Walking With Christ

Matthew 25:46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.(ESV)

The end of Matthew 25 deals with the most frightening subject in the whole bible. This is the final judgement. It’s that moment when Christ will say the words that we either long to hear or fear to hear.

Telling people to “go to hell” has been like the free space in bingo when talking about family arguments for as long as I can remember. Many such arguments ended with one or the other person screaming that and stomping away. In fact, those were very nearly the last words my mom said to my brother. I’m not fond of that phrase. I don’t think they would be either if they had ever seen hell for themselves. It’s a lot more difficult to be so flippant when one truly understands what that means.

Around my seventh birthday, I got really sick. I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t even sit up without throwing up. The room constantly spun for days on end. I came to the conclusion that I was going to die. I finally fell asleep after that and was convinced that I had actually died. What I saw was a vision. Part of that vision included an incredibly detailed view into hell. I’ll spare the details about what I saw in hell as well as the rest of the vision for now. Long story short, I woke up the next morning and my fever had finally broken. I was still weak, but felt physically fine beyond that. What I saw left a scar on me that has stayed with me ever since. This is why is always hurts me when people like my brother say they would go to hell just to avoid certain people if they went to heaven. It shows the utter lack of understanding as to what each one is and what that choice means.

Claiming to be a Christian means that we have supposedly made that decision. We really do owe it to ourselves to spend the rest of our time here on earth trying to explore what that decision actually means and then explaining it to others who don’t understand it as well as we do. Being a Christian doesn’t just mean choosing heaven or hell. It means choosing to have a relationship with Jesus Christ for all eternity. We don’t always have to agree with God. We will one day have to admit that disagreeing with God did always mean that we were wrong.