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I became a Christian in the fall of 1973.

I had hosed my life up royal, lost everything, including all of my friends and was essentially living in hiding in Seattle, Washington.  I had much to fear.  I was all of 18 years old.

And having accidentally become a Christian, I suddenly saw an entirely different world around me.  As a natural by-product, you want to tell others, your family, your old friends, people you just happen to meet on the streets.

My family was ignostic, so they did not want to hear anything about religion.
No one in the Seattle area has any interest in the Christian faith.  (about 3% are estimated as Christian)

If I could only tell you how many times I was flat out told, "Yeah, well, I expect to live my life and then I will think about it as I am dying."

A little presumptuous  since this means you expect to actually be in your right mind before you die.  Able to make a decision or choices.  And yet, that does not seem to be scenario for most people I have known at the time of their deaths:

• Hit by a truck
• Chocked into unconsciousness on food
• In a coma for a period of time (chemical or unexpected)
• Died in their sleep
• Fell to their death
• Hit by a ladder on the back of their head
• Carbon monoxide posioning
• Kicked by a horse in the chest
• Murdered
• Drowned
• Wife hired a hitman
• Someone driving by flicked a cigarette as you were bathing in gas to get grease off

These are just some of the bizarre causes that preceded many of my friends into death recently.  One moment they were living their lives, not a care in the world usually, then next?  Well, falling into a coma is actually the most common situation.  Once in the coma they never came out or suffered some form of heart failure or internal hemorrhage that could not be stopped in time.  Yeah, no time to rethink that putting off the salvation process .....

Even my own father whom I prayed for 37 years over for his heart to be softened to God, went into a bathroom, sat down on the toilet and went into a coma.  He was going to die of blood filling his lungs but he had a heart attack instead at the last moment as they were changing drains and breathing tubes.

I tried so hard, through the years to even get a conversation going with him over Christianity - but he would have none of it.  He was Hebrew, yet even as such, he believed in National Socialism - he still clung to the promise of Hitler and the state of natural man.

Through the years I tried and always failed to get him engaged in a conversation, mush less try to tell him my story.  I knew from my Hutterite discipleship that he lived because God was not done with him, he still had chances left to come to salvation.  But, one day those chances ceased and his body was shut down and he was forced to now face God with nothing standing between him and a God without a sense of humor.

Salvation is a limited time offer.  It is only good during this lifetime.  Once you are dead, all chances for it are gone.  I am not so sure that there are those whom are still alive and yet their chances have already passed as well.

The other limiting factor is that you need God's Holy Spirit working on you in order to even hear His call to repent.  And, that might happen once or several times during your lifetime.  I am sure everyone gets at least once to hear, or more, otherwise it would be hard to know you are guilty of rebellion to God's laws.

And people such as my father have mighty hard hearts and minds dead set against ever responding to any call by God on that heart...

No matter whom you are, I would prefer that you do listen, that you do seek, that you do respond in the positive - even if you are the most miserable man in the world in my book, and were I a different person, would have helped you meet God (you slime ball HT!). 

Its your future at stake here and a future without God is no future at all!