The Fatal Race

The word race suggests competition. In Hebrews 12:1, God’s people are likened to runners in a long-distance race. Today, the world offers a race that has been corrupted, and the prize has become carnal.

If we could spend even a few minutes in hell, we would never be the same. Imagine what it would be like to be drawn into that black furnace of everlasting darkness and glimpse a demonic world of godlessness, cursing, hatred, lust, and corruption. Imagine if we were to hear the groans of the eternally damned and witness their terror, their gnashing teeth, to rub shoulders with the workers of iniquity, the crucifiers of the Lord Jesus. We would listen to the endless sounds of hopeless, as the damned shook their fists at the God of justice, cursing the day they were born. We would feel what being lost means, cut off from God and truth and love and peace and all comfort.

How could you return to earth from your short visit to hell and ever be the same again? Would you go back to neglecting God’s Word, his house, his love? Would you go about your selfish pursuits of accumulating, hoarding gold and silver, and praying for even more? I hardly think so. No, you and I would live every hour as if it were our last.

If we could spend only a few minutes in heaven, we would never again compete in a carnal race. I often think, “If only we could experience a short walk within the gates of that city of God…” We would drink in the peace, the beauty, the heavenly splendors; we would listen to the grand choirs of angels singing the glories of the Lord and mingle with the patriarchs, martyrs, apostles, and those who came out of great tribulation. We would visit with departed loved ones, feel the glow of God’s holy light; and best of all, catch a glimpse of the face of the resurrected Lamb of God and feel the glory and warmth and sense of security shining forth from his presence!

Would we ever come back to this earth and take up the worldly race again? Never! You and I would live only for the Lord, rejecting the world and all its pleasures and carnal things. We would run only his race.

Set your face and heart to seek the Lord as never before!