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{The Application
Application for the Ungodly
Principles to Be Deep in Your Hearts
Your Choice in This World Determines Your Eternal Destiny}
Your choosing or refusing Christ and His holy ways is what determines your eternal state. Choose Christ and you make Heaven sure to you. Refuse Christ here and you will be rejected by Him forever.
God offers you this choice: either the narrow and difficult way, with a life of blessedness at the end of the way, or the broad way, with the death and destruction to which it leads. Choose Christ with His yoke, cross, and eternal crown, or choose the devil with his gold mines, [earthly] paradise, and eternal prison. All the parts of both of these offers are linked together. Choose the devil’s gold mines and paradise and you must have his prison, too. Take Christ’s yoke and cross and you will have His crown. You cannot take the devil’s paradise and Christ’s crown. If you will have the devil’s pleasure, you must have his prison. You cannot obtain life without choosing the difficult way that leads to it.
Here is the choice, sinners, that God puts you to; it is the business of life in this world to choose for eternity. And that which is the business of this life is the business of this hour. This very little piece of your time and the choice you make now may be what will make a final determination of your eternal state. If you make an evil choice now, you may never have a minute of time to choose again—forever.218 Oh, if your hearts were sensible of this: that there is so much depending upon every hour of your lives, either life or death, either Heaven or Hell, for eternity. Surely you could only reason with yourselves: Is it a time for me to stand idle all day? Is it a time for me to be laughing or sporting or to be drudging and scraping for the muck of the earth? Is it a time for me to stand trifling with Christ and the Gospel, making so many delays and excuses? “The terms are too high. The way is too difficult. The yoke is too heavy. This or that I cannot part with. I cannot bring my heart to agree to it.” This is the business that is now under debate: What must be my everlasting state? In which of the two regions of eternity will my lot fall? Shall I be a saint or a devil, a vessel of honor or a vessel of wrath? Will my dwelling be in everlasting blessedness or everlasting burning? Which way do the scales turn now, either for Christ or the world? Do they turn for everlasting? Sure, if matters stand thus, I must be serious and consider what I do. This is the first direction; get these three principles fixed in your hearts: Eternal things are more substantial than temporal things; things not seen are as infallibly real as the things that are seen; upon your present choice depends your eternal destiny. Choose Christ and His ways and you are blessed forever; refuse and you are undone forever. And then make your choice.
218Sinners: This is true not only because God gives each of us our heartbeats one at a time and we do not know the span of our lives, but also because, when sinners reject the Gospel, God often justly leaves them to harden their hearts against it and eternal life for the rest of their lives.
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