Carbon monoxide. CO. Invisible, odorless, tasteless. Silent but deadly gas; a high enough concentration in the air can kill within 30 minutes. The unsuspecting victims simply go to sleep and do not waken.
To combat the danger, there are detectors similar to smoke detectors that will sound an alarm when the carbon monoxide reaches a dangerous level. One detector did go off-repeatedly. How irritating! The homeowner could find no problem; everything seemed perfectly normal around the house, and at last he turned off that “malfunctioning detector” before he went off to work an all-night shift.
It wasn’t malfunctioning. The warning was stopped, but the home was silently filling with the deadly gas. What horror met the head of the little household when he came home from work in the morning! Six people-family members and guests-had slipped into a final sleep in the night, a sleep that could not be broken.
If only he had listened to the warning!
There is a deadlier enemy in the world. It is as silent as the deadly gas, but inexorable. Every man, woman and child alive today is susceptible-in fact, cannot escape. We are talking, of course, of time. It is passing steadily on, though we can neither see nor hear its presence.
Warnings aplenty there are. Another gray hair, a little ache in an unaccustomed muscle, and could that be a wrinkle? Then quick! To the hairdresser, the cosmetician, the fitness center. Silence those age detectors, and never, never think of the eventual result.
Continue this course for a lifetime-ignore every one of the little warnings-and when the end comes will you be too drugged to realize that you are slipping into a Christless eternity-that the “sleep of death” will give way to a terrible awakening when “in hell” you will lift up your eyes? There will be no further warning; it will be too late for help. You will be lost, and lost forever.
The six people in the gas-filled house could not be roused. They were totally, absolutely, finally gone. There was left only the one grieving survivor. His grief is dreadful to think of. And there is One who will grieve for you. Do you know who that will be? It will be God! Can you imagine that? God, who is “not willing that any should perish.” God, who was so anxious for you to be saved that “He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:1616For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)).
Unlike the poor man who disconnected the alarm, God has sent every possible warning to you-every possible appeal-every possible invitation. He has done all that can be done for your salvation. Can you refuse it? Can you reject that wonderful love and struggle along trying to ignore the warnings? It is a losing battle!