“Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” Matthew 7:13-14
Eternity is a guarantee for every one of us. Mortality and eternity are forever linked together, you cannot have one without the other. Men the world over wrestle with what comes after death, and religion can be looked at as a service rendered to man to help cope with the unanswerable questions. Therefore, the mark of a true Christian will always be faith, faith in the man Jesus Christ himself. Furthermore, it will always be foolish to discern the value of something based solely on the numbers it produces. For faith has a value in and of itself, and the consequence of not having faith in Christ has been mandated by God himself. This consequence comes regardless of the number of opinions for or against it.
Of all the truths of scripture, personally, I wrestle with hell the most. I am sure that I am not the only one. It is an uncomfortable truth that there is a place prepared, a place of everlasting torment for which there is no escape. Prepared for sinners who reject God. Prepared for those who refuse Christ. It is a real place and right now many people are headed there, and millions more are still there. It is more than an uncomfortable truth; it is a burdensome truth. A truth of scripture that is difficult to face because it requires action on those who believe it. Saint or sinner. Many would rather leave off believing in scripture entirely than face the truth of damnation. Which, sadly, only pushes them closer to damnation. The devil would like it very much if we forget about hell. He would love for Christians to forget it in their sermons, in their songs, and in their speech. Let it become taboo and strange to talk about hell, because in doing so we annex huge portions of the holy scriptures and by consequence the means to save those that are bound for hell. Christ did not avoid talking about hell, he declared plainly the absolute necessity of repentance, of salvation through sanctification. He did always the will of Father and declared what it took to gain heaven and avoid hell. It was God’s will that Jesus Christ preached on hell. It was God’s will that Jesus Christ should tell us about the penalty of sin. Had we not known the severity of the crime (for we can deduce by the severity of the punishment) we could not appreciate the gift of salvation. Manifested in the cross is both the goodness and severity of God. If God, and Jesus, wove the message of hell into the very fabric of the gospel; are we then to try and unravel that? Are we wiser than Him? It is an absolute necessity that we face the uncomfortable truth of hell. That we face it personally, collectively, and preach it openly. As the song says: “What about the life your living? At the judgment will it pay?”
Jesus is the Messiah, the Savior of the world. His way is the narrow way, and his gate is the strait gate. To remove the penalty of rejecting His sacrifice and continuing in open rebellion against God is to make the gospel null and void. We must face the reality of hell and return that reality to the church. For as William Booth the founder of the Salvation Army once said: “The chief danger that confronts the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, heaven without hell.”
