Are You Ready

Allister Murphy reflects on the flooding in British Columbia and how its impact makes him consider eternity. For everyone the question of eternity is one we either embrace, avoid, or struggle with. In His parable about the rich man and Lazarus, Jesus fleshes out the concept of eternity. In this presentation this parable is presented in a light which reflects our current reality.

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Transcript

Are You Ready

Hey everyone, thanks for joining me for a microcast with Teleios Talks. Today I wanted to kind of pose a question to everyone, are you ready? On the 13th of October 2021, Mr. Glen de Vries, a tech entrepreneur, along with Mr. William Shatner, a Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise, and a former NASA engineer, Chris Bouschazin, and a Blue Origin Vice President and Engineer, Audrey Powers. Those four people traveled on Jeff Bowes Blue Origin suborbital capsule. And Mr. Shatner became the oldest person to go into space that day. And when he landed in true TJ or in true James T. Kirk fashion said, "What you've given me is the most profound experience I can imagine."

And you know, when I thought about that, I thought, you know, I can't imagine what it was like for those four individuals that day to be shot beyond the Earth's atmosphere and to look down and to see this beautiful planet. You know, Shatner described it as a most profound experience.

I can think of someone who had an even more profound experience, but I'll save that for a different day, but you can ponder that one. On November the 11th, Mr. Glen de Vries, the tech entrepreneur, and another gentleman tragically died in a plane crash in the woodlands of the state of New Jersey. Just a month before that, he had been riding to the edge of the Earth's atmosphere. You know, in reading that news made me ask the question, was he ready? And I'm not here to guess, you know, what Mr. de Vries's religious beliefs were, that would be completely disrespectful. But I'm here to look at the answer to the question that we all should be asking ourselves, am I ready?

You know, one thing we can be sure about is that we will one day die. It's a guarantee. Someone once said to me, "It's the only lottery I know I will win." The problem for us is that we don't know when we're going to die, and that for many is a problem. many it causes crippling anxiety and for others it's just an end point of our existence. Whatever your reaction is to the thought of your impending death, one day you will be there and then what? The Bible says that it's appointed for men to die once. So you may not like the Bible but the Bible agrees with the rest of us and the rest of the world that at one point in time we are all going to die. So far so good.

But what happens after we die? And that's where we get so much controversy and we get division. See, the whole of that verse from Hebrews chapter 9 verse 27 reads like this, "It's appointed for a man to die once, and after that comes the judgment." That's not a very popular viewpoint. People don't want a negative experience of the afterlife. Everybody wants the warmth and developing them as they travel through this tunnel of light, green fields and cotton candy clouds. That's what people want, but that isn't the reality.

Jesus told a story, a true story, But a rich man and a poor man called Lazarus. In the story, Jesus describes what happens to each of the men after they died. The poor man died and he was carried by the angels to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried and in hell, or Hades, being tormented. from Luke chapter 16:22-23. And that wasn't the only time that Jesus mentioned hell. In fact, he warned about hell more often than anything, more than 60 times in the gospels alone. And Jesus also spoke about heaven. He described heaven as a place that was being prepared for those that believe that he was the Messiah, the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. It's a place where he will wipe away every tear from our eyes and death will be no more. There won't be any mourning. There won't be any crying. There won't be any pain. There won't be any depression. There won't be any anxiety. There won't be any cancer. Heaven is a place being prepared for us by God.

Why? Because God so loved the world, God so loved you and me, that he gave his only Son, Jesus Christ, so that whoever believed in Jesus will not perish, they won't go to hell, but they will have eternal life in heaven. John 3:16. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous that He might bring us to God, and not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

So when you ask yourself the question, am I ready? How will you answer that? Do you know what lies beyond the grave? What if, what if, what the Bible says is true? What Jesus says is true. And Jesus described himself as the way the truth and the life. God can't lie. And if what the Bible in Jesus says is true, what would your decision be? The 17th century French philosopher, theologian, mathematician, and physicist, Blaze Pascal argued that a rational person should live as though God exists and to seek to believe in God. If God does not exist, then such a person will only have a finite loss, some pleasures, some luxuries, etc. Whereas if God does exist, that same person stands to receive infinite gains as represented by the eternity in heaven and avoids infinite losses eternity in hell.

You do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life for you're a miss that appears for a little while and then vanishes? So are you ready? And recording this today, we are sitting in day two of an aftermath of massive flooding and landslides that have affected the province of British Columbia where I live. You might even be able to hear the sound of helicopters behind me flying over, because We've got air support going out with Search and Rescue, and RCMP trying to help people who are being evacuated. So recording this message today kind of has an even heavier feeling to it. We don't know what tomorrow will bring. Nobody knew that this was going to happen. No one could predict what was going to occur when that rainstorm came through two days ago, three days ago.

We don't know what tomorrow's going to bring, but the question we need to ask ourselves is that, am I ready today? Am I ready today for tomorrow? Am I ready for what tomorrow may bring? If tomorrow brings my death, I'm ready because I know where I'm going to. bless everybody and have a good one.