A Fitting Pre-Cursor to Glory
By Greg Jones
President, MLJ Trust
As a "Pastor of Pastors", one of Dr. Lloyd-Jones's mentees was an English Presbyterian minister by the name of Rev. Charles Hilton Day. The account of Rev. Day's last hours was powerfully detailed in a letter sent by his widow to Dr. Lloyd-Jones which includes a reference to one of his sermons:
We did not realize we had only 10 days left together here. We resumed our evening reading and these times together increased in preciousness. On the Saturday evening after a distressing day I suggested that perhaps he would like something a little lighter. I didn't think he was able to take in a serious book and I was just anxious to read him to sleep – 'no,' he said 'it must be the doctor'. I read the chapter from Ephesians, Life in the Spirit on Christ as the husband of his church right through, hoping my beloved was sleeping, but as I finished he just raised his head and said, 'That was very deep wasn't it?'. It was deep and glorious! We settled him at 9:30 p.m. and the Lord took him home to glory in his sleep a few hours later.1
Listen to "The Bride's Privileges"
Unbeknownst to Rev. Day, the sermon is a fitting pre cursor to the glory he was about to experience. Indeed, a better sermon before entry into glory could scarcely have been found. Dr Lloyd-Jones ends the sermon with the following words:
Christian people, shame on us for our weakness, our hopelessness, our complaining, our lethargy, our half envying the world and all the wonderful life that it has and the joy and the enjoyment. It's dying, it's fading, it's under condemnation. It's going to disappear, it's passing away. And you and I have this glory to look forward to, the glory that we shall share with the Lord Jesus Christ in that glory which is indescribable - the world to come of which we speak.
1 Iain H. Murray, The Life of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: Volume 2 (1899–1981) (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1990), 644-645.