On the outskirts of the town where I live in the state of Washington there is an area of exclusive homes called Bell Hill. People like to own homes on Bell Hill to take advantage of the panoramic mountain and water views. On a clear day, depending on your vantage point, you can see most of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Vancouver Island, the San Juan Islands, snow-covered Mount Baker and the Cascade Range, as well as some of the mountains and valleys of the Olympic mountain range. The higher your vantage point, the better the views become. It does seem as though from the top of Bell Hill “on a clear day you can see forever.”
When I heard this phrase, “On a clear day you can see forever,” I thought, What an interesting figure of speech! It is what an English teacher would call hyperbole because it uses exaggeration to make a strong point. It also takes a word that describes length of time-“forever”-and instead uses it to describe a long distance. Now ask yourself a question: If you could see down the corridor of time a long way-even to that time known as “forever” what would you see? How would you see yourself? What do you see yourself doing?
“This is difficult,” you say. “Who can do such a thing with any certainty?” Looking into the future from the low elevation of man’s reasoning, one can’t see too far. But when a person stands on the high ground of God’s Word the future may be clearly seen.
From the pages of God’s inspired book you can learn that you will be in one of two eternal places. Either you will be “forever with the Lord,” in a body that is incorruptible and in a place called heaven where just to breathe the atmosphere is to know a fullness of joy. Those in this happy place will be there because they have trusted in the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Or you will be in the dark, horrid regions of hell. You will be there because sin and unbelief kept you from the greatest blessing God had for mankind. Instead of being in the Savior’s presence, you will be in hell with the devil and his minions who will be tormented forever for all the evil they caused.
Forever with the Lord, or forever a great distance apart from Him. Those who will be forever with the Lord will be at home in the most expensive real estate ever. The price for any soul to get to heaven is the “precious blood of Christ, as a lamb without blemish and without spot.” All the gold and silver in the world is nothing when compared to the price that was paid at Calvary. And heaven is real estate. There is nothing unreal about it. Those who will be there will have real glorified bodies, they will know real joys that never fade, and they will have a real home where they shall see the Savior face to face—the most wonderful sight ever.
Hell is just the opposite of all this. Where heaven is full of joy, hell is full of sorrow. Where heaven is full of wonderful light, hell will be in “the blackness of darkness forever.” It is the cheapest real estate ever. It will cost people nothing to get there; it will take no effort to enter. What do you have to do to end up in hell? Not a thing; just go on living in indifference to the claims of the Savior. It is a cheap but awful place, because its sorrows, miseries and regrets are real and they will last forever.
Many people today live their lives without a care for the One who loved them so much that He went to the cross to die for them. They excuse their spiritual indifference by believing that it is impossible to know anything that is spiritual with any certainty.
As sure as God has made you with two hands, two feet and a heart and mind, He has also made you a spiritual being with the capability to know spiritual truths. He wants you to know and understand Him. He wants you to feel a deep need of Him. He wants you to look down the corridor of time and see what the future holds for believers as well as the lost. And best of all, He wants you to come to the Lord Jesus Christ as the only Savior of sinners, so that you might receive the forgiveness of sins and the assurance that you will spend eternity with Him in heaven.
Oh, that you might see clearly what the future holds in store for you, and that you might look to the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation. “Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else” (Isa. 45:2222Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else. (Isaiah 45:22)).