Is Hell A Myth? # 5

Is Hell A Myth? # 5

But think now of the.....

VII. Agonizing

Not only of those agonize who agonize in hell, but the agony of soul we should have in prayer and in preaching with concern to save the lost. If this city had a pestilence descending on it - what would be not do to stop its onslaught? If your children were in danger of smallpox - how concerned you would be! If a mad dog were loose in a school - how you would risk your life to save children from the virus of rabies from the dog's fangs! How much more when there are souls in danger of hell - eternal hell!

Who can arrange or describe fitting funeral obsequies of a lost soul? All the tears ever shed by all the graves and tombs of earth cannot. All the moans and sobs and sighs ever uttered cannot. If the inanimate world could break her silence - would that do it? If all seas should utter their deep and dreadful wails - would that do it? If all the mountains should lift up rumbling voices - would that do it? If the sun should drape in darkness - would that do it? If the moon should refuse to give her light - would that do it? If all the stars turned to clay - would all these fitly show the dire catastrophe of a lost soul? No songs on earth, no prayers, no words can fitly show what it means to be lost!

Yet I fear we agonize not as did Abraham over the wickedness of Sodom and Gommorah. Nor as Moses who pleaded for God to blot him out rather than the people. Nor as Jacob over the disappearance of his son Joseph. Nor as Samuel wept all night over Saul. Nor as David who cried all night over Absalom. Nor as Jeremiah who wept like a brokenhearted archangel. Nor as Ezekiel who ate filth to show the horrors of slavery. Nor as Job who asked God questions through lips that festered with disease. Nor as Paul who counted all things but loss.

I fear that we as Christians treat our main business as an incidental. We should be like Whitefield who said, "I am willing to go to prison and to death for you, but I am not willing to go to Heaven without you." When fishermen are sent to the river, they fish. When nurses are sent to the hospital they nurse. When painters are sent to a house, they paint. When soldiers are sent to the battle, they fight. But when our God sends us into the world to win souls, we sing "Throw Out The Lifeline" but do not throw! We sing "I Love to Tell the Story" and do not tell it. Our singing and our practice are so strangely at variance.

We need the passion that girded Francis Asbury as he traveled a distance equal to five circuits around the world every five years, on the average, for forty-five years - and that mainly on horseback. We need the passion that fired Livingstone and kept him aflame amid jungle dangers and twenty-seven attacks of African fever - the passion that was the power working in the heart of David Brainerd who said; "I care not what hardships I endure, if only I can see souls saved." - the passion that drove General Booth who said, "God shall have all there is of William Booth."

And lastly let us examine the....

VIII. The Antithesis

We cannot leave speaking without giving the antithesis to hell. Allow me to say a word about Heaven. Heaven is the place where no hostility can reach us, where no temptations can assail us, where no pain can pierce us, where no night can shadow us. Heaven is the most beautiful place the wisdom of God could conceive and the power of God could prepare!

Dr. Biederwolf tells us of a little girl who was blind from birth and only knew the beauties of the earth from her mother's lips. A noted surgeon worked on her eyes and at last the operations were successful, and as the last bandage dropped away she flew into her mother's arms and then to the window and the open door. As the glories of earth rolled into her vision, she ran to her mother with tears, crying, "Oh Mama, why didn't you tell me it was so wonderful?" "I tried to tell you," she replied, "but I couldn't do it."

And one day when we go sweeping through those gates of pearl and catch our first vision of the enrapturing beauty all around us, I think we may hunt up the Apostle John and say, "Why didn't you tell us it was so beautiful?" And John will say, "I tried to tell you when I wrote the twenty-first and twenty-second chapters of the last book in the Bible after I got my vision, but I couldn't do it."

Heaven - the land of no heartbreak, no graves, no wars or poverty, no hearse rolls its dark way to the tomb. Let us have and hold and preach the Bible conception of hell. Let us have and hold and preach the antithetical conception of that perfect vision of God which we call home - Heaven. Every human must make his choice. We pray that choice is Heaven!

~Robert G. Lee~

(The End)