Worldwide Harvest Ministries * Messages

A VOICE FROM ETERNITY

“And in Hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.  And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.”   Luke 16:23-24

         Sometime ago I spoke on the subject of signs and our obedience to what they told us to do.   I want to talk to you concerning the urgency of being obedient while you are still here.  When approaching some railroad crossings you see a sign that reads like this:  STOP!   LOOK!   LISTEN!    It means that there is danger in going heedlessly along , paying no attention to the warnings given.  In deciding a case, when a man sued a railroad company for damages, a judge in Pennsylvania said: 

“The complainant could not recover damages, if he failed to stop, look and listen.”

God, in His Word, throws out the flag of danger, and warns men of the sin in heedlessly going toward Eternity, paying no attention to the Word, the Spirit, and the Divine Direction of God.  In the reading of this passage of Scripture we have an awful warning from the lips of Him who spake as man never spake;   from Him who never uttered a useless nor a trifling word.   JESUS Himself!  In our text we have the cry of a damned soul;  a voice from Hell.   The cry of a man who had been favored with the privileges,   blessed with opportunities, and who, in spite of all that God could do, in spite of Moses and the prophets, this man passed out of life to wake up in an eternal Hell.   

Damned!   Yes.   In Hell?   Yes.

And even on the authority of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Savior of the world, Yes!  God Himself.

          You say you do not believe in a Hell.   Well then, do you believe in a Heaven?    If so.   On what authority?   What other book in all the world tells you of Heaven aside from the Word of God?   Not one scholar, scientist, philosopher, ever discovered there is a Heaven?   Name him if you can— tell all of us the work in which he first made it known to the world.  

          You and I  depend on the Bible, this old Bible, the written Word of God, for our knowledge of Heaven—Yes, for all your knowledge of Heaven—and the same Book says there is a Hell—

“in Hell he lifted up his eyes.”

If the Word is false in one case, it is false in all;  If the Word is true in one case, ti is true in all.  God cannot lie.

This Book is His Word, and in this Word I read:

“The wicked shall be turned INTO HELL with all the nations that forget God.” 

“Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels

“He that believeth not SHALL BE DAMNED.”

Not that this is God’s choice for man.

“He hath not appointed us unto wrath, but unto salvation.”

He exhorts men:

“Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, for He will have mercy, and unto our God for He will abundantly pardon.” 

“I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, but would rather that all men should turn unto Me and live.”

“Turn he, turn ye, for why will ye die?”

“Repent ye, and believe the Gospel.”

Again and again God warns you, and yet you are doing just what this lost soul did.

You are neglecting the Word of God.

That man had Moses and the prophets, but he heard them not.  God says to you STOP!   He calls to you by His Word, His Spirit, His Divine Direction.   He holds up before you the awful examples of those who have perished in their sins, and woke up in Hell, in torment, and He asks you to LOOK!  He sends the Holy Spirit to talk to you, and Spirit-filled men to preach to you, and asks you again and again to LISTEN, and yet you, some of you, heed not!

           Some day you will want God’s Word; some day you will ask for a message from it.  There is a story told of a man in Philadelphia, who, after years in a life of sin, came down to his death bed.  He had neglected the Word; grieved the Spirit; and was facing Eternity!   He asked that his mother’s Bible be brought.  It had been neglected those years.  He wanted his sister to read the book to him.  Only one Bible would do—his mother’s.  He would not let them take it off his bed.  He would reach out and put his hand on the book as though there was some virtue in the very touch of its lids.   “Hannah,” he would say,  “read to me out of mother’s Bible,” —and thus he died.

“He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be cut off,

and that WITHOUT REMEDY.”  

THIS TEXT TEACHES US THAT Death ends all opportunities.   All men’s chances end in this life.   God crowds it with blood-bought privileges, but death ends them all.

George Kulp, was preaching in the Methodist Church in Steelton, Pa., when, at the altar call, a woman came forward crying:

“O God, give me another chance."

This was a confession that she had had previous chances, and had murdered them.  It was a begging cry; a heart-broken plea for just one more chance.  God gave it to her and mercifully saved her.

There was a funeral of a young man about the age of twenty-one years of age.   While working in a saw-mill, he had by an accident been hurried into Eternity.   As they lowered the body into the grave, the mother of the young man cried out in her anguish:

“O God, why did you not give my boy a chance?”

This young man was of age.  Life had been filled with light and opportunities.   He went, suddenly hurried into Eternity where there are no calls to the unsaved; no Gospel; no mourner’s bench; no pleading of the Spirit.

WHY DO MEN SHRINK FROM DEATH?

Because of the pain of dying?   NO.   Soldiers in war go into battle yelling and cheering at the top of their voices, not knowing but that at any moment the fatal bullet might strike, or a road bomb, or a car bomb might go off and tear them in pieces.   Yet they go on not fearing death.

WHAT MEN DREAD COMES AFTER DEATH!

They know hope ends here and mercy ends here.   When man crosses the line, he leaves all hope of salvation, all mercy for the unrepentant, behind.

The story of a mortally wounded soldier with a bullet in the spine.   His constant cry was: 

“O God, have mercy on my soul!  O God, have mercy on my soul!"

That agonizing cry penetrated far out into the darkness of the night, and drove sleep from the ears of his fellow soldiers.

“O God, have mercy on my soul!”  

Afraid of the mere act, the pain of dying?—no, no, that soldier had gone into battle fearlessly—it was what came after death.

I plead with you today. . . . Do not presume upon the mercy of God.

Your eleventh hour went by long ago.

The men hired at the eleventh hour were idle because “no man hath hired us.”   it was their first opportunity and they accepted it. 

Your first opportunity—- has gone forever.

Death ends all successful praying.

IT IS A HOPELESS TASK, PRAYING IN ETERNITY.

This man lifted up his eyes in Hell and prayed—but he prayed in vain— “have mercy upon me;”  “a drop of water to cool this parched tongue,”   But there was neither water nor mercy.

PRAYER IS FOR TIME—FOR THIS LIFE.

Men in Eternity may pray:   “Rocks and mountains, fall upon us,”   But there is no answer.   They will seek death, but death will flee from them.

           Some reading this today are like this young man that while his mother was trying to get him to repent and trying to convince him of time running out, stated to his mother:

“All I want is five minutes in which to say,' God have mercy on me.’ “

The devil is fooling you into believing that at the last minute before it happens, before death, that you will have time to repent.   This young man on his death bed, sent for the preacher to come and pray for him.  When the preacher began to pray the man asked him not to pray to long.   His condition was so intense that he could not endure a word spoken above a whisper.

He had his five minutes to say: 

“God have mercy on me,”

But not the strength to say it.   Life is the time to get prayer answered.   If you will not pray now, there is coming a time when you will—and it may be too late.

A group of young men who were attending a revival service and they were seeing many others rise and go up for prayer.   These young men, influenced by the devil himself, made a covenant between them that they would never ask anyone to pray for them.   Later on in life one of these young men Death had come to him.   He asked the preacher to come and pray for him—-the very thing that he had vowed to the others he wouldn’t do.   An anointed praying  evangelist was called to pray because of their reputation.   When she entered the room the dying man cried:  “Pray!  Oh, Pray!  Pray!”   She knelt down and prayed earnestly for this man.  Even though she was gifted in prayer:   This time the heavens are brass; her prayers rise no higher than her head.   She realizes that God is not pleased and rises from her knees.   Still the dying man cries:  “Pray—Pray—Pray,” and the mother says:  “Oh , do pray—do not leave us—pray once more.”   Again she tried to pray. . .  But there was no unction, no liberty, no prayer.   She left that home unable to pray.   The last words she heard were those of the dying man, as he cried:  “Pray — Pray — Pray!”   As life was slipping away his loved ones bent over him to hear his last words; they were these:

“Pray — Pray — Pray!”

           There is a time to pray, a time when God answers, a time when He will be found.   And there is a time when He mocks, and when fear cometh.

The condition of the lost is fixed to all eternity.

There is no talk of a second chance:  for the man whose voice cries out in Eternity.   There was a great gulf fixed where no one could go to him nor could he leave.   No wonder this lost soul said:  “I am tormented in this flame.”   The very knowledge that hope is gone —mercy gone—would breed a despair that would torment eternally.   Eternal torment implies: 

“Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire,”

There is no darkness like the darkness of Hell mentioned of in the Bible.   In the land of eternal snows a time comes when for 120 days.  24 hr. days.  That the sun does not shine.  The longest period of

darkness on earth.   But one day, “the long, long night is past.

But in Hell, darkness is forever and ever and ever.

           Hell is one Eternal Night.   Nights without stars.  Nights only.  No days.  No sun.   Souls cry to souls,  “How long?  How long?”   And devils damned, in Hellish screams answer:  “Forever and forever!”   The Pendulum of Eternity over the gates of darkness vibrates through the eons  and says “Forever and forever!   Forever and forever!   Forever and forever!”           O Eternity, God has wound up thy clock and it will never run down, and its tickings and beatings are heard by all the lost.   Its sounding bell strikes off the centuries, the ages, the cycles.

The appalling monotony of its pendulum, going—going—going—repeating still:  ‘Forever and forever!   Forever and forever!  Forever and forever!’   No end to the suffering; no end to the pain; dying and yet never dead; praying for  death, seeking for death, but death fleeing from them; shut up in the bottomless pit with death, and yet unable to die!   There are those in this life that have lost all hope and want life to end.   They commit suicide: In Hell you can’t get rid of the suffering and the despair of no where to turn.

THERE IS NO SUCIDE IN HELL!

ITS DEATH (Hells Death) It IS AN ETERNAL DYING.

 

 

Hell is the final insane asylum of the Universe.

           Devils damned, the false prophet, the beast, all drunkards, murderers, liars, adulterers, dogs, sorcerers, whoremongers, idolaters and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie, have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone forever and ever, and that intensified as the cycles roll on, by the panorama of the past rolling before them — mercies, opportunities, family circles, altars, Gospel sermons, revival services, mourners’ benches, praying friends, an open Bible, the Spirit’s pleadings, an interceding Christ —- all neglected, all rejected, all gone by, and gone never to return!  “Appointed unto salvation,” “but, you would not.”   God called, you refused.  God stretched out His arm, but you paid no regard.   Sinai warned —- its thunders rolled — you would not hear.  Now the weeping, now the wailing, now the gnashing of teeth, now the death that never, never dies!

This lost soul in Hell is wanting you to know:

NOW IS THE TIME TO REPENT!

 

THE VOICE FROM ETERNITY IS STILL CRYING OUT FOR YOU TO REPENT AND AVOID HIS

ETERNAL DESTINY.

 

THE WORD OF GOD SAYS THAT:

“Now is the accepted time; Now is the day of salvation.”