We have all seen photographs taken with a telephoto lens where the setting sun seems to be looming on the horizon so close to earth it appears they could even collide. It looks as though it is a thousand times closer to earth than ever before. There is something else looming on the horizon that few seem to see at all – eternity! Like a product bought in a grocery store we all have an expiration date. Though we cannot read it, it is there perhaps stamped invisibly on our forehead. And when that date arrives we will breathe our last. Our hearts will pump their last beat. Our earthly pilgrimage will be over. We will join the billions that have lived before us and memory of us will soon be forgotten. A generation or two will pass and it will be as though we never even existed. Folks from future generations will walk by our graves and take no note of our names. We will mean nothing to them – nothing at all.
Life is a mystery to most. It seems to have no rhyme or reason. An African-American is born on a plantation in the year 1804, begins working on that plantation at the age of six or eight, endures a life of abject slavery for thirty more years and dies aged thirty-eight of tuberculosis. A Chinese peasant farm couple produce six sons and daughters between the years of 1345 and 1356, all dying in infancy save for two sons who perish in a famine that strikes China in 1364. The farm couple themselves die of typhoid fever two years later in 1366. All of these unfortunates live and die having never seen or even heard of a book called the Holy Bible, knowing absolutely nothing of Jesus Christ, the cross, or the possibility that humans can live eternally. To them there truly is no rhyme or reason for human life. Their existence was noted by few, their deaths noted by none. Do they have an eternal fate? Did a “soul” survive every one of them? Are their souls now in a place called hell? Is their human suffering carried on into and through all eternity?
Our Lord continues my life and may well extend it into another decade as He has mercifully and graciously provided me with HIS answers to the above queries. And He cautions me that to whom much is given much is required. He has spiritually begotten sons and daughters around the globe who have besought Him to give them the answers to such questions. I trust He has provided all who read my words with those answers as well, especially if YOU have been begotten by Him, too.
Christ’s Faithful Servant (Galatians 1:10-12),
Donald Wiley