The Need of Decision For The Truth

“I believe the doctrine of election, because I am quite sure that if God had not chosen me I should never have chosen Him; and I am sure He chose me before I was born, or else He never would have chosen me afterwards; and He must have elected me for reasons unknown to me, for I never could find any reason in myself why He should have looked upon me with special love. So I am forced to accept that doctrine. I am bound to the doctrine of the depravity of the human heart, because I find myself depraved in heart, and have daily proofs that there dwelleth in my flesh no good thing. I cannot help holding that there must be an atonement before there can be pardon, because my conscience demands it, and my peace depends upon it.

Those young fellows who never felt conviction of sin, but obtained their religion as they get their bath in the morning, by jumping into it – these will as readily leap out of it as they leaped in. Those who feel neither the joys nor yet the depressions of spirit which indicate spiritual life, are torpid, and their palsied hand has no firm grip of truth. They believe this, and then believe that, for, in truth, they believe nothing intensely.

Whenever I hear the sceptic’s stale attacks upon the Word of God, I smile within myself and thin, “Why, you simpleton! How can you urge such trifling objections? I have felt, in the contentions of my own unbelief, ten times greater difficulties.” We who have contended with horses are not to be wearied by footmen. Gordon Cumming and other lion-killers are not to be scared by wild cats, nor will those who have stood foot to foot with Satan resign the field to pretentious skeptics, or any other of the evil one’s inferior servants.

If, my brethren, we have fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ, we cannot be made to doubt the fundamentals of the gospel; neither can we be undecided. A glimpse at the thorn-crowned head and pierced hands and feet is the sure cure for ‘modern doubt’ and all its vagaries.

Go with your skepticisms to those who do not know whom they have believed. We have heard, and we do testify; and whether men receive our testimony or not, we cannot but speak it, for we speak what we do know, and testify what we have seen. That, my brethren, is the sure way to be decided."

From Lectures To My Students, by CH Spurgeon, (published by Zondervan,1954 Edition pg. 227)