I remember it well. My brother was driving as we were travelling through the back roads of The King Country around Christmas 1978. Suddenly, the view from my car door window turned black. It was no mystery as to what had happened; an oncoming car had forced us off the road. My brother’s swift reactions put our vehicle up against the bank to avoid a head on collision. What went through my mind in the split second that I was watching this unfold? I have no idea! All I know is, that by the grace of God, if our time had come, my brother and I would have found ourselves in paradise with Abraham and Lazarus—Praise the Lord!
However, if I had not been right with God, and I was gambling on the “Deathbed-Repentance-Out-Clause,” I would have been out-of-luck! There simply was no time for repentance.
A man who rests his salvation on a belief that he will have time to reconcile with God seconds before he meets Him, has everything to learn. He does not understand that the heart grows cold away from the Lord. If a man does not seek Jesus during the days of his life, neither will he seek him in the moments of his death.
Like you, I am convicted that what goes on between a man and God in the last seconds of life is between him and God. I too praise God that those who have preceded us are in His merciful hands; judgement is His, not mine.
But just as we honour the dead by acknowledging things we can’t know, we must honour the living by acknowledging things we do know. First and foremost, we must preach that “now is the day of salvation” (2Cor.6:2). Rejecting Jesus today is doing nothing to prepare our souls for eternal life. Instead, “unless you believe that I am He [the Messiah], you will die in your sins” (John 8:24).
It is the ultimate foolish gamble to leave salvation for another day.“For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Lk.19:10).
John Staiger
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