No guarantees

I was witnessing to one of my dear friends yesterday who is going through tremendous financial turmoil and is very depressed to the point of being suicidal. I told him that he needed God in his life and asked him to go to church with me and told him that Jesus could take his worries away. He listened politely for a while and when I stopped long enough to take a breath, he asked if he could say something.

“Of course”, I replied.

He told me that he did not believe in the Bible and that everything I was talking about was based on the Bible.

Hmmm “Have you ever read the Bible?”

“No”

“Well how do you know that you do not believe it?”

He was taken aback for a moment and then stammered, “Well I have heard various things and been around it here and there all of my life.”

“Jeez son, do you realize how that sounds? How can you not believe in the Bible when you have not even bothered to read it? That is like saying you do not like hamburgers without ever having tasted one. What if the people that have told you things about the Bible all of your life are wrong? What if the Bible is what I believe it to be, the unerring factual word of God? Why not read it for yourself and then make up your mind? If you do not at least read “some” of the Bible, I believe you will miss out on the direct revelation and only communiqu from God Himself.”

I told him to tell me something specific that he did not believe about this Bible that he did not believe in, and he could give me nothing specific. When he could not, I quizzed him a little more about the Bible and found that he knew absolutely nothing about it. And when I say nothing I mean nothing. I spent a good hour or more telling him about Abraham, the covenant with him, the Jews, and the Old Testament that prophesied a Messiah. I told him of the rejection by the Jews of Jesus even though Jesus fulfilled all of those prophecies right up through His crucifixion, death, burial and resurrection in the New Testament. I told him that there are many things still to come and man of the events occurring today such as the Jews returning to the Holy Land were prophesied thousands of years ago..

The sad thing about his situation is that he is a decent guy and he has a longing for God and needs God, but he has to date rejected Jesus Christ based entirely on second hand information, all of which is negative about religion, Christians, and the Bible.

Make no mistake about it, good guy or not, the Bible states that believing in Jesus is the only way to get to heaven and unless he changes, he will go to hell. I pray my friend finds Him before it is too late.

In that regard I am bringing him several books on prophecy for which he has a keen interest and of course a Bible to read. He told me that he knows he will not read the entire thing, and he asked me to give him some specific chapters to read that would interest him. So I will scour the Bible in an effort to find something that will catch hold of him.

I told him that this life is but a vapor and he might be lucky to make it 70 or 80 years, but eternity is forever. I realize he has things to do in this life, but anyone who looks beyond the tip of their nose should understand that sufficient time should be set aside to thoroughly investigate this important issue which involves eternal life. I mean after all eternity is FOREVER! Not to mention that there are no guarantees for even another second of life in this world before being vaporized.

At the end of the day after reading the Bible if he still does not believe, then at least he will have given it the old college try.

Have you read the Bible or do you rely on second hand information? I would not want to bet my eternity on it Think about it.

James 4:14
Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.