A Visit to the Birth Canal

Okay grab my hand real tight, I want to show you something. I want to a show you the entrance to the land of immortality because I don’t think you believe me when I tell you how small it is. I keep talking about getting small enough to get through it and meanwhile most people have this idea that just about everyone they know will fit. Don’t get me wrong, I want everyone to get in who is even remotely a good person, even most of the time a good person no matter what they believe about God. It’s just that one day while I was flying around I saw that door and it was almost tiny! I just don’t see how everyone can fit, especially if they are in a hurry to escape a disaster.

Let’s face it; the thing about truth is that you just can’t change it. A good way to imagine truth is to think of it as matter, something with substance. See this computer screen in front of you. It is true. If Harvey came over to me and said he thought it was round, I’d have to tell him that he was wrong. The truth is that it’s square. I don’t want to start a fight, and if he wants to believe it is round and if Harvey tells everyone he knows to believe it is round, well then he can do that. And all the nice people in the world can either join Harvey in his insistence on a round monitor or let him go ahead and be wrong. The hardest people to convince that Harvey is wrong about the round computer screen are the people with their eyes shut. They are sitting in their own darkness, imagining their own versions of a computer screen, or convincing themselves that computer screens don’t exist at all, and some of them get really mad at you if you ask them to open their eyes and see the square screen. Truth just sits there minding its own business; it doesn’t care if you believe it or not. It can’t change to suit everyone on the planet; in fact it can’t even change to help just two people who disagree to both be right.

If something is invisible you can still know it’s true by what it does. For instance, you know that cyberspace is true because we have email. You know that electricity is true because we have light bulbs and air conditioning. If you tried to tell someone about cyberspace and electricity who never experienced their effects they would think you're wacko. You know that immortality is true because Jesus is still alive. That's true because if you ask Him to prove it and really mean it, He will. But don’t think that anyone else will believe you because He is proving it to you and not to anyone else at that moment. One day about hundred years or so ago I was sitting by a swimming pool at my friend’s house sunning my happy little self when my friend forced me to ask Jesus Christ to prove to me that He was still alive. To make her stop bugging me I did what she wanted and geezoflip…He replied! I wish He had flashed the information up in the sky in brighter-than-the-sun neon lights so everyone else could see, but He didn’t He whispered it loud enough only for me to hear. The problem with that is that on days like yesterday when I tell some people that He is alive their faces glaze over like they want to go to sleep.

I read that Jesus, the only true immortal I know, said to me and to the other aspiring immortals that the road to life is narrow and difficult to travel and few find it. “Strive to enter,” He said, “many will try and won’t be able to.” (Matt 7:14 and Luke 13:24).

Of the xillions of people from day one to now, very few are immortals because you have to

1. take away the zillions of good people who either think that immortality is fantasy or don’t think about it at all. (Why bother to surprise them?)
2. take away the millions of other people who think Jesus is a liar because He said it would be hard to get through and few will make it, (Don’t you hate people who don’t take you seriously?) and
3. if you believe that Jesus has inside information, you even have to take away a bunch of people who are trying to get in and won’t make it.

That’s the scary part! And that’s why we aspiring immortals have to help each other by becoming like athletes who train for the Olympics to go down that hard road that I call the birth canal to the land of immortality. The new planet earth will not be overpopulated. On the other side of that narrow entrance will be the few people who went beyond nice to love those who were mean to them, who trusted God no matter what bad things were happening, who let thieves steal from them, and who don’t mind being nailed to a cross. Well, that eliminates a few …zillion people. At least on the other side you won’t have to stand in long lines for an ice cream cone!

It doesn’t matter that there are few people aware of or willing to go down that difficult road and through that narrow gate, what matters is that the aspiring immortal makes it. That’s what I’m here to tell you. One of the most important things an aspiring immortal must learn is never to look to the left or right to see if anyone else is coming along, only focus with all your might on getting through yourself. You’ll have plenty of time for company on the other side. Okay. Let's go!