Acts 12:25

REFLECTIONS

Reader! let not you and I overlook the wonderful success of prayer, in the case of Peter, as related in this Chapter. Oh! what cannot prayer accomplish, when awakened by the Spirit of the Lord? And let us not fail to remark, how very near sometimes the Lord permits the enemy to approach, and the apprehensions of his people to be exercised, before the Lord vouchsafeth his answer to prayer. The night was advanced, and the morning hastening on, which was to end the life of Peter, before that the prayers for the Apostle's deliverance were answered. So is it frequently with the Church. But there is a time to favor Zion. And that time, shall not fully run out, before the Lord's hour is come. Oh! the wonders of the Lord's timing; and the Lord's giving deliverance. And, oh! the exercises of the Lord's people, thereby to their good. In everyone the Lord speaks; I the Lord teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go!

What a lesson is here read, to the great and the mighty of the earth, of such as are enemies to God, and his Christ. Oh! how suddenly do they consume, perish, and come to a fearful end! Behold in Herod, the sad representation. It is the shout of a god, said the mistaken multitude. And before the shout was hardly ended, he shrieked, though unheard by them, the first shriek of his in hell. What a striking, but just account, the word of God gives, of such awful characters, Like Sheep, (said the Psalmist), they are laid in the grave: death shall feed on them, and the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning: and their beauty shall consume in the grave from their dwelling. He shall go to the generation of his fathers: they shall never see light. And where is that? Nay, where is it not? Peter saith; to the spirits which are in prison. And if they never see light, where can that be but hell? A land of darkness, as Job saith; as darkness itself, and of the shadow of death, without any order; and where the light is as darkness. Oh! for grace to know distinguishing grace, and to say with the same Psalmist: But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave, for he shall receive me.