don’t you read your Bibles? The grammar is clear: God says, ‘I am –
not was – the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob’. The
living God defines himself not as the God of dead men, but of the
living” (Matthew 22:31-32, The Message).
The Bible is full of stories about the encounters of the souls of men after death. From Genesis to Revelation, virtually every book of the Bible has something to say or a story to tell us about life in eternity. There is no ambivalence in the Scriptures about the existence of heaven and hell, and that man would end up in either of
these two places after he is done with living on the earth.
Above all, Jesus Christ, the ultimate authority in Scripture to whom all must bow spoke copiously about heaven and hell as the only available eternal destinations from which we must choose. Like it is in our text for today's message, Jesus always sought to put an end to all speculations about eternity, bringing us the reality that must be believed. He told us again and again in very clear language about eternal life, emphasising at every opportunity that He came to show us the way to that eternal life of peace and joy with God.
With all the above, it remains very strange to me that eternity seems so very far from the thoughts of so many. Some don't even believe in life after death. They think that for man, death is the end of everything. That is very foolish because nature itself shows us that nothing created ever comes to a finite end. That is where we get the idea of recycling from. Life is continuous, it only changes form. This mortality must necessarily hand over the baton to immortality. Please don't join the foolish to live in this world as though everything will
end here.
Let me admonish you to make peace with God. Jesus, the Way, the Truth, and the Life is ever prepared to help us. When you live by His words, then you will be able to say like Victor Hugo, "When I go down to the
grave I can say, like so many others: I have finished my work, but I cannot say I have finished my life. My day’s work will begin the next morning. My tomb is not a blind alley. It is a thoroughfare. It closes in the twilight to open in the dawn".
Friends, we are not yet in the land of the living, but we are here in the land of the dying. Someday, we shall be in the Land of the Living, where we shall live to die no more. Are you prepared for that phase of your life? Your time here in the land of the dying is given you to prepare for the land of the living, whether in heaven or hell. Hear it again, perhaps for the umpteenth time - heaven is real, hell is also
real.
No comments:
Post a Comment