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Tract Number 47
Audio download at bottom of page
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ETERNITY
by H. M. Riggle
Written around 1942
“The high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy” (Isaiah 57: 15). This is the only text in the King James Version of the Scriptures where the word “eternity” occurs. It is probably one of the most comprehensive words in the Bible and in all language. It embraces everything past, present, and future. It comprehends God himself, who “inhabiteth eternity,” for He was before all things. If people would only stop long enough in their mad rush through the rattle of social, political, and commercial events, and worldly affairs that are occupying their minds, and carefully consider the great eternity to which we are all hastily going, this world in which we live would be different. Eternity cannot be measured nor fully comprehended. No cycle of years can estimate it. It is a boundless ocean, a shoreless sea, a “world without end.”
Let us draw some comparisons. Time, the whole period of human history from creation to the end of this world, is but a fragment of eternity. It might be likened to a small island in the midst of the ocean. Gradually its sands are being washed away by the mighty billows which sweep against its shores. At length — God only knows how soon — the billows of eternity will sweep over and wash away the last sands of time and nothing will remain but eternity. Now, reader, your life and mine are but a very small fragment of time. Let us suppose that the average human life on this earth is seventy years and that the future would last only 100,000 years. Would it not pay to be a Christian? Imagine you would have to suffer as much and endure as many hardships and persecutions as Paul did even for seventy years. You would have 99,930 more years of glory and happiness with Christ, the angels, and the redeemed hosts of heaven, than all your period of suffering here. Glory to God, my soul says, “Press on to glory.” On the other hand, I want to appeal to the sinner on the same basis. Suppose for seventy short years of life here, you could enjoy all the pleasure that sinful life can give, climb to the pinnacle of earthly fame and honor, accumulate riches so you could revel in worldly accomplishments, and then die without hope. You would have 99,930 more years of torment amidst howling demons and the “weeping and wailing” of the damned in hell than all your years of enjoyment in sin. What a fool you are to live another day in sin!
Listen! 100,000 years do not measure the future. It takes ten hundred thou-sand years to make a million, and a thousand million to make a billion. I heard a speaker say that approximately one billion minutes have passed since the day Christ was born in Bethlehem. This statement interested me, so I began to count. There are 1,440 minutes in a twenty-four day, and 525,600 in a year. Multiply this by the years that have elapsed from the birth of Christ to January 1, 1942, and the sum total is a little over 1,000,000,000. Now think of as many years as there have been minutes since the Savior was born. May we wake up to the realities of the future! It takes a thousand billion to make a trillion, a thousand trillion to make a quadrillion, a thousand quadrillion to make a quintillion, a thousand quintillion to make a sextillion, a thousand sextillion to make a septillion, a thousand septillion to make an octillion, a thousand octillion to make a nonillion, and a thousand nonillion to make a decillion, written with a 1 and 33 zeros.
Some school teachers of Indiana met a number of years ago and decided to get an idea of how many a decillion is. One of them, Charles H. Hartung, pastor of a congregation in Fort Wayne, Maryland, told me the result. They bored a hole in a plank two inches deep and two inches in diameter, filled it with mustard seed, and counted every seed. They found 16,000 of these seeds to a cubic inch. From this they began their calculations. Before they reached the enormous sum of a decillion, they had enough mustard seed to cover the whole earth as deep as the distance from here to the moon. Think of that many years!
Let us suppose that a bird were to come from a far distant planet, make one trip in each decillion years, and carry away in its tiny mouth a grain of sand from the seashore, or a bit of dust. That bird could carry away the entire globe on which we live, and eternity would not have been measured. Friend, YOU are going there. We shall all soon be there. Death is the gateway through which we all must pass, and death fixes our destiny either in heaven or in hell. While you are reading this, your casket may be in some undertaker’s room, and the pick and shovel that will dig your grave may be in a tool house. The minute your lungs cease to inhale and exhale, the moment your heart stops beating, you are there. The supreme question of life is, Are YOU READY?
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