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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Life After Death (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 58. Four Common Answers
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Four Common Answers
This is a question of chances. This talk will be a sober thoughtful study of chances. We say that every man should have a fair chance. That is ingrained in us.
The Britisher prides himself on his proverbial insistence on "fair play." And the American likes to think that that is one of his strongest traits, too. Underneath everything else, that is really the question here. Will every man have a "fair chance"? Will he get "fair play"?
That is to say, is God fair? Will he be fair with us when settling time comes? There've been some vigorous things said on the other side. Are these fair to God? God's good name has been slandered quite a bit. They say He will not give a man a fair chance. Are "they" right or wrong?
A chance is an opportunity. This is a question of opportunity. If you dig under that, it is really a question of a man's use of opportunity. Or rather, dig in just a bit deeper, it's a matter of keeping hold of our ability to use the opportunity.
For this touches directly one of the automatic laws of life. That is to say, what we don't use we lose. That is an inexorable law. What we can do, and don't do, by and by we lose the power to do. That "can" is lost. Failure to do steals away the power to do. If you refuse to use your eye, if you stay in the dark, by and by you can't use your eye. The seeing power is gone out of the eye. If you don't use any given set of muscles they go bad. You can't use them when you would.
The real question is this, will the man who has had full opportunity of making right choice here, and who has not used it, will he have an-other opportunity? Will the present opportunity be lengthened out beyond the grave? Or, digging deeper, if a man hasn't used his opportunity here, will his using power stick by him over there?
For, be it keenly marked, every man is master of his own destiny. He makes his own life. His present action controls his future. Every man is a prince in his own right. God said at the start, "have dominion" or mastery. Man is a master. He is masterful in his own action. He was made so. He is made so.
And so it can be said thoughtfully that life opportunity. I mean to say this, and say it as strongly as I can, this: the biggest single thing in life is that it is an opportunity. If a man is alive, he has opportunity, opportunity to pick and choose, to decline and refuse, to go up or down. The earth is peculiarly the place of opportunity. Life is an open door to every man. The earth is an open door to every one on it.
Is this the reason why there is such a terrific moral battle on here? Is this why the Evil One seems to be massing all his forces now and here? For it is clear enough that the earth is a battlefield, above all else, a tremendous moral battlefield. Every man's life is a battlefield. For the battle of earth is fought out and settled on the human battlefield of a man's life.
The black pencil mark is under that "another". Is there another chance? All life is a chance, as long as it may be, always long enough to use the opportunity it is. Is there another chance after this?
There are four common answers to this question. That fact of four shows how folks don't agree. Some say that one doesn't need another chance. No matter how we've used or not used our chance here, the thing goes only one way. We'll all pull through on the other side past any threatening dangers. And lately they have been adding, "We'll all pull through easily." Then there is an increasing number of those who say, quite positively, "Yes, there is another chance." Different groups gather here.
Strange to say, there are two separate "no" answers. And they come from two groups aggressively opposed to each other. Some say, "No, there's not another chance because if you haven't used your chance here, that's the end of you. You simply . cease to exist. There's no other chance for you, because there's no "you" left to have another chance. This teaching is called "conditional immortality." Immortality or continued existence is conditioned on one's relation to Christ, these teach.
The second "no" group puts the same general answer, but from a radically different angle. This is the old so-called orthodox group. In-stead, of another chance there is a ceaseless time of sleepless remorse over the unused chance. The tooth of pain never ceases cutting into your increasingly sensitive spirit, they say. The flame never burns out. It's a plain blunt "no," unadulterated, unmitigated, sometimes uttered in harsh forbidding tones.