o
say much but Glory! From that hour the devil has never dared to
challenge my conversion. To Christ be all the praise."

Many people are waiting, they cannot exactly tell for what, but for
some sort of miraculous feeling to come stealing over them--some
mysterious kind of faith. I was speaking to a man some years ago, and
he always had one answer to give me. For five years I tried to win
him to Christ, and every year he said, "It has not 'struck me' yet."
"Man, what do you mean? What has not struck you?" "Well," he said, "I
am not going to become a Christian until it strikes me; and it has
not struck me yet. I do not see it in the way you see it." "But don't
you know you are a sinner?" "Yes, I know I am a sinner." "Well, don't
you know that God wants to have mercy on you--that there is
forgiveness with God? He wants you to repent and come to Him." "Yes,
I know that; but--it has not struck me yet." He always fell back on
that. Poor man! he went down to his grave in a state of indecision.
Sixty long years God gave him to repent; and all he had to say at the
end of those years was that it "had not struck him yet."

Is any reader waiting for some strange feeling--you do not know what?
Nowhere in the Bible is a man told to wait; God is commanding you now
to repent.

Do you think God can forgive a man when he does not want to be
forgiven? Would he be happy if God forgave him in this state of mind?
Why, if a man went into the kingdom of God without repentance, heaven
would be hell to him. Heaven is a prepared place for a prepared
people. If your boy has done wrong, and will not repent, you cannot
forgive him. You would be doing him an injustice. Suppose he goes to
your desk, and steals $10, and squanders it. When you come home your
servant tells you what your boy has done. You ask if it is true, and
he denies it. But at last you have certain proof. Even when he finds
he cannot deny it any longer, he will not confess the sin, but says
he will do it again the first chance he gets. Would you say to him,
"Well, I forgive you," and leave the matter there? No! Yet people
say that God is going to save all men, whether they repent or
not--drunkards, thieves, harlots, whoremongers, it makes no difference.
"God is so merciful," they say. Dear friend, do not be deceived by
the god of this world. Where there is true repentance and a turning
from sin unto God, He will meet and bless you; but He never blesses
until there is sincere rep