One more time!

[AI translation] This warning from the unknown writer of Hebrews was first uttered at a time when Christ's small church was threatened by a twofold peril: inwardly, coldness and alienation from the way of the Lord, and outwardly, increasing persecution from the Gentile world. This is the occasion for the writer of the letter, who is responsible for the church, to issue a deadly serious warning: beware, people, the situation is tragically serious, the end is at hand! God will once again shake not only the earth, but also the heavens. And this once again will be God's final act with this earth, with earthly history, the final, great judgment of God's consuming fire, in which the impermanent things pass away and only the invisible, eternal things remain. It is as if the words of Jesus ring back in this Word: He also spoke of heaven and earth passing away, but His words, His things, the things and people recreated by Him, will never pass away. He has also spoken of such a catastrophe occurring, that the sun will be darkened, the moon will not shine, the stars will fall from the sky and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. The apostle Peter also stated in his epistle, "But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, when the heavens will pass away with a crackling sound, and the elements will be burned up, and the earth and the things in it will be burned up." (2 Peter 3:10) - Today, these terrifying, fantastic statements of the Bible about the end are beginning to become a very real reality. In the atomic age, it is beginning to be scientifically conceivable that mankind will one dreadful day bring such a terrible doomsday upon itself that our entire planet will be scattered like a cloud of dust across the great universe, that the elements will be burned up and the earth and all things on it will be incinerated.I'm not saying it will, but imagine for a moment if it did! What would be left for us if it all ended at once? The music of Mozart, Bach's Missa Solemnis, the birdsong in the woods, the translucent glow of the spring sunshine, the intimate silence of home, the 'immortal' works of Arany, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, the power of love and money, the crying and giggling of children, would be gone forever. It would be the end of the sea and the land, of everything that was and is on earth, whether beautiful or ugly, good or bad. What would even be left after such a world catastrophe? What would be left but God, and nothing but that existence connected with God which can never pass away again once His grace has begun with someone. What else could remain but the names of those who are written in heaven, in eternity, in that one fiery, immovable eternity!
I know that this, as I have said, is fantasy, but let us try to see this problem in faith, in the light of God's revelation. Today, no one knows what mankind will do with nuclear energy, but we do know that the shadow of an eventuality, of an imaginable destruction and immeasurable suffering, looms large in the hearts of all thinking and feeling people. Out of this universal threat, the outlines of a certain satanic eschatology are already beginning to emerge, a horrific picture of a terrible end brought about by the merciless death ray. Some of the images of the future are similar to those of the Bible's apocalyptic vision of the end of time. But even if the images are similar, they do not say the same thing. The desperate doomsday theory of the atomic age is one thing, the Bible is another! The Bible says that God will shake once more not only the earth but also the heavens. It is God who will inflict the final suffering and misery on mankind, who will raise it up with his mighty hand, who will judge.
Here the question immediately arises: could God use the fearsome prospect of nuclear war to execute his final judgment on the world? And if so, can we still believe in God? Wouldn't our faith in him be shaken by this possibility? Would not our whole image of God be shattered? Yes, perhaps we would shatter the flat, inert, humanised image of God, the Enlightenment concept of God, the philosophical concept of God, the convenient God we have made for ourselves, the harmless God who is all goodness and forgiveness. But for this image of God, it is not a pity if it is shattered within us! For the God who once spoke there at the foot of Mount Sinai was so terrible that even Moses said, "I am afraid and tremble;" and the God who speaks in the New Testament through the blood of Jesus, who took the damnation of this world so seriously that he gave his love in the flesh for it, this God is a very different God. Behold, it is not the harsh, bland Old Testament, but the New Testament, which speaks of Jesus Christ, the Saviour, that says of Him, "Our God is a consuming fire!" A fire in which everything and everyone must one day be burned, must be consumed, what and whom He has not first cleansed with that holy, divine blood of redemption, the blood of salvation!
Yes, Jesus Himself, and after Him all the apostles, speak emphatically that the hour in which the fire of God's judgment will fall upon the world will be a time of terrible disaster! A terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God! Yes, that is what Biblical eschatology teaches. But it also teaches us that with God, judgment and wrath are never the final, the complete, the ultimate. Though His work of restoration continues through the end times, through the fires of severe judgments in the end times, His ultimate goal is not destruction, but re-creation, the re-creation of the world and of humanity. All the catastrophes of the end times, and all that precedes them as a shadow, are but a great and painful breakthrough into the new. A terrible labour, a cosmic birth-pain, the result of which will be what the apostle John saw before him when he spoke by the Spirit: "And behold, I have seen a new heaven and a new earth! The old things are passed away, all things are made new!"
It is against the backdrop of this imminent, threatening and yet promising future that the writer of Hebrews warns the Christian church, which is despondent and divided between external and internal troubles: "Men, take deadly seriously what God says!" It is as if he were warning you that something should not lead you astray from the way of salvation! Beware, do not despise him who speaks, for God does not play with his word! The writer of the letter recalls the poignant circumstances of the Old Testament giving of the law: how fearfully serious it was when God spoke to His people from Mount Sinai, amid thunder and flaming fire. And then the people were terrified, but later they did not take it seriously. They did not escape, but the whole generation that had listened to God's word in vain fell into the wilderness one by one. They never reached the land of Canaan. God gave this as a sign that His word, His word alone, is the only saving power, the power that transcends the passing of heaven and earth! And God is still speaking, still has His word to us, even more majestically, more movingly, more powerfully than then, there in the Sinai desert. Not on a tangible mountain, not in flaming fire, not in thundering lightning, but through Jesus.
God speaks to the world today, to us, in the blood of Jesus. Such a striking phrase here in the Bible, the blood of Jesus: speaking! The blood, the shed blood, is a deadly serious thing, it proclaims in itself that it is not a joke, it is not a trivial matter. The blood has a poignant speech. God speaks such a poignant, great, deadly serious word to mankind. The speech of blood is loud, it cries out! The blood of Abel also spoke, cried out, cried to heaven for vengeance! For justice. All innocent blood shed cries to heaven from the earth. The blood of Jesus too! He cries to heaven and speaks before God about me and you. This holy blood has a decisive voice where our destiny is controlled, where the supreme decisions are made. Christ intervenes in that decision. In that God pronounces judgment in view of the blood of Jesus. And do you know what that holy blood says about us? The Word says: better than the blood of Abel! It does not cry out for revenge, it does not accuse, it does not ask for punishment, but for mercy! He intercedes for us! He begs forgiveness. He cries out the same cry that he cried out so loudly on the cross: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" And he speaks so powerfully that God solemnly declares, "I will remember their sins no more." Instead of accusation and reproach, this holy blood blots out all our sins from God's memory. Behold, this is not the final death that God desires, but the very escape from it!
It is by this word of the blood of Jesus that God saves, saves, and cleanses from sin. It is by this word of the blood that he sanctifies us and sets us at his service, again and again. Whoever despises even this word of God is unsaved! I don't know, and no one knows, whether God will bring the end in the atomic age, but in any case, the frightening prospect of the atomic age is also a warning sign that one day the earth and the sky will pass away, and then there will be nothing left but God and those who have heard His word, the word of blood! Everything that scientists, politicians and journalists say and write about the effects of nuclear energy only serves to underline for us the warning of the Word: "Beware, do not despise him who speaks; for if those who despise him who is on earth have not been saved, much less we, if we turn away from him who is from heaven..." (Heb. 12:25) There are two great and serious warnings in this Word. One is to take salvation deadly seriously, because you can miss out! Esau is the example of one who squandered his inheritance, his blessing. It was his, but he didn't need it. He didn't need it when God gave it to him, he needed it later, but it was too late, someone else took its place, the wheel of predestination passed over him! Yes, salvation is free, but there is an appointed time to receive it. And the prize is only available for a certain period of time: those who do not apply before then lose their right to it.
I was talking to someone recently who told me of the temptations that incessantly draw him, tempt him, into paths not allowed. Finally he said: I'm getting older and older, and I'm always afraid of missing out on something, something good that could make my life happy! Behold, our Word today says the same thing. The original text can also be understood this way: let no one pass away from the grace of God, let no one miss out. There is a point beyond which repentance is futile, beyond which that holy blood no longer speaks of grace and forgiveness, but of irrevocable accusation and judgment! It is not a threat, but an entreaty, a re-offering of grace. Beware, therefore, lest anyone be cut off from the grace of God!
The other warning is: "Therefore, having obtained an immovable kingdom, let us be thankful, whereby we may serve in a manner pleasing to God with grace and fear." It is precisely in the nuclear age, at a time when souls are under the threatening shadow of destruction and suffering, that there is such a need for liberated souls who will show something of God's compassionate love for the whole world, who will show something of Christ's redeeming power in the struggle against injustice and evil in the world. Who show something of the fear that should fill every man if he refuses to listen to the word of the blood. It is precisely in the clouds of the threatening clouds, when something of the apocalyptic fear of the coming apocalypse is trembling in the souls of the non-believing world, that we need people who will be noticed by the world and who will ask: "But where do you find that unshakable calm in this troubled world, that comfort in suffering, that joy even in pain, that unwearied hope even in hopelessness? What is the secret of your life? Who, then, can bear witness to it with credibility: 'Behold, God is our light and our salvation; of whom, then, or of what shall we fear?
Yes, only in this way could we authentically turn the conscience of the world to God, who is a consuming fire, but who still calls this troubled world to life and renewal by the word of blood!
Amen
Date: 14 July 1957.