Most of you are familiar with the hymn Whosoever Will May Come. The chorus runs as follows, “Whosoever will, whosoever will; Send the proclamation over vale and hill; Tis a loving Father calls the wand’rer home: Whosoever will may come.” I suppose the writer had in mind the text “And whosoever will let him take the water of life freely” (Rev.22:17b). We can see from the text that the hymn is not written accordingly. This is the danger of a lot of our modern hymnology. I find more and more inconsistency with the plain teaching of the Holy Scriptures is derived from misconceptions taken from modern hymns. I was asked recently if I did not believe in ‘whosoever will’. My reply was yes, but every ‘whosoever will’ in the Bible has a qualification. For example observe the one in the text just cited, “Whosoever will, let him (not them or all, but him) take the WATER of life freely.” The qualification is to the individual who has a SPIRITUAL THIRST; ‘he’ may take and drink. If we had the space I could point out (without exception) the qualification to every invitation in the Bible. Observe another example text in the Old Testament, “For I will pour water upon him THAT IS THIRSTY” (Isa.44:3). Thirst as a feeling of the soul in a spiritual sense is certainly indicative of divine life. It is as impossible, spiritually viewed, for a man dead in sin to thirst after a living God, as for a corpse in the graveyard to thirst after a drink of cold water from the well. I know for myself that such a feeling as thirsting after God had no place in my soul until the Lord was pleased to quicken my soul to spiritual life. I had heard of God by the hearing of the ear, as the ancient patriarch Job testified, but my soul had not beheld Him. I had seen Him in creation, in the starry sky, in the roaring sea, in the fruitful earth, I had read of Him in the Bible, I had learned His existence by education and tradition, and I had some apprehension of His holiness in my natural conscience; but as to any spiritual thirsting after Him, any earnest desire to fear Him, know Him, believe in Him, or love Him, no such experience of feeling ever dwelt in my heart. I loved the world too dearly to look to Him, who made it, and I loved myself too warmly and affectionately to seek Him who would bid me crucify and mortify thyself. Therefore I am well convinced a man must be made alive unto God by spiritual regeneration before he can experience any such sensation as is here conveyed by the figure thirst: or know anything of the Psalmist’s feelings when he cried, “As the hart paneth after the water brook, so panteth my soul after thee, O God, My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God” (Psalm 42:1-2).
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