January-February - The Gospel Magazine

The Gospel Mogazine
25
As a young child, beginning to feel somewhat of the majesty and justice of
God and my own guilt before Him, I remember on a Sunday morning I would
*alk alongside Dad (resplendent in top hat and frock coat) and one of his
deacons from Camberwell to Surrey Tabernacle, Walworth Road. Their
conversation was purely on the things of God. With my hand in his, but saying
not a word myself, I listened intently to all that was said. How I enjoyed those
times! They were so different from all the bustle and rush now which certainly
does not lend itself to spiritual conversation. During the terrible air raids in the
First World War we usually went down into the cellar and sang hymns, and I
remember always nestling on the floor as closely as possible to him, thinking
that, if he was killed I also would be killed and go straighto heaven with him.
$'hat a testimony he bore! We usually ended with singing the Doxology.
There was just one sermon of my father's as a child to which I rather took
exception. It was from the text, "Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath".
The previous week I had been very perverse and he had punished me severely and
I said to my little self, "Dad, practise what you preach!". But perhaps he had
been convicted himself!
Mr. Roe's death
His last week on earth was spent meditating on the word, "Well done, good and
faithful servant, Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord". From some very brief
particulars found after his death, it was obvious that he intended to speak from
those words the following Sunday but, before the dawn of another Lord's
Day on 4th February,1967, at the age of 83, he was very suddenly granted an
abundant entrance into the joy of which he had intended to speak. He was
buried in St. Ives Cemetery on lfth February, 1967.
Extracts from sermons
Law convictions break: Blood convictions melt.
Not a bone of the mystic Christ shall be broken. No mutilated body shall the
mystic Christ have. God guards the mystic Christ today.
THEY shallook on Him whom they pierced, and HE shallook on them with
mercy and forgiveness and heaven in His heart and words.
Holding the doctrines of grace is not sufficient. Do the doctrines of grace
hold us?
We may take the same bread and drink the same.wine and hear the same
preachers and yet be destitute of vital fellowship with either the Lord or His
people. Handshaking and clattering of tongues in religious assemblies are not
essential for fellowship, but heart breakings and confessions of sins to God are.
He is the Advocate with the Father. He is dealing with Him who is His own
Father. What will not the Father do for His Son - His Well-Beloved - His only
Son? And He is the Father of the sinner for whom Christ advocates.