What If?

Today my email had a collection of articles from a site called Flipboard. Each day I get an email from them of articles that they think I may be interested in. I have no recollection of how I got signed up with Flipboard in the first place, or how they decide what to send me links to. I do know that almost every day I skim the titles and quickly delete the email. Almost every day, but not today.

Today there was a link to something titled Top Seven Worst-Case Scenarios For The Human Species. Following that link led to a collection of videos, all beginning with “What If…?” What if we lost the Amazon rainforest? All mosquitos disappeared? There was no salt in the world? The sun exploded tomorrow? The world lost oxygen for five seconds? A coin-sized black hole appeared on earth? We burn all the oil?

Those are some pretty incredible scenarios. Previous to seeing the Top Seven article in my mail I don’t think that I had ever given any of these topics even one second of serious thought in my entire life. But now that I am aware they exist I’m tempted to say ruh roh! Or zoinks!

I’ll confess that I didn’t watch a single one of the videos. I’m guessing that each one in some way shows how critically important the particular topic is to the overall matter of sustaining human life on planet earth. Even the one about mosquitoes, which given that I've lived most of my life in Wisconsin and Minnesota I tend to doubt. Instead, the pastor in me jumped in a different direction, to a different scenario. What if a single human being died outside of having a saving relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ?

Science doesn’t have much to say about that scenario, but the Bible does, in many places. The first phrase that came to my mind as I followed this question was “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” In a story my Bible titles “The Narrow Door” Jesus looks ahead as he is asked about those who will be saved. In the story Jesus makes it clear that not all are saved, saying in verse 28:

“In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out.”

There is even a Wikipedia article on the weeping and gnashing of teeth, noting it as “a description on the fate of the unrighteous ones at the conclusion of the age.” Even without knowing any of the specific details it's easy to see that being cast among the unrighteous is going to be pretty horrible, at best.

But things don’t have to be that way, for Jesus very freely offers something infinitely better, and, in fact, the only alternative to the weeping and gnashing of teeth, which is eternity, in his very presence. The story my Bible titles “I Am the Bread of Life” includes these words in verses 35-40:

“Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.””

As bad as the worst-case scenarios for human life that sparked this whole blog post may be, there is something truly horrible that faces every single person on earth. The never-ending weeping and gnashing of teeth for those who are eternally outside the Kingdom of God.

But there is also the perfect solution, and its available to you, right now. And that is to turn from your sin and turn to Jesus, believing in Him, and His promises, as your Savior and Lord.

Today I stood in a cemetery and preached the funeral of someone whom, at best, I barely knew. I do know that he believed in Jesus and it was a joy to stand there say, as Paul taught, that for the believer to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. May you be among those gathered, forever, in the presence of the Lord Jesus.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.