The word race suggests competition and in Hebrews 12:1, God’s people are
likened to runners in a long-distance race. Today, the race has been corrupted
and the prize has become carnal.
If we could spend just a few minutes in heaven, we would never again compete in
a carnal race. If only we could experience a short walk within the gates of that
city of God; drink in the peace, the beauty, the heavenly splendors; listen to
the grand choirs of angels singing the glories of the Lord; mingle with the
patriarchs, the martyrs, the apostles, those who came out of great tribulation;
visit with departed loved ones; feel the glow of God’s holy light; and best of
all, catch a glimpse of the face of the resurrected Lamb of God and feel the
glory and warmth and sense of security shining forth from His presence!
Would we ever come back to this earth and take up the fatal race again? Never!
You and I would live only for the Lord, rejecting the world and all its
pleasures and carnal things. We would run His race!
If we could spend even a few minutes in hell, we would never be the same.
Imagine what it would be like to be drawn into that black furnace of fire and
everlasting darkness; to suddenly be cast into a demonic world of godlessness,
cursing, hatred, lust, and corruption; to hear the groans of the eternally
damned and witness their terror, their gnashing teeth; to rub shoulders with
the workers of iniquity, the crucifiers of the Lord Jesus; to listen to the
endless sounds of hopeless, useless prayers of the damned, shaking their fists
at the God of justice, cursing the day they were born; to feel what being lost
means, cut off from God and truth and love and peace and all comfort.
How could you return to earth from your short visit to hell and ever be the
same again? Would you go back to neglecting God’s Word, His house, His love?
Would you go about your selfish pursuits of accumulating, hoarding gold and
silver, and praying for even more? I hardly think so. No, you and I would live
every hour as if it were our last.
Do you want to quit running and beating the air in vain? Set your face and
heart to seek the Lord as never before!
THE FATAL RACE
by David Wilkerson
[May 19, 1931 – April 27, 2011]
