The newspaper ‘religion writer’ wrote:
“Lying beneath the surface exists a quite separate reality. When it manifests, the person can be ripped out of their everyday composure and pitched into epic time, time in which a second may be charged with an eternity of consequence. All that was taken for granted, evaporates.”
He wrote about the life disrupting, sometimes life-ending, event of death.
Some are unprepared
A seventeen year old Aussie youth died suddenly of a stroke. A forty-something year old wife and mother stabbed to death in her own home during a robbery gone wrong. Surgery that ended badly. A hit and run death. Five teenagers travelling in dad’s work vehicle driven at excessive speed by the inexperienced young son. He alone survived and is now facing serious criminal charges and probable lengthy prison time. A country wedding with guests travelling home by bus which rolled over killing ten and hospitalising another fifteen.
People ripped out of their everyday composure in the twinkling of an eye. Were they ready to experience their ‘eternity of consequence’? How is that “quite separate reality” to be faced?
A delusion
…is defined as an idiosyncratic belief or impression that does not accord with a generally accepted reality.
The fool says in his heart: ‘There is no God. (Psalm 14 verse 1).
How long will you love delusions and seek false gods? (Psalm 4 verse 2) such as money, pleasure, holidays, cars, boats and endless other leisure activities.
The secret power of lawlessness is already at work…[Good, nice people] perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie, and…will be condemned who have not believed the truth. (2 Thessalonians chapter 2 verses 7- 12).
The Bible (composed by about 40 different writers over approx 1,350 years) is a lie, a fantasy!
‘I don’t believe in Jesus, that he was a real person’.
If that were so, is it probable for all unbelieving authors to invent stories of particular miraculous behaviour or events performed by or happening to people they know didn’t exist?
Why would anyone invent the resurrection of Jesus? What would be the sense in that atheist dreaming up this statement?: If it is only for this life we have hope in Christ then we of all people are most to be pitied?
Jesus said/says if they won’t “listen” to you (Matthew chapter 10 verse 14) then ‘shake the dust’ off your feet and move on.
Heaven and hell: lost and found
You won’t go to hell because you have a leaning towards homosexuality, just as I won’t go to heaven because I am heterosexual. You won’t go to hell because you have committed adultery just as I won’t go to heaven because I refrain from doing so.
You won’t go to hell because you were born into Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism, and I won’t go to hell because I am Australian. You will go to hell if you choose to remain blind, if you choose to remain a slave to darkness or you choose to remain lost although born into a society not of your choosing which practices some dark art or belief system.
The father rejoiced because his son had been lost but now was found. (Luke chapter 15 verse 32). Jesus came to save those who were lost to God. Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret. (2 Corinthians chapter 7 verse 10).
Born a Moslem, Hindu or Buddhist
You will go to heaven if, though born a Moslem, Hindu or Buddhist or into an atheistic home you choose to gain understanding, you cease to remain a slave to darkness because you choose to search for and find God. I will go to heaven if I choose to cease being an Australian atheist and sincerely seek God.Though previously lost to Him and now found by Him, I must seek and so will find.
You and I will go to heaven because once we were blind but now we see, once we were slaves but now we’re free, and once we were lost but now we’re found. The outworking of such massive change leads to willing restraint and a spectacular eternity of consequence, albeit that lapses of behaviour (hopefully rare) quickly followed by deep regret, confession and divine forgiveness may intervene.
The covering of Jesus
Of human misbehaviour there is no limit. They “refuse” to come to Me (Jesus) and have life. Although the fury of God about ungodliness and godlessness throughout human history is frightening, our protection by indestructible, never-ending Jesus saves us throughout eternity.
So you, a Muslim living in a Muslim society surrounded by Islam should not think you are hopelessly smothered in unbelief/wrong belief. I was (still am) surrounded by atheism but I sought and found even though I still live in a spiritual desert.
If you choose to stay seated in the back row of the ‘auditorium of life’ clouded in Islam (founded seven hundred years after Jesus) then you will never become a seeker after truth and so will never find it. And in 10 or 20 years time (or worse still at the end of your life), you will still be sitting in the back row and so won’t find Jesus Who says: seek and you will find. And by implication: don’t seek and you won’t find.
What not to do
We should never use our ancestry and inherited current position as our excuse for remaining comfortably seated in the back row in self-imposed wilful ignorance.
And the truth is…?
Jesus says: I am the way and the truth and the life. And the truth will set you free.