A time to tell

If you had a bit of spinach stuck between your teeth, or body odor so bad your co-workers were snickering around the water cooler, would you want someone to tell you? Then if you know hell is real, and you know people who are headed to a Christ-less eternity, should you not tell them?

That's how my friend Jayne Clark introduced the three-day topic of the Judgment at our women's retreat at Harvey Cedars Bible Conference in New Jersey last weekend --- and I couldn't escape the logic of it.

It's been a long time since I've heard a sermon on hell. I mean one that lingered there and let you smell the sulfur, not just a passing poetic reference.

There is, of course, that famous Jonathan Edwards sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." And I'm ashamed to say that, like old Barnabas, who "was led astray" by peer pressure in an unrelated matter (Galatians 2:13), I was slipping into the camp of people who say nice things about Edwards in spite of that little trip to woodshed in Enfield, Connecticut on July 8,1741.

But Jayne helped me remember how I myself got saved. This Christian guy at L'Abri took a fancy to me, and didn't fancy me being damned, and kept saying, "Andree, please become a Christian." It was as unsophisticated as that.

"Therefore, let every one that is out of Christ now awake and fly from the wrath to come. The wrath of Almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging over a great part of this congregation….'Haste and escape for your lives, look not behind you, escape to the mountains, lest you be consumed'" (Jonathan Edwards, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God").