The Ultimate Choice

Soon as Jesus says in verse 12, "This is the law and the prophets." In other words, this sums it up. He says, "Now enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are a few who find it."

Lord, in these two verses you have narrowed down the paths of humanity into two. Although many of us would try to broaden them, or make them three, or hundreds, you've made them two. Lord, we hide behind your words and your revelation. I pray that today, all of us Christian, as well as non-Christian who might be listening right now, would be confronted with the fact that the Gospel is indeed selective and very narrow. And I pray, Lord, that we will see the same way. Challenge us today, Lord, by these truths, and cause us to be entering into the narrow gate. In Jesus' name, amen.

Seems pretty obvious from the context that Jesus has pretty much finished the Sermon on the Mount. It's over with, as far as the body of teaching is concerned, and now He moves into an appeal, something that He has been moving toward the entire Sermon on the Mount. He brings people down to a choice. Either you will enter the kingdom and be saved, or you will refuse to enter the kingdom and be eternally lost. And there are two gates, he says, that lead to two roads, that lead to two destinations, and they're traveled upon by one of two groups of people. It's a choice.

You have to admit, when you read the Gospels, that Jesus is absolutely honest. He pulls no punches, he doesn't hide things from people, he says things as they are. He doesn't just con people into making a choice, and they'll find out something different later on. When we are presented with something in such a way where the truth is couched or covered, we feel insulted.

Have you ever been asked by a person, a line like, "Hey, I have something very important to share with you. Means very much to me, would you come over to my house next Wednesday night?" Well, if it means that much, sure. Go over their house Wednesday night, you find three or four other couples. Totally unaware of what's going to take place. Then they go through the spiel, and you're still wondering, man, what is this important thing he has to tell me? About an hour later, all of a sudden it's Amway.

Now, I apologize if I have hurt some of you Amway distributors, but you know what it's like when they don't tell you upfront what they're doing. They just want to get you there, and then give you the spiel. Jesus gives you the spiel right away. He says it's a narrow gate, and it's a narrow road, and very few find it. And then there's a broad way that leads to everlasting destruction, total ruin and total loss, and many people enter in by it.

Now the theme of the Sermon on the Mount is what? It's the Kingdom of God, and He's been speaking about the kingdom every single verse. He begins by telling you the characteristics of the kingdom, and what kind of a person it is that enters the kingdom. And after going through the sermon, saying you've got to enter by being poor in spirit, and then God changes you to be into His image, and then you become salt, and you become light, and because you're so salty, you become persecuted. But then you rejoice.

And a kingdom person is not like the Scribes and the Pharisees who are hypocrites. A kingdom person is like this. After laying principle after principle down, Jesus, in effect, in these verses, lays it all out, and he says, now what are you going to do about it? Now the choice, the ultimate choice, is up to you. And there's no sense listening any further unless you want to make a choice here and now to enter the kingdom, or not.

Now life is made up of choices. You're confronted with choices, some trivial and some significant, all of your life. You never make it through a day without making some sort of choice, and I found sort of an interesting story about a man named Fred, who inherited $10 million. He was confronted with choices. But the will provided that he had to accept it either in Chile, or Brazil. He chose Brazil. Unhappily, it turned out that in Chile, he would have received his inheritance in land, on which uranium, gold, and silver had just been discovered.

Once in Brazil, he had to choose between receiving his inheritance and coffee or nuts. He chose nuts. Too bad. The bottom fell out of the nut market, and the coffee went up to $1.30 a pound, wholesale, unroasted. Poor Fred lost everything he had to his name. He went out and he sold his solid gold watch for the money he needed to fly home. It seemed that he had enough for a ticket either to New York or Boston.

He chose Boston. When the plane for New York taxied up, he noticed that it was a brand new super-747 jet with red carpets, and chic people, and wing-popping hostesses. The plane for Boston then arrived, it was a 1928 Ford Tri-Motor with Swayback, and it took a full day to get it off the ground. It was filled with crying children and tethered goats.

Over the Andes, one of the engines fell off. Our man Fred made his way up to the captain, and he said, I'm a jinx on this plane, man. Let me out if you want to save your lives, give me a parachute. The pilot agreed, and said, on this plane anybody who bails out must wear two chutes. So Fred jumped out of the plane. As he fell dizzily through the air, he tried to make up his mind which ripcord to pull.

Finally, he chose the one on the left. It was rusty, and the wire pulled loose. So he pulled the other handle, the chute opened, but the shroudline snapped. In desperation, the poor fellow cried out, St. Francis save me! A great hand from Heaven reached down, seized the poor fellow by the wrist, and let him dangle in midair, and then a gentle but inquisitive voice asked, St. Francis Xavier, or St. Francis of Assisi?

A lot of the choices that we make during the day are as humorous as that. Some of them are very trivial, and we laugh at them. But there are choices that are significant and life-changing, and this choice in these verses, this choice is the most crucial choice any human being must face. It is the choice to enter the Kingdom of God by accepting Jesus Christ, or by saying nah, and rejecting him, and going into everlasting destruction. If you haven't come to the significance of that choice, then you are what Paul said, "ever learning but never coming to the knowledge of the truth." That is the most significant choice-- the ultimate choice-- a man must make.

Now God has always allowed people to live with choices, but he always sets them out at the beginning, and he says, now, now that you know all these things, here's the choice. I seek to persuade you to take the right choice, but whatever choice you end up with, you must live with it. And so God said in Deuteronomy, to the children of Israel, "See, today I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life." He persuaded them, he was pleading with them. But the choice was ultimately theirs.

In verse 13, Jesus gives a command. "Enter by the narrow gate." Now the imagery to a Jew was something they could understand. A gate was always an access to a road. Every city in those days was surrounded with walls, and the gate was an entrance that either led into the city or out of the city. And so the picture is a wall of a city, you want to walk out, and you have two gates to choose from. There's one that's constricted and small and narrow, and you can see just a few people going in one by one. You can see that the road is narrow out ahead of the gate, and over to the left is this broad, wide gate, and it's a wide road and packed full of people.

Now when Jesus said, enter the narrow gate, remember last week when we learned a little bit of the Greek construction about commands? This command is called an aorist imperative. Again, you don't need to remember that. It simply means you make a definite, once for all, committed decision to do something. It is a command that says, make an action, enter by the narrow gate. Sort of like the Nike commercial that we see on television now that says, just do it. That's what Jesus means when he says enter, just do it, make a decision to enter into the narrow gate.

He does not say ponder the gate, admire the gate, ooh, check out that gate, what a nice spiffy gate that is. Don't contemplate the gate, enter it. Now that's important, because a lot of people read the Sermon on the Mount, people even like Mahatma Gandhi, who admire it and think, wow, what a wonderful set of teachings to be admired is this Sermon on the Mount, but they never follow it. Or they look at Jesus' life and they think, I respect Jesus, fine, upright, moral teacher, a good thinker, a nice guy. But they never receive him. Jesus says, don't ponder the gate, enter the gate.

Folks, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not a college class called The Bible as Literature, or Comparative Religion, or Philosophy 101A, where you compare the philosophy of Jesus with the philosophy of Karl Marx or Bertrand Russell, and then you sit back and you go, hmm, I can't decide which one do I like best, what is the best philosophy that I agree with?

Jesus says enter. Make a choice on which one you're going to follow. And you know when Jesus confronted people, he confronted them that exact same way. Remember when he went up to his disciples and Galilee, he was walking down the road, and he saw Matthew? He didn't walk up to Matthew and say, Matthew, contemplate me, admire me, Matthew. He said, follow me, believe in me. Aorist imperative, make a definite choice to follow after me. Enter through the narrow gate.

When I used to go out witnessing, I learned something. I would go out in the streets or out on the pier in Huntington Beach, and I pass out tracks. Now, most people want you to be able to give them something, and they find out it has to do with Jesus and they go, OK thanks. Stuff it in their pocket and they want to walk away.

And I would politely walk up to a person and say, excuse me, could I have you read this? They say, yeah, OK thanks. They put it in their pocket and decide to walk away, I'd say, no, excuse me, if you have just a moment of your time, could you read it right here? It'll only take about 50 seconds. Just read it and tell me what you think about it, that's all. Well, OK. They'd open it up, and they start flipping through the pages, be confronted with the Gospel. And they close it up.

And I'd say, now, what do you think about that? Well, it's nice. Well what's so nice about it? What do you feel about it? Is it the truth? Well, it could be the truth. Well is it the truth in your life? Well, no. And I was trying to get them to think, to bring them to a place where they would think about the choice, and then make a choice, because they have already made one whether they know it or not. To be undecided is to be decided against Christ, Jesus said that. Either you're for Me or you're against Me. Either you are with Me or you are scattering. Jesus always presented the Gospel in a way so that people would make a choice.

Now, we need, folks, to ask ourselves. Everyone sitting in this room, have I entered the narrow gate? Have I made a conscious definite choice to walk through that narrow gate Jesus is speaking about? None of this stuff, well, I've always been a Christian, I've always been raised to believe in Jesus. You see, going through the gate is a definite active choice. You don't just somehow float through the gate. You enter it by an act of will. You don't just all of a sudden wake up having entered the gate and go, wow, I went through the gate, boy, this Christian upbringing really paid off, because, here I am, I just floated right through it. It is a definite active choice where you decide consciously to enter it.

I love the book, it's called Knowing God by J. I. Packer. And in his forward, he has a beautiful illustration about two types of people, when it comes to spiritual things. And the illustration he uses is that of a road that travels out into the country, and a large Spanish house with a balcony on it. And there's the walkers, and there's the balconeers. And the walkers get out on the road and start trudging, and they know what it's like to walk on the road. The balconeers. They're also concerned about the road, and they talk about the road and where the road might lead, they philosophize about the road, they even talk to the people walking on the road about the road.

But they're still balconeers. They're onlookers. They don't get out of their balconies and walk down the road. And so they'll sit and write theology and philosophy books about sin and the existence of evil, but they never walked the road. And there are many people who talk about Jesus and about Christianity and about church, and they study bibles, but they're onlookers. The Gospel is a walk for people who will get off the balcony and walk down the road. Enter through the narrow gate, don't sit and talk about it, contemplate it, or admire it, but walk it.

I found out this week that years ago, there was a time when Christians thought that it was good after contemplating the Gospel. The claims of Jesus, once they wanted to commit themselves to Jesus, that they would actually get down with a pen and paper, and write out a contract, a covenant. They think, well, it sounds too legalistic. Well you do it with your house, don't you? I will pay x amount of dollars first of the month, after 10 days I'll pay a penalty, I promise-- for 30 years, I'll do that.

And these Christians would sit down and say, I am giving Jesus Christ absolute ownership of my life, and they'd sign their name to it, and they'd have the document in their house. Now there's a lot to be said for a practice like that. Because many of us suffer from just "we'll just contemplate, and think about, and admire" instead of saying, I will definitely commit myself to that narrow way, commit myself to Jesus Christ.

Couple other things before we move on. The Christian life is narrow at the beginning. It's narrow at the beginning, and it stays that way. It's not wide and all encompassing at the beginning, and then it narrows out once you find out as you walk down the road, it's narrow right at the very beginning, it's a narrow gate. Now that's important when it comes to evangelism, because we would get the impression by listening to some who present the Gospel that indeed, the gate is wide at the beginning and that there's really not much difference between a Christian and a non-Christian.

And after all, you should never think that Christianity is so narrow. You see, we want to attract people like Hollywood would attract them, oh come on man, Christianity, it's cool! There's pizzazz to it! Let's hang lights around it, two for one special sale signs. It's become the Gospel of the hot sale, the irresistible deal, I've got a deal for you, you can't pass it up. Just accept Jesus. You see that's, backwards already. Jesus accepts us. We have placed man at the center of the Gospel and people think they're doing God a real favor by accepting Jesus. And we make it seem like the gate is so wide, and just, you know, just do it. I'll tell you, that was my problem when I first became a Christian, I knew absolutely nothing.

All I knew is that I just accept Jesus, all I gotta do is raise my hand and accept Jesus, and then go about living how I want to live. And I almost hate to confess this, but I came home to my brother who was 2 and 1/2 years older than I am. I said, Bob, you got to accept Jesus, and he said, aw man. I said, no, you can live the way you want to live, you can still take all the drugs you want to take, it's what I believed.

Just accept Jesus! It's so easy, it's so broad, it's so wide! Live any way you want to, just say this prayer. Took about a day before God got through my heart and told me that there was a thing called repentance, that I had to turn from the old and go through a narrow gate, and give my life lock, stock, and barrel, no strings attached, over to Jesus Christ.

You know, Jesus was always too honest to tell people, oh hey, it's so easy. He always told them to count the cost, before going through it. He was too honest to have soldiers in his army there under false pretenses. Now because it is a narrow gate, folks, that involves a break. It involves a choice. It means that you have to make a break with the rest of the crowd. Because you see the crowds going through that broad gate, it's a lot easier to get through. The narrow gate is this one at a time, narrow turnstile. And so to make a choice for Jesus involves a break. It involves a decision that is different from everybody else.

Now, this is where it's tough for some of you contemplating Christianity, because the world is going through this wide gate, and there's this narrow little gate, and one thing we hate, and that's to be different. We don't like to be unusual. We want to fit in. If that's the style of clothing, we'll wear it. If that's how people wear their hair we'll wear it. If that's how people are talking, we'll do it. We want to fit in, we hate to stand out and be different or unusual. Now there are exceptions to that rule, some people love to be eccentric and different.

But for the most part, most of us want to fit in with everybody else. To be a Christian is to be unusual. It's to make a different choice from the rest of humanity. You make a break. And the rest of the world's saying, come on man, don't go through that gate, only geeks go through that gate, only people who really have nothing left in life go through that narrow gate. This is the gate, man. This is where all the buddies are. All the fun is, all your friends are. Go through that gate, you'll be alone. Go through this gate, you'll have a blast. So to accept Jesus Christ and go through a narrow gate, involves a break.

And it also means that because it is narrow and constricted, that you can't bring a lot of baggage with you. Christians, you can't bring a lot of the world with you, you can't bring it with you at all. See, that's the difficult part. It's one thing to leave the crowd behind. It's another thing to leave the ways of the crowd behind. Like the old saying goes, you can take the Christian out of the world, but it's a little tougher to take the world out of the Christian.

Many people want to go through that gate and say, great, I've made it, now God, I've got a lot of stuff I want to hang on to. I want to hang on to my party, and then my habits, and my peculiarities, and this is my part of the world that I want to carry with me all the way to Heaven, and hands off of it God.

God says, no deal. I want you to come through that narrow gate and I want all of your life. You don't hang on to anything else Charles Spurgeon used to say so beautifully that you and your sin must separate, or you and your God can never come together. It's a narrow gate, and what's so beautiful is Jesus gives you the scoop right up front. It's narrow. It's constricted. Can't take a lot of baggage, it involves a break. Go on through.

Now look at verse 14, He talks about the road that that gate leads to. Says, "Because narrow is the gate, and difficult is the way that leads to life, and there are a few who find it." Difficult. That narrow gate leads to a difficult way. Now, some translations read differently. Some just say narrow. The Greek word for difficult is a word called stenos. It means, literally in its root, to groan from being under pressure. It's where we get the word stenography, which means to compress or abbreviate sentences or letters. And so He talks about a narrow, constricted road. A stenos. It starts out narrow, and it never broadens.

If you think, well, it was tough for me to become a Christian, I have given up so much, but it'll get better, it'll get easier as I go along, it'll be a breeze. I mean that's what all the other Christians are telling me. Well then you see an unbiblical view of the Christian life. Yes, it's abundant life, it is life and fellowship with God, you have satisfaction, meaning, it's wonderful. But it doesn't start out narrow and then broaden. It stays narrow all the way from the time you accept Jesus Christ to the time you enter Heaven.

You know what? It's too wonderful to be an easy life. And if you ever thought about it that nothing really good that's really worthwhile comes easy. Difficult is the way, Christian. The Christian life is too wonderful, too magnificent, to be so easy. Living like Jesus is not easy. Being changed into His image and glory, to be like Him isn't a snap. And you know what? It is really only the wimp that desires the totally easy road. No hardships, man. Look how flabby the person gets, who never exercises, who decides just to take life totally and completely at ease. Never wants any difficulty. Look at the character of that person, how flabby and how shallow.

And you know what, I am convinced that people really want challenges. I read of a communist leader who is asked, when he was over in Eastern Europe, parts of the Soviet Union, why communism spread so effectively. He said this, we don't just invite people to do things. In the Communist Party we challenge them with a formidable task that will take every part of their fiber. It would take laying their life completely down for this thing to work, says that's why we're successful because we challenge people like that.

And Jesus right at the beginning said it's a narrow gate and it's a difficult, or constricted, or narrow way, and you know that's true. The flesh wars against the spirit, the spirit wars against the flesh, they're contrary to one another, Paul said, so that you cannot do the things that you'd want to. It's narrow, but Jesus is entered through it. That's why, by the way, when you get accused of having a narrow mind, it's a compliment.

You Christians are so narrow minded. You're right. In fact, you're a little bit off, we're close minded. Because before we knew the truth, we were open, well whatever, you know it is open to the truth, we just want to find whatever's happening. But when we accepted Jesus, He came and closed our mind. When you know the truth, the truth will set you free. It is not an insult to be called narrow minded if you know that Jesus Christ is the truth, and you present him that way. It's a narrow gate, it's a narrow way, and your mind, if you're a Christian, should be settled on that issue.

However Jesus talks about, verse 13, "broad." It is spacious. Lot of room, broad is the way that leads to destruction. It's an eight-lane freeway, that way. It's easy going, there's few rules, there's few restrictions, you don't have to really be spiritually mature, you don't have to sacrifice anything, you can just float along with everybody else. That's the easiest thing in the world, to float downstream. As they say, any dead fish can float downstream. Doesn't take much strength to do that, it's easy to float along with everybody else. And it's broad.

Few restrictions, few road signs, few limitations. It can be like the Book of Judges on the broad way. Every man does what is right in his own eyes. And that's the watchword of the world, isn't it? Man is the measure of all things? I am who I am and I begin to build outwardly, and I decide what is right and what is wrong, nobody can impose a value system upon me, that's the broad road.

And look on that road, there's even very religious people on that road. Because you can be very religious on the broad road, and be accepted by that crowd. But you can't be a narrow Christian with absolutes on that road. Nah, they won't have you. That's why you've got to travel down the road where there's a few people on it. It's a narrow road.

I have a friend in Israel, some of you who've traveled with me know him. He's the guide we have every year. And David and I were taking a walk one time, and we discussing Christianity, Judaism and Islam. We were looking at the golden Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount. And he said, "You know, Skip, Judaism is broader in our thinking than is Christianity.

Because we believe, as Jews--" and he's an Orthodox Jew-- "we believe that Christians will be accepted by God in Heaven because Jesus introduced them to God the Father, Yahweh, the one and only true God of Israel. And so we believe the Christians will be accepted by God, because they believe in one God, they're monotheists." And he said, "You know, Muslims are abroad as well.

Although they have difficulty with us and difficulty with you as Christians sometimes, they believe in one true God, and there's a lot of accommodation on that road," but he said, "you know what, you guys are the only ones that are as narrow as you are. You guys are the exclusivists. They say it's only Jesus, no other way." Now when he said that, I thought, golly, I wish more Christians would realize that, as well as Jews and Muslims, yes it is narrow, yes it is very exclusive, don't try to broaden it.

You say you're being narrow, I'm just repeating what Jesus said, I'm standing behind his words I didn't make up the rules. He claimed to be the way, the truth, and life, He proved it by His death and resurrection, and His revelation. It's his ball game, it's his rules, it's his love that sets men free. It's a narrow road.

And then look at the-- well now you're thinking, you know, Skip you're not a good salesman. That is not a good sales pitch to talk people into accepting Jesus. You go out on the streets and say, excuse me, how would you like to enter the narrow, constricted, difficult way of Jesus Christ?

I mean, forget it. I've been thinking about it up to this point, but you've been telling me all this stuff, I'm not going to become a Christian now. Or some of you younger Christians saying, that's what I'm in for? I'm turning back. Before you contemplate that, keep in mind the destination. Oh, it's a broad road, but it leads to destruction, which is a Greek word that means total loss and ruin. And the other one leads to everlasting life. It's narrow, but it leads to everlasting life.

A wise man will always consider the end of the road that he's traveling upon. It is someone who is not smart, who will say, oh what a beautiful road, I don't care where it leads, it just looks nice. That's not wisdom. A wise person will ask, where does this road lead me?

I have some friends in the church who love to go whitewater rafting and canoeing every year up in the canyon, northern New Mexico. They're skilled at it, they love taking those rapids, but they have a map, they know where they're going to start, they know where they're going to end, and they know what it's like on the way.

Now I am sure that the whitewater rapids just above Niagara Falls are just as thrilling and just as exciting as some of the runs up here in northern New Mexico. And I bet if you got on a canoe or a whitewater raft and you're cruising past up from Niagara Falls, you go woo, this is great. But it's the end of the road that is so disturbing. And if you're wise, you won't just consider how fun it is, how attractive it is now, but you consider the end of it. And Jesus said that end leads to destruction.

Let me tell you something else. Yes, the Christian life, walk in the spirit is narrow, it's constricted in many ways, but at the same time it's abundant life, and something you must remember. It's a scripture out of the book of Romans where Paul says, "You know, I suppose that the sufferings of this present time aren't even worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in us."

Oh yeah, it's tough, but, the glory that is going to be revealed in us in the end is just too great. Two destinations, Jesus says. One leads to life, and one leads to destruction, not nirvana, not purgatory, not, well all roads lead to God, there's higher waves, and there's lower waves, there's good religions, and then there's better religions. No, there is one road that leads to life, Jesus said, then there's any other road that leads to destruction. And Jesus said, or God said in the Old Testament, there is a way that seems right into a man. But the end thereof are the ways of death.

Juan Carlos Ortiz, in his book, said, the Kingdom of Darkness is like a wrecked ship that is sinking fast. Listen to this, when the captain knows that his ship is lost, he goes to the passengers and he says, listen, those in second class can go to first class, you're free to do whatever you want. Anyone who wants to drink, help yourself to the bar, it's all free. If you want to play soccer in the dining room, go ahead. If you break the lamps, don't worry about it. And the passengers say, what a nice captain. We can do whatever we want to on this ship. But they'll all be dead in a few minutes.

You see, oh yeah, you can hang on to anything you want to, but you're lost in the end. The enemy will come along and say, hey let's broaden the road a little bit, you can do whatever you want to. Hey, I like serving the Devil, he's a nice guy, he gives me more freedom. I have a newspaper article of a kid in Los Angeles who said, I will serve the Devil instead of God, because the Devil is not restrictive and God is. But he doesn't know that his ship's about to crash. He's going to be lost in a short period of time.

When it comes to this whole idea of everlasting destruction, that's not a popular idea. In fact there's a Gallup Poll in Europe they took, and they found out that most Europeans believe in Heaven. Nice, huh? Few of the same Europeans believe in Hell. Well, Heaven and Hell do not exist by popular vote.

Because you don't like something, you can't vote it out of existence. We could say, you know what, I don't like the idea that birds can fly and we can't, I don't like this rule of gravity, and I'm going to take a vote and we're going to vote gravity out of existence. The moment you pass the bill, you will not start floating up into the air. Popular vote will not negate the law. Life and death spiritually exist, you cannot negate them by popular vote. Now look at the crowd on those roads. On one road, the broad road, there are many, on the narrow road, there are few. Few. Hey, I thought most people are going to be saved though.

Well, look down a few verses at verse 21. Jesus says, not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven. But he who does the will of my Father in Heaven, and many will say to me in that day Lord, Lord have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name? And I will declare to them, I never knew you depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.

We'd read a scripture last week that I would like to refer to again in Luke 13 let me read it to you. And listen to how closely the scripture we just read this morning in this scripture are. Verse 22 of Luke 13. "And He went through the cities and the villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem. And one said to him, 'Lord, are there few who are saved?'" And He didn't say, well, now the percentage ratio. Listen to his answer. He said, strive. Give it all you got. Not work your way to salvation, but just put yourself into it, make a decision. "Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, will seek to enter, and will not be able to."

Why is it that there are few who accept Jesus Christ? And why are there many who go through such a broad gate? Jesus said, many will seek to enter, and will not be able to. There are few on that road, not because there is limited space. But it's like this, anybody can follow the ordinary.

Anybody can do what everybody else is doing. It's the easiest thing in the world. But the moment you decide to be different from everybody else, the moment you decide to soar above the heights of mediocrity, and live a life totally dedicated to God, and abundant life of walking with him, you're not going to have a lot of people following suit. They just rather follow the crowd. Well, everybody can't be wrong, this is a nice road, just travel on that.

I came across an article that I would like to share with you. I've already shared it with those of you who come Thursday night about a month ago. It is a report by a cardiologist, who is an emergency room cardiologist who used to see a lot of people come in and out, and he used to not believe in Heaven, Hell, or anything spiritual, until some of these accounts. He said, I am thoroughly convinced that there is life after death. And that there are at least as many people going to Hell as Heaven, declared Dr. Maurice Rawlings, type cardiologist, who talked to his patients who died and been resuscitated.

Have you ever read those books about people who had near-death experiences? They died and they see bright lights, and everything's rosy and fine, they write books about them? People don't write books about what this guy's about to talk about. Dr. Rawlings, a fellow of the American College of Cardiology and Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga, told the magazine that until he began collecting accounts three years ago, he could find no support for the Biblical accounts of Heaven or Hell. But the incredible experiences and two vivid accounts of about 100 patients whose hearts had stopped dramatically, changed all that, and led Doctor Rawlings to write the book Beyond Death's Door.

He says, "about 50% of the revived persons told of having gone to a place of great darkness filled with grotesque moaning, writhing bodies, crying out to be rescued from this place with an overwhelming feeling of eerie and nightmarish terror," he said. He talked about the chilling reports, and he said that people typically don't write about these things because they're embarrassed, and also this stuff won't sell very well. Doctor Rawlings added that their doctors are embarrassed to make inquiries into such spiritual matters. Instead, we hear mostly of heavenly life after death experiences, but nobody can afford, he says, to ignore the reports of these patients. And he cautioned, saying, I am convinced that there is a Hell and that we must conduct ourselves in such a way as to avoid being sent there at all costs. That's the findings of a cardiologist who at one point didn't even believe in those things.

Summing it all up, Jesus said there's a narrow way and there's a broad way. Enter it, don't contemplate it, make a decision. Let's pray.

Our Heavenly Father, you have given us all that it takes to enter into the narrow gate. You pointed it out, you've described the life, you've even said the people who come to you would be changed, to enable them to walk that narrow road. It's a narrow road, Lord, but on it is abundant life. Lord, while we see many people, in our circles, and even in this country, come to know Jesus Christ, your people are still a minority. You always have a remnant. You're always drawing out a remnant. Father, this morning I pray that you will draw people from even our own crowd who have not yet entered.