Resurrection of Christ, a Pledge of future Victory – Charles Spurgeon

OUR Lord came into this world to destroy all the works of the devil. Behold before you the works of the devil pictured as a grim and horrible castle, massive and terrible, overgrown with the moss of ages, colossal, stupendous, cemented with blood of men, ramparted by mischief and craft, surrounded with deep trenches, and garrisoned with fiends. A structure dread enough to cause despair to every one who goes round about it to count its towers and mark its bulwarks. In the fullness of time our Champion came into the world to destroy the works of the devil. During his life he sounded an alarm at the great castle, and dislodged here and there a stone, for the sick were healed, the dead were raised, and the poor had the gospel preached unto them. But on the resurrection morning the huge fortress trembled from top to bottom; huge rifts were in its walls; and tottering were all its strongholds. A stronger than the master of that citadel had evidently entered it, and was beginning to overturn, overturn, overturn, from pinnacle to basement. One huge stone, upon which the building much depended, a corner-stone which knit the whole fabric together, was lifted bodily from its bed and hurled to the ground. Jesus tore the huge granite stone of death from its position, and so gave a sure token that every other would follow. When that stone was rolled away from Jesus’ sepulcher, it was a prophecy that every stone of Satan’s building should come down, and not one should rest upon another of all that the powers of darkness had ever piled up, from the days of their first apostasy even unto the end. Brethren, that stone rolled away from the door of the sepulcher gives me glorious hope. Evil is still mighty, but evil will come down. Spiritual wickedness reigns in high places; the multitude still clamor after evil; the nations still sit in thick darkness; many worship the scarlet woman of Babylon, others bow before the crescent of Mohammed, and millions bend themselves before blocks of wood and stone; the dark places and habitations of the earth are fall of cruelty still; but Christ has given such a shiver to the whole fabric of evil that, depend upon it, every stone will be certain to fall. We have but to work on, use the battering-ram of the gospel, continue each one to keep in his place, and like the hosts around Jericho, to sound the trumpet still, and the day must come when every hoary evil, every colossal superstition shall be laid low, even with the ground, and the prophecy shall be fulfilled, “Overturn, overturn, overturn it; and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him.” That loosened stone on which the angel sits is the sure prognostic of the coming doom of everything that is base and vile. Rejoice, you sons of God, for Babylon’s fall draws near. Sing, O heavens, and rejoice, O earth, for there shall not an evil be spared. Truly, I say unto you, there shall not be one stone left upon another, which shall not be thrown down.