How do you feel when you are late for an appointment, how does it make you feel when you have given your word to someone and you are unable to keep it? Think about that for a moment and then consider this, how does it make you feel when that happens to you?
The words that come to my mind are frustrated and inconvenienced, for we regulate our lives around time, we set up specific tasks and then allow our lives to revolve around them, and when something occurs that adversely affects our prescribed path, we feel as is our time has been wasted. “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” (Prov. 14:12)
I have met leaders of Bible study groups who become very upset when the program they have set for that midweek lesson is not completed, even when a brother in Christ has a pressing matter he needs to discuss. I have met pastors who will spend little time with those same brothers in need unless they make an appointment, their time is being pressed upon, and a specific order of time and its proper usage must be maintained. “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:” (Heb. 9:27)
Every person who adheres without question to the tenets of the Roman Catholic doctrine, every Buddhist, every Mormon, every single person that believes that there is a way to the Father other than through the Lord Jesus Christ has wasted the time allotted to them, every one of them has wasted the entirety of their life. “The memory of the just is blessed: but the name of the wicked shall rot.” (Prov. 10:7)
Works-based religious organizations, manmade ideologies, imagined precepts, every thought of man that denies that the shed blood of Christ, that His sacrifice alone is not sufficient in and of itself for the salvation of their soul has used their time here on earth foolishly. Think how they will feel when they hear this truth, much too late to do anything about it. “While it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation.” (Heb. 3:15)
When you are late for that appointment you feel as if you have let that other person down, you have disappointed them, you feel embarrassed, shame, and belittled in your own eyes. Those we speak of will stand before the Great White Throne of Judgment feeling all this and more, and they will do just what you do when you are late, they will offer excuses. Whether made-up or real, they will not be accepted.
When you expect someone at a specific time and they are late, you feel frustrated, inconvenienced, and while you will listen to their excuses, they will mean little to you, for your timeline of the day has been interrupted and now all that was to come afterwards must be altered.
The Lord Jesus Christ will listen to their excuses on that fearful day, and then they will be cast into eternal torment. Tell me, how important do you believe your plans for today seem to you now?
