2 Timothy 4:6-8 For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.… 1. The godly, by a spiritual instinct and sagacity, foresee their ends; so did Jacob (Genesis 48:21), and Joshua (Joshua 23:14), and Christ (John 17:2), and Peter (1 Peter 2:14). They always watch and wait for their Master's coming. Their acts, diseases, and disquietments which they meet withal from the world are as so many petty deaths unto them. A man that dwells in an old crazy house where the walls fall down, the foundation sinks, the pillars bend, and the whole building cracks, concludes such a house cannot long stand. As for the wicked they are insensible and secure, and though grey hairs, which are signs of old age and death approaching, be here and there upon them yet they know it not (Hosea 7:9). 2. Death is not dreadful to good men. The apostle speaks of it here not by way of lamentation, but of exultation. Death to him was but a departing from one room to another, from a lower room to a higher, from earth to heaven, from troubles to rest, from mortality to immortality. They are long since dead to the world, and so can part with it more easily. The wicked look on death as a dreadful, dismal thing; but God's people looking on it through the spectacles of the gospel, see it to be a conquered enemy, having its sting taken out (Hosea 13:15), so that what Agag said vainly and vauntingly, a Christian may speak truly and seriously: "The bitterness of death is past" (1 Samuel 15:32). 3. The soul of man is immortal. Death is not an annihilation, but a migration of the soul from the body for a time. 4. The death of the martyrs is a most pleasing sacrifice to God. 5. The death of the martyrs doth confirm the truth. The Church is God's garden, and it is watered and enriched by the blood of martyrs. (T. Hall, B. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.WEB: For I am already being offered, and the time of my departure has come. |
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