What must the strength of an angry God be? By Charles Spurgeon. Psalm 47, verse 8. God reigns over the nations. God sits on His holy throne.

When the soul is perfectly reconciled to God and comes to delight in Him, then it rejoices in all of His attributes. At the first, perhaps, it dwells almost exclusively upon His love and His mercy. but it afterwards proceeds to find joy in God's sterner attributes, and especially delights itself in His holiness and in His power.

It is a mark of Christian maturity when we begin to distinguish the attributes and to rejoice in God for each one of them. It betokens meditation and thought when we are able thus to discern the things of God and to give to the Lord a song of praise for each one of His perfections. It also indicates a growingly intimate communion with our Heavenly Father when we begin to perceive His adorable character and to rejoice so much in all that He is. that we can take the attributes in detail and bless and praise and magnify Him on account of each one of them.

We see the attribute of God's omnipotence manifested in His providential control and care of everything that He has made. His overruling hand controls all the major events in His universe as well as all of the common events of our daily life. His mighty hand guides the fall of every leaf in autumn and adorns each blade of grass with its own drop of dew.

It is also clearly manifested in all the events of human history. His power is seen in the rise and fall of empires, in the growth of nations, or in their overthrow. It ought to be a subject of great joy to all the godly, that the world is not left to the control of chance, or luck, or accidents, or to tyrants. There is a governor and ruler who is Lord of all.

Another subject for which we have reason to adore God is that His power is seen in the ultimate judgment of the wicked, a topic which should prostrate us in the dust before His solemn majesty. There are two flaming jewels of Jehovah's crown which will be frightfully seen in hell, His wrath and His power.

What if God, choosing to show His wrath and make His power known, bore with great patience the objects of His wrath, prepared for destruction? Justice and omnipotence will be glorified together in that last tremendous act of judgment. in which he will separate the righteous from the wicked, and apportion to the unbelievers their due.

Who knows the power of your anger? What must the strength of an angry god be? Who shall stand against him when he will break them with an iron rod and smash them like clay pots? Beware, says he, you that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces and there are none to deliver.

Who shall stand against this great and awesome God in the day of His wrath? Who shall endure in that day when mercy's day is over and justice alone sits on her burning throne?