If I Could Te

You Jus

ThingNatha

Pitchford

Chapter Eleven: My Reward is With Me

We have now come to the final chapter in this description of just what Christianity is and what itmeans for all of us, no matter who we are. In this chapter, I would motivate you to be living your life inlight of eternity. This life, in which we invest all our time, labors and resources, and in which we makevery clear what is of ultimate importance to us, does not end after eighty years (or even a hundred, for that matter). It is just the stepping stone to eternity, and what we do with our time now, how we spendthe few years we have on this earth, will determine what we will be doing with our time for all eternity,for good or bad. But there are no shades of gray, no middle ground, in the eternal destinies confrontingus in the here and now. There are only two options: for those who have given up everything to followthe Savior, there is eternal joy and reward beyond imagination; but for those to whom the pleasures of this life have been ultimate, whether they professed to be Christians or not, there is only unspeakable,unending darkness and wrath. Christianity is not just some game to be played or some hobby to occupyour time – it is where true, ultimate, eternal reality confronts us, and how we respond will have effectsmore real and lasting and dramatic than any other decision we will ever make.I believe the truth of that assessment with all my heart. That is why I write to you. That is whymy tone throughout this book has been weighty and sober. It is why my appeals have been as fervent asI could make them. It is not popular today to write as emotionally as I have written, to write as if I amwearing “my heart on my sleeve”. There is always the chance that my pleas will be chalked up asmaudlin manipulation or spiritual showmanship. But to tell you the truth, if I could have come up witha more poignant way of impressing upon you the utter seriousness of what I have been saying, I wouldhave used it. My fear, as I reach the end of this book, is not that I have been too fervent or extreme, butthat I have failed to portray just how vast and consequential the gospel message is for every one of youwho reads this. My motives may be impugned, but that little concerns me; what does concern me,however, is that when I conclude, I should be able to say, “I have spoken the truth as clearly andurgently as I know how, I have not lulled anyone to a sleep which will end in everlasting torment bymaking him suppose that the fundamental truths of Christianity are things that may be joked about andlaughed off without consequence.” As I come to an end, it is in the hope that I may say so honestly.You see, the perspective of Christianity that makes it a subject for lighthearted debate or casualconsideration, in the same class of things to be debated as global warming, for instance, or economictheory, is entirely grounded in the supposition that this life is ultimate, that God will not intervene inhuman affairs in any dramatic or catastrophic way, that the philosophy of religion has as its only practical effects how I live this life, what sorts of things I engage in now, whether I'll be a good,upright, humanitarian citizen, and indeed, just what it means to be a good citizen. But those things areof secondary importance, and the presupposition which drives them is absolutely false.It is very common to hear it said in America today, “Of course God's not judging you! He's tooloving to want to hurt you – it's just one of the bad things that happen to people, it's nobody's fault, justchance and bad luck”. But let me say it as clearly and emphatically as I know how: that perspective isnot just wrong, it is a lie from the pit of hell, designed by Satan to lull you into a false and Christ- blaspheming sense of security, and ultimately to plunge you into eternal destruction where you mightshare the fate he already knows is reserved for him. God does judge people. His wrath is immense andterrible beyond description. And when his patience has run out – and believe me, it will someday – thetruth of the terrible end awaiting you, which you ignored and despised, will be clear to you beyond anydoubt. But by then, it will be too late.God does judge people. He does punish sin. And his punishment of those who resist his graceand despise his patience will not be restorative or temporary, but punitive, starkly just, and dreadfully

1 Chapter title taken from Revelation 22:12

If I Could Te

You Jus

ThingNatha

Pitchford

unending. In this last chapter, I will show from the scriptures the punishment awaiting the impenitent,the eternal reward stored up for the true followers of Christ, and the way in which we should bespending our time as we live in light of this certain future judgment of the world.

You Treasure Up for Yourselves Wrath for the Day of Wrath

The popular conception of God as some genie-in-a-bottle whom I can manipulate to fulfill myearthly desires, or else some distant, kindly-hearted old man who would never be angry at sinners, isunimaginably different from the God whom the bible reveals, the God who is a consuming fire, whowill destroy all those who are opposed to him

. From the very beginning of the bible, God is revealedas one whose Word is omnipotent and immutable: he speaks, and his will is done. And this sovereignand all-powerful God, when he first spoke to the man whom he had made, solemnly promised thesanction of death, if he at all disobeyed

.Adam did, of course, disobey God, and his response was immediate and severe: God enacted acurse

of such fearful proportions upon the earth that, throughout thousands of years of human history,all humankind has not just died, but they have been torn apart by wild animals, broken down by painfuland disfiguring diseases, tormented, tortured, and killed in thousands of unspeakable ways at thecapricious cruelty of the forces of nature which God controls absolutely and minutely, directing themall to his various purposes

, and even at the hands of each other, whom God is equally sovereign over,and equally directing to his own just ends

. When God is angry with people, he may send she-bears outof the forest to maul them

; he may cause a tower to fall upon them

; or he may send a sadistic and powerful nation to conquer them

; but in each case, even when, as with the last example, his instrumentof judgment is itself evil and deserving of judgment, God himself is ultimately doing the judging. Not aday goes by in which he does not give some evidence of his anger against fallen mankind. But neither does a day go by, for now anyway, in which he does not likewise display his remarkable patience andforbearance.But if these things are so, if God is giving hints of his wrath in the midst of his patience, if he issignifying and assuring us all that his forbearance will one day end, even while we enjoy its luxuriesnow, then how foolish must we be to go blithely along as if things will always continue in the sameway that they have from the beginning of creation

? If we despise God's patience and ignore his hintsof the coming judgment, then we are taking what was intended to lead us to repentance and using itinstead to treasure up for ourselves wrath on the Day of Judgment

. God's kindness should teach usthat his mercy and grace are great, that he will heal and forgive us if we turn to him; and his foretastesof destruction should teach us that, if we do not repent, we will all be likewise destroyed

.But insteadof putting these signs to those good uses, we see his acts of judgment, terrible calamities such as theholocaust, for instance, or 9/11, and use them to question God's power or concern for us, or else tosuggest that we are somehow better than they who were destroyed. But contrary to either of these false

2 Hebrews 12:29; 10:27-313 Genesis 1:3, 6, et al; 2:174 Genesis 3:14-195 Psalm 29:9; 135:6; Numbers 22:8; 1 Kings 17:14; Daniel 6:22; Mark 4:296 Genesis 50:20; Exodus 4:21; Judges 14:1-4; Proverbs 16:4; 21:1; Isaiah 44:28; Acts 2:22-23; 4:27-287 2 Kings 2:23-248 Luke 13:4-59 Habakkuk 1:5-1110 See 2 Peter 3:3-1011 Romans 2:4-512 Luke 13:5

If I Could Te

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Pitchford

inferences, those very acts teach us that God is intimately concerned with directing the affairs of thisworld, and that he will ultimately do so by pouring out judgment, not just on them, but on all of us whodo not repent. If we do not turn to him in submission, he will destroy us just as he destroyed those threethousand people on September eleventh.In a similar way, we misuse God's patience and goodness, and instead of being drawn to repent by his forbearance, we treasure up greater wrath for ourselves. We ought to learn, just by living in thisworld, that God's wrath is immense and certain, but his mercy is greater yet and freely held forth to allwho would avail themselves of it. His goodness is so vast that he causes the sun to shine and the rain tofall not just on the best of men, but even upon the very worst of them

. But instead of being drawn tothis good and patient God in humility, we obstinately press on in our blasphemous way of living, whichdenies that God is our Creator and Law-Giver, our Maker and Judge.But do we really think that we will be spared if we ignore such great and obvious truths? Whenhas God ever spared them who continued to despise him? When the world was utterly corrupt, andrefused to acknowledge him in any of their thoughts, when they were continuing as they always had,eating and drinking, marrying and burying, he suddenly consumed them all in his great wrath

. Today,we live our lives just as they did in Noah's time, utterly oblivious of our impending doom – but will hespare us if he refused to spare them

?What about a little later, when the depraved citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah refused to heedLot's warning of coming judgment? They were destroyed by fire from heaven, and their destructionwas without mercy

. But if they were shown no mercy when they refused to hear Lot, how muchgreater will our punishment be, if we refuse to hear the fully-revealed and finally-accomplished gospelof Christ and him crucified? On the Day of Judgment our punishment, if we do not repent, will beworse than theirs

.We could go on and on, the example are everywhere: Pharaoh resisted God's message and wasdestroyed with great and fearful plagues

; the nations of Canaan filled up their allotted measure of iniquity and were then put to death, man, woman, and child

; Israel broke God's covenant and was thensent into exile and torment, they were starved and slaughtered, they ate their own children in thefamine, they were tortured in unimaginable ways

; Ananias and Sapphira lied to the Apostle Peter, andGod struck them dead

; King Herod accepted the undue praise of the crowds and was smitten with aterrible and incurable disease

; Babylon the Great, signifying every great city or people that has been prominent and successful, and has not submitted to God, is pictured in Revelation as finally destroyed.It is said of her that the smoke of her torment will rise forever and ever

. And all these examples are but hints and foretastes of the coming Day of Judgment, which will be terrible beyond description.The truth of the scriptures is that God hates the wicked and arrogant

, he is angry with sinnersevery day

, he is restraining his fury for now, but will one day hold them all in derision and destroy

13 Matthew 5:4514 Genesis 6-915 Matthew 24:37-4116 Genesis 1917 Matthew 11:23-2418 Exodus 3-1419 Genesis 15:16; Deuteronomy 2:34; 7:2-3, 16; 20:16-16; Joshua 6:21; 10:28, 39; 1 Samuel 15:320 Deuteronomy 28:15-68; 2 Chronicles 36:14-21; the Book of Lamentations21 Acts 5:1-1122 Acts 12:20-2323 Revelation 18:1-19:324 Psalm 5:5-6; Leviticus 20:23; Hosea 9:1525 Psalm 7:11