“Remember his marvelous works that he hath done; his wonders, and the judgments of his mouth;” (Psalm 105:5) The glories of the creation of God are all around us wherever we look, and they are indeed majestic to behold. I enjoy the mountains, both the distant view of them as they rise to touch the sky, the clouds rolling over and through them, behind every rock and around every crevasse is a new wonder. Not so my lovely wife, she prefers the ocean, every step along its sandy shore brings the possibility of a new sight, a different fish to see, the sand between her toes enraptures her, and staring out over the vast, unlimited distance that the sea offers allows her mind a freedom she can little experience elsewhere.
The mountains, plains, desert, ocean, even the deep forest, they all show the incredible imagination of our creator, not only in their vistas, but in all of the other senses that He has blessed us with. We can smell the flowers or the approaching rain, we hear the wind, waves and birds that sing the praises of His Name continually, we can taste the acridness of the air in a lightning storm, or the fruits and vegetables that He so graciously provides for us. And of course, we can feel the roughness of a tree or the caress of the ones we love, all is from our Lord. It would be nice if all of humanity could experience the creation of God as believers do, even as it is now, under the curse, but that is not the way that it is.
Those who do not know Christ as Savior do not see His wonders in every sunrise, and the sunset to them means only the end of the day and in a way reminds them that their lives will also end someday, the night for them brings only the hope of tomorrow, a tomorrow they cannot guarantee. Oh, they may see the beauty in it in their own way, but not the one who created it, the One responsible for that beauty, nor the One who gave them the eyes to see it. They worship the creation instead of the creator, (Rom. 1:25) and in nearly all of creation they try to find their place in it. They want to be the master of it, to control it, to manipulate it for their own desires and their own ends, they desire to consume it upon their own lusts.
The invisible things of God (Rom. 1:20) they have refused to see, shuffling them to the deepest recesses of their minds, they believe themselves to be wise, but they will be shown for the fools that they are. (Rom. 1:22) In the Word of God, the man who orders his life as if there were no God is called a fool, for he has said in his heart that there is no God. (Psalm 53:1) So for them in the terminology of creation, only evolution works to their advantage and our Lord is allowing their minds to believe that hundreds of millions of years and natural selection are the only viable answer to all that is, and that a “higher power” who simply spoke a few words over a six day period of time as an answer for all of creation is ridiculous in the extreme.
“You will be as God” (Gen. 3:5) is their motto, and gods they will be, in fact, there are some religious organizations that believe and teach that someday they will not only be able to be a god, but will sign their name with a capital ‘G,’ apparently believing they will usurp the only One who will ever sit on the throne of all reality. They can no more tell you how or where this incredible power is going to come from than where all that is now began.
And, so it is and has been with man since Adam disobeyed God and took that first bite of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, receiving it by his own free will from the hand of his wife. Man has the desire to be the master of his own life and destiny, and has thrown the commandments of the Lord to the side in favor of his own decrees, yet he is bound to these laws that he has placed upon himself as if in iron chains that he cannot and will not admit to himself that he wears. Christ tried to help the rulers of the religious sect of His day with this dilemma, telling them that they had not only burdened themselves with these man-made laws, but all who desired to remain within the society of their traditions and statutes. He said to them, “For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do.” (Mark 7:8) Their laws were set above God’s commandments.
The lost will almost always acquiesce to the burdens that are placed upon them by those in authority over them, most always out of a fear of retribution or the consequences of their actions if they do not adhere to all that is placed upon them. Nearly all of them will agree that everyone should come to a complete stop at a stop sign or a red light when they are driving their vehicle, but if you suggest that those who do not, those who are caught on camera not doing so have the amount of the fine automatically deducted from their checking account, this they will argue vehemently against, as long as you do not get caught, the law is of no value. These have decided to give up many of their so-called freedoms for the protections offered to them by those that are in authority over them, yet they still proclaim a form of freedom. The illusion of this freedom is like a very thin covering over them that can be torn at any time, a freedom they truly believe exists.
These are the chains of bondage to the will and ways of Satan and their own devices, and many of them are of their own making. There is a price to pay for this so called perceived freedom, and that price is strict obedience to their masters, the humans that are above them who also believe they posses freedom, the ability to choose their own paths in life and remain in control of it no matter the circumstances.
Allow me a quick example. I do not enjoy the effects of a hurricane, no one does, lives are lost and the damage can be devastating, but I must admit I do occasionally enjoy watching those who are in positions of assumed authority go through their actions as they speak on preparedness and cooperation. Usually there are several individuals on the stage in front of the television cameras, each with their own responsibilities and their plans of action for the storm that is coming. What I find interesting is the words that they do not say, no matter what type of “natural disaster” that is on the way. What they do not say is this, “A disaster is coming, a hurricane is heading our way, and there is absolutely nothing we can do to stop it, we are at this time completely and utterly powerless.”
All of the rules, regulations and laws that the lost have willingly burdened themselves with, the massive military, police forces and legal systems that they have surrounded themselves with, the notions and ideas that they are the masters of their own fate all come to nothing, they are inconsequential and of no value whatsoever. I feel so sorry for those who will be left behind at the rapture of the church, they have no idea just how powerless they really are, a hurricane will seem like a calm breeze compared to the day of the Lord.
These will not rest in the everlasting arms, they refuse to believe that God even exists. They are a law unto themselves, they rebel at every opportunity, they seek to either be in power, or to beg the assistance of those who are in authority over them. The lost know nothing. They exist only for their own pleasures and in the constant fear of the consequences of their actions at the same time if they step outside of the boundaries that have been placed around them. They are neither cold nor hot, even within the actions of their own selves, doing what they do all within a moral construct that has been placed upon them by their fellow man, and as long as they adhere to the laws and restrictions of this morale conduct, the scales of heaven will balance to their favor, they have been “good enough.”
This is what the lost “know,” this is that they believe, that if their good deeds outweigh their bad deeds, as judged by them within the set limits of man’s ideology, they will then be judged worthy to enter into the heaven that they have envisioned within their own mind. The hell that they imagine is for bad people, and those “bad people” are also judged as so by the moral construct of the civilization in which they live, by the laws of the land and the people within it. The lost know absolutely nothing about repentance of sin, for sin is what they decide it to be, and what the law of human morality has deemed it to be. The scales of good and bad await them.
Now are you beginning to understand why it is so difficult to help them to see the truth about salvation, now can you see that if you are going to draw them to the cross and the knowledge of repentance that they must be made to understand what sin is, they must be convicted of it in their own lives. God is not a man, they are not going to be judged by any law of man or any of his ideas of morality, they will be judged as to whether or not they have believed on the Son of God as the only way to the Father.
Most Christians do not like to bring up the subject of sin anymore, just repeat these words after me, get baptized and everything will be alright. So sad. The lost know nothing, you know the Savior, go tell them about Him, but I am afraid it will not do much good if you do not tell them about sin. No one comes to Christ except by the Word of God and the Spirit of God. Help them to see that there is hope in the sunset, hope for a day that will never end.