What Is Taking So Long?

When raising children, it is important to address wrongdoings and bad behavior right away. If you wait to discipline your children, they will not make the connection between bad behavior and the resulting consequence. Children need to make an association with bad behavior and consequences.

If this is true for raising children why doesn't God do the same with us? Humanity commits sin after sin, and it seems like we go mostly unpunished. If we are so evil and ungodly, why doesn't Christ come back already and bring us the punishment we deserve?

As 2 Peter 3:9 declares, "The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance."

Thomas Vincent writes, "First, the wrath of God has not yet come. Had  it already come, who could have stood before it? ... In this world, God exercises His patience towards the wicked. He is angry with them, and His anger smokes against them; but He withholds His wrath from breaking forth into a flame, which would quickly devours all the wicked of the earth." God's wrath will come, but only when God sees fit. For the moment, God is still patient with us. He still allows us to make our own decisions, and He continues to withhold His full judgement.

God's impending wrath and judgement are much like our impending death: one of them will happen to you, and it might be sooner than you expect. Tomorrow will not always exist.

Living Life

Hell Is Very Real

The Bible is very clear on the teaching of hell. Revelation 20:15 says, "Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire." Our name is either in the book of life, or it is not. Non one gains automatic entry into God's book of life. Our nationality or heritage has little to do with our destiny. It determines where we were born, but we determine where we will go. We cannot assume we will go to heaven because we come from a Christian family. These are not the requirements for going to heaven and escaping the second death, which is God's wrath in the form of hell. There is one way: trusting in JEsus Christ. Don Fortner writes,"I must wwarn you who are yet without Christ, if you will not trust Christ you must be forever damned! Soon, you shall be 'cast into the lake of fire!" All who are found guilty of sin in that great and terrible day of God's wrath and judgment shall ber cast into the lake of fire. There you shall be made to suffer the unmitigated wrath of almighty God forever!"

This is not a very nice message, but it is a good remindar: the consequences of rejecting Christ are very sever. This hold true for us, our friends, our families, and anyone else we know. We should not take the message of God's wrath lightly.

Living Life

It Gets Worse

Over the course of history, men have created clever instruments of destruction. We have developed swords, guns, and bombs that can destroy cities in an intense inferno of heat and radiation. For all our ingenuity and malice, we possess nothing that compares to the strength or devastation of natural disasters. Tornadoes blast through houses and earthquakes level cities. This world and all that is in it is God's, and He is entitled to do whatever He wants to it. Yet for all the horrible disasters we have seen unleashed on earth, nothing compares to the wrath that is still yet to come. 2 Peter 3:10 states, "But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare."

The day that Jesus will return to earth is entirely unknown. But when the Lord does return, everyone will know because we will see the full measure of His wrath. Thomas Watson writes, "If it is so dreadful to hear the lion roar, what must it be when he begins to tear his prey?...'Who knows the power of His wrath?'  What fools are they, who, for a drop of pleasure-drink a sea of wrath!"

We tend to see sin as a batch of brownies with a hint of poison in them. We know it is bad for us, we know it could have terrible consequences, but for a moment that sin will taste sweet. Instead, we should view sin as the exact opposite: toxic sludge with chocolate on top, minus the chocolate.

Living Life