“Prepare to meet thy God.” Amos 4:12

H. Page 319
Ps. Page 81
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"Prepare to meet thy God." Amos, 4:12
There is no possibility of avoiding an interview
with God. Other beings you may avoid if you
wish. Criminals naturally secrete themselves
from the officers of Justice, by sometimes flowing to
the uttermost parts of the earth; and
formerly it was a comparatively easy matter
to escape detection. But in our day Science
has so wonderfully increased the Knowledge
of men, and by the aid of the Electro-Magnetic
Telegraph has so facilitated the intercourse
of Nations, and even the Photographic Art
has been made so subservient to the purposes
of Justice by revealing to strangers the life
like resemblance of the fugitive, [and] not though
he may take the wings of steam and cross

the continent or the ocean, the wings of lightning outstrip his speed and he often meets,
at the end of his journey or his voyage,
an unexpected reception at the hands of
the officer of Justice, notified of his
approach by the electric message from
the scene of his crime. It is by the aid of
such wonderful discoveries as these that
man has been gifted with a certain kind
of ubiquity, or everywhereness, and time
+ distance have both alike been almost
reduced to nothing.
But there is a limit to man's power of
rapid transit, and universal presence.
Man has nothing in his attributes that
corresponds to God's Omnipresence.
And, indeed, how it [can be] is possible that a Being

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can be everywhere present and at all times,
surpasses our capacity even to conceive.
Yet we do receive it as a well
established truth, and it is to the child of
God, a source of infinite joy to know
this is one among His attributes- that
God is present everywhere. Read 139 Ps.
Now I know that when the passage selected as my
text is read by men ordinarily it conveys no other
idea than that [a] preparation is needed by us
to meet God in Death and judgment; and
nothing can be conceived more important,
than such an exhortation, nor can any
thing be conceived of so solemn as
that meeting with god [as is] implied in
the hour of death, or the judgment of the great Day.

But there is a universal propensity in us all
to post-pone the consideration of spiritual
matters, and especially to have certain set times
to attend to such concerns, and in the interval
allotted to our temporal affairs, to dismiss the
thought of God, until the time comes for us
to meet Him. The impenitent man practices
upon this system of procrastination, when
he says to God's Holy Spirit "Go thy way" [?],
meaning, (if he mean anything,) that he
will go on in earthly pursuits however
sinful, just because they are pleasant,
and that he will manage to have things
arranged, (he does not know nor care how,) so
as to settle up his accounts finally when he
will be compelled to meet God in Death. He

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forgets that he cannot choose a time for meeting
God, just when it suits his own convenience;
that God is not confined to the hour of death,
or, the day of judgment, as times of meeting men.
I. We meet God in all the events of common Life.
What if God plant Himself in your very pathway
of life, and in the most unexpected manner,
and at a most unexpected time, pour out His
beneficence upon you in the form of a sudden
increase of your temporal prosperity; or what
if He meet you by blasting with sudden loss
your [pe???iary] ventures; what if He bless
you with the home circle of pure delights,- "wife,
children, and troops of friends;" giving you light
in your dwelling and peace around your
hearth-stone; or, what if he crown the
aspirations of the young with joyous realization of

cherished hopes, and the outlook of Life is apparently only
one long unchanging vista fo joy and peace;
or [if] what if He meet you by the lowering cloud
of dark Providences, coming in [by] the shadowing form
of bereavement, plucking from the charmed circle
of home some lovely flower upon which your
idolatrous affections are placed, and from which
your intensest happiness is derived; what if
He meet the young, the careless, the giddy and
the gay in the midst of all their thoughtlessness
of Him + HIs claims, and by
disappointment of expectations, by failure of hopes,
by treachery of pretended friends, by losses
and estrangement of affection on the part
of those you regarded as devoted to you, by any
and all such every day occurrences, is it

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not True that God is in all this? Has He not met
you in the blessings of life- your daily bread,
+ your deliverance from evil? Has He not
met you in the hour of grief desolation
and gloom that has shed its dark cloud
over your household? Has He not met you
in the Sunshine of earthly Joy and the
hour of your highest success? Has He not
met you too in the bitterness of your
plans for future earthly prosperity,
when one by one you have seen your
expectations die out in darkness, and have felt the
iron of despair enter your very soul?
God is in all this. God is in every thing. God
positively appoints, or designedly permits every event

Yes, God has already met you elsewhere alas! In the
lone hours of you withdrawal from the presence
of your best + dearest friends, when the nature
of your pursuits was such as would not
bear the look of Society at large, when you
were ashamed to let the light of Day shine
upon you, and shrouded yourself + your deeds
in midnight gloom, when you blessed yourself
with the thought that no eye saw your deed, no ear
heard your words, then it was that God met you
by His Holy Spirit or by His Providence, and not only
saw, + heard, the deed + word, but there was not a thought
in your mind but, lo! The Lord knew it altogether.
And remember that He was not [simply] there simply to
take record for a coming judgment, but His
despair in thus meeting you at such times and

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in such places, was to arrest you in your downward march and to win you to his love + service
When joy crowned your days, when your cup
was running over, when peace filled all your soul,
this was God's gift, and His goodness
was intended to lead you to repentance,
and when sorrow fell on your path, and
the springs of your enjoyment were dried up
and woe lay heavily upon your heart,
then God was reproving + rebuking you to
correct you wanderings and restore
you to Himself. When He met you in
those dark scenes of sin and folly His
voice was "What doest thou her?" Come
back, Come back, my son "If sinners entice
thee consent thou not"- "Go not in the
way of evil men, enter not into the path

of the wicked; avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it,
and pass away. For they sleep not except they have
done mischief; and their sleep is taken away
unless they cause some to fall. For they eat the bread
of wickedness, and drink the wine of violence."
Now the question that comes up for answer is How
did you meet Him, when you were thus
confronted by His Providence, and Conscience
gave voice to His Word? Were you
prepared to meet Him? Were you glad to meet
Him? Alas, not every time is God welcomed
when He comes to meet men "in the paths
of worldliness and vanity, pointing kindly
to the coming wrath, and the warning them
from that wrath to flee." They avoid Him.
They hush Conscience. They harden their neck, though

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often reproved," forgetting that they incur the
threatened risk of being "suddenly destroyed
and that without remedy."
And if any think that the hour of Death and
the Day of Judgment are the only times
when we may expect to meet God, such
may find in the context of this passage a
refutation of this thought. The Israelites had
been rebellious, idolatrous, and corrupt, that God
had visited them with famine, drought, locusts, and
dreadful pestilences; by the incurious of the
Assyrians and other enemies, as well as by innumerable
evils of various kinds, but as "they persisted in
impenitence, rebellion, + idolatry, notwithstanding
all these warnings, judgments, and respites, the
Lord was determined to bring upon them the

calamities which had been before predicted."
So "He warned them to "prepare to meet their
God "as their offended Judge and Adversary,"
(not at death, and the judgment Day) But as one who was
about to denounce sentence, and to execute
righteous vengeance upon them by the Assyrian armies."
But if we do not meet God in all the events of common
life, how are we to explain the wondrous
occurrences of our own times? Who is this that comes
along in the terrific Earthquakes of California, +
South America? Who rides upon the wings of
the tornadoes that destroyed millions of property +
944 lives in Asia, Europe, and America? Who directed
the floods that desolated nearly ? of the richest portion of France, caused the
loss of hundreds of lives, threw out thousands "into
the cold world without homes or help," + who sent

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the overflow of the Danube into [Pe?th] + destroyed 600?
Was it chance or Fate, or some impersonal Law
[of Darkness] of Nature that, in New Grenada, Asia Minor,
to Islands + Mexico, whelmed in death over
20,000 by Earthquakes? How was it that in
the wreck of 11 magnificent Steamships near
1000 lives were lost? Three hundred and four lives
by 35 fires; by Explosions by fire damp, boilers,
Gunpowder, fireworks, nitroglycerine, + chemicals
over 200; Famine too has swept away
20000 in Asia Minor; and in the Fiji islands
50,000 people are said to have perished by measles
and other diseases. But now explain if you
can the extraordinary occurrences that have
taken place recently in our own country.
I know that infidel Scientists may be ready

to give some explanation of them upon natural
law. But I ask if natural Law or any other
form of Law can act without some Law
Executive? Was it by natural Law, that after
a succession of disastrous years of commercial
panic, agricultural failures, and calamitous
visitations of pestilence upon man + beast, such
as were experienced in this city, that men
instead of becoming more subdued and penitent
and turning unto God in humiliation + sorrow
for sin,- instead of "the inhabitants learning
righteousness when the judgments of God were abroad
in the land;"- actually rushed to the farthest
extreme of violence + outbreaking wickedness, as
witnessed in the very winter that succeeded
the summer of Pestilence here; can the scientist

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explain all this by natural or physical Law?
Then when the Holy Spirit in great power was
sent into our midst, and vast multitudes were
gathered night after night to listen to the
message of Divine Love + Truth as
proclaimed by God's servants in simplicity and
Godly sincerity, for weeks in succession,
where are the vast fruits in conversion
of sinners now to be found? Alas, their
goodness is like the morning cloud +
the [morning] early dew;- it passeth away." And
after all this, and the goodness of God
manifested to the whole land in the
fruitful seasons upon the thirsty soil, and
filling the hearts of all with gladness +
joy in the anticipation of returning prosperity

prosperity, but (it is to be feared) with little of gratitude
or, humbling sense of dependence upon God,-
Can you wonder that God's patience has found
its limit, and that suddenly in some parts of
the country the destructive grasshopper swept
away the labor of the agriculturist? But mark
the goodness of God in the fact that these
ravages were so early as to admit of
replanting, + yet no sooner were they glad [?]
by a prospect of another abundant harvest than
the unwanted occurrence of disastrous floods
in July + August put an end to all the possibility
of any crop at all. Is this all chance, or physical
Law? Our time, too, hurries on apace, and soon
the inevitable destruction of our great staple + the
grain for the sustenance of our people, which

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but a few days since presented the appearance
of a yield unparalleled in the history of
the country, as it waved in magnificent
luxuriance along the banks of our
great river, will add its melancholy
contribution to the record of disaster by
which uncounted millions of property
are to be destroyed, and calamity to the
commercial world that can be hardly
be estimated, is to befall the country
just beginning to emerge from a long
and dreamy night of gloom and ruin.
Now I ask again is all this just by Chance, or
by the inevitable process of physical Law?
If by the latter only, then the wise scientist
who claims to understand all these laws shd.

have pointed out the danger in time to warn us
to provide against it. But it came upon the
wisest in as sudden and unexpected a manner
as it did upon the most ignorant. No, no,
my brethren, all these things have come upon
us by the wise providence of that Being who
"rules in the armies of Heaven, and does His
pleasure among the inhabitants of Earth."
who "taketh the wise in their own craftiness;"
and by whom it comes to pass that, "the counsel of
the froward is carried headlong." Let it be now
fully realized by all the inhabitants of this
land, let it be known + read of all men, that
God is saying to us by these solemn and
extraordinary visitations "Prepare to meet thy
God!"

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My object is ill-understood now, if my heavens do not
feel satisfied that we need a preparation
to meet God at other times than at the
time of Death and the Day of Judgment.
It is God's will that we should meet Him
at all times and in all places, by Day
and by night, at home and abroad, on
the land and on the sea, in solitude
and in Society, on the Sabbath and during
the week, in the closet as well as in
the Sanctuary, in joy + in sorrow, in
prosperity and in adversity, in sickness + in health,
in life as well as in death. He would have
us live ever under His eye; to feel that
it is the breath of God that breathes upon
us in the gentle breeze of the summer morning
of peace, no less than it is the footsteps

of the dreadful God marching upon the
storm in vengeance. "We are
ready enough to tremble at the thunder
of His voice, or to shrink from the anger
of the Lightning's flash, to acknowledge that
it is God that rides upon the whirlwind
and directs the storm, But we must not
fail to realize that it is the same Being
who stretches out the heavens above us in their swat
serenity, and carpets the Earth with its
mantle of green, and opens His hand to
supply the wants of every living thing,
and crowns the year with His goodness.
So would God have us cultivate a tender and
close intimacy with Him, + to realize His
existence not as an angry Sovereign, + a Righteous Judge

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but as a gracious, loving and tender "Father in
whom compassions flow." That [inscription] Sentence "Thou
God Seest me," was suggested to
Hagar in the Wilderness, not as a caution
to guard her against any violation of GOd's
laws, so much as a grateful memento of
His watchful Providence over her in the
extremity of her distress. So let it be with
us all along life's pathway, believing
with a constant, habitual, childlike
trustfulness that God's eye of tender
compassion is ever upon us for good, and
that we are called upon to meet Him
with grateful recognition of His mercies,
and to bow in filial acquiescence to His
Wise and Holy Will in all things.

Yet while this truth cannot be too earnestly
insisted upon, that we are to meet God as
present everywhere, it derives its mightiest
forcefulness from the very fact that
its realization constitutes the very best
preparation to meet Him,
II. In Death. Men may and the majority do
manage to neglect all intercourse with God
during the progress of life. They live upon His
sufferance, subsist upon His bounty, enjoy
His sunshine + rain, breathe His air,
sleep under. His wing of protection, and no
word of thanks, no song of praise, no deed
of service, no labor for His glory is ever
tendered in return. But most of men
are conscious of God's presence come to

23.
meet them in Death. This is the hour, this the
messenger, that calls them inevitably to a
meeting with God. Many places may be avoided,
by you that others have been compelled to
visit; many messengers have called for
others that have never called for you; many
meetings others have to attend, from which
you have been exempted. But this place,
this messenger, this meeting neither you, nor
any other creature can avoid. It is for all
of our race. This is not wealth enough (in all the Universe) to bribe
Death to let you alone; there is not influence
enough among the great to overrule Him; there is not wisdom
skill enough among the physicians to escape Him; there is not eloquence
enough in all the Orators to persuade Him; there
is not power enough in the mightiest giants or the

most formidable army to resist Him. Hence
men have to go when the summons comes
whether willing or reluctant; whether ready
or unprepared. Some yield joyfully "having a
desire to depart and be with Jesus which
is far better." Others in frantic agony of
soul and body, go in terror and
consternation revealing in dying utterances of hopeless
despair the destiny that awaits them in
the regions of unutterable woe. Others
in stern, moveless, mute, stony
insensibility, hoping for nothing, caring for nothing,
fearing nothing, believing nothing, defiantly
yield[ing] to their inevitable doom. These
varied methods of meeting God in death, take
their coloring from the manner in which they

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have [spent] passed the time of their sojourning here" in life.
He who has realized God habitually day by day, lived
as under God's eye, walked before Him in all
His ordinances + commandments blameless,
relying upon God's grace + Holy Spirit to aid Him,
is prepared to meet God in death without fear,
and to leave earth "with joy and not with grief."
While the thoughtless and the lovers of this world
most commonly die in terror and fright, and cannot collect
their distracted thoughts calmly to consider the
subject of death + Eternity, but pass to their doom
in dismay and hopelessness. So the hardened
criminal comes to his death, and having been
all his life pursuing the course of violence and
infamy in which he has ripened his soul for
an Eternity of Woe, dies and makes no sign,
save the mute eloquence of a death bed of defiance.

III. I close with simply directing your thoughts to the
Scriptural statement as to the other meeting with
God- I mean, "the Judgment of the great Day."
"His appointed unto all men once to die, and after death
the judgment." "We must all appear before the
judgment [bar of God] seat of Christ;" "that every one may
receive the things done in his body according to that he
hath done whether it be good or bad." "So then,
every one of us shall give account of himself to God." "Our
God shall come and shall not keep silence; a fire shall
devour before Him, and it shall be very tempestuous
round about Him. He shall call to the Heavens from
above, and to the earth, that He may judge His people."
"I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient
of Days did sit, whose garment was white as snow,
and the hair of His head like the pure wool: His

27.
throne was like the fiery flame, and His wheels as
burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth
from before Him; thousands, thousands ministered
unto Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood"
before Him: the judgment was set and the books
were opened." "And I saw a great-white throne, and
Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and
the heaven fled away; and there was found no
place for them. And I saw the dead small and
great stand before God: and the books were
opened; and another book was opened which
is the book of life: and the dead were judged
out of those things which were written in the
books according to their works."
The subject is not exhausted. I propose to conclude this
evening with a discussion of two points viz.: 1. The
necessity + nature of preparation, and 2. The mode of preparation.