Eternity # 1

Eternity # 1

My text this evening is one word. Ever since I have been a minister I have asked God to help me say two words and say them properly. It is said that George Whitefield used to say "Oh!" in such a fashion that his hearers were convicted of sin and some of them would cry out for mercy. The first word that I would like to say properly is "Lost." I have never yet spoken it as it ought to be uttered. I have tried my best and failed. If I could say it as the Son of God appreciated it when, fainting beneath the weight of the Cross, He staggered up Calvary Hill, I would not need to preach. To me it is the most striking word in the English language. The other word I have asked God to help me say is the word of my text. It is written in Isaiah 57:17. It is the word "ETERNITY."

A thousand years from tonight we shall be somewhere. Ten thousand years from tonight. Increase the multiple and you only increase the truth. How can a man speak a word that takes ages of time and all beyond it. ETERNITY! The old cobbler sat day after day on his little bench, hammering away at the shoes, and before him was an old-fashioned clock. After a while he thought that the pendulum of the clock was speaking to him and he heard it say as it swung one way, - Eternity, and when it went the other way, - Where? And the old clock became a preacher and he heard it speaking like this: "Eternity, where? Eternity, where?" The question is a solemn one. ETERNITY, where?

The word becomes all the greater when I add to it a part of the verse in which the text is found. "The high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity." What a subject for thought is here. I speak of this One and they tell me that He is omnipresent, that is, everywhere. I speak again of Him and they say that He is omnipotent, that is, all-powerful. I talk of Him again and they tell me that He is omniscient, that is, all-knowing. We have come in contact with great minds. This is the greatest. We have been influenced by great personalities. This is an infinite personality. When I put these words together, the statement of my text is startling. "One that inhabiteth eternity." He is infinite. He is eternal. He is unchangeable. Eternity is the place of His abode.

Answer me this question; Where will you spend eternity? Nobody can answer it but you. If I could answer it for you, God knows I would. God has placed the power of choice and determination in our hands. God may love, and Jesus may die, and the Spirit may plead, but you alone can settle the question of eternity. Answer me this: Where will you spend eternity?

I was preaching in Lincoln, Nebraska, when a professor of mathematics stepped up behind me and said: "Eternity begins where computation ends." I said: "Professor, what does that mean?" "It means this," he said, "That when the man with the greatest mind the world has known thinks his way out and out and out into the future, and his mind fails because it can go no further, that is the beginning of eternity." There is no end. Sometimes men try to measure the depth of dark caverns, but the plummet is not long enough. So they measure the depth like this: They take a stopwatch in one hand and place a rock in the other, and note the time when the rock drops from their fingers, and listen as it strikes the bottom, noting the time it has taken to fall. If you know the weight of the rock and the time of falling, you can measure with some degree of accuracy the depth of the darkness. They tell me that sometimes they let a stone fall and there comes back no answer from below. Tonight I stand on the edge of the precipice of time, and I cry up into the light and into the darkness: "How long art thou, Eternity?" I get the answer from this Book: "The peace of righteousness is everlasting. The doom of the wicked is without end."

Where will you spend it? I have no apology to make this evening for asking you to think about Eternity when there are so many problems in time. I have no apology for asking you to think about the future when on all sides of us there is the cry of the needy, burdens that must be lifted, and tears that must be wiped away. I cry out for this reason. A man is never fitted for time until he is prepared for eternity.

When my father slipped away into eternity, one of his friends gave me his pocketbook. I opened it and found inside a piece of poetry, stained on one side as if with tears, and pasted together on the other as if worn with much reading. Some of the verses I remember after all these years;

"How long sometimes a day appears,
And weeks, how long are they.
Months move as if the years
Would never pass away.
But days and weeks are passing by,
And soon must all be gone,
For day by day as moments fly,
Eternity comes on.
Days, months, and years must have an end,
Eternity has none.
Twill always have as long to spend,
As when at first begun."

Tell me this evening, where will you spend it? Here in this world you have crowded God out of you life. You have lost consideration of Him. You have built your home without Him. You are training your children without Him. Yet you were made for God. Nothing less than God can satisfy you. If I had a place on which to stand and could hurl into space a million worlds like ours, I could never fill space. When I open my Bible, I read in the Psalms: "If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there." Whether I climb up into the light or go down into the darkness, in the daytime, in the night time, I find God. Only God can fill space and only God can fill my life!

~J. Wilbur Chapman~

(continued with # 2)