Tomorrow is just hours away, yet no man seems to know what it holds. All the hustling, hassles of life and ‘the survival of the fittest’ game that has been the bane of society is all about how to survive tomorrow – those few hours ahead. For some tomorrow never even comes. They die and others enter tomorrow with the supposed gains of the dead. To the survivors of yesterday ‘today’ is all that they know being completely unmindful that another tomorrow is just at the corner lurking to take any life.
And because they hope to get there anyway, they think all that is necessary to enter that tomorrow is to do anything today. So, genuine, not too genuine and even absurd deals and endeavor are engaged in to gain or secure tomorrow – the next day. It is a recurring decimal and recurrent circle that plays up every day. To them these hassles are their way of ‘keeping body and soul together’. While they could be minutely right, they are ignorant of a very startling truth inherent in that phrase, and which is by far the greater truth.
THE SOUL: THIS IS THE REAL MAN.
Yes, it is good to keep body and soul together. We do not want to draw attention to the state of the soul presently. Actually, all these struggles of life that men engage in are only to keep the body, the soul’s house, together. For the body is only a structure, a house where the soul dwells! All the proper dietary precaution, good food and food supplements, exercise, good rest and all that, is an attempt to extend the life span of this house that houses the soul. But how men give zero attention to the soul, the occupant of the house!
The soul! This is the real man, damaged with sin and left so. This is the real man; God’s nature altered by sin and made Satan’s nature. This is the real man so priceless in the sight of God and loved by Him so much so that He gave His only Son to die for it!
This is the real man that made Jesus Christ to come down from His glory above. This is the real man that made the Lord gave His life so that He may redeem it. This is the real man the Son of God is now expectedly waiting for; waiting for him to return to Him in repentance as to receive forgiveness and grace unto life. This is the real man that causes angels of God to greatly rejoice when he accepts Christ and thus become saved. This is the real man not so known on earth because Satan has deceived sons of men. This is the real man.
The soul is not only the real man. It is also eternal. It can’t die, that is, in the sense of being extinguished. In it eternity is inherent. It is originally the nature of God, IT NEVER DIES. The nature of Satan, which it now has (in its present fallen state), only alters its eternal destination – removal from God, the source of life and all goodness, forever; into the damnable abode of Satan, the source of wickedness, forever!
While the soul still abides in his house, men sadly think only in terms of today and only build up themselves (actually the house) to face just tomorrow. ‘Today’ is what matters to them because they think it guarantees some sort of safeguard for tomorrow: an uncertain time they have in mind when they speak of ‘keeping body and soul together’.
A COSTLY DELUSION
But what happen when the body or house dies and decays, and the soul depart? What happens when our hustling (and the fight to finish) to keep body and soul together cannot now keep both together? Seriously; you that is so engrossed in the momentary things of the world, only because you are thinking of the tomorrow that is only some hours away which sometimes you may not even get to, what are you thinking about that endless tomorrow where the soul, the real you, abides forever? Can you dare to be penny wise and pound-foolish? What is the wisdom in trying to gain the world, even the whole world, and lose your soul?
The greatest question that can be asked in all of the universe and which depth of truth cannot be fathomed throughout eternity came from no other person but Jesus Christ called the Wisdom of God in the only Holy Writ in the universe: “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” – Matthew 16: 26.
Eternity is the one and only subject matter that ought to be engagingly vibrating in the mind and thinking of man; but sadly, it is not. We must say it in passing that the church so-called has not helped matters. We may leave that as a subject for another day, except to say here that this piece is put together on purpose to benefit believers and potential believers alike.
Whereas man tries to block his mind from the reality of eternity, all his members (the whole body) are actively engaged in sundry matters en route eternity. Actually, when God in Genesis 1: 27 “created man in His own image”, He simply invested eternity (His ever-enduring life) in man. That life was also pure! But when man, Adam, sinned and took over a fallen nature he died. And we all died with him!
We all got the image of Satan in the place of God’s and immediately became living-corpses: dead souls in bodies of flesh! That God’s ever-enduring and pure life has now become Satan’s ever-enduring but now wicked and damnable life. And while the soul’s eternity (now a very damnable kind of eternity) is never in question, the consuming sinful life that sets it on the course of this damnable eternity also now blocks and clogs his mind from the now sad reality of his final destination. Sin in man tries to erase every sense of eternity in man, making him to live as though all that matter is ‘now’. A very sad delusion indeed this is.
LIFE VOID OF THE GREATEST REALITY!
It is a grand delusion, and very discomforting to the soul. But like a man chained all over with a sealed and impenetrable house over it (prison that is) there is nothing the soul can do. Sin is that chain, and this body of flesh (actually called the body of sin in Scriptures) is that sealed and impenetrable house. And, even sometimes, when a gracious God reminds man of life after ‘now’, His prompting is quickly silenced by sin, lifestyle of sin, love for sin and sins multiplied inventions such as philosophy, freethinking, occultism, humanism, atheism so-called, witchcraft etc.
All these, individually and, or collectively, make man to virtually live a life void of any sense of the greatest REALITY (and a FOREVER REALITY for that matter) in the entire universe: Eternity! It is life when we think it is all over. Life after now! Eternity is an unceasing reality. Better is the man, who keys in into this eternal reality, for when breath has been snuffed off and men think it is all over, that is just when ETERNITY actually sets in.
Indeed, God created man’s soul to live eternally. Satan’s rude intervention with sin into man’s soul did not alter that. What that wicked intervention of Satan caused is only, but dangerous, change of abode: eternal abode! That Satan’s intervention separated us from God and eternity with Him. That means separation from the Source of Life (that is God) and everything that God and life gives, forever! The result is an indescribable suffering. And it is eternal!
Does it concerns God that because of sin (which is the soul’s ruin) man will spend eternity in eternal damnation? Yes! Has God made a way of escape for man to take his soul from Satan, sin and eternal damnation? Yes! God’s answer to Satan’s rude and wicked intervention that now ruins souls was His counter (and gracious) intervention in Jesus Christ. Having sold out our souls to Satan only GRACE could come to the rescue!
And as we conclude this, we must take us
to the first thing that we must do to secure our future. This hymn, “O the Pardon Christ’s Cross Offer”, by this writer touches on it:
1. O the pardon Christ’s Cross offers!
Its unconditional forgiveness:
You’re not obliged to come with a price,
Or character deserving of mercy.
Emmanuel invites all today:
“Unto you, O men, I call.
And My Voice is to the sons of men”,
“Ho! Everyone that thirsts,
Come you to the waters”;
“Come unto Me all you that labor,
And are heavy laden,
And I will give you rest”.
2. O the pardon Christ’s Cross offers!
It is compassionate forgiveness:
“Turn you; turn you from your evil ways,
For why will you die”, says the loving God.
3. O the pardon Christ’s Cross offers!
It is instantaneous forgiveness.
The same day Zacchaeus met Jesus he heard:
“This day is salvation come to this house”.
4. O the pardon Christ’s Cross offers!
It is full and glorious forgiveness.
The day the young son returned home,
He got his royal robe, ring, shoes and feast.
5. O the pardon Christ’s Cross offers!
He that is forgiven is reckoned
As if he had never sinned at all.
So is he who answers the call today. (See appendix for music)
The Savior invites you today. At the Cross He saves to the uttermost. There He sets free and makes free indeed! Take a step of faith today, when you still can, and you will be glad you did.
