To think little or not at all about the centerpiece of history, is to guarantee that you will have no place in heaven. It is not enough to merely be religious by going to church on holidays or even every Sunday, or doing a few other well-meaning duties. It is not religion that makes you acceptable to God. You must be “accepted in the Beloved,” that is, in Christ’s merits alone. (Eph. 1: 6) Only trusting in Christ, resting your confidence in the one who lived, died, and was raised again, can assure you of heaven.

When wars have ceased, international leaders have become dust and the poverty of their souls is revealed; when enterprises crumble and the last dream has evaporated; when death has claimed the final person, and those alive are changed for their eternal future; when everything earthly and mundane is over, and each person resides within the eternal Kingdom of God or outside in eternal judgment —what will be important? And what among all that is important will be the most important?

This is a question worth thinking about, because finding out what is important in the end will, or at least should, tell you what is important now. That which is important for eternity, that is, for billions of years and more, is surely the most important thing to God for this brief wisp of time called human history. And it should be even more important for you, since you live here for only a small fraction of that wisp.

What if, in your hurry and your worry about so many little things, you actually missed the most important thing?

That which is most important for all time, as is well known only to some, is Jesus Christ. I mean, not just Jesus Christ as a being, but Jesus Christ in the light of what he has done—his life, death, and resurrection. It is a huge gamble to dismiss the one who is the center of everything. There is, in fact, no hope for such a person.

You know what it means to forget the most important element of some concoction—like the sugar in sugar cookies, or the coffee in your coffee and cream, or the lens in your glasses, or the warhead on your nuclear weapon. But some of you have forgotten Christ, and his death and resurrection, as if he were not essential to life and eternity. He is, rather, everything related to life and eternity. This is why I say there is no hope for such an omission.

Christ’s perfect life, his sacrificial and substitutionary death, and his victorious authenticating resurrection provide the foundation of all hope.

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