“What if…?”
Everybody has played that game, especially after doing something that they later regret. Sometimes it’s not regret that drives the game, other times it is idle musing about the variety of directions their life could’ve taken if they had gone to a different school, chosen a different career, been born in a different family, married a different spouse, or lived in a different locale. With the countless of choices and events we all face every day in our lives, “what ifs” are limitless. What if I had said this? What if I had arrived five minutes earlier? And on and on it goes.
One intriguing idea has come out of the field of astronomy and that is the idea that we exist in a world of multiverses, or multiple universes. In this branch of astronomy, there generally are four distinct theories of how a multiverse would look like and how they operate. One of these has intrigued me the most. If you’ve seen the sci-fi TV show Sliders, you know the idea. It’s the idea that with every possible choice that exists in the world, a separate world branches off from each avenue that the choice presents. For example, say you come to a fork in a road. You decide to go left. Once you do, a separate universe splinters off in which you decide to go right. We don’t see this universe because it’s in another dimension that we cannot see. So, theoretically, there’s an infinite number of dimensions in which each and every choice is followed through to different conclusions. So, there may be a world where you’re living in a different home or working in a different job or attending a different school or not even exist. Dinosaurs may still be roaming the world in one; in another the Beatles will still be touring.
It’s a pretty cool idea. However, that’s not what the Bible teaches us. It teaches us that our choices have a finality to them, especially the one that determines where we spend the rest of our life. Ironically, in reading about Heaven and its riches from Randy Alcorn’s book Heaven, the reality of Hell has started to haunt me and is spurring me to evangelize more seriously.
Think about it: The person who is hell-bound will spend the rest of their life for eternity, never dying, never ceasing to exist, in a solitary life that will be completely devoid of pleasure and delight since God, the ONLY source of pleasure and delight, will remove Himself fully from their presence. (This isn’t true of our current world, which is why God’s grace falls on both the believers and the unbelievers.) The only thing that will dwell on their minds for day after day, year after year, decade after decade, eons after eons, forever after forever, will be “What if I had listened? What if I had taken it seriously? What if I had chosen Christ?”
“What if…?”
– Matt
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A What If For Eternity
September 24, 2009
Calvary
Comments Off on A What If For Eternity
Matt
“What if…?”
Everybody has played that game, especially after doing something that they later regret. Sometimes it’s not regret that drives the game, other times it is idle musing about the variety of directions their life could’ve taken if they had gone to a different school, chosen a different career, been born in a different family, married a different spouse, or lived in a different locale. With the countless of choices and events we all face every day in our lives, “what ifs” are limitless. What if I had said this? What if I had arrived five minutes earlier? And on and on it goes.
One intriguing idea has come out of the field of astronomy and that is the idea that we exist in a world of multiverses, or multiple universes. In this branch of astronomy, there generally are four distinct theories of how a multiverse would look like and how they operate. One of these has intrigued me the most. If you’ve seen the sci-fi TV show Sliders, you know the idea. It’s the idea that with every possible choice that exists in the world, a separate world branches off from each avenue that the choice presents. For example, say you come to a fork in a road. You decide to go left. Once you do, a separate universe splinters off in which you decide to go right. We don’t see this universe because it’s in another dimension that we cannot see. So, theoretically, there’s an infinite number of dimensions in which each and every choice is followed through to different conclusions. So, there may be a world where you’re living in a different home or working in a different job or attending a different school or not even exist. Dinosaurs may still be roaming the world in one; in another the Beatles will still be touring.
It’s a pretty cool idea. However, that’s not what the Bible teaches us. It teaches us that our choices have a finality to them, especially the one that determines where we spend the rest of our life. Ironically, in reading about Heaven and its riches from Randy Alcorn’s book Heaven, the reality of Hell has started to haunt me and is spurring me to evangelize more seriously.
Think about it: The person who is hell-bound will spend the rest of their life for eternity, never dying, never ceasing to exist, in a solitary life that will be completely devoid of pleasure and delight since God, the ONLY source of pleasure and delight, will remove Himself fully from their presence. (This isn’t true of our current world, which is why God’s grace falls on both the believers and the unbelievers.) The only thing that will dwell on their minds for day after day, year after year, decade after decade, eons after eons, forever after forever, will be “What if I had listened? What if I had taken it seriously? What if I had chosen Christ?”
“What if…?”
– Matt
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