It's All or Nothing

By Rev. Ernest O'Neill

It is all or nothing and I encourage you especially these days to make absolutely sure that you are giving all. Now, why do I say that? Because you know all the stuff about the last days, you know it. I don't need to tell you. You know that in the last days, people will have the form of religion but not the power of it. You know that in the last days, things will become blacker and whiter, they actually will. Things will become blacker and whiter, it is no chance, whatever explanation you want to give about AIDS and everybody seems to have their own explanations. It's obvious from that, and from the terrorists' activity, that things are beginning to break apart. They're beginning to move apart. Even those of us who say, "Oh, there have always been great communications, oh people have always, there have always been rumors of wars and wars, oh there have always been earthquakes." Even those of us who try to rationalize it all, we have to bow down to the fact that there are an incredible number of wars now. There are an incredible number of earthquakes now. There is a tremendous sense of communication so that everybody in the world knows exactly what is happening everywhere and there is an increasing feeling that we are not able to control it all.

The world does not feel a more secure place now, does it? It doesn't. You're able to dial a certain number and you'll get the police in a moment, you'll get a heart attack unit immediately at your door, but we don't feel more secure, do we? We feel less secure now than we ever did. We know exactly what is happening everywhere in the world. We have magnificent missiles that we can send anywhere to destroy anybody but we don't feel more secure. The whole world feels more and more shakey than it ever did.

Loved ones, these are the days when counterfeit religion comes in. These are the days when there will rise up a Christianity that has an appearance of Christ's gospel but does not have the sacrifice and surrender of Christ's gospel. And I would ask you "where is your life this morning? Have you surrendered everything to him?" You know what that means. And you know if you're sitting there and thinking, "Do you mean to give up my car, give up my money?", it's usually not those things, it's usually not the things. It's the attitude of your heart. Is Jesus everything to you? Have you given your whole life to him? If he said "Tomorrow, I want you to go to Africa or I want you to go to India, or I want you to give up your present way of life. I have something for you to do in the mountains in Kentucky or in the mountains in the Appalachians", then would you do that? Would you obey Jesus? Or are you trying to work the Lord into your plan and your program?

In other words, all of us are in a very real situation this morning. We are all gathered here to thank a man for giving up His life for us. And now I am suggesting to you that there is only one real thanks that you can give that is appropriate to such a sacrifice. And wasn't it one of the old, I think it was Papious; it was one of the old saints you remember in the early church. And he was being burned at the stake and he was 86 or 87 and they said, "Have you anything to say?" and he said, "I have served my master these eighty and six years and after what he has done for me, there is no sacrifice too great that I could make for him."

Well, those are the guys that will be in heaven. See? It's not by being like them that we'll get into heaven but I am using that to say to you that there is only one appropriate response to what you and I see Jesus has done for us. And that is to bow before him and say, "Lord Jesus, I give my whole life to you. Whatever you want me to do, I will do. You just tell me." Loved ones, that's I think what the Father wanted me to share with you so that we would not be involved, any of us, in just a kind of nicey-nice religion or a nice little bit of church-going but we would be real.