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Marching Toward the End
If there is a universal desire and thought in the hearts and minds of people it is that this world is not the “end” but is only a passageway to a new and different life. It doesn’t matter what faith one is from: Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity—whatever—the human heart is focused on what comes next, with a great hope and belief that what comes after death will be different and better and final.
Our beliefs take different forms and we have differing ideas of what this new life will be like, but down in the core of our being we all believe—even the atheists—that after death everything changes.
For the atheist the change is from something to nothing; for the Buddhist the change is from being a fleshly soul to being one with the universe; for the person of Islamic faith there is paradise; for the Jew and the Christian there is heaven where we will spend eternity with the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.
As you read this I know that there is a part of you that believes in and even longs for a new life after this one, where there will be no sin, no struggles, no danger, no sickness, and no evil. We wish and hope for a life where there are no more good-byes, no more death and no injustices.
We dream of a time when no little children will ever be faced with birth defects or cancer or mistreatment from those who should love them most, their parents.
We dream of a time when there will be no divorce, no lying, no unfairness, no unkindness.
Our hearts long for the day when there will be nothing but honest and pure joy, untainted by fear of it all ending, untainted by fear of violence from an intruder, a spouse or a nation against nation. Our hearts long for just pure joy where, to paraphrase Rodney King, “everybody gets along.”
The day is coming.
We are marching toward it. It is coming at a time that has already been set by God. Acts 17:30-31 says:
Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent, 31 because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man He has whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.
There is a judgment coming that is part of the transition to the kind of eternity that we all dream of and long for. There is a day coming, a fixed day, when the Lord Jesus Christ, the one whom God raised from the dead, will judge the world in righteousness.
For the first, only and final time, all things will be judged correctly, judged in righteousness. There will be no escape from proper consequences and no improper consequences handed down.
And after this judgment what we call “eternity” will begin. Of course eternity has already begun, better, has already been and continues. But what we mean by “eternity” is that new time, that time that isn’t even marked by time as we understand time with its life-spans and eras and so on.
Eternity is that time frame, for lack of a better term, when all of the crud of this life is over and only the good things remain. That day, that season is coming, and it is marked out by the pivot point of the judgment that the verses in Acts 17 speak about.
If you would like to be part of the good side of that pivot point, notice in verse 31 above what God says must happen: you must repent.
Repentance means to “change,” as Billy Graham has so often said, “to change your mind about your way of living,” to change your mind about Christ and about God. When the Bible in the New Testament talks about repenting it means to turn away from sin and to turn to Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.
Romans 10:9 says, “For if we confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead we will be saved.”
This “confession” that Jesus is Lord is not us simply paying lip service to that fact, which happens to be true whether we confess it or not. This confession is the honest confession of a person’s heart that they have repented from self-will and sin, and have by a decision of their heart surrendered their lives to the Lordship of Christ
The part about “believing in our hearts that God raised him from the dead” encompasses the reason that Jesus died: He died for our sins, to pay the penalty for our sins. This belief is us saying in our hearts and with our mouths, that Jesus died for in our place, paying our debt of sin, so that God in his righteous judgment, can authentically and honestly cancel the debt that we owe.
This belief is us saying, “Lord I have nothing to offer you to gain heaven, except the death and resurrection of my Lord Jesus Christ.”
Friends, the very thing you long for—a perfect eternity—is the very thing we are marching toward IF we are believers in Jesus Christ. The day has been fixed. It is already set. It is coming as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow.
Do we know when that day is? No. But we know that the day has been set. The time is drawing nearer every day.
Are you ready? Have you asked Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior? Have you put your trust in him and him alone for salvation from your sin? If you haven’t done that, you aren’t ready.
Get ready my friend, get ready. We are marching toward the End. Whether it will be years or decades or centuries, the time of judgment has been fixed. Don’t come to that day unprepared. If you do, it will be too late.
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