We must take heart from message
We need to take to heart the warning (Geoffrey Brooking, Letters,
December 9) about what lies ahead for this world.
We have seen how precarious the world’s economy is when a mere microscopic virus can so easily bring such ruin upon it. So we need to heed the warning God gives us, in Revelation chapter 18, that the whole world economy will come to complete, irrecoverable devastation on a coming day.
John Catt (Letters, December 16) reminds us that Christianity, (having become the religion of the Roman Empire) sort to Christianise the age-long celebrations, such as Saturnalia and Yuletide, in its effort to win pagan tribes to Jesus Christ.
It was now drifting away from its Biblical foundations and adopting more and more worldly ways. (The two differing birth narratives of Christ, John shows us Joseph’s involvement in it, in Matthew and in Luke, Mary’s part. In it – they complement rather than contradict one another.)
So what is the message of hope and joy that the Gospel of Jesus Christ brings to us? God graciously warns us that there will be a day, already fixed, of wrath and of His righteous judgment. After all, God is our Creator, so each one of us is rightly answerable to Him.
He will judge the secrets of all our hearts by Christ Jesus. (If there were no final accountability ultimately it wouldn’t matter one fig how we lived our lives, whether in goodness and virtue or in every kind of evil and depravity.)
So the good news (gospel means good news) is that God, not willing that any should perish, sent His Son, His one and only Son, so that whoever believes on Him may have eternal life.
God didn’t send His Son into this world to condemn us, but that all might be saved – and all can be saved if we are prepared to own up to the fact that we have, each one of us, fallen so far short of God’s glory, His own perfections – the unalterable standard of the holy and righteous God – and ask for His mercy and forgiveness, which He is only too ready to grant.
Paganism and atheism may have their futile promises and may encourage us to ‘eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die’, but nothing of lasting worth. (The late, out-spoken atheist, Christopher Hitchens, suffering from terminal cancer, told Jeremy Paxman his life was bleak and meaningless.) Jesus Christ offers to all who will receive it the water of life, which springs up, sparkling, crystal-pure and unalloyed to fill our hearts with perfect love, perfect joy and perfect peace – for time and all eternity!
Bryan Shingler