PASTOR JOHN COLLINS: HELL-IT'S A CHOICE
“If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better
for you to enter life maimed, rather than having two hands, to be cast into
hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched-where ‘their worm does not
die, and the fire is not quenched.’” Mark 9:43-44 (NKJV).
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| Mark 9:43 Jesus preaches Hell |
Jesus goes on to say the same of your
foot and your eye,
which if it were to cause you to sin, you should cut it off or pluck it out.
That is a
brutal truth that is said in order to make
the hearer and
the reader realize
just how important it is for a person to seek to be
obedient to God in this
life and to not sin. It is also very important for every person living to
realize the absolute
truth of hell, that it is a place of torment and those
that are judged worthy of deserving hell, do indeed go there and everyone who
does go there will be there for eternity and the suffering will never stop.
That is not what people want to hear. It is
fire and brimstone preaching that our grandparents listened to but we don’t want to hear
it, right? There are even many so-called
Christians who refuse to accept that
existence of hell and have chosen instead to delude themselves and say that
“their God” would never create a place of eternal torment and that
“their God”
is a
loving God who would never hurt His children and that means that hell is
just being separate from the
presence of God, or it is just a metaphor, or it
is symbolic of some other state in which we may find ourselves during life or
temporarily after death but it is not eternal nor is it a final judgment of torture.
That is just wrong thinking and as much as people do not want to hear it or
accept the truth of it,
hell is real, just as
heaven is real.
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| A choice of good and bad since the beginning |
You cannot have one without the other. There was the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil in the
Garden of Eden and that means that there
has been the choice of good and bad since the beginning. Yes, all that we do in
life is a choice and it all leads to the ultimate day of reckoning for
everyone. There will be a time in which all will matter and will determine where
you spend eternity. Are you going to be forever in heaven or in hell? Are your
choices selfish ones, are your choices made with
God and His will in mind and
do you believe in the truth of the righteousness and truth of
God, in the
sacrifice of Jesus and in the available to you, through faith? These are things
that you need to be aware of as you go through the day to day activities of
your life, as you grow up, get a job, get married, have and raise children and
do your best to be a person that can look yourself in the mirror in the morning
and feel good about. Could you sit down with
God and have a conversation
knowing that He knows every single thought and feeling you have ever had and
knows every single thing you have ever done alone and with every single person
you have ever come into contact with? Could you honestly sit down with God and
trust that you have done all that you could to obey Him and not sit there
justifying your life?
Don’t waste what time you have been given with denials that
are only good to serve your own disobedience. God will not give up on you and
you should not give up on you but you must know that you are only given a very
limited amount of time here on earth. You
should live that life with purpose knowing that your priorities will indeed
have you sitting down with God one day so that you don’t have to live with
regret while suffering the torments of the damned for all eternity.
“For everyone will be seasoned with fire, and every
sacrifice will be seasoned with salt. Salt is good, but if the salt loses its
flavor, how will you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace with
one another.” Mark 9:49-50 (NKJV).
LOVE THAT CROSS, PASTOR JOHN
