A Familiar Question with Eternal Weight
We all know the line from pop culture: Who you gonna call?
It was written for a movie that made people laugh, but the question itself is deadly serious.
When a crisis hits, when the next breath is uncertain, when eternity draws close—who you call on determines your future.
Let me take you to a moment when that question was no longer playful for me.
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The Leap
I’ll never forget standing on that tiny metal platform, more than a hundred feet in the air, looking down at a parking lot in Orlando, Florida.
It was a tourist bungee-jump setup—cars below glinting like toys, the pavement hard and unforgiving.
Just the operator and me.
He crouched down and tightened the heavy straps around my ankles.
This wasn’t a gentle drop into water; this was headfirst.
Every instinct in me shouted Wait!
Check the cords again. The parking lot looks too close. Maybe later.
The man looked me in the eye and said quietly, “It’s time to jump.”
In that moment my heart was pounding so loudly I could hear it echo inside my ears.
Every rational part of me wanted to hold back—find one more excuse, demand one more check, tell myself there would always be another chance.
But the truth was now or never.
The opportunity was here.
If I didn’t leap, I would climb back down and never know what it was like.
That moment on the platform taught me something about life:
some choices can be revisited, but some cannot.
Some doors stay open for a season, and then they close forever.
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A Cosmic Choice
The Bible tells us that every human being stands on a similar platform.
Joshua’s ancient challenge still rings:
> “Choose you this day whom you will serve … but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:15)
God has given each of us a lifetime—a single, unrepeatable opportunity—to respond to His offer of salvation.
The plan of salvation isn’t a revolving door of second chances.
There’s no purgatory, no reincarnation, no endless retries.
Why?
Because the plan of salvation isn’t just about getting people to heaven; it’s about healing the universe itself.
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God’s Goal: Eradicate the Cancer of Sin
The purpose of the whole plan of salvation is to rid the universe of the cancer of sin.
God longs to end every tear, every tragedy, every grave.
He wants to end the suffering and the carnage and the rebellious character flaw that fuels the rebellion.
The prophet Nahum declared:
> “Affliction shall not rise up the second time.” (Nahum 1:9)
Revelation promises:
> “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.” (Revelation 21:4)
This is the heart of the gospel.
God isn’t merely cleaning up symptoms.
He is removing the disease.
Sin is not just a bad habit; it is terminal spiritual cancer.
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The Bible’s Clear Timeline
Because the cure is decisive, the Bible presents a decisive timeline for every soul.
Hebrews 9:27 – “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.”
2 Corinthians 6:2 – “Now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”
John 5:28-29 – “The hour is coming when all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth—those who have done good to the resurrection of life, those who have done evil to the resurrection of condemnation.”
Notice what is missing in all these passages:
no mention of a holding tank for slow learners, no hint of reincarnation, no extra probationary period.
One life. One choice. One eternity.
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Why This Is Hard for Us to Accept
But if that’s so clear, why do people resist it?
Why is a single lifetime to decide so hard to believe?
Let’s be honest.
Part of us wants the comfort of more time.
We sense eternity in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11), and we feel life should last forever.
So we invent ideas that sound merciful—purgatory, reincarnation, “I’ll make it right later.”
They soothe our longing for another chance.
But deeper issues lie beneath.
We underestimate sin.
We think of sin as a series of mistakes we can eventually correct.
Scripture calls it slavery (John 8:34) and a hardening force (Hebrews 3:13).
Every delay makes turning back less likely, not more.
We overestimate tomorrow.
James 4:14 says life is “a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.”
We plan as if we own the next decade when we don’t even own the next heartbeat.
We misread God’s patience.
Peter says God delays judgment because He is “not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).
People mistake that patience for permissiveness and think delay equals more chances.
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The Essence of Sin: Self on the Throne
And here’s the deepest reason:
> The essence of sin isn’t a humble wish for more opportunities to do what is right.
The essence of sin is SELF.
Sin began with self-exaltation:
Isaiah 14:12-14 records Lucifer’s five “I will” statements:
“I will ascend…I will exalt…I will be like the Most High.”
Genesis 3:5 echoes the same lie: “You will be like God.”
Romans 8:7 declares, “The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.”
Sin’s one goal is self-rule—self-glory, self-sufficiency.
It doesn’t want more chances to change; it wants to stay in charge.
This explains why people delay.
It isn’t merely that they need more evidence or time.
It’s that self resists surrender.
And every postponement hardens the will a little more.
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The Weight of Today
Friend, I’m not here to shout or to scold.
But deep inside, everything in me wants to lean forward and say as plainly as I can:
Today matters.
This very day has been handed to you as a gift for one ultimate purpose—
to choose Jesus as your Savior and Lord.
Not merely to think about Him, not merely to admire Him,
but to receive Him and surrender to Him.
God places extraordinary weight on the ordinary word today.
That is why Scripture repeats it again and again:
> “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.” (Hebrews 3:15)
“Now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” (2 Corinthians 6:2)
Joshua understood this when he gathered the tribes and said,
“Choose you this day whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15).
He didn’t mean someday, when things settle down.
He meant now—while the invitation is alive, while the heart is still tender.
Yet we humans have a way of softening that word.
We reinterpret this day to mean get serious about God someday.
We tell ourselves there will always be a better season:
after the career stabilizes, after the children are grown,
after the next vacation, after retirement.
But the quiet truth is that later is not promised.
A couple of years ago, I was sitting in a midweek Bible study, enjoying the discussion.
Without warning everything went dark and I began to collapse.
A physician seated just behind me instantly recognized the emergency.
He checked for a pulse—and found none.
My breathing had stopped.
After several tense moments and a few chest compressions, by God’s mercy my heart started again.
I opened my eyes to a circle of anxious faces.
One breath earlier I assumed I had hours left in the evening.
The truth was I did not even own the next second.
That night burned into me what James 4:14 declares:
“You do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? It is a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.”
Friend, today really does matter. We have no guarantee of another heartbeat.
This very day is God’s gift to choose Jesus as Savior and Lord.
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Myths of a Second Chance
Because the call of “today” feels so final,
people have invented hopeful-sounding alternatives.
Two of the most common are purgatory and reincarnation.
Purgatory
Centuries after the New Testament was written,
a teaching arose that souls not yet ready for heaven
could spend time in a refining place called purgatory,
where prayers or offerings of the living might speed their progress upward.
But the Bible never hints at such a place.
When Scripture speaks of life after death, it speaks of resurrection and judgment, not probation.
Hebrews 9:27 says, “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.”
Jesus spoke of a resurrection to life and a resurrection to condemnation (John 5:28-29)—two destinies, not an intermediate state.
Purgatory may sound compassionate,
but it dilutes the urgency of grace and makes the cross less than sufficient.
The blood of Jesus doesn’t need a post-mortem supplement.
Reincarnation
In many cultures another idea prevails:
that souls return again and again in different forms,
gradually working off karma until at last they reach a higher plane.
But Scripture shows the opposite pattern:
one creation, one earthly pilgrimage, one resurrection.
The gospel is not an endless cycle of try-again lives.
It is a decisive rescue by a Savior who conquered death once for all (Hebrews 9:26).
Both of these concepts—purgatory and reincarnation—
are different ways of saying the same thing:
There will always be another chance.
And both contradict the Word of God.
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Personal Accountability Before God
The Bible is plain: each person is ultimately responsible for his or her own salvation.
No indulgence purchased, no ritual performed, no offering made on your behalf can tip the scale of God’s justice.
Salvation isn’t a transaction where someone else buys a little extra credit for you.
Imagine the shock of the self-absorbed man or woman who spent life believing that someone else’s prayers or payments could somehow slide them through the pearly gates—
as if God were an angry bureaucrat to be placated by the right paperwork.
Grace doesn’t work like that.
Christ’s cross is not a loophole to exploit; it is a gift to be personally received in faith and repentance.
> “The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son.” (Ezekiel 18:20)
“So then each of us shall give account of himself to God.” (Romans 14:12)
“A person is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.” (Galatians 2:16)
This is the heart of biblical truth:
every heart has a throne, and every soul stands personally before the Judge of all the earth.
No one else can step in at the last minute to make that decision for you.
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God’s Cosmic Purpose
And all the while, God is not merely trying to populate heaven with as many last-minute rescues as possible.
He is accomplishing something much larger.
> “Affliction shall not rise up the second time.” (Nahum 1:9)
The cross of Christ is not only personal salvation;
it is the cosmic cure.
Through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection,
God is removing the cancer of sin so completely
that rebellion will never flare again.
Revelation 21 promises a world where
“death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore.”
For that to happen, the universe needs a decisive end to sin,
not an endless extension of it through multiple lifetimes or post-mortem reforms.
That is why Scripture speaks of a single life and a final judgment.
God is closing the chapter on evil, not keeping it on life support.
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Living in the Now of Salvation
So what does this mean for us today?
It means the most important decision you will ever make
is not your career path or your retirement plan or where you live.
It is who sits on the throne of your heart.
Every heart has a throne.
Someone sits there—either Jesus or self.
The only safe time to dethrone self and enthrone Christ is today.
To choose Jesus is not merely to admire His teachings
but to place your entire trust in His finished work on the cross,
to confess Him as Lord and Savior,
to receive His forgiveness,
and to let His Spirit lead every area of your life.
This is not a call to sinless perfection overnight;
it is a call to a decisive surrender.
Grace will shape the rest.
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A Final Picture
Think back to that platform in Orlando.
The cords were secure, the harness checked, the operator ready.
All that remained was a single, irrevocable leap.
Life is like that.
God has done the work.
The straps of His covenant promises are fastened.
The cross and empty tomb prove that His love will not fail.
But He will not jump for you.
To delay is to climb back down the stairs
and walk away from the one adventure that truly matters.
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Invitation
Today—this very day—has been handed to you as a holy gift.
You can use it to drift or to decide.
The Holy Spirit is whispering,
“Choose you this day whom you will serve… but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
Who are you gonna call?
Call on Jesus now.
As for me and my house
We will serve the Lord.
