Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”

• Mark 8:34-38

“The modern Christian laughs at the idea of a final judgment. That shows how far we can stray away if we imbibe the idea that the modern mind is infallible and not our Lord. To His mind at least the finality of moral decision is reached in this life. There is no aspect of our Lord’s mind that the modern mind detests so fundamentally as this one ….
“The parables in the 25th chapter of St Matthew are three aspects of the Divine estimate of life. The parable of the ten virgins reveals that it is fatal from our Lord’s standpoint to live this life without preparation for the life to come. That is not the exegesis, it is the obvious underlying principle.
“The parable of the talents is our Lord’s statement with regard to the danger of leaving undone the work of a lifetime. And the description of the last judgment is the picture of genuine astonishment on the part of both the losers and the gainers of what they had never once thought about.
To be accustomed to our Lord’s teaching is not to ask, ‘What must I do to be good?’ but, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ How long does it take us to know what the true meaning of our life is? One half second.”

• Oswald Chambers, Daily Thoughts for Disciples (December 18, from The Highest Good)

There are a great many people these days who do not believe that the world will come to an end.

But scientists have many reasons to think that without opening the Bible and seeing the prophecies contained within it.  The expansion of the universe is slowing, according to some scientists, and at some point, maybe millions of years from now, the expansion will reverse, and the universe will fold in on itself.  According to some scientists.

Being a chemical engineer, I prefer the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  The change in entropy always increases.  You can equate entropy to disorder, or chaos.   Whatever occurs on this earth adds to the entropy, and that little bit of “order” cannot be restored if not acted upon by an outside force.  It leads to the clockmaker argument for God.  The universe is like a clock, and the clock was wound up by Someone.

Then there is the study of stars.  They all go through a life cycle, and our sun has been exceptionally stable.  But in studying the sun, it will eventually run out of nuclear fuel and the star life cycle will bring an end to the entire galaxy.

These three observed phenomenon are factual, but each has the provision of “Unless acted upon by outside forces.”

So, for those that believe that this planet, earth, will be restored at the End Times to a Garden of Eden type planet, then God can do anything.  He can, to use the clock analogy, reset the clock to be self-winding.  All this change of entropy, stars having a life cycle, etc. come from the Fall of Man.  God cursed the man, the woman, the snake, and the earth itself.

Only God can flip that switch, or there is a parallel universe, presently guarded by angels with flaming swords, and when the world ends, and the judgment is complete, we pass through to a glorious paradise that has always been there, but beyond our reach.

Regardless of God’s mechanism, clinging to the things of this earth will do us no good.

God’s wrath was demonstrated in Noah’s Flood.  God promised not to destroy the earth by water again.  That is the meaning of the rainbow.

But God will destroy the earth by fire.  And whether you believe in climate change (as if the climate has not always changed) and you believe that there is a human element in the destruction of the earth…

There has been a human element in the destruction of the earth ever since the events recorded in Genesis 3.  Adam and Eve sinned, and our sin nature remains.

But the Good News is that Jesus has claimed victory over sin and death.  Whether God destroys this orb in space or restores it, those who call upon Jesus and believe and trust in Him for their very lives will save their lives and be with Jesus forever.

C.S. Lewis said that he did not think he had ever met someone who had a life-giving belief in Jesus Christ who did not also believe in Hell.  Can we extend that to a belief in the End Times?  After all, without the End Times is there a judgment?  And how can we move to a place with no pain and no suffering and no sin and no death, unless this present world ends?

As for me, I will believe in Jesus and trust in Him.  I have no power to change anything other than to have Jesus change my heart and my desires.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.