Most of us assume human life has existed for millions if not billions of years, and that it will probably continue to exist for many millions, if not billions, more. In the face of that, our tiny lives become so overwhelmingly insignificant that we succumb to a life of unthinking conformity along with all of the other billions of meaningless ants that populate this planet.
But when we do this, we are confusing time with eternity. Evolutionary teaching has created this unreal picture of human life. All the unsubstantiated talk about billions of years gives the impression that not only the planet itself is eternal, but so is human existence. Even the most ardent evolutionist cannot, however, dispute the fact that recorded human history extends back barely six thousand years from today.
Think about what that means:
It means that the very first human beings to leave historic record of their existence lived only six thousand years ago. Just six thousand years ago. Think about that.
If you live to be even sixty years old, you will have experienced one percent of the entire recorded history of the human race, from Adam and Eve, or whoever you like to think our first parents were, to the present.
Our generation is one of less than 200 that have ever lived here on earth. What we say and do is an important part of human history.
But far more significant than that, because the earth's population has been increasing exponentially all this time, the present generation - that is the present population of the earth - represents something like one quarter of all the people who have ever lived on earth.
What we say and do in terms of changing the direction of history is not insignificant.
Whatever the reason for human existence, one quarter of us are right here now to hear the answer if anyone has it, and if anyone has what it takes to communicate that answer to the rest of us.
The Bible says that, with God, there is very little difference between a day and a thousand years. That is because God lives in eternity... the place where billions of years have meaning and are very real. But we humans live in time and space, where a few thousand years can tell the whole story.
Human existence on earth is not eternal. In the face of eternity, it is only just getting started.
And it may be almost finished before it barely got started. In fact, what we are experiencing right now may be nothing more than a flash in the pan, a tiny little experiment in the light of eternity, to see how we human beings will handle freedom and the responsibility that goes with it.
Somewhere outside of this dimension that we call time, there is an eternal purpose, an eternal plan; and our whole purpose for being on earth is to see if we will look for and follow that plan.
If you find a bulldozer sitting in your front lawn when you wake up in the morning, you will just naturally look for an explanation for its existence. You won't try to pretend that it is not there. And having found ourselves on this planet, we too should be looking for an explanation.
The explanation is there in Jesus Christ and all that he taught. God put us here to love one another and to see if we would give up all that we have for his promise of eternal life. It is only our stubborn rebellion against God that makes us refuse the teachings of Jesus, and invent religious rituals and philosophies instead.
But we don't even have to wait another thousand years to discover the stupidity of that approach. In another fifty or a hundred years we will all be dead. Every last one of us. And we'll be standing before the Creator of all that we call life, trying to tell him why we refused to fall on our knees before his Son, and accept the message of faith and love that he came to bring to the human race. Are you ready for such an encounter?
Why not accept what Jesus said today instead!
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