Eternity # 2

Eternity # 2

You are going out into eternity. God pity you. Oh, to have no hope, no Saviour. How long and dark the way is. Answer me a question: Do you not think that in these days, especially these prosperous days, we are thinking too much of time and all too little of eternity? We are pursuing wealth and pleasure. We are forgetting God. I want to ask you a question: Do you think that we ought to be called to serious thought? I am neither a prophet nor a son of a prophet, but I know that will come to America if in her pursuit after pleasure and her love of power she continues to forget God - judgment will fall! Judgment! I tremble for the country that will not hear when God speaks, and for the man who builds for time and has no thought of the future.

Answer me this question: Do you really think that men at heart are indifferent? Let your mind run over the list of men you know. Do you think that they are indifferent? I do not. I know men fairly well. I know what they sometimes say with their lips. If I were to go through your shops and some of the workmen would tell me they were not interested in God, I should know they were not speaking the truth. If I were to go through your college halls and some student would say that he was not interested in spiritual things, I should know that he was speaking falsely. They are not indifferent. You walk the streets some day and your best friend passes you and you never see him. You take your seat by the fireside with the newspaper that you never read a line of. You were saying as you walked the streets, or as you sat by the fireside, or as you tossed restlessly upon your pillow: "God! Eternity! My soul! What must I do to be saved?"

A Christian gentleman went to one of the judges in the state of Georgia and said: "Judge, I hear that you and your wife are to separate." He was highly indignant,k and said: "Sir, that is an insult. No two people in this world have loved each other more devotedly.l Separate! Nothing could separate us." His friend said: "But, Judge, your wife is a Christian. She is far from well, and the doctor tells me that she cannot live long, and you are not a Christian. Your wife will go straight to God. You are turning your back on Him." The old judge stood with tears running down his cheeks and lips trembling as he said: "My God! I never thought of that!"

Men are not indifferent. Answer me this: Are you reckless? There is one heart beat between you and eternity. Yet you hold back as I plead with you, as your old mother prays for you, as your wife is in agony about you, as the ministers are heartbroken over you - and tomorrow, tomorrow may be eternity. God pity you. I do not understand you. Why do you not come to Jesus?

No man in all this world is satisfied without God. You are not. Tonight as I close my appeal to say to every man in this building: In God's name, why don't you turn? Why don't you turn. Drifting, drifting, drifting, out into the sea of Eternity! And I stand lifting you warning cry: Why don't you turn? Tell me why. The very atmosphere of this place seems filled with God. It may be that God is giving some of you your last call. The door is open and it may shut again. Turn now. Why will you die?

You know the old story. I happen to know the real truth about it, for a friend of mine was in a way associated with it. On the Harlem railroad a man kept the bridge. It was an old-fashioned drawbridge that turned with man power. You remember how he got a message to keep the bridge shut because a special train was coming. However, just as the order came he heard the whistle of a little tugboat, and saw that he only needed to throw the bridge a little to let the tug boat through with her flagstaff. After he had let the tug through he turned to throw the bridge back and something was out of order. He bent to his task, pulling and pushing. The sweat came in great drops from his brow. An agonizing cry rose from his heart. The special came down the track and through the open bridge, and scores of people were killed. The keeper of the drawbridge was a man under fifty, and in the night his hair turned as white as snow. My friend went to where they kept him until he died, and the man walked up and down in his little padded cell like a caged tiger, by day and by night, rarely sleeping. One thing he kept saying over and over again: "Oh, if I only had. If I only had. If I only had." When he became exhausted he would fall on his cot, only to rise again and say: "Oh, if I only had."

Tonight the door is wide open and people are praying and God is waiting. It would be an awful thing to go out into Eternity saying: "If I only had." Tonight I plead with you. I think God has sent me to some of you to give you another call. These meetings are going on because God in His mercy is flinging wide the door once more. Come in. Come in. You fathers here, you can never expect your boys to go in unless you go yourself. If my mother had not been a sweet, consistent Christian, dying at thirty-four, I wonder where I should have been. You young men, you boys and girls, everybody come in!

~Wilbur Chapman~

(The End)