Great passages from the Bible (part 3)

Today we continue looking at some noteworthy Bible passages.  These verses include some of the most frightening things that God says to us in Holy Scripture.

We are given a serious warning in Isaiah 59 verse 2: Your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.  God is everywhere and sees everything.  He knows your thoughts and how you feel, 24/7.  But your sinfulness puts Him off.  God created you to love Him, but look at your life honestly.  How often do you thank Him for giving you food to eat and a place to live, work to do and people who love you?  Do you value God as the most important person in your life, or do you treat Him like a vending machine, only praying when you want something from Him?  How often do you forget that He is watching and break His rules to get what you want?  Every day each of us makes God angry, and our sins make Him tune us out until we repent.  It is only thanks to Jesus that we can be forgiven and reinstated into God’s good graces.

Also frightening are these words from Jesus, preserved in Matthew 12 verse 32: anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.  To be forgiven, we need to believe in Jesus—that He is God’s Son, that He died to forgive our sins, and that He rose from the dead to bring us into heaven.  Faith in Christ is essential, and the Spirit of God gives us that faith.  But some people reject the Spirit and the gift that He offers.  They deny that God exists, that they need supernatural help to live a happy and worthwhile life.  They treat Christianity with scorn, making jokes at God’s expense and urging laws that limit religious expression.  When someone slams the door on the Holy Spirit’s work, that person is eliminating any possibility of being forgiven.  If you push away the Spirit that offers faith in Jesus, you’ll never be in a position to receive God’s mercy, since it is only available through Christ the Savior.

But the scariest words in the Bible come from the lips of God’s Son in Matthew 25 verse 41: Then he will say to those on his left, `Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.  On the day when Christ returns, all the dead will rise to meet Him.  All the people that have ever lived will be gathered for an evaluation—will they be allowed to live with God in peace and happiness, or will they be cast out into the darkness that is filled with never-ending screams of torment?  Those who ended life as a friend of Jesus have nothing to fear; those who thought they didn’t need Christ in their lives, well, they’ll spend eternity regretting that terrible mistake.