Yesterday I spent a couple of hours cutting an old carpet into 3×3 squares, and pulling it up. Today my son-in-law helped as we stuffed that old carpet into garbage bags to be left for pickup with this week’s trash. We are repairing and refurnishing a room that will soon be occupied by my eight month old grandson. I told little Simon that the next time I do that, he is going to help.
This time of year in the U.S.A., we do a lot of those kinds of projects. We call it spring cleaning. It is a good time of year to do reality checks on old things that need to be thrown away – things that did not survive the winter, or have outlasted their usefulness. It never fails that once we start looking over all the things we have collected in storage rooms and attics and basements – we wonder why we have kept all this junk in the first place.
On a cosmic scale, God also has a spring cleaning in store. It is called Judgment day. The apostle Paul said that God “commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed.”[1] That man is Jesus Christ. He will decide who and what remains after Judgment Day.
In fact, he is actually doing the deciding right now. Today Jesus is hearing the prayers of people who are calling out his name for the first time. He is listening to those prayers. He is deciding who will inherit the eternal life of the age to come.[2] It is a gift that will not be given to everyone. Not everyone will make it into the next age. Those who do not make it will be destroyed.[3]
It is not a pleasant thought, but it is unavoidable. This world is too much marred and disfigured by sin and its consequences for a peaceful transition into the next age. The apostle Peter described that day as one which “will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.”[4]
He had described the fate of those who are lost as like that of Sodom and Gomorrah – two Old Testament cities that were destroyed by God because of their wickedness. He said that “by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly.”[5] Now, if they are the examples, and they are gone, why do so many think that God cannot truly destroy the ungodly? If they are the examples, and they were condemned to extinction, why do so many feel today that they are going to spend eternity alive somewhere – no matter what?
The fact is – the lost will be truly lost. They will not make it into the new age of everlasting life. God has a marvelous destiny of untold glory and joy, but only for those that Jesus Christ allows in. He is the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father and eternal life except by him. Have you come to the Father through Jesus Christ? Come to him. Judgment Day is coming!
[1] Acts 17:30-31.
[2] Matt. 19:16, 29; 25:46; Mark 10:17, 30; Luke 10:25; 18:18, 30; John 3:15f, 36; 4:14, 36; 5:24, 39; 6:27, 40, 47, 54, 68; 10:28; 12:25, 50; 17:2f; Acts 13:46, 48; Rom. 2:7; 5:21; 6:22f; Gal. 6:8; 1 Tim. 1:16; 6:12; Titus 1:2; 3:7; 1 John 1:2; 2:25; 3:15; 5:11, 13, 20; Jude 1:21.
[3] Matt. 10:28; 22:7; Luke 17: 27, 29; 20:16; 1 Cor. 3:17; 6:13; 15:24, 26; Heb. 10:39; 2 Peter 2:12; Rev. 11:18.
[4] 2 Peter 3:10.
[5] 2 Peter 2:6.
jeffersonvann 