The Consignment of the Lost
In the space age, who has not had the eerie thought of an astronaut shooting into space and never returning. Imagine
him wandering like a star out into nothingness. Such is the description of those without Christ in eternity, as God calls them "wandering stars" (Jude 13). It is bad enough to see people with so little purpose drifting through life now. But for this to extend for
all eternity ought to stir one's soul to share the good news of Christ who said, "I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly"
(John 10:10).
God describes the destiny of the lost in Jude 13: "...to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever." Anyone who has been deep down in a cave when every light was extinguished and it became so black you could almost feel it knows what God is trying to describe. "Men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil" (1 John 3:19); and since they hate the light and neither come to the light (v. 20), they get nothing but darkness.
"And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire" (Rev. 20:15). People who have had their bodies
covered with third degree burns have suffered horribly, but they can get relief from the pain. In hell there will be no relief nor release, for "the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever" (Rev. 14:11).
Shouldn't this move Christians to witness? Rowland Hill, an English preacher of two centuries ago, said, "While I passed
along yonder road I saw the gravel pit cave in and bury three men alive. I hastened to the rescue and shouted for help until they heard me in the town almost a mile away. Nobody called me a madman then. But when I see destruction about to fall on sinners and entomb them in an eternal mass of woe and cry aloud if perchance they may behold their danger and escape, they say I am beside myself. Perhaps I am, but, oh, that all God's children might thus be fired with desire to save their fellows."
"Of some have compassion, making a difference: and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh" (Jude 22, 23).
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