IN these peculiar and highly prophetic days, when observant minds throughout the world are profoundly impressed by alarming conditions existing in nature; by the perplexing political state and the threatening military attitude of several of the great nations; by the intense, wide-spread struggle for wealth, power, influence; and, saddest of all, by the rapid rejection—by leading teachers of the day—of candid belief in the creative work of God and in the sacrifice of His Son for the sins of the world, it is highly opportune to cite attention to a fearful but widely unheeded statement of Christ in His Sermon on the Mount.
In Matt. 7: 13, 14 occur its extremely solemn words. There Christ Himself, man's Creator, advises, urges, yes, commands those who heard Him—and all who have followed, down through the centuries—thus: “Enter ye in at the strait [limited, restricted] gate.” Why?—“Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto LIFE,” and—saddest of all utterances—“FEW there be that find it.”
But He prefaces this electrifying assertion with an announcement even more startling, more warmful, if that be possible. We give His words: “For WIDE is the gate, and BROAD is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat.”
Notice: The Author of human life does not say that the wide gate and the broad way lead to punishment in endless suffering and torment, but to “destruction,” a finished, completed act, with no continuance of life thereafter.
And herein beam forth the kindness, compassion, and mercy of the divine Father. Men and women who sin impenitently, forfeit LIFE. They do not spend eternity in misery. God's words to Ezekiel were, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” Eze. 18: 4, 20.
But the death of a sinful being affords the Father no pleasure. With great fervor He exclaimed, on one occasion, “As I live, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live.”
By these words God does not mean that a man by turning from sinful ways, and walking in paths of righteousness, can escape physical death, or can shun residence in the grave. That blessedness will be experienced by those only, who pass triumphantly the superlative testing of the last days—now at the door. They will then undergo an instantaneous change, equivalent to dying, and succeeded quickly by fulness of life forevermore.
Reader, harken: Paul wrote to his beloved Corinthians: “Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: . . . and we shall be changed.” Why? Because “flesh and blood can not inherit the kingdom of God. Neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. . . . This corruptible must [first] put on”—assume—“incorruption, and this mortal must [first] put on immortality.”
Further, Paul writes to the faithful Thessalonians, whom he styles the “children of light, and the children of the day”: “Then”—after the righteous dead are resurrected—“we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”
But we have strayed from our text. Let us return to it, greeting Christ's own impressive commentary thereon, uttered on an occasion near His death, and recorded in Luke 13:24. “STRIVE to enter in at the strait gate.” WHY?—Because “many . . . will seek to enter in, and shall not be able!”
These are momentous words. Their full significance reaches far into eternity. They are the words of Christ Himself. Their vast meaning should ring into the very soul. They should arouse men instantly from their inexplicable lethargy in reference to spiritual interests. They should make men spring to their feet mentally, morally, spiritually, and begin to “STRIVE to enter in.”9
Two tremendous facts are couched in these living words of the Redeemer. First, there stands—for every human being—the inspiring possibility of entering into eternal life at the strait gate. Second, there exists the saddening, awfully solemn fact that many shall seek—not STRIVE—to enter that supremely inviting gate, and—“SHALL NOT BE ABLE!”
The difference in effort, of the two classes, arrests our attention. What thought had Christ in mind when He spoke these words of vast import? What is the difference between striving and seeking, that the one is attended with joyful success, and the other is linked with dire failure? There must be an element in the one case which is lacking in the other.
Is it not FAITH—strong, active, persevering faith, which achieves the glorious reward at the strait gate, while its lack, its absence, assures eternal defeat? On many occasions Christ referred to faith as the mightiest instrumentality at the service of man here on the earth.
Just after the wonderful scene on the Mount of Transfiguration, He said to His disciples, “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence; . . . and it shall remove.”
But even that was not the limit. Stepping to the very summit of possibility to faith, He declared, “NOTHING shall be impossible unto you.”
Many statements from the life of Christ, Paul, and other Bible writers, might be cited to show that without faith there is no possibility of life for man beyond the grave; but we have not space for them in this article.
Compared with the mass of mankind, few people, even in Gospel lands, act, work, and live by faith in God's Word. Large companies of men and women are looking, in an indefinite way, for a future life; but with their expectations there mingles no element of faith in the efficacy of Christ's death to save from wrong doing. They form this great body of seekers for the narrow way and the strait gate, but they are not striving to enter in.
The prize which awaits the victor at the strait gate is the greatest, the most worthy of effort to obtain, that can be offered in the universe of God. This prize is LIFE, life eternal. Of its blessedness, its inherent value, its marvelous inclusion of joy, peace, comfort, opportunity for expansion of spiritual being, and for accomplishing great commissions under God, we can form but faint estimate. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.”
Now if all these supreme results and fruits await man's striving to enter the strait gate, what height of folly, what summit of unthinking is it, to make no effort to enter therein? And what depth of apathy, of unconcern, of self-robbery is it, to accept in their stead the deluding, fleeting, cheating things of earth, and especially as a sufficient reward for the unceasing struggle the multitudes are putting forth. CHANGE—to striving for the strait.
