Eternal

Matthew 25:46 (NIV84)

“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

Good morning Zebras,

Today’s attribute is “eternal” which the dictionary defines as lasting or existing forever.

God, of course, is eternal.  He has no beginning and He has no end.  And He tells us that in His own words:  “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”  And although we had a beginning, we too are now eternal beings destined either for eternal life, or eternal hell.

We don’t really like to talk about Hell anymore.  I think it’s because it makes our God look “unloving.”  But three times in the book of Matthew, Jesus mentions the eternal fire prepared for those who reject Him. If Jesus thought it was important enough to talk about we probably should too.

It is not fashionable to believe a loving God would condemn people to hell and eternal fire, but that doesn’t change what the Bible says.  Just because people don’t like it doesn’t make it untrue.

What we must remember is that God doesn’t condemn people to hell; they choose that for ourselves when they reject Christ.

Francis Chan, one of the speakers at Founders Week, is pretty passionate about this subject and he used an illustration that I can’t seem to get out of my head.  He was talking about the tendency in modern Christianity to erase the judgment of God, to focus only on His love and mercy.  And he used Noah’s Ark as an example.

God told Noah to build the ark because He was going to flood the earth.  Genesis 6:7 says: “So the Lord said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them.”  

But since Noah found favor in God’s sight He gave him the task of building the ark and saving those who were willing to get inside, which ended up being a total of eight people, all from Noah’s family.

Yet how many nurseries are decorated with Noah’s Ark?  Tons, right?  But when you think about what the Ark really symbolizes you realize how we have changed it to make it palatable.  We fill it with cute little animals poking their heads out of the side of the boat, but we forget the people and animals that didn’t make it in.  Noah’s ark should look more like the last scene of the Titanic than a cute nursery decoration.

When we look at the ark, or the cross, we should not only see God’s provision for those who believe, but His judgment on those who do not. 

Love,
Jill