For Fellow Aliens: If You Were to Die Today

Sunday, January 11, 2009

If You Were to Die Today

If you were to die today, are you 100% sure that you would enjoy eternal life in the presence of God? If, for any reason, you are unsure about your eternal destiny, I urge you to carefully consider what the Bible has to say. In a nutshell, the Bible explains that you are a sinner because you have willfully lived in ways that are not pleasing to the God of this universe. Because God is fair and just in everything He does, your sin has placed you in danger of being punished forever in a place called hell. However, the fair and just God who created you is also infinitely loving. He does not desire for anyone to perish in hell, but for all people to receive forgiveness. Because of this great love with which He has loved the world, your just and loving Creator decided, before time began, to send His Son, Jesus Christ, into the world. Jesus’ purpose in coming to earth was to live a perfect life, die a costly death, and then miraculously rise from the dead. All of this was done to accomplish what you could not. The Scriptures explain in John 3:16, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever would believe in Him would not perish [in hell], but have everlasting life [in heaven].”

You can experience God’s forgiveness and plan for your life. The Bible explains that the keys to receiving eternal life are repentance and faith. The word “repentance” means to turn away from something. In this case, the Bible speaks of turning away from your sin. In order to receive forgiveness of your sin, you must be willing to turn from it. However, the Bible also explains that you must also be willing to place all of your faith in Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. In order to be saved from your sin and it’s consequences, you must be “born again” by believing in what Jesus accomplished on the cross and then surrendering your life to the Savior, trusting in Christ alone to save you from your sins. This is genuine faith. Much like John 3:16, the Bible also says, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9-10). This is what I hope will happen in your life today. I hope that you will realize that you're are a sinner and in need of Jesus Christ’s saving power. I hope that you will carefully consider the consequences of being found guilty on judgment day, apart from the Savior. I also hope that you will carefully consider the great benefits of placing your life in the hands of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Figure 8 Scripture Memory System

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“There are many who speak only of the forgiveness of sin, but who say little or nothing about repentance. If there is nevertheless no forgiveness of sins without repentance, so also forgiveness of sins cannot be understood without repentance. Therefore, if forgiveness of sins is preached without repentance, it follows that the people imagine they have already received the forgiveness of sins, and thereby they become cocksure and fearless, which is then greater error and sin than all the error that preceded our time.” MELANCHTHON

“Satan tempts us at the point of our physical needs, not that we might gratify them to excess, but that we might think of nothing else and gratify them at the expense of our usefulness in this world. Satan tempts us at the point of our ambitions, not that we might engage in positive evil, but simply accept the fact of evil, learn to live with it, come to terms with it, and maintain a discreet silence in the presence of it. Satan tempts us at the point of our religion, not that we might disbelieve in God, but that we might demand certainty; -- that kind of certainty of God that leaves nothing to faith, nothing to God himself. These are the moral struggles that have reality for people such as we are; the subtle temptation to renounce our duty in favor of what is attractive, that insidious allurement to a kind of a half-goodness which is the essence of everything bad and which is more productive of suffering and hatred, war and misery in this world, than all the designs of wicked and greedy people combined.”

Arthur Leonard Griffith (God's Time and Ours)

My research suggested that people are simply not being pastored. Often ministers are out of touch with what's happening on the ground, as they are surrounded by a wall of secretaries and voice mail. Congregants have to wait up to a month for an appointment, if they can get in at all. Once-a-week home Bible study groups lack depth and theological know-how for help with the serious problems many of us face. Many churches refer people to professional counseling that costs at least seventy-five dollars an hour. Those lucky enough to have a health plan that pays for counseling usually find the only counselors on approved HMO lists have no concept of a Christian worldview.
Julia Duin from the book "Quitting Church"

I cannot believe in the spirituality of any Christian man who keeps an eye open for the approval of others, whoever they may be. The man after God’s own heart must be dead to the opinion of his friends as well as his enemies. He must be willing to cross important persons as obscure ones.
He must be ready to rebuke his superior as quickly as those who may be beneath him on the ecclesiastical ladder. To reprove one man in order to gain the favor of another is no evidence of moral courage. It is done in the world all the time. We’ll never be where we should be in our spiritual lives until we are so devoted to Christ that we ask no other approbation than His smile.
A.W. Tozer

I may . . . pass for being a relatively successful man. People occasionally stare at me in the streets—that’s fame. I can fairly easily earn enough to qualify for admission to the higher slopes of the Inland Revenue—that’s success. Furnished with money and a little fame . . . [I] may partake of trendy diversions—that’s pleasure. It might happen once in a while that something I said or wrote . . . represented a serious impact on our time—that’s fulfillment. Yet I say to you, and beg you to believe me, multiply those tiny triumphs by a million, add them all together, and they are nothing—less than nothing, a positive impediment—measured against one draught of that living water Christ offers to the spiritually thirsty.

—Malcolm Muggeridge, quoted in Richard D. Phillips, Jesus the Evangelist (Reformation Trust Publishing, 2007), 127

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Sunday, January 11, 2009

If You Were to Die Today

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