SELF-SUFFICIENCY;
JUDGMENT OF GOD: FUTURE; PRIDE: SPIRITUAL

A Muslim falls down on the ground five times a day in reverence to God in heaven—and a lot of people laugh at him. The Hindu measures himself painfully on the way to the Ganges River to bathe himself—and a lot of people comment, “How foolish can you get?”

But I would rather be a Muslim or a Hindu or a primitive tribesman living in a hut in Africa, kneeling before bones and feathers and mumbling some kind of homemade prayer, than to come into judgment as a self-sufficient American businessman who ruled God out of his life and out of his business and out of his home.

Many an unthinking, secular-minded American would reply: “I’m willing to take my chances!”

What foolish talk from a mortal man!

Men do not have the luxury of taking their chances—either they are saved or they are lost. Surely this is the great curse that lies upon mankind today—men are so wrapped up in their own godless world that they refuse the Light that shines, the Voice that speaks, and the Presence that pervades.… The Spirit of God tries to speak to this modern man of the great curse that lies upon his heart and life—he has become so absorbed with money and bank accounts and profit and loss and markets and loans and interest that any thought of God and salvation and eternity has been crowded out. There are dollar signs before his eyes and he would rather close another deal and make a neat profit than to make his way into the kingdom of God.

Psalm 14:1–3; Mark 8:36–37; John 1:10; John 3:19–21

Who Put Jesus on the Cross?, 112, 113.