____________________________________________________ THE GOSPEL OBSERVER "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations...teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:19,20). ____________________________________________________ March 27, 1994 ____________________________________________________ The Judgment Day -- No Excuses by Tom Edwards I read once of a Scottish lawyer, a wicked man, who had rented a horse, which he either killed by accident or ill-usage. Naturally, the owner demanded restitution. Agreeing, the lawyer asked the man if he would take a promissory note. ``Certainly,'' the owner said. The lawyer also indicated that it would take him a long while before he could pay the debt, so the owner complied by saying, ``You can fix your own time.'' The wicked man then wrote the note, making it ``payable at the Day of Judgment.'' Eventually, the owner took the matter to court and had the judge read over the note. He responded by saying, ``The promissory note is perfectly good, sir, and as this is the day of judgment, I decree that you pay tomorrow.'' As we see in this above illustration, not everyone has the same view of the Judgment Day. In the Old Testament, God meted out various judgments, in which His wrath was outpoured on the ungodly, such as on Sodom and Gomorrah, Babylon, Edom, Tyre, Damascus, Nineveh, Assyria, and even Jerusalem to name a few. His judgments were often spoken of as being a day of darkness. Concerning Babylon's doom, Isaiah writes: ``Behold the day of the Lord is coming, cruel, with fury and burning anger, to make the land a desolation; and He will exterminate its sinners from it. For the stars of heaven and their constellations will not flash forth their light; the sun will be dark when it rises, and the moon will not shed its light'' (Isa. 13:9,10). This was not a literal darkening of the heavenly bodies, but it adds to the figurative description of the awesomeness of Babylon's destruction, when the Medes would move in to overthrow and make of them a perpetual desolation (Isa. 13:17-20). It was also a judgment upon Jerusalem in A.D. 70 when the Roman armies came and besieged the city, cutting it off from outside necessities, until about one million Jews perished--and of which the Lord had forewarned (Matthew 24). Usually, however, when most of us who are Christians think of the judgment, we think of that ultimate Judgment Day in which the saints and the sinners shall be grouped with either those who will receive everlasting life or those who will go into everlasting separation from the mercy, love, and goodness of the Lord (Matt. 25:31-46). The Bible tells us that ``we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad'' (2 Cor. 5:10). At this time, ``God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus'' (Rom. 2:16), for God has entrusted all judgment to His Son (John 5:22). What a horrifying day the final judgment will be for those who are unprepared (Heb. 10:29-31; Matt. 7:23)! But for those who are ready, it will be an entering into the eternal joy of the Lord, where there is never sadness, pain, nor suffering; but, rather, an endless bliss. It's been said that the Judgment Day will probably be the greatest day of excuses. What might some of these be? Some might say, ``I was just too busy. I didn't have the time.'' Do you happen to know anyone like this? It's easy for any of us to get so caught up in the secular world that we're not giving enough time to God. As the song tells us, we need to ``take time to be holy.'' Listen to this need in the Amplified version of Ephesians 5:15,16: ``Look carefully then how you walk! Live purposefully and worthily and accurately, not as the unwise and witless, but as wise--sensible, intelligent people; making the very most of the time--buying up each opportunity--because the days are evil.'' Jesus commanded that we put His kingdom first (Matt. 6:33). Isn't it ironic when people say they don't have time for God, yet every minute they live, the Lord has made possible for them. It would do us well to meditate upon this following poem someone once wrote, entitled the ``Clock of Life'': The clock of life is wound but once, And no man has the power To say just when the hands will stop; At late, or early hour. Now is the only time we own To do His precious will, Do not wait until tomorrow; For the clock may then be still. Various passages in both the Old and the New Testaments convey to us this urgency. Our life is like a ``vapor'' (James 4:14). We must, therefore, be wise and use our time to the glory of God that when the hands of life cease to move, our ``inner works,'' which are taken by the great Maker of Time, will be placed within a ``new case, given a new face,'' spruced up and made adaptable for not just a realm of minutes, hours, days, and years, but re-designed to dwell harmoniously in heaven's eternity itself--where time never ends. I imagine another excuse that others might try to make is that they just ``didn't know.'' But will pleading ignorance hold up in the Judgment Day? Not according to Acts 17:30. Here we are told: ``At the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent.'' We need to keep in mind that no one will ever be lost because he doesn't understand the Bible--or because he has never even heard it--but one will be lost because of personal SIN! In other words, if a person were to die right before the plane brought the needed antidote for the fatal snake bite, did the snake-bit person die from not receiving the antidote or die from the snake bite? Obviously, it was the snake bite that killed him. SIN IS LIKE A DEADLY SNAKE BITE! We, therefore, need the antidote of the gospel, which is the only thing that can heal our sin-sick souls; but if we don't receive this, we will die in our sins BECAUSE OF OUR SINS--NOT BECAUSE WE DIDN'T HAVE THE GOSPEL. What a jolt it will be to those in the Judgment Day who actually thought they had done many things for the cause of the Lord, and performed these works sincerely, but were sincerely in error and will hear the doom, ''...I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness'' (Matt. 7:21-23). Again and again, the implication is that ignorance is not an excuse. As God said through Hosea, ``My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge...'' (Hos. 4:6). If we want to be ready for the Judgment Day, we must look into that word by which we will be judged, the New Testament, apply its precepts and become a part of God's family before that day comes (John 12:48). Only in this way can one have a joyful expectation of heaven that will one day be replaced with that once longed-for actuality. Listen to how Julia Sterling expresses the blissful nature of the Lord's heavenly realm in her following poem: The Home beyond the shadows Hath neither pain nor tears; But, through its cloudless regions The Light of Life appears-- Dispelling every sorrow, Removing every care, And giving rest eternal To all who enter there. Far away beyond the shadows Through gates that never close, There the King Himself will lead us Where the living water flows. Obey Jesus as your Savior so that when you stand before Him in the Judgment Day as your Judge, you'll be able to cross over into the realm of His eternal glory. The Judgment Day is inevitable, but the verdict rendered upon us depends on what we do with Christ while in this temporary earth-life. Act wisely; you'll have no regrets! All the angels in heaven will rejoice (Luke 15:10); we who are Christians will be glad you did!; and you will be eternally grateful for having entrusted your life to Jesus Christ. ___________________________________________ Christ's Historicity "The place is of geographical definiteness; the man who owned the tomb was a man living in the first half of the first century; that tomb was made out of rock in a hillside near Jerusalem, and was not composed of some mythological gossamer, or cloud-dust, but is something which has geographical significance. The guards put before that tomb were not aerial beings from Mt. Olympus; the Sanhedrin was a body of men meeting frequently in Jerusalem. As a vast mass of literature tells us, this person, Jesus, was a living person, a man among men, whatever else He was, and the disciples who went out to preach the risen Lord were men among men, men who ate, drank, slept, suffered, worked, died. What is there 'doctrinal' about this? This is a historical problem...Let it be said that we know more about the details of the hours immediately before and the actual death of Jesus, in and near Jerusalem, than we know about the death of any other one man in all the ancient world" (Wilbur Smith). ________________________________________ Tri-State CHURCH OF CHRIST 1314 Montgomery Avenue, Ashland, Kentucky 41101 Sunday: 10:00 A.M. Bible class 10:50 A.M. Worship 6:30 P.M. Worship Wednesday: 7:30 P.M. Bible study evangelist/editor: Tom Edwards (606) 325-9742 e-mail: tedwards@zoomnet.net Gospel Observer web site: http://www.zoomnet.net/~tedwards/go ________________________________________