Bruce Collins, Evangelist

The personal website of Bruce Collins

Oh, Believe it!

 

Rom 3:3-4  For what if some did not believe? Will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect?    Certainly not! Indeed, let God be true but every man a liar. As it is written: “THAT YOU MAY BE JUSTIFIED IN YOUR WORDS, AND MAY OVERCOME WHEN YOU ARE JUDGED.”

 

The Importance of being Right!

Some people are saying that if I am wrong about God, I have wasted my life.  They are saying that if you who do not believe in the Lord Jesus are wrong about God you have wasted your eternity.  They are wrong.  If I am wrong about God, I have lost nothing.  I have still been able to enjoy a life that was better than the one I would have had, had I not believed in God.  Belief in God has made me accountable.  It gave me a conscience about sin.  It gave me sympathy for those less fortunate than I. It caused me to spend my money carefully.  It caused me to live a more healthy life style. It gave me something to look forward to after I die.  It gave me hope.  I haven’t lost anything if I should be wrong but for those who reject the Living and True God, they have lost their souls for eternity.  Now I realize that in a sense I have oversimplified because belief in my God has kept me from believing in what I consider to be false Gods.  I don’t want to be wrong on that score which is why I have spent years studying the internal proofs that the Bible is the book that tells us who wins in the end.  Those internal proofs are the prophesies that have already been fulfilled when the Lord came the first time and the things the Bible says about the way I think and act that no one but the Living and True God could really know.  Fulfilled prophecies connected with the nation of Israel also give us reason to believe that the Bible is the Word of God.

 

The Resurrection

Many people do not believe in the Lord Jesus because they say that they cannot believe in the resurrecton of the Lord.  They say that resurrections have never happened.  Some of these same people believe in reincarnation based on the cycles of the seasons of nature.  After all, every year things go dormant or appear to be dead in the winter and come back to life in the spring.  That is particularly true in the areas where winter involves weather that is below freezing.  However, the Bible says that the Lord was raised from the dead and there is no proof of reincarnation when it comes to the lives of humans.  The Old Testament prophesied that the Lord would be raised, the Gospel writers record it, the epistles explain it and in 1 Corinthians 15, we find there were over 500 witnesses that saw the risen Lord “at once.”  His tomb is empty.  Angels said He is alive.  Because He lives, I have confidence that should I die before the Lord comes, that I too will be raised from the dead. I also have confidence that when I trust Him, He will take me to heaven.  I have confidence that I have joined the winning team in this battle for souls.

 

Eternal Conscious Punishment

I understand that there are many reasons why people, many of them good people, have rejected the God I love.  One of those reasons has to do with eternal conscious punishment.  Can a good God really put people who reject Him and His Son in a place of torment for all eternity?  Now if I were God I wouldn’t do that even though I might want to.  We would like to think we are more civilized than that.  Yet we do believe in retribution and “justice” when people harm us or others.  My God says that sin is so repugnant to Him that it does deserve eternal conscious punishment.  However, He also says His love for us is such that He wants to spare us from the consequences of our sin.  That is why He sent His Son to the cross to die–the just One for us the unjust (1 Peter 3:18).  He does not ignore guilt, but He has found a way for us to be forgiven and for justice to be served. 

 

The one sin God will not forgive is the rejection of Him and His love which is the rejection of the Lord Jesus and His sacrifice for us.  Just because people do not want to believe in eternal conscious punishment does not change the reality of that place.  Everlasting fire was prepared for the devil and his angels, not for mankind (Matthew 25:41).  However, those who choose Satan’s lie over the love of God will get to spend eternity in that place with the Devil.  I am convinced He will be mocking those who rejected the Lord.  He does not love, He hates.  He lies.  He murders. 

 

I believe that should I be wrong (and I am not), I will have had a better life than I would have had without my confidence in what others would like to be believe is a fiction.  But if I am right and you reject the love of God, if you think God is being unfair to punish people who reject Him, if you believe Satan’s lies, then you will have lost your soul for eternity and you will have only yourself to blame.

 

There is a song that I like that goes something like this:

 

There’s a story ever new, it is wonderful and true

And the best thing you can do is believe it!

It will calm your troubled breast and will give you peace and rest,

It’s of all the news the best, O believe it!

 

Bruce Collins

 

Meditation for the week of April 1, 1018

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