This past week, I was going through
a bag full of the notes I have written over the years, and I
found the notes to one of the earliest messages I ever preached
on this text of Scripture. They're right here. Fifteen pages
of them. I used to write a lot more notes
than I write now. And I also used to always make
a cover page for it since I traveled from place to place preaching
at that time. I was not a pastor anywhere. And I want to make
sure I didn't preach the same message in the same place twice.
I always wrote down where I preached it. And I've preached this in
five places that I know of. First time I preached it was
December 6th, 1981. So that was 34 years ago. There was a group of people who attended the 13th Street
Baptist Church in Ashland, Kentucky, but they lived about 35 miles
away in a town called Grayson, Kentucky. So for a while, instead
of having all those families drive to Ashland again on Sunday
evening, I drove there, and we met in what had been a shoe store,
but there was nothing in there at the time, and I preached to
them. I don't know how long that went
on, but preached to them on Sunday evenings. the Lord giving me
opportunity to learn something by experience.
all kind of old war horses in the gospel. I wasn't going to
hurt them if I flubbed up. You know, they already knew what
the gospel was. We had some good times together. But I also preached
it in Cottageville, where Mike Walker is now the pastor. I preached
it in Paintsville. There was a little work they
were trying to start there, though I don't think anything ever came
up to it. You remember Larry Criss, who preached for us? At
that time, he was pastor in a little church in Anstead, West Virginia.
And I preached this message there on July 10th, 1983. We even got
dates written down. And then later that year, I went
to Owensboro, Kentucky as pastor and preached it there. But it's
a very simple message. And I guess that's why I preached
it in so many places. It is simply the gospel. And so, if the Lord is pleased,
even though much time has gone by since I first preached it,
the message is still the same. And that's one thing that was
kind of gratifying to me as I looked through the notes. I really haven't
changed, certainly not in any significant way in which I preach
or the truth which I preach. And we read here, beginning in
2 Peter 3, verse 8, and do not forget this one thing, dear friends,
With the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand
years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping
his promise, as some understand slowness. Now, the King James
says slack. He's not slack. The idea is,
it's not as though God has forgotten his promise, or given up on it,
or changed his mind. Rather, here's the reason that
he has not yet returned. He is patient with you, not wanting
anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. But the
day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear
with a roar. The elements will be destroyed
by fire. and the earth and everything
in it will be laid bare." Now, Peter says that God is not
slow, He's not tardy concerning His promise. It's not as though
He said He would come at such a time and then didn't show up
at the appointed hour. The promise, of course, that
is being spoken of is seen here in verse 4 where it says, they
will say, where is this coming that he promised? You remember
he promised it to the disciples in John chapter 14. He says,
if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive
you unto myself. He made a promise. He's coming
back. These things... Or there are
many questions concerning Christ's coming, and there are more answers
than questions. And I say that for this reason.
I don't mean there are more right answers than questions. But for
every question that people have about the return of the Lord
Jesus Christ, there's going to be 10 or 12 opinions about it.
And it's something that people are very interested in, and I
can understand that. I'm very curious about it. But in the absence of definite
scriptural statements about it, people have invented all kinds
of schemes or plans or timelines about when and how and under
what circumstances the Lord will return. Now, I can tell you this. with certainty, at least as certain
as I know how to be about something. The Bible gives us no hint whatsoever
as to when the Lord will return. He has not given us any indication
of events that shall occur on the earth which shall signal
to us that the Lord is just right at the door and ready to come
back. But there are some things about
it that we can know. First of all, it's a sure thing.
It is certain the Lord shall return. Enoch first prophesied
of it, we read that in Jude 14. You remember Enoch, he was in
the seventh generation from Adam. And he preached this message,
the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones. The saints,
his people. And Paul echoed it later when
he said, the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout
and with the voice of the archangel. But he said that those who have
fallen asleep in Christ, when the Lord comes, they will come
with Him. There's His ten thousands of
holy ones that come with Him. And so Enoch and Paul preached
the same thing about the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. He
will indeed come. Isaiah prophesied it, Christ
Himself confirmed it, and all the apostles spoke of it. John
said this, What we shall be has not yet
been revealed, but we know that when He shall appear... What's
that talking about? When He comes back. When He makes
an appearance at this world again, we'll be like Him because we'll
see Him as He is. In the book of Revelation, chapter
22, verse 20, it says, Surely I come quickly. Christ will come,
of that there can be no doubt. It will not always be through
death that men meet the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord will return
to earth, for such is the plan of God. God made the earth for
man. He didn't make man for the earth,
He made earth for man. More specifically, He made the
earth for THE man, Christ Jesus. Man is to be prophet, priest,
and king in this world, but it's obvious we can't supply or fulfill
that because prophets have to know the truth and we by nature
don't. Priests have to represent folks before God, and we couldn't
even represent ourselves before God. And kings must be able to
rule, and none of us has the power to rule hardly anything,
much less the whole universe. Rather, God's prophet, priest,
and king, who will rule over this entire world, yea, the whole
universe, is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. And while
this world was made for man in general, it was made for THE
man, Christ Jesus, in particular. Now it's good for us to keep
that in mind, because it reveals to us what our level of importance
is in the whole scheme of things. And that's somewhere beneath
the importance of the Lord Jesus Christ. People, some people in despair
say things like, well, I didn't ask to be born. Well, that's
true. Nobody did. But your existence
has nothing to do with your will or your purpose or what you think
ought to be. We are here. Because God ordained
that we would be here, we will serve the purpose for which we
were put here. And that purpose will be fully
realized as Jesus Christ returns. And everyone is assigned their
eternal destiny according to their relationship to Him. This whole universe spins on
the Lord Jesus Christ. This whole world. Everything
in it and everything that happens is for Him. The day must come
when God vindicates His Son to the world that rejected Him.
The day must come when Jesus Christ comes as the arm of God's
judgment to bring judgment to pass on all those who were not
represented by the Son at Calvary. You see, it would be entirely
unfair, would it not, for God to punish the Lord Jesus Christ
for the sins of God's people and then simply let everybody
else go unpunished. All sin must be punished. And
if it was not punished in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ
on Calvary, it will be punished by the person of the Lord Jesus
Christ when He returns. It is Christ that comes, and
that's the most important thing to keep in mind. Everybody's
wondering about when He will come. Let me repeat what I've
said to you many times. It won't be long before He comes
for you. No matter when He comes to wind
up history, the history of this fallen world, no matter when
that is, it's not going to be that long before He comes for
you. And you say, well, I'm pretty young. I've got a lot of years
ahead of me. Well, it says here that so far
as God's concerned, that a thousand years and a day are pretty much
the same thing. So if you have 50 years ahead of you, let's
say, well, that's one twentieth of a thousand. One twentieth
of a day is what? One point something hours. If
I told you that in one point something hours the Lord was
coming for you, what would you do? You'd get pretty serious, wouldn't
you? You know something, it doesn't matter whether it's one point
something hours, or one point something centuries before the
Lord returns, or before He comes for you individually through
the process of death. Here's the reality of it. He's
coming. Christ is coming. Christ, the one the world rejected.
Christ, the one to whom, in whose hands God has committed everything,
including the souls of all men. Now we believers, we like to
say, take comfort. My soul is in the hands of the
Lord. And that's fine for us to think of it in those terms.
But you want to know something? Everybody else's soul is in His
hands too. For He is Lord over all. He is
sovereign over the entire creation. And He will do with each man
as seems good in His sight. God has committed everything
to the Lord Jesus Christ. And He comes. It's He that comes. Enoch said, the Lord comes with
ten thousands of His saints. Isaiah said, the Lord cometh
with fire. Christ said, I will come again.
Surely, I come quickly. The apostles say, the Lord Himself
shall descend from heaven. We wait for God's Son from heaven. Waiting for that blessed hope
and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior,
Jesus Christ. And one of the last words in
the Bible is John saying, even so come Lord Jesus. Here's the point I'm trying to
make. The point of the Lord's return is that it's the Lord
that returns. Now, if I were to leave town
for a while, and then before I came back and I called up the
newspapers, they put this ad in, Joe Terrell's coming back
to Rock Valley. People look and go, so what?
I didn't know he was gone. Why? Because I don't matter much. I have little to nothing to do
with the lives of people in this area as to what shall become
of them. But the Lord is coming back.
That's important. That means something. I sat through
so many messages about the return of the Lord and they always had
us looking for Antichrist instead of Christ. They always had us
worried about the beast, trying to make sure we didn't take the
mark of the beast, which for some was getting a social security
number. Others, they said, well, they're going to put a tattoo
on your hand or on your head, you know. I even watched one
movie where they had translated the number 666 into binary, zeros
and ones. And it just looked like some
symbol. And it's like they'd snuck it on to people. People
didn't realize that that was really 666 on their forehead
when it was, you know, 011, you know, something like that. They
just thought, how silly. Brethren, antichrist don't matter. He'll be defeated. When the Lord
comes, Antichrist is out of the picture. The beast that rises
up out of the sea is going to be plunged right back into it
again. The beast that rises up from the earth, God will stomp
him right back into it. These are not whom we should fear or
be concerned about. He who comes in the clouds in
power and great glory is the one you should be thinking about.
Because when He comes, everything is over. It's like the day of
the flood. When God came in that day, there
was only one place of safety. It was the ark. It had one door
through which to come. And just before God sent the
water, it said, God shut Noah in. God shut the door. And the
rain fell. And when the rain fell, the whole
world died with the exception of eight souls there in that
ark. And I don't know what the flood
was like. Sounds to me like it's so bad
that I doubt anybody survived for very long. But even if there
were some swimming around the ark, pounding on it, Noah let
us in, let us in. Noah couldn't let them in. Why? Because it wasn't Noah that closed
the door. It was God. And what God opens, no man can
shut, and what God shuts, no man can open. Christ comes, God
in human flesh, and He will put an end to this day which we call
the day of grace, the day of God's acceptation. But also included in this promise
is a warning. This is a promise, not a threat. Powerful men of our day make
threats, and quite often it's a bluff. They threaten what horrible
things they'll do. People or a nation or whatever
doesn't do what they think they should, and then people or the
nation call their bluff and they just back down. This is not a
bluff. He will return. All the promises
of God are true. And that includes the promise
of judgment as well as the promise of salvation. God promised His coming. He promised
the destruction of the old world. Look in verse 10. But the day
of the Lord will come like a thief, the heavens will disappear with
a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth
and everything in it will be laid bare. Now, I remember hearing
guys, you know, try to describe what that would be like and try
to define that in scientific terms. Folks, I don't care what
the science behind this is, or if there's any science behind
it at all. The heavens disappearing with
a roar, the elements destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything
in it laid bare, how that happens is not a concern to me. What
does concern me is that it's going to happen. In essence, this promise concerns
all that has to do with the winding up of this present world. And
it's been so long since the promise was made that there are some
who doubt that it will ever happen. Verse 4. Well, verse 3 will say,
first of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers
will come. Scoffing and following their
own evil desires, they will say, where is this coming he promised? Ever since our father died, father's
died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation. Saying that he promised judgment.
I'm an old man that's never come. I guess it'll never happen. Oh,
our lives are nothing on the timeline. They're a little blip,
a bare moment. Why, the 2,000 years that has
gone by since our Lord made these promises with his own mouth,
they're nothing to God. They have no effect on Him. We
are born, we grow up, and we grow old. All within the span
of a century or less. God is utterly unchanged by the
passage of time. And His promises are unaffected
by it. Men may scoff, but that won't change it. They scoff God with their actions,
they scoff God with their works. They actually hurl their contempt
in His face and act as though His warnings
are without merit. When their God-given conviction
or God-given conscience convicts them of sin, they say, where
is the promise of God? When they are called to repentance
by the preaching of the gospel, they say, all things continue
as they always have. My soul, take your ease. Your
barns are full. You have plenty. If I can do anything or can't
do anything other than this, I pray that God will enable me
that everybody here will wake up to this reality. Everybody
here, young and old, wake up to this reality. The life, the
existence that you and I see and experience day by day shall
not go on forever. It shall be over for us within
a few years. And it shall be over for everything
at the appointed time that God has determined by which He will
judge the world by Jesus Christ. Don't let the passage of years
dim you to the reality of it. Don't let them provide you with
any comfort that judgment will not come. God says, I haven't
come yet, but that's not because I'm slack concerning my promise,
my promise of judgment. It's not because I've just kind
of got over my anger. You know how that is. Sometimes
you get upset at people and you're ready to really give them what
for, and then a little time passes and you're like, okay, I don't
mind. God's never like that. What He said He'll do, He will
do. Now these who scoff about the coming of the Lord, they
make three serious errors, an error in reasoning. They say,
what has happened before will happen again. But we know that's
not true. Day after day after day, we go
out to our car and we turn the key and it starts. And we keep
on going and maybe a little light comes on one day and says the
battery's not charging like it was. And we say, well, it's doing
okay. And a few more days go by and every day we get in and
despite what the little light is saying, we turn the key and
the engine comes on and it's fine. But then one day we go
out there and all it does is go and that's it. And what we've done has been
fools to think that just because so far the car has always started,
that it always will start. Well, just because God didn't
come yesterday or any of the days in the last few thousand
years, doesn't mean He won't come today. Just because God
has not visited judgment on you for your sin so far, doesn't
mean that He won't in days to come. They don't even use their
reasoning well, for they only have 50 or so years to consider. They're willfully ignorant of
the facts. Do you know there was a time when God said he was
going to destroy the world with a flood, and he let one man know
about it, a man named Noah. And he told Noah, and then he
said, Noah, you tell everyone else. And Noah was considered
a preacher of righteousness in his day. And he confronted the
people with their sin and told them to repent. And he's building
this ark, and the whole time he's building this ark, it is
a testimony. God's judgment is coming. Here
is a place of safety. And then the people watched as
God brought the animals in, most of them two by two, a few of
them seven. And they saw them coming on to
the ark, and Noah standing there, and saw the provisions going.
They saw all of that happen. And they're saying to themselves,
you know, that old crazy man Noah has been telling us this
for 120 years now, and I haven't seen so much as a drop of rain
yet. And they went on about it and
it says they married and were given in marriage and they were
eating and drinking. In other words, they were just
going on with their lives as they always had, just completely
shoving out of their minds what Noah was telling them and what
was being revealed to them in the building of that ark until
the day came when God said, OK, this is the day I have on my
calendar. I put it there. And I'm not going to push it
back one day. And God shut the door to the
ark. And He caused the fountains of the great deep to open up.
He caused the windows of heaven to open up. And water overflowed
this earth in such torrents, torrents of rain, in massive
eruptions of water. That's why many believe really
that about everybody was dead within just a little bit. Because
it was not just 40 days of rain. It was 40 days of earthquakes.
It was 40 days of the earth ripping open. And the waters that had
been stored under the earth for all this time come flooding out.
It was days of mountains heaving up and valleys falling in. And by the time 40 days was over,
there was not one square foot of land showing anywhere in all
the earth. 120 years passed between when God
told Noah about it and when it happened. And for that reason,
many people said it ain't gonna happen. But it did. And no matter
how many years now pass, before the Lord returns, we know this,
He will return. But here's a glorious truth. God hasn't come yet. Christ has
not returned yet. Not because of laziness, not
because of a change of mind, but for this, God is patient. But we're not very patient, are
we? Somebody wrongs us, we're ready
to lash out right now. All the patience of God Another
writer said, knowing that the long-suffering of God means salvation. Adam sinned. And God, you know that He knew
about it. We don't know what time of day
it was that Adam sinned, but it says later in the day that
God came in the cool of the evening. We get the impression that it
was customary for God to do this. and to commune with the man and
the woman. And that sin had been committed
earlier, and God had not done a thing about it. And when He came in the garden
and confronted Adam and Eve with it, He did not do anything to
Adam and Eve about it either, in eternal terms. He made a promise. He made a promise of a Savior
to come. And he illustrated how that Savior
would save by killing some animals and covering Adam and Eve with
their skins. And then he put them out of that
paradise called Eden and made them live in a world under his
curse. Yet God did not destroy the world
then, nor did he send Adam and Eve to hell then, nor any of
his descendants. He waited. There was a promise
he had made about one who would come and save, and 4,000 years
at least went by. And I'm sure by then many were
saying, I guess that Jesus Christ, well, they wouldn't have used
those words, but I guess the promised seed of the woman isn't
going to come after all. I mean, let's face it, 4,000
years, God must have forgotten about it. He's slack concerning
that promise. But he did come, didn't he? He
did come. Even though 4,000 years passed
between the first promise and the fulfillment, and then a mere
2,000 years goes by between the promise of the Lord's return,
and people will doubt that He's ever going to come back, He'll
come. God is patient. And notice this
now, God is patient, but He's not patient with everybody. It says He is patient with you. Who's the you he's talking about?
Well, strictly speaking, he's talking about his elect. All
what God has put up with out of us. How many years did we go before
we believed? How much rebellion against God
did we engage in before He came and changed our hearts and caused
us to bow to Him and call Him Lord? How much sin does He continue
to put up with out of us? I tell you, we ought to read
about the patience or the long-suffering of God, and it ought to fill
our hearts with joy and thanksgiving, because brethren, as the Apostle
wrote, God's long-suffering is salvation. Without it, there
would be none. Every one of us deserves the
eternal judgment of God, but oh, how patient He is. Even though He's pronounced judgment
upon this world, He will not bring that judgment to pass until
every object of His saving grace and mercy has been brought to
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you remember the story of
The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. There's a line in there
that I think illustrates this perfectly. God goes down there,
two angels went down there to Sodom and they told Lot what
was going to happen. They says, if you have any family
in this town, get them out of here. Because tomorrow God's
going to destroy this place. And Lot tried to get his children
and his sons-in-laws to listen to him and leave, but they thought
he was just a crazy man. And that's what people think
of believers in our day. They're a bunch of crazy believers, talking
about judgment. The next morning, boy, Lot was a mess, wasn't he?
He hesitates to leave. They say, leave, and he won't
go. And they said these words, Lot,
get out of here because God cannot destroy this place until you're
out. Lot's presence in that town was
holding off the judgment of God because God will not bring judgment
on this world until His people are out of the way. He will not
let judgment fall on them. Why hasn't God destroyed the
world yet? Because some of His people are
still in it. In fact, in all likelihood, some
of His people have not even been born yet. And He is waiting,
He's putting up with what the world is doing, and He's putting
up even with what His people continue to do. He is tolerating,
putting up with all of that, waiting until that last one of
His chosen people shall be brought in by the power of the Holy Spirit.
And once they are taken out of the world, and I don't mean physically
taken out, I mean spiritually taken out
of it. You see, whenever a man is born again by the Spirit of
God, he's no longer a part of the world. The Lord told His
disciples, I am not of the world and neither are you. And so,
once, by the power of the Gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit,
once that last one of God's elect is pulled out of this world of
unbelievers and rebels, then, and not until then, God will
bring judgment and destroy all the unbelieving world, even as
He saves every one of His people who remain until that time. The day of the Lord will come,
but it won't come because God is not willing that any of his
people perish. Isn't that wonderful news? I believe I'm one of God's people. Most of the time I don't act
like it at all, but I believe that I am by the testimony of
scriptures. I don't have any confidence in
myself. I don't have any confidence in my power to hang on. Don't
even have any confidence in my will to hang on. But here is something I do have
confidence in, the will of God. And it says he is not willing
that even one of his people should perish. He is long-suffering
toward us, it says. Our translation says you, because
some of the Greek translations say you, some say us. But either
way, it's the same people he's talking about, the ones to whom
he's writing. He's long-suffering to those
whom he has chosen, for whom the Lord Jesus Christ has died,
and to whom the Spirit has come, and given them an understanding.
He is long suffering with the wickedness of this world and
puts off the destruction of it until such time as every one
of those that He has willed to save have been born, have heard
the gospel, have been called by the Spirit, and have called
upon His name for salvation. Then He will come. And it will be a dreadful day
for the world, and yet the most wonderful day for those who have
been saved by the grace of God. The Lord will come like a thief.
What's that mean? Utterly unexpected. That's why
we know there are no signs of the Lord's return. When does
a thief give notice of his arrival? You know, dear resident, I will
be at your house 10 p.m. Friday night. Signed, thief. You just don't get those letters,
do you? They do everything they can to sneak up. They do everything
to hide what they're doing because surprise is to their advantage. Well, it's not as though the
Lord is a thief or that He needs to surprise people, but He uses
that principle as an indication of His coming. It will come at
the very time when people are saying, peace and safety. Then He'll come. At the very
time no one thinks he's going to come, that's when he's going
to come. When no one's looking for him,
he will show up. The heavens will disappear. With
a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire and the earth
and everything in it will be laid bare. Now why? Because everything about this
creation is ruined. Everything. You and me, the earth
we live in, the universe, all the stars, everything is messed
up. Man's sin ruined everything. And Jesus Christ is going to
fix everything. What does he say here? Verse
13, but in keeping with his promise, we are looking forward to a new
heavens and a new earth, the home of righteousness. There is a promise of his coming
in judgment, and there is a promise of his coming in salvation, and
both are the same event. For He destroys this world in
order to make a new one. He destroys this world which
is cursed by sin, which has everything in it that stands opposed to
God, and therefore everything in it that stands opposed to
the people of God, and He's going to destroy it all. There will
be no more disease because this world, which has disease in it,
is going to be gotten rid of. There will be no sorrow because
sorrow belongs to this world that's cursed by sin. In the
world to come, there will be no sorrow because there will
be no curse. There will be no death. Death
is part of this creation. It is our salvation for God to
eliminate this creation and put us in a new one where death no
longer rules nor has any part. In this world, what is life like?
It is a slow march to the grave. We talk about, well, I've had
a pretty good life. And I understand that's just
the way we talk, but friends, what we have is not life. That's
why the Lord Jesus Christ says, I've come that they might have
life. What we have is a slow death. For some of us, it may be faster
than others. But for all of us, it's equally
certain. A march to the grave. But in the new world, nobody
will be digging holes in the ground to put people in it. Nobody
will be setting up memorials. There will be no death. Nobody's
going to be sick. Sickness is just the precursor
to death. That's all. It's the birth pains of death. There'll be no loss. there'll
be no more saying goodbye. For the Lord comes to destroy
the creation in which all those things exist, that He might make
a creation wherein righteousness dwells, so that we who have been
made righteous by His grace will have a place to be at home. You
who believe, do you not sense that this world is just not where
you belong? It's really not where you want
to be. Oh, I realize there's some minor joys in it. We love
the joys of family, the joys of friendship, the joys of interesting
things to do. But when it gets right down to
it, we look around and there's really nothing here that provides
us with a sense of satisfaction. And there's much in it that we
look at it and we just say, that's not right. Won't it be good? To look out on a world and say,
that's exactly how it should be. Everything's perfect. I'm perfect. To never go to bed and toss and
turn because of the worries on your mind. Never wake up to face
a day full of troubles and duties you have no idea how you'll ever
get them done. To watch day after day go by
and yet see no effect upon your glorified body and be possessed
of the dew of youth, as the scriptures say, forever. When I was a child and they spoke
to me about the coming of the Lord, it terrified me. And that's
what they wanted it to do. And now I think about the coming
of the Lord. And my thought is, Lord, could
it be today? I would not want the Lord to
come until all his elect are called. But I would surely like to leave
this place for the next one. I would surely like to be done
being like me, so that I can be made like Christ. I would sure like to be done
worrying about the future, not knowing what's going to happen. I would like to be done regretting
the past, because there's a whole lot in my past to be regretted. Is the coming of the Lord a frightful
thing? Only if you're outside of Christ. If you're in Christ,
it's a wonderful thing. And therefore we look for this
new heavens and new earth. Now let me make a quick application
and we'll be done. If you are at this present time
outside of Christ in your experience, you have never honestly called
upon Him for His salvation. I want you to think of something.
I want you to recall how long-suffering the Lord has been with you. That He has not given you yet
what you deserve. And I would that you would make
good use of His patience and no longer test it. no longer ignore both His warnings
and His promises. And that you would see how gracious
He's been to you so far. And instead of that making you
dull and insensitive to the truth, that it would break your heart. And you'd say, God, what a fool
I've been. Would you come and rescue this fool from his foolishness? Would you come save this sinner
from his sin? So that when you come to destroy
the world, you'll be coming to save me. You see, when we're all done
theologizing, when we're all done taking our stand about religion
and this, that and the other, it all comes down to this. We
are sinners in desperate need of a Savior. Jesus Christ is
the Savior we need. But the day of salvation will
not go on forever. There's coming an end to it.
And I would not have you be like any of those who may have survived
the first few hours of Noah's flood, desperately trying to
get in a boat where the door has been closed by God. So I thought you believed in
election and all God's people will be saved. I certainly do.
But I have no idea who here is elect and who is not. All I know
is this. The ark has been built. The animals
are getting in. Getting in line. I don't know how long it will
be before that door is shut. I don't know when the last of
God's animals is going to get on board. But oh, may God give you grace
to get in line, to get into that ark Christ Jesus,
and find safety in Him. For He is coming. And the only
place of safety from the Lord Jesus Christ is in Jesus Christ. That makes sense to you. Makes
perfect sense to me. But the only place of safety
from Jesus Christ is to be in Christ. God grant it to be so.