A striking sermon preached by Free Church of Scotland great, Robert Buchanan on discerning the “signs of the times.” Listen here, or read the entire sermon below. Here are a couple of choice passages:
“Our Saviour charged it as a sin against the Jews, that while they could ‘discern the face of the sky and of the earth,’ they did not discern that eventful time. May not a like condemnation be justly pronounced against the men of our own day? Out of the multitudes who so closely watch every indication of change that appears on the ever shifting horizon of the commercial and political world, how small, comparatively speaking, is the number of those whose hearts and minds are similarly exercised as to the signs and prospects of the kingdom of God. For the thousands and tens of thousands everywhere, whose eyes are intently turned to the discussions of senates, the deliberations of statesmen, the councils of kings, to gather some intelligence bearing on the security of property and the interests of trade, there is but one here and another there tremulously alive to the safety of the ark of God, and putting forth in deep solicitude the inquiry of our text, ‘Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?'”
“. . . It is to the Lord we must turn, if we desire to know what is in the womb of time, and say to his inspired seers, in the words of the text—’Watchman, what of the night?—Watchman, what of the night?'”
Listen to more of the great theologians and preachers of the Disruption and the old Free Church of Scotland. All Thomas Chalmers recordings here.
West Port Experiment 