Nuggets from An Urgent Call to a Serious Faith—Rescuing from a False Hope (Part 2)

Christ could come at any moment to take us to His Father’s house, where we will be united with Him eternally. Seven years later, when He appears and “every eye shall see Him” and Israel will recognize Him, we will be at His side in glorified bodies to rule and reign with Him—“and so shall we ever be with the Lord!” That is the Christian’s hope. Heaven is our home and that is where our hearts are—with Him. The world has lost its appeal, sin has lost its power, and Satan must relinquish his claim upon those who belong to Christ. We have been set free!

What motivation that realization gives both for holy living and for declaring with clarity God’s message to mankind! And what is that message? The standard “evangelistic” approach has long been to promise healing and joy and blessing for those who come to Christ, but a world that imagines it is in the process of achieving peace and prosperity has little motivation for heeding such a gospel.

The message that is needed is one of conviction of sin and the fear of God. Until men and women realize that they have violated God’s laws and that this world is ripening to reap His wrath, they will not see their need for the forgiveness which Christ bought with His blood. That message will be increasingly difficult to deliver in the days ahead, but it is the only one that will prevent “converts” from coming to Christ for the wrong reasons and thereby being set up to follow the Antichrist when he appears. It is both awesome and thrilling to realize that our responsibility and privilege is to rescue as many as possible from the wrath to come.