A Limited Time Offer...

We hear a lot about limited time offers in our thoroughly commercialized world…

“Hurry!! For a limited time only!!! Get yours NOW!!!!”

It is amazing how easily we have become so readily conditioned to acquiring stuff that we unconsciously react in all the appropriate ways to acquire it… truly, we do not even have to think about what to do: it is a conditioned reflex. Moreover, whatever we want, we want it NOW, and the world has evolved with regard to instant gratification to the point where it is routinely available. The world fairly screams at us, “Why deny yourself? You can have whatever you want right now, be it good, bad or indifferent. After all, it’s all about YOU!”

Understand that limited time offers come, go and come again, because businesses offering them do whatever they need to do from a business perspective to get people to buy their products. In other words, limited time offers are not really limited in any way, because they will always come back around; they have no expiration date that truly means they will never be seen again. People always have another chance.

Let me tell you about the limited time offer.

Your acceptance of Jesus Christ as your King and Lord, Savior and Messiah

The multiple provisions of this limited time offer are beyond generous:
-You become a child of the KING of kings and the LORD of lords.
-Your sins (past, present and future) are forgiven.
-You are given a peace that is beyond comprehension or understanding.
-You are given a new nature.
-You are indwelled with the Holy Spirit.
-You are freed from a life of bondage to sin.
-You are empowered to live life to the full.
-You inherit eternal life in God’s Kingdom.

The single condition of this limited time offer is absolute:
-The offer expires when you expire.

I cannot begin to tell you how many people discount Jesus Christ, thereby not having a personal relationship with Him: and it breaks my heart. The reason that it breaks my heart is that in order to be saved, it is not enough to say that you believe in Jesus Christ. In Holy Scripture, the book of James says this:

You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that – and shudder. (James 2:19)

You must have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ; it is in that relationship (your complete and abiding trust in His atoning blood sacrifice on the cross that paid your sin debt to Almighty God the Father) that you are saved by grace, through faith:

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. (Revelation 3:20)

It brings tears to my eyes, and a heavy burden to my heart, when I hear people deny what Jesus Christ has done for them, saying in effect that they are ‘good people’, and that all such ‘good people’ will be admitted to God’s Kingdom, based on their own merits. The witness of Holy Scripture says that there are NO good people, and that NO ONE can do any amount of work to justify their admittance to God’s Kingdom:

All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. (Isaiah 64:6)

The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9)

Jesus stated the truth:

A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good – except God alone. (Luke 18:18-19)

Jesus Christ is the only way into God’s Kingdom:

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:6)

People often dismiss Holy Scripture (adding insult to injury by not even reading it before dismissing it) saying that it is a fantastical mix of fantasy, mythology and outright lies. I can assure you that nothing is further from the truth. Holy Scripture has approximately 2,500 prophecies recorded within it, approximately 2,000 of which have been fulfilled to date without a single miss. No set of extra-biblical prophecies has ever come anywhere even remotely close to a thus-far perfect track record. As for those who think that one or more of the prophecies yet remaining to be fulfilled will be missed, thus discounting the testimony of Holy Scripture, ever hear of the phrase ‘The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior’? Think about it.

If your heart is hardened, and you cannot bring yourself to bend your knees and confess with your tongue that Jesus Christ is your personal King and Lord, Savior and Messiah, giving Him lordship over your life, I grieve and I weep for you. I grieve and weep for you because you will bend your knees to Jesus Christ, and you will confess that He is LORD, willingly or unwillingly:

It is written: ” ‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.’ ” So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God. (Romans 14:11-12)

You will either confess Jesus Christ as your personal King and Lord, Savior and Messiah at the Judgment Seat of Christ (a judgment of believers across all of the ages), or you will confess Jesus Christ as King and Lord at the Great White Throne (a judgment of unbelievers across all of the ages). If you appear at the Great White Throne judgment, you will be condemned to an eternity of torment in the lake of fire. Do not be angry with God, because He has not condemned you to that place of eternal separation from Him… you have condemned yourself to that place, because of your unbelief in God’s only Son whom He sent to die so that your sins would be forgiven, and so that you would be pardoned from the lake of fire because when God looked at you on the Day of Judgment, He didn’t see you… He saw His Son Jesus Christ, whose blood has washed away your sins.

I am a watchman on the walls of the very last days of history as we know it… and I give you a very somber warning, if you are a hard-hearted unbeliever:

For he says, “In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.” I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation. (2 Corinthians 6:2)