Near the end of his life Paul wrote: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” (2 Timothy 4: 7) My sincere hope and prayer is that every one of us will be able to triumphantly point to Paul’s testimony at the end of our own spiritual journeys and say that we have fought the good fight and have finished the race and kept the faith.
Our happiness and joy will be overwhelming to be reunited with family and friends in Heaven and the new earth, and to sit at the banquet table together with our Lord and savior and creator Jesus.
We will also have the time and opportunity to develop close personal relationships with our guardian angels, members of the godhead, and with all the men and women of earth’s history who put their faith and trust in Jesus and God the Father. Ellen G. White taught that people are judged based on the “light” they receive; therefore, those who never knew Jesus but acted in accordance with the moral law, guided by their conscience and the voice of God in nature, could be saved. (Desire of Ages, p. 638) Even so, all of this is just the “tip of the iceberg”: “But as it is written: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”” (1 Corinthians 2: 9)
Paul’s testimony to the Corinthians also asks you and me today: Are you really fighting the good fight? Are you actually running this race to finish it? Are you honestly keeping the faith? Are you truly willing to let go of this dying planet and trust God to take you to a new eternal one? We are living in the very last moments of man’s history; every country across the globe is taking sides and arming themselves to the teeth for an existential war. Truth has traded places with lies; up is down and down is up. Only God’s angels are keeping a lid on the explosion of violence and destruction coming our way: “After these things I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, on the sea, or on any tree….till we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads”. (Revelation 7: 1 – 3)
Can we afford to be luke warm and complacent like Revelation’s Laodicean church any longer? (Revelation 3: 14 – 19) No!! It’s well past time for us to fight the good fight in truth. It’s well past time for us to finish the race spreading the gospel while we still can. It’s also past time for us to keep the faith with love in humility. When someone new walks through the front door of our church, visits a Sabbath School class, joins our main services, or eats at our potlucks, what do they see, hear, and sense? Jesus said: “Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me”. (Matthew 25: 40) Lord have mercy on us a little longer, and take us just the way we are, and guide us into a truly saving relationship with you today and forever. Amen