08.04.08

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. - Romans 1:16 NKJV.

The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear! - Matthew 13:41-43 NKJV.

In Independence, Missouri 97-year-old Grace George was saved by her cat. At four o’clock in the morning Grace woke up because of her cat’s loud meowing or maybe yowling is a better word. Grace just wanted to get some more sleep, so she put the cat outside, but then she smelled smoke and knew she had to escape from the house. Grace was aggravated about being woken up, but so thankful for being saved from the fire. The fire department believes that lightning caused the fire, which caused about $115,000 in damage. As for the cat, Boo Boo is going to get a special treat, a can of salmon.

If your house was on fire it would not matter to you whether it was two in the afternoon or three in the morning; you would be thankful if someone woke you up, and warned you of the danger. If you saw someone’s house on fire, of course you would do all you could to alert the family inside of the danger, and call the fire department too. If you needed to you might even smash a window or knock down a door to save a life threatened by a fire in a home. There would be no hesitation, and we would each do what we could to the best of our ability to try to save them.

Spiritually there are countless millions, perhaps even billions of people who are very close to facing an eternal spiritual death in the burning fires of hell. What is the appropriate thing to do in order to alert someone to their impending torment in eternity? If you were the one facing death by fire wouldn’t you want someone to try to save you? Wouldn’t you want someone to at least try to talk to you about what is ahead in your future? If someone knew how you could avoid such a horrible fate as eternity in the burning fires of hell, wouldn’t you want them to tell you?

Jesus, Paul, Peter, and the writer of Hebrews all speak of the need for salvation. Why did they mention the need for salvation? Because, there is something to be saved from. There is something to be terrified of, and that terrible thing is called hell. We should be terrified of it because it is exponentially worse than simply dying in a physical fire here on this earth, because hellfire will never ever end and it will go on and on eternally.

If your neighbor, or your parents, or your children, or your co-workers, or your friends are lost and facing eternal damnation in hell what should you do? What would you do if their house was on fire? Maybe you ought to try to get their attention. Certainly, you should not be ashamed of the gospel and never mention it, but then that is what majority of us do. This is not something that you can put off and put off and never do anything about, because there will come a day when they will slip out into eternity, and it will be too late to tell them how to be saved.

Is there someone you need to warn? Maybe you need to do a little "yowling" and try to wake them up before it is everlastingly too late.