nor purifying fire. It is no place from which he will one day emerge
a wiser man, ready to accept the finished work of Christ. The day of grace will
be eternally past, and throughout eternity, solemn and awful thought, it will
be still WRATH TO COME. As you think of it, should it not fill the heart with
yearning, with longing for the salvation of souls? Should it not make us
instant in season, out of season? Daily we meet men who are going on to the
wrath to come and we are going on to the good things to come. Shall we not,
knowing the terror of the Lord, persuade men? Shall we not entreat them, yea,
shall we not go out and compel them to come in?" "Turn ye, . . . for
why will ye die?" (Ezek. 33:11)