REALISM;
DEATH: CERTAINTY OF; UNSAVED

I must charge it back upon the worldling, the unsaved man, that he is really the unrealistic person because he must spend his whole life pretending. If I were to invent a title to cover the genus homo, the human being, unsaved and out of Christ, I would have to call him “the great pretender.”

For instance, he must pretend all of his lifetime that he is not going to die. He must put on that act day after day, month after month. That is not realism—it is the fuzziest kind of fantasy in which humans can indulge.

What is it with us?—humans continually acting in a pretense that we are never going to die yet knowing all the time that we must and that we will!

But the Christian has become a realist.

He is already prepared for that next chapter. He has packed his suitcase and he is ready to go. In fact, you may see him somewhere sitting on his suitcase, with the pair of steel rails close by. He knows for a certainty that the train is on the way and that it is not going to pass him by. He is the realist and it is the other fellow who is the dreamer of deadly and fateful dreams.

Philippians 1:21–24; 2 Timothy 4:6–8; Hebrews 9:27

Echoes from Eden, 71.