When people die, everything comes to an end. However, due to the sins committed while in the body, the soul cannot help suffering horrendously in Hell forever. Therefore, one of the most spiritually wicked and cruel behaviors is to prevent someone from believing in Jesus and to wreck a believer’s faith by persecuting them.
But, in the eyes of the people of the world, this does not seem at all wicked. Such people don’t think it a bad thing when parents tell their offspring, “Do not believe in Jesus. If you keep believing in Him, we will cut off the father-son relationship”. From the spiritual viewpoint, however, this means that they are condemning the souls of their offspring to Hell. What wicked and cruel behavior this is.
It is just as bad to look on souls who do not know about Jesus and who are going to Hell and to do nothing. If you know that someone is going to Hell and you allow them to enter into intolerable, eternal pain in Hell by not telling them the Gospel – what could be more evil or more cruel?
In Luke 10, we find the story of a man who met robbers in Jericho. A high priest and a Levite heartlessly left him lying and groaning by the side of the road. These men should have taken and saved him, according to Leviticus 19:18: ‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord’. But they ran away, how wicked such behavior is.
Similarly, it is really evil behavior to ignore people who don’t know about Jesus and are going to Hell. It is insane just to look at someone who is drowning and not even try to rescue them, if it is in your power. If we think about this spiritually, it is even more evil to look at people going to Hell and leave them to do so.
We must not become evil people who never have anything to do with the work of saving souls. We must become people who save others through Jesus. We must be people who, at the end of our lives of faith, are told by God, “Good and faithful servant”.
/ Pastor Seok-Jeon Yoon
Extracted from Yonsei Newspaper #559 (January 06, 2018)
