75. A Dread Foreboding of Eternity

A Dread Foreboding of Eternity

We may try to imagine as we will that our sins that we now regret are simply so much “water under the bridge,” and that since we cannot now correct them, they will be overlooked; but that does not change the terrific fact that what we have done we can never undo. Every deed, word, thought, desire, impulse has been written into the enduring memory of our very souls, and our whole record, with nothing missing, will with infallible accuracy face and condemn us at the Judgment, if we go out in our sins, and no man can escape this dread foreboding.

Then to make it worse, we find ourselves to be helpless slaves to sin. Many times, and with the imagined aid of many good resolutions and sincere determination, we have tried to quit sinning, only to find ourselves soon fallen by the wayside, with our good resolutions all lying in the “discard.” And even if we actually could undo the past and live a really better life, it would still be we who were doing it, and the resulting self-satisfaction would be the more terrible sin of pride, for we would simply have transformed ourselves from publicans into pharisees.

Then to confirm all these stern realities to us beyond escape, we are compelled to admit that every religion in this world is founded and maintained on the universal consciousness of sin, and on the inescapable cry of every heart for deliverance from its power and consequences by some power outside ourselves. And to make the dread of the future more compelling, we see that as God operates in nature all about us, full penalty is inevitable for all who break her laws, for nature knows no such thing as forgiveness. The penalty is executed without respect of person on every one who sins against her, and none can deliver from the penalty, for substitution here is impossible.

We see also, in the light of nature’s laws, that we can do nothing to save ourselves from sin. For two hundred years scientists defended the doctrine of spontaneous generation in nature. But at last all possibility of such a thing was scientifically disproved, and instead it was established that life can come only from pre-existent life.

Yet this same doctrine still persists in the spiritual realm, but without all reason. Men are still determined to believe that by striving after high ideals and noble aspirations, we can finally bring ourselves out of the realm of death into that of spiritual life. But neither is spiritual life spontaneously generated. This life also must come from pre-existent life, for it can never be generated by any effort of man. So in this realm also we are faced with the scientific truth that spiritual life can come into being only as it is generated, begotten, by pre-existent spiritual life, and God is the only possessor of that life. We are therefore shut up to Him, if we are ever to come out of death into life.

All this can mean but one thing, and that is that we do need salvation, and that it must come to us from outside ourselves, if we are ever to have it. So we must squarely face the question as to what God’s Word says about the provision He has made for us.