THE ELEVENTH HOUR
By D. M. PANTON.
God
the Holy Ghost has gone forth down all the ages of history, again and again
summoning labourers into the vast vineyard of God. In the dawn of the world "He went out early in the morning" (Matt. 20: 1), and brought in the pre-Flood hosts
of saints, of whom - except a thin
line of Patriarchs - we know nothing and have no revelation. He went forth again to Jacob’s children in
Work
Thus
work waits, and waits for all. "The kingdom of
heaven is like unto a man that is a householder that went out to hire labourers"
(Matt. 20: 1). Dredging, ditching, building, staking;
planting, watering, weeding, pruning: a vineyard on the mountainside is an apt
parable of strenuous work. Savages far
off in inaccessible forests, who are yet to be stars in the Redeemer's crown;
little children in hundreds of thousands, at present totally unconscious of
Christ, who are to be standard-bearers of the Cross in coming years; monstrous
errors to be fought with the naked sword of the Word of God; Scripture to be
unfolded to the gaze of an astonished Church; characters to be built up before
the sight of all men out of the elements of Christ: vast, exhaustless,
accomplishable, divine, the work waits. Therefore the Spirit moves amongst all
ranks and classes, seeking labourers; not one willing worker is refused: the
call goes out into all lands, all races, all ages, all
souls.
The Eleventh Hour
So
naturally our thoughts turn to the eleventh hour, which
manifestly is our hour today - only sixty minutes before the midnight cry -
"Behold, the bridegroom cometh". Even Scientists believe the race is reaching
its last hour. On the covers of three
successive issues of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists appeared the
outline of a portion of a clock. In June
1947 the hands of their clock were set at eight minutes to twelve. Twenty-nine months later they set the hands at
four minutes to twelve. From October
1949 to March 1950 the hands of the clock moved one minute and they now stand
at three minutes to twelve. "About the eleventh hour he went out, and found others
standing: and he saith unto them, Why stand ye here
all the day idle?" That man has missed the whole purpose of
life who is not at work for God. He may be the busiest man on earth; but all
life is idleness if it has no conscious labour for the life beyond: all labour
that has no Christ in it is one immense miscarriage. "Alas"
- as one man said on his death bed - "how
laboriously I have spent all life in doing nothing." So the Holy Spirit argues with the soul.
"Why
stand ye here all the day idle?" Your whole life is only one day, one little
day: why idle away even your last hour? Every
man has, in his own wonderful composition, every tool for doing the work of
God; and the call carries with it all the power needed to obey: why then stand
idle?
A Missed Call
It
is a very pathetic response which is made in the marketplace. "They say unto him, Because no man
has hired us." They were unemployed, not unemployables; they were
not habitual loiterers, or chronic wasters: they are waiting in
the marketplace for hire that never comes. Somehow the call has missed them all these
years. Some men are called in the
morning of their life, like Timothy: some in its meridian, like Paul: some in
their sunset, like Nicodemus - "Can a man be born
again," he cries, "when he is
old?" The call has
never reached their ears. A godless home
and a churchless youth; no shock of grace to awaken or arouse; religious teachers that
never told them the truth, for these teachers
never know the [whole] truth: somehow they had never come face to face
with the Lord of the Vineyard.
The Last Hour
Now what a joy it is to tell such souls that it is just
for them - the loving, tender, gracious command of our Lord. "Go YE
ALSO into the vineyard." It is a marvel of grace, but just like our
Lord Jesus that He is willing to accept the last hour in His
gracious and golden service. Abounding
goodness calls at the eleventh hour; and momentous work can be done in the last
minutes before the sunset of a wasted life. God is calling us at all times and in all
places; by day and by night; by accidents, by Scriptures, by hopes, by fears:
most of all - we hear the call in the fellowship of God's own people, where He
finds far the most of His labourers: until the most wonderful call - the call
up to the Throne of God.
Work Now
Now
we close with that sunset scene. It is
five o'clock, the hour before sunset; and as all labourers had, by the Law of
Moses, to be paid before sunset (Deut.
24: 15), less than one hour remains. The Eleventh Hour, named only here in the
whole Bible, is an uncertain hour, a slippery hour, a difficult hour, a blessed
hour. It is naturally a rare hour for
living; it is grace to an unusual degree - the call reaching the ears before
the ears are dead; and it is, necessarily, the last invitation of
grace. At the twelfth hour there is no
call, for all the work is finished. "The night cometh, when no man can work." "Because I have called, and ye refused, I will laugh in the
day of your calamity, and mock when your fear cometh" (Proverbs 1: 24).
Facing the Hour
So
we do well to face our eleventh hour. When
Sir Robert Matheson, Registrar
General for
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