"So Many Truly Sincere & Religious People"

' So Many Truly Sincere & Religious People

"Cornelius and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly." Acts 10:2

Yet Cornelius and his family weren't saved! (Acts 11:14) A generous centurion builds a synagogue. (Luke 7:3-5) A young man keeps the commandments from his youth up. (Luke 18:21) Balaam prophesies. (Numbers 23:16) Saul weeps. (1 Samuel 24:16) Judas preaches the gospel. (Matthew 10:5-8) Yet none of these men were saved! It is at times, enough to fill one's heart with mingled astonishment and sorrow, to see so many truly sincere and religious people, whose religion will leave them short of eternal life—because they are destitute of saving grace. To see so much amiability, benevolence, devotedness, self-denial, liberality, loveliness of character, integrity, consistency of life, all inescapably dashed against the rock of inflexible justice, and there shattered and lost—swallowed up with its unhappy possessors in the raging billows beneath—such a sight, did we not know that the Judge of the whole earth cannot do wrong, would indeed stagger us to the very center of our being! '

- J.C. Philpot