Page Content (OCR)
We do well not to murmur at this. The incarnate God, who has suffered vicariously and personally more than anyone else ever will or could, surely has the right to determine the method and extent of his own self-immolating compassion. The transgressor who assumes redemption as something to which he is entitled needs to consider God's woud rebuttal: 20:15). He made this whole place. He is in command. "Salvation" presupposes a prior damnation. In order to escape any danger, one must recognize and believe in the danger. Disbelief is sure destruction. We are commanded to fear hell. We need to be just as plain, solemn, and tender as Christ himself was on this Consequently, no error is more fatal than universalism, the idea that there are many paths to God. While this is the cur-rent politically correct theology, those who advocate universal-ism, or the neo-paganism of the New Age, are gambling their eternity that the Bible is wrong! "Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me" (John 14:6). If there were any other path to the throne of God, then the Father didn't answer Christ's prayer in Gethsemane.*”? and he died in vain. Universalism attempts to mask retributive justice; it transmutes sin into misfortune instead of guilt; it translates suffering into mere chastisement; it converts the completed work of Christ into mere moral influence; and it makes salvation a debt due to man rather than an unmerited gift from God. blood on a wooden cross erected in Judea almost 2,000 years ago. This event has turned out to be the most cataclysmic event in the entire universe, and it directly impacts every one of us in more ways than we can possibly imagine. "God is going to invade this earth in force. But what is the good of saying you are on his side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream, and something else—something it never entered your head to conceive—comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us, and so terrible to others, that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing; it will be the time when we discover which side we have really chosen, whether we realized it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back, to give 187 on whom I will have compassion" (Romans 9:15). "Is it not lawful for me, to do what I will with mine own?" (Matthew turn bars any pardon. Fortunately, we are each the beneficiaries of God's love letter—a love letter written in C. S. Lewis gathers all this up very well in these words from Mere Christianity: