Avoiding Catastrophe

(Making the big decisions too late.)

Open: The story of loosing my brother Kenny. My desperate hope that he’s in Heaven with the Lord, but I’m just not sure if that’s true or not. I stood there in my room alone after he died, weeping to God, wishing I could say a final goodbye, tell him how much I loved him. It was too late to turn that around.

It’s important for us to avert the catastrophe of seeing our loved ones pass away without Christ.

Illustration: After church one day in a small church on the East Coast a German man who had lived in Nazi Germany told the pastor a story of his experience there.

He said, “I lived in Germany during the Nazi Holocaust. I considered myself a Christian. We heard stories of what was happening to the Jews, but we tried to distance ourselves from it, because, what could anyone do to stop it?

A railroad track ran behind our small church, and each Sunday morning we could hear the whistle in the distance and then the wheels coming over the tracks. We became disturbed when we heard the cries coming from the train as it passed by. We realized that the train was carrying Jews like cattle in the cars!

Week after week the whistle would blow. We dreaded to hear the sound of those wheels because we knew that we would hear the cries of the Jews en route to the death camp. Their screams tormented us.

It wasn’t long before we learned the exact time the train came past our church and whenever we heard the whistle blow we began singing hymns. By the time the train came past our church we were singing at the top of our voices. If we heard the screams we sang louder and soon we would hear them no more.”

Thousands of souls, doomed to certain death rolled by on that train. The last songs they ever heard were the hymns of the people in that little church, which claimed to serve the God of love, yet turned their backs on their fellow man and drowned out their cries for help.

“Years have passed,” the man said, “and no one talks about it anymore. But I still hear that train whistle in my sleep. God forgive me; forgive all of us who called ourselves Christians and yet did nothing....”

? How many people in your life, in your home or in your workplace are lacking a relationship with Jesus Christ? How many are traveling the road that leads to destruction? How many are being led like cattle to the slaughter? Have you reached out to save them, or are you drowning out their cries with your busy life?

? Is it really fitting for us Christians to lay hold of God’s Grace, and at the same time, withhold it from our brothers in need?

God forgive all of us who have called ourselves Christians and yet did nothing.

I: THE CALL (can you hear the whistle blowing?)

Listen my friends… Listen. Do you hear that sound? It’s the whistle. It’s the sound of the final trumpet of God, and it’s not far off… One day, mankind will face the stark reality of eternity.

Today, every man and woman is faced with the decision of a lifetime: choose life by the blood of Jesus Christ, or let the pride, the sin, and all the mistakes, which stand between us and God separate us from a right relationship with Him? Today is the day of reckoning because tomorrow we will live the rest of eternity based on the decisions we made the day before… The Bible tells us, in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet… We will be changed.

“For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.”

1 Corinthians 15:52

Can you feel the earth tremble? It’s the people of God on their way to destruction.

Soon, as in the case of the Christians in that little church, the train will have passed and the moment of decision will be lost.

? Do you really want the blood of your neighbors, your family and your friends to haunt you because you neglected to share the way of salvation with them?

Then seize the day my friends. Seize the day! The return of the Lord is near. The final trumpet is pressed to the lips of its master. A single blast of wind is all that stands between eternal life and eternal death for so many people today. Is it right for us to just stand by and watch them pass away?

The Bible tells us about two roads men take. Both roads lead to a place in eternity. One is called the wide road and the other is called the narrow road.