Salvation

The Year of Jubilee

This December 24, the Pope will declare the beginning of the Year of Jubilee, and four special “Holy Doors” will be opened in Rome with the most important being in St. Peter’s Basilica. People from all over the world—an expected 30 million or more—will make a pilgrimage to Rome during 2000 seeking forgiveness of all past sins by walking through the doorways, which are opened only during Jubilee years. Many will travel thousands of miles, sacrificing time and money, in an effort to obtain eternal life. For these seekers, Rome is the place to be in 2000.

The Jubilee occurs every 25 years, but the dawn of a new millennium is bringing much more attention to this particular Year of Jubilee and will bring a greater number of pilgrims.

OM Indeed, Spring, 1999, p. 6

Barna Poll

56% say a good person can earn their way into Heaven
44% say if a person does not consciously accept Christ as savior, they will be condemned to Hell
44% say all people experience the same outcome after they die, regardless of their religious beliefs
34% say there are some sins that God cannot forgive
31% believe that Hell is a literal, physical place, 37% say it is separation from God
39% say it doesn’t matter what faith you embrace because they all teach the same lessons
53% contend that if a person is good enough, or does enough good things for other people, they will earn their way into Heaven. One-third of all born again Christians (34%) accept this notion.

Barna Research Group, Ltd., Oxnard, CA

My Son Died, Don’t You Care

The day is over, you are driving home. You tune in your radio. You hear a little blurb about a little village in India where some villagers have died suddenly, strangely, of a flu that has never been seen before.

It’s not influenza, but three or four fellows are dead, and it’s kind of interesting. They’re sending some doctors over there to investigate it. You don’t think much about it, but on Sunday, coming home from

church, you hear another radio spot. Only they say it’s not three villagers, it’s 30,000 villagers in the back hills of this particular area of India, and it’s on TV that night.

CNN runs a little blurb; people are heading there from the disease center in Atlanta because this disease strain has never been seen before.

By Monday morning when you get up, it’s the lead story. For it’s not just India; it’s Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and before you know it, you’re hearing this story everywhere and they have coined it now as “the mystery flu.”

The President has made some comment that he and everyone are praying and hoping that all will go well over there.

But everyone is wondering, “How are we going to contain it?” That’s when the President of France makes an announcement that shocks Europe. He is closing their borders. No flights from India, Pakistan, or any of the countries where this thing has been seen.

That night you are watching a little bit of CNN before going to bed. Your jaw hits your chest, when a weeping woman is translated from a French news program into English: “There’s a man lying in a hospital in Paris dying of the mystery flu. It has come to Europe.” Panic strikes.

As best they can tell, once you get it, you have it for a week and you don’t know it. Then you have four days of unbelievable symptoms. Then you die.

Britain closes it’s borders, but it’s too late. Southampton, Liverpool, Northhampton, and it’s Tuesday morning when the President of the United States makes the following announcement: “Due to a national security risk, all flights to and from Europe and Asia have been canceled. If your loved ones are overseas, I’m sorry. They cannot come back until we find a cure for this thing.

Within four days our nation has been plunged into an unbelievable fear. People are selling little masks for your face. Some are talking about what if it comes to this country, and preachers on Tuesday are saying, “It’s the scourge of God.” It’s Wednesday night and you are at a church prayer meeting when somebody runs in from the parking lot and says, “Turn on a radio, turn on a radio.” While the church listens to a little transistor radio with a microphone stuck up to it, the announcement is made, “Two women are lying in a Long Island hospital dying from the mystery flu.” Within hours it seems, this thing just sweeps across the country.

People are working around the clock trying to find an antidote. Nothing is working. California, Oregon, Arizona, Florida, Massachusetts. It’s as though it’s just sweeping in from the borders.

Then, all of a sudden the news comes out. The code has been broken. A cure can be found. A vaccine can be made. It’s going to take the blood of somebody who hasn’t been infected, and so, sure enough, all through the Midwest, through all those channels of emergency broadcasting, everyone is asked to do one simple thing: “Go to your downtown hospital and have your blood type taken. That’s all we ask of you. When you hear the sirens go off in your neighborhood, please make your way quickly, quietly, and safely to the hospitals.”

Sure enough, when you and your family get down there late on that Friday night, there is a long line, and they’ve got nurses and doctors coming out and pricking fingers and taking blood and putting labels on it.

Your spouse and your kids are out there, and they take your blood type and they say, “Wait here in the parking lot and if we call your name, you can be dismissed and go home.”

You stand around scared with your neighbors, wondering what in the world is going on, and that this is the end of the world. Suddenly a young man comes running out of the hospital screaming. He’s yelling a name and waving a clipboard. What? He yells it again! And your son tugs on your jacket and says with a grin, “Daddy, that’s me.”

Before you know it, they have grabbed your boy. “Wait a minute, hold it!” And they say, “It’s okay, his blood is clean. His blood is pure. We want to make sure he doesn’t have the disease. We think he has got the right type.”

Five tense minutes later, out come the doctors and nurses, crying and hugging one another - some are even laughing. It’s the first time you have seen anybody laugh in a week, and an old doctor walks up to you and says, “Thank you, sir. Your son’s blood type is perfect. It’s clean, it is pure, and we can make the vaccine.”

As the word begins to spread all across that parking lot full of folks, people are screaming and praying and laughing and crying. But then the gray-haired doctor pulls you and your wife aside and says, “May we see you for a moment?

We didn’t realize that the donor would be a minor and we need . . . we need you to sign a consent form.”

You begin to sign and then you see that the number of pints of blood to be taken is empty. “H-h-h-how many pints?,” you ask. And that is when the old doctor’s smile fades and he says, “We had no idea it would be a little child. We weren’t prepared. We need it all!”

“But -but...” “You don’t understand. We are talking about the world here. Please sign. We - we need it all -we need it all!”

“But can’t you give him a transfusion?”

“If we had clean blood we would. Can you sign? Would you sign?”

In numb silence you do. Then they say, “Would you like to have a moment with your son?” You go into that room where he sits on a table saying, “Daddy? Mommy? What’s going on?”

Can you take his hands and say, “Son, we love you, and we would never ever let anything happen to you that didn’t just have to be. Do you understand that?”

When that old doctor comes back in and says, “I’m sorry, we’ve -we’ve got to get started. People all over the world are dying.” Can you leave? Can you walk out while he is saying, “Dad? Mom? Why - why have you forsaken me?”

And then next week, when they have the ceremony to honor your son, some folks sleep through it, and some folks don’t even come because they go to the lake, and some folks come with a pretentious attitude.

“MY SON DIED! DON’T YOU CARE?”

Is that what God may be saying? “MY SON DIED. DON’T YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I CARE?”

“Father, seeing it from your eyes breaks our hearts. Maybe now we can begin to comprehend the great love you have for us. Amen “

Source unknown

How C. H. Spurgeon Found Christ

I thought the sun was blotted out of my sky - that I had so sinned against God that there was no hope for me. I prayed - the Lord knoweth how I prayed—but I never had a glimpse of an answer that I knew of. I searched the Word of God; the promises were more alarming that the threatenings. I read the privileges of the people of God, but with the fullest persuasion that they were not for me. The secret of my distress was this: I did not know the gospel. I was in a Christian land; I had Christian parents; but I did not understand the freeness and simplicity of the Gospel.

I knew it was said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved,” but I did not know what it was to believe in Christ.

I sometimes think I might have been in darkness and despair now had it not been for the goodness of God in sending a snowstorm one Sunday morning, when I was going to a place of worship. When I could go no further I found a little chapel with fifteen people. The minister did not come that morning because of the snow. A poor man, a shoemaker went into the pulpit to preach.

His text was, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” There was, I thought a glimpse of hope for me in his text. He began thus: “My dear friends, this is a very simple text indeed. It says, ‘Look.’ Now that does not take a deal of effort. It isn’t lifting your foot or your finger; it is just ‘look.’ Well, a man need not go to college to learn to look. Anyone can look; a child can look. But this is what the text says. Then it says, ‘Look unto me.’ Many of you are looking to yourselves. No use looking there. You’ll never find comfort in yourself.

Then the good man followed up his text in this way: “Look unto Me; I am sweating great drops of blood. Look unto Me; I am hanging on the Cross. Look! I am dead and buried. Look unto Me; I rise again. Look unto Me; I ascend; I am sitting at the Father’s right hand. Oh, look to me! Look to Me!”

Then He turned his attention to me. He said, “Young man, you look very miserable. And you will always be miserable - in life and in death in you do not obey my text. But if you obey, now, this moment, you will be saved.”

Then he shouted, “Young man, look to Jesus Christ; look NOW!” He made me start in my seat; but I did look to Jesus Christ.

There and then the cloud rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun. I could have risen that moment and sung with the most enthusiastic of them of the precious blood of Christ, and the simple faith which looks alone to Him. Oh, that somebody had told me that before - trust Christ, and you shall be saved!

Source unknown

Don’t Cross that Line

There is a time, we know not when,
A place, we know not where;
Which marks the destiny of men
To glory or despair.

There is a line, by us unseen,
Which crosses every path,
Which marks the boundary between
God’s mercy and his wrath.

To pass that limit is to die,
To die as if by stealth;
It does not dim the beaming eye,
Nor pale the glow of health.

The conscience may be still at ease,
The spirit light and gay;
And that which pleases still may please,
And care be thrust away.

But on that forehead God hath set
Indelibly a mark;
Unseen by man, for man as yet,
Is blind and in the dark.

He feels perchance that all is well
And every fear is calmed;
He lives, he dies, he walks in hell,
Not only doomed, but damned!

O, where is that mysterious line
That may by men be crossed,
Beyond which God himself hath sworn,
That he who goes is lost?

An answer from the skies repeats,
“Ye who from God depart,”
Today, O hear His voice,
Today repent and harden not your heart.

- Joseph Addison Alexander

Source unknown

The Wish Wand

I had a little wish wand and waved it to and fro
Whenever thoughts turned heavenward or the other place you go.
I thought it safe to trust it with my whole eternal soul
so I wished the life I’d lived on earth would get me to my goal.
I wished that all would get to heaven whatever they believed
that Buddha sat at God’s right hand that New Age be received.

I wished that Paul would change his mind that Jesus wasn’t right
because He spoke of lostness and a dark eternal night;
about the way to heaven one truth, one narrow gate,
and I was so broadminded that I wished away my fate!

So I waved my little wish wand in the radiant face of Him
who met me at the gate of heaven and wouldn’t let me in.

I wrote to heaven’s congressman, but he courteously replied
that I should have left my wish wand at the feet of Him who died!
For wishes could not wish away a lifetime of rejection,
and wishes could not dress my soul in heaven’s own perfection.
And wishes could not save me now for hell was so obscene,
that wishes there die ghastly deaths, strangled with a scream.

So I took my little wish wand into hell the day I died,
and I waved it at the serpent as he slithered to my side.
It was dark but I could see him and all I knew was fear,
and no matter how I waved my wand he wouldn’t disappear!
Oh I wish that I had wished aright I wished I lived again
I wished I had a body that was whole, not racked with pain.

I wished I could remember something other than the dirt.
I wished I could forget my sin. So every memory hurt.
Oh, I wished and wished and wished that I could have another chance
to cast upon the Crucified a trusting, saving glance.

But the devil took my wish wand and he laughed right in my face
and I went to live eternally in darkness and disgrace,
I never wished a wish again I had no heart to try
for hell is where hope ended, and where all my wishes died!

By Jill Brisco, in her book Heaven and Hell