Your
Date With Destiny: Meeting the Real Jesus
Your Date With Destiny: Meeting the Real Jesus
“I have come that they may have life, and that
they
may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).
Misunderstanding Jesus’ expectations of His
followers is
one of the biggest tragedies of all.
Mistakenly assuming
that Jesus paid the penalty for our sins so we
can now do
whatever we want, many have a mental picture
of Jesus as
a quiet, docile, loving Being handing out
eternal life to anyone who will
simply acknowledge Him as Lord and Savior.
Many believe there are
many roads to God and a joyful afterlife.
The Bible reveals that we each have a date
with destiny when we will
face Jesus and give account of our actions.
Surprisingly, the way Jesus
will appear when He returns and the criteria
He will use in determining
who will be in His Kingdom are quite different
from what most people
have been led to believe. Similar to the
confusion surrounding Jesus’
first coming, misunderstanding is rampant
regarding His return. What
is the truth—the real story—about His return?
Why will Christ come a second time?
Jesus is pictured in the book of Revelation as
the resurrected Savior,
the Messiah who is preparing to return to
earth a second time. “I am
He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am
alive forevermore”
(Revelation 1:18).
But how is He coming, and why? In Matthew 24
He gives us the
sobering answer. Responding to the disciples’
question, about the time
of His return and the end of this age of man,
Jesus laid out a frightening
scenario that includes widespread religious
deception, warfare, famines
and devastating natural disasters. “All
these,” He told them, “are the
beginning of birth pains” that will usher in
this new age to begin at His
return (verse 8, NIV).
At what point will He intervene?
At the point that mankind faces annihilation.
“It will be a time of
great distress,
such as there has never been
before since the beginning of the world, and
will never be again. If that
time of troubles were not cut short,
no living thing could survive;
but
for
the sake of God’s chosen it will be cut short”
Why must Jesus Christ return? Conditions will
have grown so terrible, so life-threatening, that
human life will be in danger of extinction.
He came to earth the first time to save us
from our sins. He will come a
second time
to save us from ourselves.
Initially at least, it will not be a pretty
sight. Revelation 6:16-17
describes Him as coming
in wrath
because of mankind’s continued
refusal to obey His laws and the
world’s continual slide into evil and
self-destructiveness. His return is
announced with the sounding of trumpets
ushering in monumental calamities on the earth (chapters 8 and 9).
Yet in all of this it is His great con-
cern for mankind that leads to this
righteous anger.
Jesus is pictured as the One who
is returning to rule the nations of the
entire earth (Revelation 11:15). He will
not accept resistance from anyone who
opposes His righteous rule and will
make war with the nations and the
leaders who oppose Him (Revelation
19:15). He punishes and takes charge
for our own good—to bring peace to a world
bent on destruction.
This is perhaps the most important picture of
Jesus in the Bible,
because this is the Jesus Christ the entire
world will meet sometime
in the coming years—perhaps in the
not-too-distant future.
From these prophecies it becomes clear that
Jesus didn’t die
for us
to have our own way.
“He humbled Himself and became obedient to the
point of death, even the death of the cross.
Therefore God also has highly
exalted Him and given Him the name which is
above every name,
that
at the name of Jesus every knee should bow”
(Philippians 2:8-10).
Jesus will take His rightful place as ruler of
the earth, as the saving
Messiah, when He returns.
Where will you find yourself at that point?
Are we missing something?
As noted at the beginning of this chapter,
many have the idea that
Jesus died for us to eliminate any requirement
that we obey God—and
that a gentle, docile Jesus will admit us into
His eternal presence if we
will only acknowledge Him as our Savior,
regardless of any way we
would choose to live.
Jesus Christ will return to earth to
save the human race from extinction,
intervening when mankind is
on the brink of self-annihilation.
But to believe these things is to believe in a
false Jesus and to completely miss the point of His promised second coming. He
must return
precisely becausewe will have followed the
path of doing whatever
we want and rejecting God’s laws—and that path
ends at the point of global extinction.
Which path will you choose? It’s true that
Christ’s sacrifice demonstrated God’s love, and nothing could be a more
powerful demonstration
of that love. But is that all there is to the
story? Is Christianity a matter
of only what Jesus has done for us? Or are we
willing to follow Jesus
by doing what He commanded and following His
example?
Are we going to simply believe in Him, or will
we believe His message too? There is a major difference. He preached
the gospel of the Kingdom of God,
the world-ruling Kingdom He will establish at
His returnAre you preparing to be in
the Kingdom of God? Do you really grasp that
the
Kingdom of God is a literal kingdom that will
rule over all the earth and,
in an ultimate sense, will extend throughout
all infinity for eternity?
Jesus explained the laws of the Kingdom of God
in His Sermon on
the Mount. These are magnifications of the
same laws He gave at Sinai,
laws that He lived perfectly throughout His
entire life. And Jesus said
that if a person diminishes them in the least
way, that person himself
will be regarded as least (Matthew 5:19). Yet,
tragically, the majority
of those who claim to follow Jesus dismiss His
clear statements on this
important issue.
It seems that the teachings of Christianity,
from the time after the
apostles passed from the scene, have focused
on the appealing idea of
One who loves you, forgives you, comforts you
and accepts you. But
few have explained that Jesus
requires
His followers to
obey
the Father’s
commandments, both for their own good and for
the benefit and blessing
of all those around them (1 John 2:3-6; 5:3).
If you don’t understand God’s commandments,
you don’t understand
sin, because sin is the breaking of God’s law
(1 John 3:4). And if you
don’t understand what sin is, then how can you
repent? Without repentance—turning from living
your own
way of life to
God’s
way of life—how can you truly accept Jesus
Christ as Lord and Savior?
Jesus didn’t die so we can feel better about
ourselves.
Jesus died to
pay the penalty for the sins you and I
committed.
If we return to a life
• If you’re not already a subscriber,
request a free subscription to our
gods-word by gaurav pawar daily artical -magazine
The Good News at
http://gods-word-gauravpawarg-article.blogspot.com/,
http://br-vitarv.blogspot.com/
• While you’re at it, also request a
free subscription to our
World News
and good-nwse
newsletter
No comments:
Post a Comment