Heaven or Hell?

     When is the last time you heard a good sermon about hell? No, you didn’t mis-read that. I used the word “good” on purpose to refer to a truthful, straight-forward sermon on what the Bible says about hell. You might not know it by listening to a lot of contemporary preaching, but hell is still a reality according to the Holy Bible. It’s still there, although it’s no longer found in the sermons many preachers present. But we can’t just blame the preachers. The fact is for millions in our relativistic, “this is my truth” age, hell will no longer sell. The doctrine and place called “hell” by Jesus just won’t jive with the God many contemporaries have created in their own free-wheeling way of thinking. The very notion that God might actually punish and cause pain in an eternal place the Bible calls hell is very unpopular in this age when, as it was said of another people long ago, “every man [is doing] what is right in his own eyes” (Proverbs 17:6). For many preachers as well as people who sit in pews, hell has cooled off or been frozen out altogether. The fire of hell has been thoroughly drenched with the water of theological liberalism and faithless thinking. There is barely a flicker of hell left in the minds of many. We can choose to ignore it, we can get angry about it, and all hot-under-the-collar if the preacher preaches on it from time to time, but the Bible’s teaching about hell is still there right alongside it’s gloriously good news about Heaven. Jesus Himself taught about Heaven and told us to lay our treasures up there (Matthew 6:19-21). But the Lord also talked about hell. He pulled no punches about it when He warned (talking to His disciples of all people!) in Luke 12:4-5 — “And I say to you, My friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.  But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear Him who, after He has killed, has power to cast into hell; yes, I say to you, fear Him!” Read more of His sobering words about hell in Mark 9:44-48 (do it now if you haven’t read that passage lately); if what you read there doesn’t give you a big case of the heebie-jeebies, you didn’t read closely enough. Whether your preacher or church will preach hell or not, Jesus preached it.  
       Words by eighteenth century English poet Edward Young should provoke serious thought: “Time flies, death urges, knells call, heaven invites, hell threatens.” All of that reflects Bible teaching, and especially the vein of thought in 1 Thessalonians 5:9-11 (and several preceding verses) — “For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him. Therefore comfort each other and edify one another, just as you also are doing.” We don’t have space to study it here, but the “wrath” Paul mentions is God’s wrath, and its final and fullest form will be in hell (Romans 1:18ff * Matthew 5:22 * 1 Thessalonians 1:10). That’s bad news. The good news is, praise be to God, because of Jesus you don’t have to go! Mark Twain said he didn’t want to commit himself about heaven or hell because he had friends in both places. Millions never grasp the fact we can go to Heaven, but we must commit to it. If we don’t, we automatically commit to hell. Serious stuff. Are you committed to Heaven? Have you thought about it?

by: Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN 

 

Prepare or Predict?

       I’m about to make a prediction. I’m going to tell a joke that I predict you will think is really goofy (as in wacky, silly, ridiculous, and “lame-brained!”). Here goes. Have you heard about the preacher who kept making false predictions about the second coming of Christ? The church he preached for finally had to file as a “non-prophet organization.” I’m certain my prediction came true. That joke IS goofy. I know that and you surely know that. But I told it to illustrate a point. Some predictions are fairly easy to make. For instance, I can with 100% accuracy predict the score of any NFL game or even the Super Bowl before it ever starts, and you can, too. It’s always 0 to 0 before it starts! More seriously, most things are not so easy to predict. Things like the weather or the outcome of the next Presidential election or what the stock market will do. In 1903, the President of the Michigan Savings Bank tried to dissuade Henry Ford’s lawyer (Horace Rackham) from investing in the newly formed motor company telling him, “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty – a fad.” Oops. In 1920, a “New York Times” article dismissed the possibility of space travel and declared, “A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.” The paper issued a light-hearted retraction in 1969 as      Apollo 11 headed to the moon! Niels Bohr accurately stated the situation when he said, “Prediction is a very difficult art, especially if it’s about the future.” The ancient wise man warned in Proverbs 27:1 — “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth.”
      Truly we can't. But there is a day (yet future as I write these words and if you are reading them!) we can predict with absolute accuracy. Sort of that is. That day is the day the apostle Paul wrote about in 1 Thessalonians 5:2. There he declared by inspiration to Christians living in the ancient Greek city of Thessalonica, “For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night.” More than merely a prediction, those words are a promise from the God who cannot lie (Titus1:2). Verses could be multiplied. Christ is coming again to save those who believe and judge those who have not believed and obeyed the Gospel (see 2 Thess.1:7-10 * Acts 1:11 * John 14:1ff * 1 Thess. :10; 4:13-18, etc.). The verse cited above contains both clarity and obscurity. Clearly, Christ is coming again. We can be certain of that — “you yourselves know the day of the Lord comes.” But there is also obscurity — the coming will be “as a thief in the night.” That is, the coming is uncertain as to the exact day and time. Jesus teaches we can be certain nobody can know for certain when He will come again in Mark 13:35 where He urges His disciples, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” So much for all the prognosticators who come along fairly frequently predicting the day Jesus will come back. You can be trust this — nobody but God knows for certain when that day will be! The take home point: we should all worry about preparing for His eventual return instead of obsessing about predicting when it will be. As Jesus urges in Matthew 24:34, "Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” Are you ready?

Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN  

Would You Swallow That?

       A story tells about a mother who was sick in bed with the flu. Her darling six-year-old daughter wanted to be a good nurse. She fluffed the pillows and brought Mommy a magazine to read. She even showed up with a surprise cup of tea. “My, you’re such a sweetheart,” the mother said after swallowing several sips of the tea. “I didn’t know you even knew how to make tea.” The little nurse replied, “I do, Mommy. I learned by watching you. I put the tea leaves in the pan and then I put in the water, boiled it, turned off the stove and then I strained it into a cup. But I couldn’t find the strainer, so I used the fly-swatter instead.” Horrified, Mom screamed, “You what?!” And the little girl said, “It’s okay Mom. I didn’t use the new fly swatter. I used the old one.” The moral of that story: know what we swallow, but also what kind of strainer was used as a filter for what is served up to swallow! Strainers filter and separate out stuff we don’t want in what we prepare to eat or drink, etc. Who would knowingly drink tea strained through a used fly-swatter? Yuk! Flies are nasty, disgusting, disease-ridden creatures. They feed on stuff you consider to be trash and sewage! They get into your trash, load up on all kinds of pathogens and bad bacteria, then land and walk their filthy little fly legs all over your food or the rim of your glass. Gross. Would you willingly and knowingly swallow tea strained through a flyswatter?                       
    I think of all this when I hear somebody spout off some kind of morally and / or spiritually extreme idea. One example (by no means the only one) is when someone insists that gender is not “binary” but multiple. A computer search on “how many genders do progressives say there are” revealed an article entitled, “68 Terms That Describe Gender Identity and Expression” (@ healthline.com). A summary statement declared, “Gender is a spectrum, and there are dozens of ways to describe your individual gender identity. Man, woman, cisgender, and transgender are just a few options.” The article went on to say many people grew up with the idea that there are two sexes, male and female, that “match” with two genders, male and female. That view is condescendingly described as “simplistic.” In no uncertain terms it is stated, “In reality, neither gender nor sex is binary” (composed of two).  We are asked to swallow that, and many do. But what kind of filter is that kind of thinking slipping through? A fancy name for the philosophy is autonomy, the idea that each person is self-governing, self-ruling, and totally independent, free of any kind of control beyond each person. You’ve heard it expressed as, “This is my authentic truth.” Gender autonomy allows a man to say, “I identify / feel like a woman” or vice-versa.” I don’t pretend to know how people feel. I do know this — that kind of autonomous, feeling-based thinking, untethered from the idea that objective truth exists and is knowable, is not new. Long ago the inspired ancient wise man said, “There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death” Proverbs 14:12). That’s God’s truth. The folks who insist there is no absolute truth expect you to accept that statement as absolutely true. Forgive me for being simplistic, but I can’t swallow that.

            “ ... He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female’” — Jesus, Matthew 19:4 

by: Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN