What Time Is It? By Bruce W. Robida November 5, 2012

 

In the United States, the average life expectancy is 78.75. Men typically die younger than women (76.2 years vs. 81.3 years). It is guaranteed that 100% of us will die some day, some greatly outliving the average while others don’t even come close to making it to the average. A fact of life is that we don’t know when our time will be up. We hope for a long and healthy life, not dwelling on the fact that it will one day come to an end. But what if we knew the day and even hour of our demise? Would our lives be any different? Consider that we might have a small inkling about that hour if we just think about it a minute. I don’t mean that we have the ability to predict the exact time of our deaths, but I do think that we might have an idea about the hour, metaphorically, speaking.

Take a look at a clock and think of a twenty-four hour period as the average human life span. The following illustration is for men. At one second past midnight you were born. At 6 AM you’re 19.05 years old and at 12 O’clock, noon, half of your life has passed and you’re 38.1 years old. At 6 PM you are now 57.15 years old. Every hour on the clock ages us by about 3.175 years. At 7 PM we are 60.8 years old. At 8 PM we are 64 years old. At 9 PM we are 67.2 years old. At 10 PM we are 69.85 years old. At 11 PM we are 73.025 years old. At midnight, typically, we die at age 76.2 years old. Some of us seemingly cheat death, living longer than the average person. On this clock, my dad passed away at age 78.4. And although he outlived the average for men by almost two years, he died within the same hour (between midnight and 1 AM). As a male, at age 54 it is a little bit after 5 PM on my life clock. If I live the average life span, I have less than 7 hours remaining. If you live an average life span, what time is it for you?

I didn’t write this to be depressing. It is a fact of life that we have to accept, that we will all die one day. My point in using this clock illustration is to drive home the idea, that for many of us, it is getting late, and by late I mean, if we haven’t done so already, it is passed time to get serious about God; who He is, and what he expects from us. Many of us go about our daily lives, giving little thought about God and our responsibilities toward Him and the work that He has prepared for us. You didn’t know that God prepared work for us?

“For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 2:10

There is a lot we don’t know about God. The simple reason is that we have come to rely upon men and woman, priests, ministers, pastors, prophets, prophetesses, etc., to learn about God. And sadly, most are not on the same page. They all claim to preach from the Bible, but do they? Why are their teachings so different? Why are there so many different denominations? Because they all have different agendas. They all want us to follow them and their teachings rather than the teachings of Jesus Christ. His teachings are found in the Bible and that is what I would like to encourage you to learn from. I’m not saying that all preachers are bad or all are wrong, but I will say that if they teach anything other than what is found in the Bible (or what was taught by the apostles), they will be cursed by God and you should stay away from them.

“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel-- which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!” Galatians 1:6-9

Don’t wait for your last hour to get serious about God. Not everyone will get into heaven. God wants everyone to be saved, but He says that some will not. The choice to spend eternity in hell will be theirs.

 

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