Joseph Alleine

Joseph Alleine Wrote:

…”I have sometimes thought that if only I could convince men that they are still unregenerate, the work were more than half done.”

How I often wish the same thing; because false presumption is right, if we are to take the statisitcs of a mere 15% of true believers making up the visible church. How false presumption seems to reign and these be the people that least question their estate, yet those in a good estate, will at times often lose assurance or struggle with it in the first place.
Not only is the visible church harmed by the false professors, who claim Christ yet live lives and practices not much different to much of the world, if any, but they are perhaps in more danger than the out and out atheist, because they have been totally self-decieved by Satan and lulled into false security and false presumption, and it’s a carnal security, and it seems almost impossible to say the right thing to wake up those to make them question their estate. Some willfully blind themselves, or are just hypocrites and know they are not saved, but I am talking about those who really do believe themsleves to be true converts. Oh how sad it is, at their lamentable condition and blindness at their own estate, while they go forth on missions of evangelizing to others what they have no themselves!

Alleine continues:

O how many then will be found to be the real servants of the devil, who take themselves for nother than the children of God! He can no sooner offer a sinful delight or opportunity for your unlawful advantage than you embrace it…
Oh sinner, stop here, and consider, if you are a man and not a senseless block, consider. Think where you are standing–upon the very brink of destruction. As the Lord liveth, and as your soul liveth, there is but a step between you and this. You do not know when you lie down, but you maybe in hell before morning. You do not know when you rise up, but you may drop in before night. Dare you make light of this? Will you go on in such a dreadful condition, as if nothing ailed you?…Do not blind your eyes. Do not deceive yourself. See your misery while you may prevent it. Think what it is to be a vile outcast, a lost reprobate, a vessel of wrath, into which the Lord will be pouring out His tormenting fury while He has a being. Divine wrath is a fierce, devouring, everlasting, unquenchable fire, and this must be your portion, unless you consider your ways, and speedily turn to the Lord by a sound conversion.

Objection: You will say, I have been a hearer of the Word a long time, yet it has not been effectual to my conversion.
Answer: Yes; but you have not attended upon it in this manner, as a means of your conversion, nor with this design, nor praying for and expecting a happy effect from it.

O study your misery till your heart cry out for Christ as earnestly as ever a drowning man did for a boat, or the wounded for a surgeon. Men  must come to see the danger and feel the smart of their deadly sores and sickness, or Christ will be to them a physician of no value. The manslayer hastens to the city of refuge, when pursued by the avenger of blood; but men must be even forced to and driven out of themselves, or they will not come to Christ….While Laodicea thinks herself rich, increased in goods, in need of nothing, there is little hope. She must be deeply convinced of her wretchedness, blindness, poverty, and nakedness, before she will come to Christ for His gold rainment and eye-salve. Therefore hold the eyes of conscience open, amplify your misery as much as possible, do not flee the sight of it for fear it should fill you with terror. The sense of your misery is but as it were the festering of the wound, which is  necessary to the cure. Better now to fear the torments that await you, than to feel them hereafter.

Where there is life there is hope.  But once we have left this mortail coil the chasm of heaven and hell is eternally fixed and we cannot pass from one to another.  Those of the visible church, who are self-decieved and blind to their own estate,  why go evangelize to those you think of as unsaved, and not tend to your own soul first? I implore all to search our  hearts deeply, and with a Biblical lamp to hold it against of if we have the marks of true conversion. I know from experience, that we can just about talk ourselves into believing we do, even if we don’t,  because there are many things that we can tick the box against, yet its not in the same whole Biblical sense.  A man can jump into a lake to save another from drowning and be successful in saving the man’s life, and yet drown himself.  The false professor with false presumption who goes evangelizing is not in a very differt boat. (pun unintentional)

I sadly believe that the false presumptions, that must in part fill our pews,  are perhaps some of the hardest cases to ever arouse from slumber; and yet, God also says he saves the biggest torments of hell, for those who have been taught, and professed, yet believed Him not.

Below is a short question and answer, on assurance; those with false presumption will not really closely ask themselves the quetions in a real heart searching way, because presumption is much stronger than assurance, the devil does his work well. But I post it in any case, for perhaps those souls who are true converts yet perhaps like myself struggle with assurance at times.
And anyone who professes Christ, I would beg and implore you, to read two books, and not just summarily, but apply the teaching and questions and searchings to ones’ own heart, but to really use it as a search light. The one is Jonathan Edwards, “Treatise on Religious affections” the second is the on quoted above “A sure Guide to Heaven” by Joseph Alleine. I have read the first and have one chapter left in the second, if you have to choose one out of the two, then I would recommend heartily Edwards, “Religious Affections,” that book had a profound effect on my own life, and read with a right spirit, I think it could make many aware who think they sit safely, of the very real danger they are in.

Are You Sure you are really saved?

Sin is a real sickness (Isa. 1:5), yea, the worst of sickness; it is a leprosy in the head (Lev 13:44); the plague in the heart (1 Kings 8:38); it is brokenness in the bones (Psalm 51:8); it pierces, it wounds, it racks, it torments (1 Tim 6:10). A man may as well expect ease when his diseases are in their full strength, or his bones out of joint, as true comfort while in his sins.
—Joseph Alleine “A Sure Guide to Heaven.”