Eternity,—that solemn word soon passes from the lips; but who can grasp the mighty, the immense idea which this word ETERNITY conveys? All thought is lost in its immensity, and swallowed up in its fathomless abyss. The mind may conceive, though faintly, of millions of ages heaped upon millions, till numbers lose themselves; or rather, till we are lost in the vast calculation. But who can measure eternity; compared with whose everlasting lines, myriads of years are infinitely less than atoms floating in the mid-day sun? All men are hastening to eternity. All are standing upon the brink of and interminable state of being. Yet all, except the little flock of Christ, are living as if life would never end; and die as if beyond the grave there was nothing to awaken their solicitous concern. Awful insensibility! How fatally has sin blinded the mind of them that believe not! Men are willing to believe that which they wish to be true. They flatter themselves that all will be well at the last, though they follow the corrupt desires of their hearts, in direct opposition to the revealed will of God. (Thomas Reade)
Human beings live for but a moment and then they enter into eternity. It seems so absurd for vapors to live for the moment, but there is a blindness that causes these vapors to focus on the things of the moment. It appears so absurd for human beings who are like the flowers that bloom for less than a day (the desert, for example) to focus on themselves and live as if they were going to live forever, but a blindness keeps them from a focus on eternity. This blindness is sin and it seems to blind people and make them insensible to the awful reality of eternity.
Human beings are finite and as such cannot possibly understand the depths of eternity in one thought, but the mind can conceive of such a thing in a chronological and mathematical way of thinking. When the mind easily skips past the word eternity, it shows that the mind has not taken the time to stop and grasp what the word means. The moment that the soul dies, which the time of that has been ordained by God, it passes into eternity and its location will never be changed. The soul that enters eternity under the wrath of God will never know the smallest joy or rest from the unmitigated wrath and endless torment that it will be under. The soul that enters eternity with eternal life will never know anything but the fullest joy from the weight of eternal glory and love. But can anyone live in this life under the weight of such reality?
The Lord Jesus Christ spoke much of eternity, though not using that word as such. It should determine our view of sin, though we think of sin as having to do with ourselves. When the Lord Jesus spoke of sin in the language that it is better for a man to have a huge rock tied around his neck and then be tossed into the ocean rather than causing a little one to stumble, it makes sense in light of eternity. The weight of the rock around the neck is far less than the weight of eternity being upon the whole soul for sin. It is this truth about eternity that should encourage people to flee from sin because of the true nature of sin and of God.
What are we to think of those who have suffered much in this life for the name of Christ? Nothing they have suffered in this life (small afflictions for a short time) can compare with the eternal glories of being in the presence of His glory forever (eternal weight of glory). How this great truth of eternity should instruct sinners to seek the things of the kingdom because it is what determines the value of things on earth. Those who seek the things of this world show that they do not value the things of eternity as they should.
The vastness and greatness of the value that eternity puts upon life should penetrate the hardest of hearts, but it does not seem to do so. Perhaps this is because eternity rests upon spiritual teachings and those who are spiritually dead view eternity with spiritual death. Surely, we would think, that a person “standing upon the brink of and interminable state of being” would wake up to eternal realities. Surely, we think, since all men are hastening to their eternal destination they would be awakened to eternal realities. It must be that those who are hastening to eternal destruction would listen to those who try to speak of those things to them, but it seems that people are so hardened to God that they don’t want to hear about eternity. Men are hastening toward eternal damnation and yet they are so blinded by their sin and of this world that they “flatter themselves that all will be well at the last.” Surely the truth of eternity is so vast and so weighty that we should spend much more time thinking about it and dwelling upon it. We should also spend our short time on this earth as vapors knowing what is truly important.
God Loves... Himself 
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