New Tabernacle Sermons

by T. De Witt Talmage

You have seen self-registering instruments which recorded how many revolutions they had made and what work they had done, so the manufacturer could come days after and look at the instrument and find just how many revolutions had been made, or how much work had been accomplished. So the human mind is a self-registering instrument, and it records all its past movements. Now that leaf, that all-comprehensive leaf in your mind and mine this moment, the leaf of judgment, brought out under the flash of the judgment throne, you can easily see how all the past of our lives in an instant will be seen. And so great and so resplendent will be the light of that throne that not only this leaf in my heart and that leaf in your heart will be revealed at a flash, but all the leaves will be opened, and you will read not only your own character and your own history, but the character and history of others.

In a military encampment the bugle sounded in one way means one thing, and sounded in another way it means another thing. Bugle sounded in one way means, "Prepare for sudden attack." Bugle sounded in another way means, "To your tents, and let all the lights be put out." I have to tell you, my brother, that the trumpet of the Old Testament, the trumpet that was carried in the armies of olden times, and the trumpet on the walls in olden times, in the last great day will give significant reverberation. Old, worn-out, and exhausted Time, having marched across decades and centuries and ages, will halt, and the sun and the moon and the stars will halt with it. The trumpet! the trumpet!

Peal the first: Under its power the sea will stretch itself out dead, the white foam on the lip, in its crystal sarcophagus, and the mountains will stagger and reel and stumble, and fall into the valleys never to rise. Under one puff of that last cyclone all the candles of the sky will be blown out. The trumpet! the trumpet!

Peal the second: The alabaster halls of the air will be filled with those who will throng up from all the cemeteries of all the ages—from Greyfriar's Churchyard and Roman Catacomb, from Westminster Abbey and from the coral crypts of oceanic cave, and some will rend off the bandage of Egyptian mummy, and others will remove from their brow the garland of green sea-weed. From the north and the south and the east and the west they come. The dead! The trumpet! the trumpet!

Peal the third: Amid surging clouds and the roar of attendant armies of heaven, the Lord comes through, and there are lightnings and thunder-bolts, and an earthquake, and a hallelujah, and a wailing. The trumpet! the trumpet!

Peal the fourth: All the records of human life will be revealed. The leaf containing the pardoned sin, the leaf containing the unpardoned sin. Some clapping hands with joy, some grinding their teeth with rage, and all the forgotten past becomes a vivid present. The trumpet! the trumpet!

Peal the last: The audience breaks up. The great trial is ended. The high court of heaven adjourns. The audience hie themselves to their two termini. They rise, they rise! They sink, they sink! Then the blue tent of the sky will be lifted and folded up and put away. Then the auditorium of atmospheric galleries will be melted. Then the folded wings of attendant angels will be spread for upward flight. The fiery throne of judgment will become a dim and a vanishing cloud. The conflagration of divine and angelic magnificence will roll back and off. The day for which all other days are made has closed, and the world has burned down, and the last cinder has gone out, and an angel flying on errand from world to world will poise long enough over the dead earth to chant the funeral litany as he cries, "Ashes to ashes!"

That judgment leaf in your heart I seize hold of this moment for cancellation. In your city halls the great book of mortgages has a large margin, so that when the mortgagor has paid the full amount to the mortgagee, the officer of the law comes, and he puts down on that margin the payment and the cancellation; and though that mortgage demanded vast thousands before, now it is null and void. So I have to tell you that that leaf in my heart and in your heart, that leaf of judgment, that all-comprehensive leaf, has a wide margin for cancellation.

There is only one hand in all the universe that can touch that margin. That hand this moment lifted to make the record null and void forever. It may be a trembling hand, for it is a wounded hand, the nerves were cut and the muscles were lacerated. That record on that leaf was made in the black ink of condemnation; but if cancellation take place, it will be made in the red ink of sacrifice. O judgment-bound brother and sister! let Christ this moment bring to that record complete and glorious cancellation. This moment, in an outburst of impassioned prayer, ask for it. You think it is the fluttering of your heart. Oh, no! it is the fluttering of that leaf, that judgment leaf.

I ask you not to take from your iron safe your last will and testament, but I ask for something of more importance than that. I ask you not to take from your private papers that letter so sacred that you have put it away from all human eyesight, but I ask you for something of more meaning than that. That leaf, that judgment leaf in my heart, that judgment leaf in your heart, which will decide our condition after this world shall have five thousand million years been swept out the heavens, an extinct planet, and time itself will be so long past that on the ocean of eternity it will seem only as now seems a ripple on the Atlantic.