
Originally Posted by
jouho
Without God, man’s destiny is death. The man without God is spiritually dead; when his physical life is over, he faces continued death—eternal separation from God. In Jesus’ narrative of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31), the rich man lives a sumptuous life of ease without a thought of God, while Lazarus suffers through his life but knows God. It is after their deaths that both men truly comprehend the gravity of the choices they made in life. The rich man “lift up his eyes,” being in hell’s torments. He realized, too late, that there is more to life than meets the eye. Meanwhile, Lazarus is comforted in paradise. For both men, the short duration of their earthly existence paled in comparison to the permanent state of their souls.
Man is a unique creation. God has set a sense of eternity in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11), and that sense of timeless destiny can only find its fulfillment in God Himself.