There is only one portal to eternal life. The whole world seeks to extend their life. Only those who have arrived at such hopelessness and despair that they take their own life do not wish to live longer. And all men wish to live after death. Over the centuries men have made various talismans as their surety to the other side.
There is only one portal to eternal life. It cannot be found in the conspicuous darkness of man’s intellect. It is absent in the conjured up morality of the fallen human conscious. The eastern mystics, the philosophers, and all the religious stoics have not found this unique place of everlasting transport into the presence of the Creator. Ever searching and ever failing, ever sure but ever mislead. Oh how man has thirsted for some of the glory, some of the praise in not only finding this entrance, but in creating it also. And in his fleshly desire he has doomed himself forever.
There is only one portal to eternal life. It cannot be found in the general acquiescence of the existence of a god, or like Einstein who thought because he acknowledged a design he could tip his intellectual hat to an obscure designer and in that find this portal. The new and exciting age that is now upon us beckons a sophisticated view of a god that it intertwined with man himself, and strives to find that this god is a super “man”, not an august Sovereign.
There is only one portal to eternal life. Even the visible church has crafted attractive gateways that entice the flesh and treat the cross with revulsion and an act of history, tragic but irrelevant for today. No brokenness, no humility, no sacrifice, no, these new and lust laden doorways lead back to their own lives and garner self aggrandizing accoutrements meant to exalt their own existence and not the life of the Everlasting One.
There is only one portal to eternal life. This portal continues to be scorned and rejected of men, despised and with no esteem. This portal finds little attention even among the religious lemmings of today, chirping with each other as they shuffle through these mortal coils. Oh how it seems that the cross of our Majestic Sin-Bearer bears disdain and disgust as reflected by the church as she ignores its life giving flow and exchanges it for our own best lives now.
There is only one portal to eternal life. This glorious gateway remains still open today, but as God closed the door of Noah’s ark so shall the grace of this entrance soon close. Oh what an incredible tragedy, should not we who have been risen from the death of sin trumpet the cross across the globe and to the far flung corners of this sin cursed world? Why should we not shout it from the housetops, “The cross of Jesus is the only gate to eternal life!!”.
Go ahead all you ministers of the flesh, tell the people what they desire to hear, not what God is speaking. Go ahead and scramble the words of men and pretend they are the Words of God. Go ahead and encourage your listeners to go after the things of this world while you only give a tip of the hat to the cross. God is reviled by your prideful disdain and He will soon appear at His appointment to meet with all those who ignored His cross.
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Wonderful biblical teaching. Thank you Rick. As I read through Golgotha's Portal a sermon series (Parables of the Kingdom Matthew 13)preached by John MacArthur came to mind-- particularily the parable on 'the kingdom is like a net'
Matthew 13:47-50 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind. 48 When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers but threw away the bad. 49 So it will be at the close of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous 50 and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
In the sermon it is explained that Jesus is speaking of a very large trolling net, used by fishermen, that caught up all water life that was in its path. Some troll nets covered a ½ mile area. It could not be worked with the hand of a man. One end of this large net was attached to the shore line. The other end was attached to a boat. As the boat left the shore it pulled the net into a form stretched between the shore and the boat. The boat would move in a circle through the sea (as far as the net would stretch, finally coming back to the shore it had begun on. It would capture every form of life in the sea in its path.. The top of the net had floats and the bottom of the net had weights. The net moved through the sea like a vertical wall and caught in everything in its path. It was immense and it brought in everything. The vertical wall swept in everything dead and live in its path. Then the catch would be sorted. The good stored in containers and the bad thrown away.
The coming of the kingdom of heaven is like the trolling net:
The net (the kingdom of heaven) moves through the world. And for those who can’t yet see it, the unregenerate, the unsaved, they are still being caught up in the net. And if by chance one feels the net, he simply flits a little ahead into the freedom he thinks is his permanently.
Men live in this world imagining themselves to be free and fulfilling their desires. They go here and there, perceiving themselves moving more and more toward freedom. People float about in the liberty of the wide deep sea of life, not knowing that the invisible lines of judgement move closer and closer. Each time they are touched by it, they just move a little more away. And so on.
Eventually they bump back up the other side of the net, as the net moves toward the shore. Wildly the fish dart back for the sea, only to be caught up again. Finally, the unsaved are caught in the net (with the saved) flipping and flailing, to be drawn to the shore.
Flipping they enter into silent death. Men may not see the kingdom. And they may not see God moving silently in the world- but HE is moving.
All men are gathered into the net. The kingdom will engulf them all. They will be sorted. The good, those redeemed by the blood of the lamb, will move to eternal life. The bad, those not redeemed- who have remained in their unbelief, will move to eternal death and be burned eternally in the furnace.
Jesus is the only Way to God and eternal life and that way comes through the cross.
By-the-way, have you seen the Mormon's TV ads lately about having discovered the true explanation of eternity?
It is as if the world is being setup to believe a lie...
In Christ
Mike Ratliff
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