In the two prior “Follow-up” posts published in recent days, I wrote this:  “In the previous post I mentioned the thousands of people who simply showed up to their office on September 11, 2001, and four college students in Idaho who simply went to sleep for the night and three in Virginia who simply boarded a bus for a class trip later that very same day, November 13, 2022, and the very near-miss of an NFL player in the middle of a Monday Night Football game a few weeks ago – and just last night it was ten people at a ball dance hall in Monterey Park, California.  But there will be many, many others in the coming months and years and probably days and even hours.  Which is why I put Follow-up “#1” in this post’s title.  Because there will absolutely be Follow-up examples “#2” and “#3” and so on.”

Unfortunately that proved prescient yet again:  in the early morning hours as they slept, at least FIVE THOUSAND people perished in a 7.8 earthquake in Turkey and Syria, with news networks reporting that the death toll is expected to rise to over TEN THOUSAND over the next few days.

Thousands and thousands and thousands of people simply went to bed as they had every night before, fully expecting to wake up the next morning as they had every time before – but that didn’t happen this time.  No, when they awoke this time it was in eternity.  Heaven or Hell.  Where they’ll remain forever and ever and evermore.

And that’s the whole point of these “While You Can” posts, to alert people that while they MIGHT have lots and lots of time left on earth, left in this life, to resolve where they’ll be spending the next one, to confirm their eternal destination, the fact, as we’ve seen the past several days alone, that might NOT be the case.  So I again lovingly and humbly urge each and every one of you to take time TODAY, right now, to address this most crucial of matters in this life:  where one will spend the life to come.  Because “tomorrow” is guaranteed to nobody, only today and more accurately, the here and now.  May we use it wisely.

(The following is reprinted from a previous post… and definitely worth repeating…)

As near-impossible as it is for human nature to do, I strongly encourage YOU to “brand your brain” with the firm fact that YOUR final day (yes, YOU!) and MY final day could be today or tomorrow or even ten or twenty or fifty years from now but the main thing is to realize that it could be today so as to give the urgency due to such an all-important matter, in fact the ONLY thing that truly  matters in this entire life:  where one will spend the life to come.

James 4:14 comes to a crystal-clear conclusion:  compared to eternity, this current life is literally like a single breath on a cold morning.  And 2 Peter 3:8 confirms that in eternity “one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”  The fact is that one day in eternity is equal to infinity  days on earth, but omniscient God knows everything including the fact that our finite human minds, which He created and designed, can’t truly comprehend infinity so He put it in terms we can  understand and digest easily, to make the exact same (poignant) point.

And, in the words of an old TV ad, eternity is final:  each and every person will in one split-second check in but will never, ever, ever check out.

Which is why I always say that the ONLY thing that truly matters in THIS life is that which impacts the NEXT one.

Please don’t put off for another day, even another minute, taking the time and focus to CONFIRM, to “make certain about” where you’ll be spending it.

• “… be all the more diligent to make certain about” your salvation (2 Peter 1:10) – that you’ll be spending eternity in Heaven, not Hell.  In unquestionable freedom and pleasure, not unquenchable fire and pain.

Because like I said in the previous post, the clock is ticking.

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