Presented to River Street Cafe, 13 May 2016
by Captain Michael Ramsay
Read
2 Timothy 1:6-8
When Christ
returns it will be like a thief in the night. The time and hour we don`t know
but we do know the end is coming and then some will go off to eternal happiness
and some to weeping and gnashing of teeth. To know this is good news, believe
it or not.
It is like
disaster relief work: I have done a lot of this. A few years ago I helped in
the aftermath of a hurricane. The good news is, like natural disasters in
general and like when the hurricane struck Galveston Island in particular, was that even though people chose to stay behind and
perish, even though we met,
spoke to and prayed with people whose family members chose to reject salvation
from the hurricane, people knew it was coming; they had a choice and as a
result thousands of people were saved.
Can you
imagine if the news announcers were so ashamed of the fact the hurricane was
coming that they didn’t share the information? Can you imagine if the
meteorologists were so ashamed of the fact that they did not know the exact
hour the hurricane was going to strike that they didn’t tell anybody? Can you
imagine if your neighbour knew the hurricane was coming and she evacuated but
she never told you because she was ashamed that she couldn’t explain exactly
what, why, where, how, and when the hurricane was coming? Can you imagine the
horror as you look up to see your life being swept away – and no one ever told
you how to be saved because they were ashamed?
Well, an
eschatological hurricane, ‘the end’, is coming and it is a lot more dangerous
than a temporal hurricane. There are people in this city here right now who
have no idea that the end is coming. There are people out there right now who
are lost and no one is pointing them to salvation.
So let us
do that. Today let us be like the rescue workers who go around pointing people
to safety. None of us know when our –or anyone else`s- lives are going to end.
We may be taken tomorrow. None of us know when the Lord is returning and
bringing with him the end to our world. But, like the weatherman watching the
storm, we do know that the things of this earth are going to pass away and it
is our job to share with everyone we meet the good news of the way to salvation
so that they do not need to perish but instead can experience the full power of
God for Salvation.
It is our
responsibility to share the Gospel for the Gospel is the power of God for all
to be saved both now and forever. To this end then, I encourage us all to look
for opportunities to share the good news of salvation in the upcoming weeks
here so that all of us here may turn to God and experience the full power of
His Salvation.
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