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| Vol. 13 No. 6 June 2011 | Page 12 |
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| Vol. 13 No. 6 June 2011 | Page 12 |
Ernest S. Underwood
Who can describe eternity? Yet, each of us has an eternal destiny. Jesus in Matthew 7 taught that there are two, and only two, roads that man travels. One leads to eternal life, and the other leads to eternal destruction. Even as we write, each of us is on one of these roads.
Now, a question: Who is determining your eternal destiny? Some have answered that their parents are doing so. One lady told me several years ago that she knew that her dad was lost, but if he was in hell, she wanted to be with him. However, Jesus taught that if one loved mother or father more than he or she loved Him, that person was not worthy of Him. Some let the world and its peer pressures decide how they will live, work and act. Jesus told His disciples that even though they were in the world, they were not to be of the world. Others let the false teachers make the choice. Yet, these false teachers encourage, yea, even demand that their hearers obey them and their sayings rather than obey God. Watch them when they talk about salvation. They will get real gushy and talk about “saying the sinner’s prayer” when God’s true spokesmen told the inquiring believer to “repent and be baptized for the remission of your sins” (Acts 2:38).
Again, who is making the decision about your soul’s eternal destiny?
People look at the religious world, see all of the division, and wonder why it exists. If we all worship the same God and claim to follow the same book, why are there so many different groups?
Paul said there were to “be no divisions among you [the people of God],” but Christians are to be “perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment” (1 Corinthians 1:10). The reason there is so much division is because many have stopped allowing the Bible to do the talking and have turned to their own ideas and philosophies.
Should there be all of these divisions? No. But there also cannot be unity without a unity of beliefs. Amos 3:3 asks, “Can two walk together except they be agreed?” The answer, of course, is “No.” God does not desire division, and we should not either, but the only way to dissolve division is to use God’s Word, and it alone, as the standard.