May 8
Keepers of the Door
“Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murders and idolaters, and everyone who love and practices falsehood”
Revelation 22: 15.
Perhaps our Lord might have his eye upon the gates of the temple when he spoke this word unto the people. For though the gates of the temple were six cubits wide, yet they were so strait, that none that were unclean in anything might enter in thereat (Ezekiel 40: 48). Because there were placed at these gates, porters, whose office was to look that none but those that had right to enter might go in thither [there]. And so, it is written, Jehoiada set “porters at the gates of the house of the Lord, that none which was unclean in anything should enter in” (2 Chronicles 23: 19), Souls, God has porters at the gates of the temple [and] at the gate of heaven. Porters, I say, placed there by God, to look that none that are unclean in anything may come in thither. At the gate of the church, none may enter now that are openly profane, and scandalous to religion. No, though they plead they are beloved of God: “What hath my beloved to do in mine house,” saith the Lord, “seeing she hath wrought lewdness with many?” (Jeremiah 11: 15).
I say, I am very apt to believe that our Lord Jesus Christ had his thoughts upon these two texts, when he said the gate is strait. And that which confirms me the more in the things is this, a little below the text he saith, “There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of heaven, and you yourselves thrust out” (Luke 13: 28). Thrust out, which signifies a violent act, resisting with striving those that would—though unqualified—[to] enter.
(Adapted, edited, and offered by Dr. Roger D Duke. Taken from the writings of John Bunyan which are in the Public Domain.)