A week ago I got to experience something incredible. My best friend here in Nepal gave birth to his second son. He was a healthy 3.5 kilos and spends most of his days wrapped in a pink hello kitty blanket. I immediately fell in love with his son as he is a gift from the Creator that perfectly knit him together. While I was over flowing with affection for this beautiful child, I was also failing to a heavy weight.
I am often asked how God could send someone that has never heard to hell. I am not going to get into a full explanation of this truth, but I will speak to part of the answer. I believe the Bible teaches about the sins of the father and this can help us to understand lostness as related to those that have never heard. I believe in the great flood and I believe that all life minus those on the ark was destroyed during the flood. I also think it is very evident that from scripture that those on the boat knew of the One True God. They worshiped Him, but something went wrong. Somewhere along way a generation decided that they no longer worshipped the God. They started to worship the created instead of the Creator. The generations that followed were taught to worship the created and before long the truth was lost to many. I know this is not a complete explanation of this idea but it is the fact I want to talk about now.
My friend, Gopal, is a child of his culture. He worships idols as the generations that preceded him have, but what if he chose different. A story that I have heard more than once from a pulpit is the story of Jonathan Edwards’s family. He was a man fully devoted to God and from him a came generations of God fearing men and women that did great things. Edwards choose to stay committed to the Savior and because of that generations of people have found favor when standing before God. There is no way this side of heaven to see the effect the Edwards decision to raise a generation of believers has had, but sadly there is a large gauge of the decision someone made to turn from the One True God to idols. My friend, Gopal, is part of this decision. This does not clear Gopal’s debt, but we can all see how much harder it is for him to call on the Savior. He stand accountable for his sin, but when other are taught to turn to Jesus for the answer he was taught to kill a goat for forgiveness. This lie is now being passed down to his children as they are taught to bow before made man idols and taught little of the Christ.
I desire more than anything for Gopal and his family to know the One True God, but this post is about something else. We are all faced with many decisions that will effect the eternity of those around us. This includes the eternity of our children and grand children as well. Are you starting a legacy of Godly men and women that will raise their children in fear and trembling of the King. I heard David Platt say one time that there is not a single decision that you make that does not have eternal consequences on your children. Wow!!! A man made a bad decision that has lead billions to hell, including all of Gopal’s ancestors. Raise a family that makes it there aim to make the name of the Lord Savior Jesus great. There would be nothing of any greater consequence that you could achieve on this temporary home. Do not stand before the Redeemer with the blood of future generations on your hands and pray that Gopal would chose to raise a generation that fear the Lord God Almighty.
