Perfect Statistic

We ponder and pontificate about “truth” with our isms–humanitarianism, existentialism, relativism, but we refuse to look into the mirror and see how wretched we are. Do you realize that every single person on the face of this planet is dying? Ten out of ten people die. There is no escape from what we call life and what the Bible calls death. The whole land is cursed, my friend. It’s just so common we accept it as a fact of life. But inside, whether you see it or not, everybody groans with sadness because somehow, someway, we know that life is ultimately purposeless without eternal life. We live in fear of death, and we cannot escape its shadow.

Eighty years is very short. It seems long, but you realize this when you’re on your death bed. And in the moments before you go, the truth looks you right in the eyes–but it doesn’t mean you’ll accept it. You can accept or deny it, but it looks you right in the face and says, “Am I true or am I not?”

When I was in Colima a friend of ours became severly ill. Peter and I went to see him at his house at the foot of one of the two volcanos. At the time I was not a Christian. This man who had been so energetic in my previous trips was now laying in bed with his stomach swollen the size of a basketball. The mask of pride had been ripped off his face and his eyes were filled with terror. A few weeks before he’d been joking around and telling us stories, bulding stuff around his house and taking care of the yard. The look he gave me before I left haunts me to this day. He new he’d never see me again because I was leaving town the following day to go Mexico City. He wished me good luck and shook my hand, he squeezed my hand hard and the look he gave me penetrated straight to my conscience–he knew this was it, that although I’d come back to Colima he wouldn’t be there.

A few days later while I was in Mexico City, Peter sent me an email telling me our friend had died. Where does someone go when they die? One minute you are a person and the other you are a body. The life that was in the person’s body, which was unique in a planet of billions of other persons, which you could not replace at all, is gone.

The Bible is unique in that it accurately describes all the aspect of the depravity of man. There is not a person in the history of the world which addresses this depravity better than Jesus Christ. Before you scoff, think carefully about these words by Edmund Spencer:

“There is principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all argument, and which cannot fail to keep man in everlasting ignorance. That principle is contempt prior to investigation.”