Believe and Live

What will the glory of faith be then? What will the punishment of faithlessness be? When the day of judgment comes, what joy for those who believed, what grief for those who did not — that here they were unwilling to believe, and now they cannot go back and believe. A Gehenna that never stops burning will burn up the condemned, a punishment that devours them with living flame; and there will be nothing anywhere, at any time, that can give their torments a pause or an end. Souls will be kept for suffering together with their bodies, in tortures without limit. [a]

So the man who watched us here for a little while will himself be watched by us forever, and the short pleasure those cruel eyes took in the persecutions they staged against us will be paid back with a show that never ends. This is what the holy Scripture says, and what it says is true: “Their worm will not die, and their fire will not be put out; and they will be a sight for all flesh to see.” And again: “Then the righteous will stand with great confidence before the faces of those who afflicted them and took away what they had worked for. When they see it they will be shaken with a horrible fear, and they will be amazed that these were saved so suddenly, when nobody expected it. Repenting and groaning in anguish of spirit, they will say among themselves, ‘These are the people we used to laugh at and make into a byword of reproach. Fools that we were, we counted their life madness and their end dishonorable. How is it that they are numbered among the children of God, and their share is among the holy ones? So it was we who wandered off the road of truth. The light of righteousness never shone on us, and the sun never rose on us. We wore ourselves out on the road of wickedness and ruin; we tramped through deserts where there was no road at all; but the way of the Lord we never knew. What good did our pride do us? What has all our boasting about riches brought us? Every one of those things has gone by like a shadow.’”

Then the pain of the punishment will come without the fruit of repentance. Weeping will be useless, and prayer will get nothing. Too late they will believe in eternal punishment, who would not believe in eternal life.

So while you still can, see to your own safety and your own life. What we are offering you is the sound help of our judgment and our advice. We are not permitted to hate, and we please God more by giving back nothing in return for a wrong; so we urge you, while the power is still yours, while something of life is still left to you, to make amends to God, and to come up out of the pit of a dark superstition into the clear light of the true religion. [d]

We do not begrudge you your comforts, and we do not keep God’s gifts hidden from you. We pay back kindness for your hatred, and for the tortures and the penalties inflicted on us we point out to you the ways of salvation. Believe, and live. You who persecute us in time — be glad with us for eternity. Once you have gone over there, there is no room left for repentance and no way left to make amends. Here life is either lost or saved. Here eternal salvation is secured, by the worship of God and by the fruits of faith.

And let nobody be held back from coming to be saved, either by his sins or by his years. For anyone still left in this world, no repentance comes too late. The approach to God’s mercy stands open, and the way in is easy for those who look for the truth and take hold of it. Beg pardon for your sins even at the very end of your life, at the setting of time’s own sun; and call on God, who is the one and true God, confessing him and believing and acknowledging him. Pardon is granted to the man who confesses; the mercy that saves is given out of God’s own goodness to the man who believes; and a way through into immortality is opened even in the middle of death itself.

This is the grace Christ gives. This is the gift of his mercy that he hands us — defeating death in the trophy of the cross, buying the believer back at the price of his own blood, reconciling man to God the Father, bringing our mortal nature to life with a new birth from heaven. If it can be done, let us all follow him. Let us be entered on his roll, under his oath and his mark. He opens the way of life to us; he brings us back to paradise; he leads us on into the kingdom of heaven. Made God’s children by him, we will live with him forever; we will always be glad with him, restored by his own blood.

We Christians will be in glory together with Christ, blessed by God the Father, always rejoicing with pleasures that never stop, in the sight of God, always giving thanks to God. For a man who was once subject to death and has been made secure in the possession of immortality cannot be anything but glad and grateful, always.