For the Elect's Sake - Hawker

"I beg the Reader not to overlook that sweet verse of mercy to the elect. Except those days, said Jesus, be shortened; (that is, the sweeping destruction going forth at that visitation) there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake, said the Redeemer, those days shall be shortened.


Reader! do not overlook the mercy; and much less overlook the Lord of the mercy. If the days had been lengthened out, as the savage Romans wished, until the whole seed of Israel had been cut off: from whence could there have been a race preserved for the propagating the seed of Christ, out of which the elect after the flesh were to come? Here as in that beautiful similitude of the cluster in looking on, which the new wine is found Isaiah lxv. 8. Was one which said: destroy it not; for a blessing is in it. So, saith the Lord, will, I do for my servant's sake, that I may not destroy them all. Reader! who shall say, from that hour to the present, and so on to the end of time, how frequent and how numerous, the instances, where mercy is shown to the graceless, for the elect's sake, which in the Adam race of nature, are to come forth from their loins. How many among the unregenerate live on, and are preserved; because Christ's seed after the flesh are appointed in their day and generation? Did the world but know this; or could the world but be made sensible of the blessings they derive from Christ's seed; would they persecute them as they now do, and like Pharaoh to Israel, often make their lives grievous by reason of their bondage. Exod. ii. 23. Oh! ye ungodly, ye careless, and christless people of this land! What would ye do were the Lord to call home his own, and house them all at once, from your persecutions? Surely you may truly say with the Prophet: Except the Lord of Hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah! Isaiah i. 9." -Robert hawker