The Brevity of Life - Online Literature

"Whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away." (James 4:14)

Life is short. It is uncertain. We have no guarantee that we will live to see tomorrow. What is our life? The bible says that our life is but “a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away” (James 4:14). Picture yourself on a cold day outside. If you take a deep breath and exhale you would see a small vapor appearing for a little while. Well that is how brief our life is.

TIME FLIES. The days, the weeks, the months and the years slip by with incredible speed, and are gone before we realize it. It seems as though they no more begin, than they are gone, passed into eternity. So, too, the happenings of the day soon recede into the distant past. Everything in this world is fleeting and transitory‑-nothing is stable and lasting. "We spend our years as a tale that is told" (Psa 90:9). Being busily engrossed with the occupations, labors and pursuits of life we are more or less insensible to the swiftness of passing time, of the solemn fact that life itself is fast getting away from us, and that the end of our earthly journey is speedily and surely approaching. Or, if we are conscious that our time is getting short, either we dismiss the thought or reckon that somehow or other all will be well in the end.

MY DEAR FRIEND, I want to say a word to you. You are on a journey, and every breath you draw, whether walking, sleeping, attending to your business, pleasure‑seeking, or whatever you may be about‑every breath you draw is but one step nearer the end of your journey--Eternity. Then let me ask you, with a real concern for your soul, where will you spend Eternity? Oh do not forget that eternity is before you! In the early morning, in the glowing noontide, in the calm evening, in the dark night, Eternity is before you! Oh, my dear friend, if you have never thought of this before, think of it now-‑Eternity! Eternity! Eternity!!

You and I may not know each other; possibly we shall never see one another. Yet, I desire to write a personal letter to you.

I write to you because you and I have more in common than you may realize. Though we may never meet each other in this world, we shall one day be in each other’s presence because we both possess a never-dying soul. With this soul both of us must appear before God, your and my Creator, in the great judgment day. “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Heb. 9:27).

Everything about us is passing away and coming to an end, and our life’s race is apt to end any moment of any day. We have no lease on life. It is a journey from the cradle to the grave, from time to eternity, and ere we are aware we shall have arrived at our final destination—heaven for the righteous and hell for the unsaved sinner. This is the clear teaching of the Bible, our only infallible source of information. We cannot, we dare not, fail to give this solemn subject our earnest and concentrated attention for none of us is more than a heart beat away from eternal weal or woe. If we had a clearer vision of the awe-inspiring matter it would banish much of our levity and irreverence, and cause us to realize our deep need of fleeing “from the wrath to come” (Matt. 3:7).

God speaks. Sometimes He whispers by the still small voice of the gospel to us in tender overtures of mercy through the preached Word. Sometimes He speaks through His Word with power, warning us to turn from our iniquity. And sometimes He thunders through His divine, providential judgments of famine, war, fire, or some other tragedy. On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, God spoke to us in thunder.

First, it will be my painful duty to dwell for a while upon death as the wages of sin; and then, more joyfully, we shall close our morning’s meditation by considering eternal life as the gift of God.

“And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.” (Luke 16:24).

OUR Saviour gives us the history of two men as no other person could. First He gives a brief account of their lives ON EARTH: one man is rich and enjoys the luxuries of the world; while the other is very poor and must beg for a miserable sustenance. Then our Lord tells of these two men AT DEATH: the rich man is buried, no doubt very elaborately, with many mourners in attendance; the beggar also died and was afforded no better funeral than the potter’s field could provide. To this point perhaps, any biographer could take us. However, the Saviour goes on to show us these two men IN ETERNITY! He was not compelled to stop where human writers must, because He could pull back that thin veil which separates this life from the next and unfold their eternal state.

O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment.

FRIEND, I am writing to you today because time is short. The day of grace is fast slipping away. The great day of judgment is drawing nearer every hour. The thread of life is slowly but surely winding up. The sands of time for each of us will soon run down to rise no more. You and I are traveling far faster than we think through time towards eternity. Only a few more fleeting days and every soul of us will have gone forever to his own place of heaven or hell. Therefore I meet you in faithfulness and solemnness today and ask you only one question: Are you a forgiven soul?

THIS message is written to every person young or old that thinks or believes he will be in heaven. Please consider the following carefully as it might make a difference to you for all eternity.