I want to talk to you today about when it is too late to change your mind. In our daily life and in our Christian life, we go through experiences where we have an opportunity to change positions for a time, but there comes a time when it is too late to change your mind. Now pilots all know about this. They call it the "go-no-go" decision. Even on an airliner, as you are rolling down the runway, when you first start, the pilot could change his mind. The pilots are monitoring gauges up in the cockpit all the time. As you are going down the runway they are monitoring gauges, and they can decide to call it off and stop. But there comes a time when they cannot do that anymore, it is too late; that is called the "go-no-go" decision. There comes a point when you cannot make that decision anymore; you cannot change your mind anymore.

That happens to people who are flying in little planes, too. One time, I took some flying lessons from an instructor in Texas a few years ago. He had probably been giving flying lessons for 40 years and was a very wise man as far as aviation goes. He required of me a more thorough pre-flight check than anyone that I had ever received instruction from before. All kinds of cotter keys and connections and switches, that I had to be able to answer to him before we got into the plane. Most flight instructors require you to make a visual check of the fuel in your tank, but that was not good enough for this man. I had to take a ruler and stick it in the tanks and tell him how many inches were on that ruler of fuel, very particular. And all the time, by the way, the airlines do that, too, if you go to a hub airport like St. Louis or Denver, you can watch the pilots, very often the co-pilots, going around with a flashlight making a visual check. They look at all the different parts of a 727 or 737 or whatever they are checking. At any point while you are making that visual check, you can decide not to go. Before you even made the visual check, you went and called to check the weather, if you are going to take a trip. On the basis of the information you got from them, you could decide not to go. After that, you get in and start it up, you go through an initial checklist, and at any point when you are going through that checklist, you can decide not to go. Then when you get out to the runway you go through another checklist, and at that point you can decide not to go.

But there comes a time, when you cannot change your mind. I remember one time like that. Even if you are in a 747, there comes a time as you are going down the runway when you can feel the plane get light, it has a light feeling. If you like to fly, it is a wonderfully exhilarating feeling when you feel that lightness. But I was in a private plane one time and we were on a short runway, well less than 3,000 feet, and we got down toward the end of the runway, going about 100 miles an hour, and it was too late to change your mind. That plane did not want to fly. The light feeling just was not there; it just wanted to stay right there. But it was too late to change your mind. If it had been two minutes before, I would have changed my mind, but it was too late. So the pilot finally had to take hold of the stick and just pull it back. Well, I was very happy that it did go up in the air.

The Bible records times when you have crossed a line, you have passed the time when you can change your mind. In 1988, I was in Australia, it happened only 50 miles from where I was living at that time, but I was in Australia when it happened, so I was watching with the people in whose home I was staying. They had told me that I should watch the news on television. There was an air crash in Dallas, right near where I was living. So I looked on the news and it was one of these situations. It was too late for the pilot to change his mind, but the plane would not take off because they had forgotten to put the flaps down. So it was too late, but they could not take off--about 13 people died. When it is too late, it is too late. And there are many stories in the Bible recorded about times when it came to be too late.

For instance, the story of Noah. Did you enjoy the story of Noah when you were a child and were reading Bible stories. You read about the time that the Lord said the human race has 120 years and God sent Noah to build the ark. There came a time, Noah was telling the people that a flood was coming and you better get into the ark if you are going to save your life, and you were free to say yes or no. You are free, you can make any decision you want. Ellen White says that God's government is a government of free will or self-will. Every act of obedience or rebellion is an act of self-will. You decide it and it is written on your account. Ellen White says that when you sin, it is not written on the devil's account, it is written on your account. God's government is a government of free will. And so they were free to make a decision. They could decide to do it or not to do it. They could decide to get on the ark or not to get on the ark. But let me ask you a question. Did there come a time when it was too late to change their mind? Yes, there did. There came a time when it was too late to change their mind.

Now when I was a boy and I read stories like that in the Bible, I thought they were very interesting stories and as I read the stories I said, "God decided that it was going to be this long and if you didn't make up your mind by that time, then it was all over." But when I got a little older, I started to read the writings of Ellen White and she told me, you can read this in the last pages of Testimonies to the Church, vol. 5, that it is the devil that tries to get people to think that God is arbitrary. You know what arbitrary is, don't you? Arbitrary is if you say, "Well, I'm just going to give 120 years and that's it. You either make up your mind by then or it's all over."

That is an arbitrary statement, but God is not arbitrary. God is never, ever arbitrary. So I had to rethink through all of these stories again. I found out that the reason that there comes a time when it is too late to change your mind is not because of something that God does, it is something that you do and it is something that I do. See, God is not arbitrary.

Do you realize that if God had let time go on 121 years, that the decision would have been the same? It would not have changed anything. You see, those people had been making that decision over a long process of time and they had fully made up their minds. And if God had let time go on, it would not have changed anything. So that decision of 120 years was not arbitrary, God foresaw that during that period of time, everybody in the world would fully make up their mind, and He allowed them to have their free choice.

How about the children of Israel when they went into captivity? Some people say, "Well, God said you would have this much time and then it is going to be it." There are some "time" prophecies and when you are a child and you read these time prophecies, that may be the way it looks to you at first reading, but look at a few texts of Scripture and see how clearly the Bible teaches this.

Look in 2 Chronicles 36:15-16, this is about the captivity of the children of Israel. It says, "And the Lord God of their fathers sent warnings to them by His messengers, rising up early and sending them, because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place. But they mocked the messengers of God, despised His words, and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the LORD arose against His people, til there was no remedy."

So, why did they have to go into captivity? Because there was no other remedy by which the Lord could save some of those people. That is why. Was it arbitrary? No. They had made a decision. Now think this through. You make a decision today, then you make a decision tomorrow and then the third day and you make a decision the fourth day.

What are you doing? You are developing a habit. Those habits become what you are, your character. And as we go through life, we become so fixed in our habits that it becomes impossible for us to change, did you know that? Eventually, it becomes impossible to change.

When I was in the seminary at Andrews University, for a class I was doing some research on the subject of evangelism and I read a book on child evangelism. And by the way, child evangelism is something that we ought to give a lot more attention to in Adventism than we do. I found out something very interesting as I was reading this book.

Did you know that it is very, very rare for an older person to give their heart to the Lord? Very rare. Almost every older person that gives their heart to the Lord, was subjected to some religious influences early in their life; almost every one. I did not realize that until I read this book. I always thought that you could give your heart to the Lord at any age. Well you "can", but you don't. Very, very few old people give their hearts to the Lord for the first time. Usually when you see an older person that is "converted" you study that person's past and you will find out that sometime in their past they either had a Christian mother or they had a Christian father or they had a grandmother or an aunt that either took them to Sunday School or Sabbath School, or read the Bible to them or prayed with them.

Every time you study, any person who comes to the Lord and becomes a Christian when they are old, you find out about their past. So far, I have not found one that did not have some religious influence early in their life. Now there may be somebody, but when a person gets to be 60, 70, 80 years of age, it is extremely rare for anyone to give their heart to the Lord if they have not had some religious influences some time in the past in their life. Why is that? Because as we go through life, we are making decisions and we are becoming fixed in our ways and the time comes when we do not change our minds. Not because God says you can't, but we don't.

The Bible has quite a bit to say about this. Look in the book of Proverbs. The wise man talks about this. Look in Proverbs 5:21-23, it says, "For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and He ponders all his paths. His own iniquities entrap the wicked man, and he is caught in the cords of his sin. He shall die for lack of instruction, and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray."

Now what is this talking about? The wicked man gets trapped in sin. Did the Lord trap him? No--his own sins trapped him. He is bound so that he cannot get free.

Let me read to you an interesting statement on that text from the pen of Ellen White. This is from the book Steps to Christ, 34, I will begin reading at the bottom of page 33. "Many are quieting a troubled conscience with the thought that they can change a course of evil when they choose; that they can trifle with the invitations of mercy, and yet be again and again impressed. They think that after doing despite to the Spirit of grace, after casting their influence on the side of Satan, in a moment of terrible extremity they can change their course." Have you ever heard somebody who thought like that?

"I'm going out into the world and I'm going to have a good time right now, but I'm going to give my life to the Lord. I'm going to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a while, but I am going to come back to the Lord and I'm going to be converted and I'm going to be saved." There are people all over Wichita and all over the country thinking this way. Many young people think this way. "I can go and live a life of sin and come back to the Lord." Now notice what she says about this. She does not say that you cannot, but notice what happens, "But this is not so easily done." Does she say it is impossible? No. She does not say it is impossible, but she says it is not done so easily, not as easily as people think.

Why is that? Here is why, "The experience, the education, of a lifetime, has so thoroughly molded the character that few then desire to receive the image of Jesus." Ibid., 34. They have no desire. Have you ever met somebody and you talk to them about the gospel and there is just no desire there to follow Jesus? Have you ever talked to somebody like that? There is just no desire there. Well, what can you do?

Those of you who have studied salesmanship know that an old formula on selling was that you get the person's attention, you show them their need, you arouse desire, you bring conviction and you appeal for action. But if there is no desire, you are stuck. Nobody buys anything if they have no desire. Is that true? That is true for Christianity, too.

She goes on to say, "Even one wrong trait of character, one sinful desire, persistently cherished, will eventually neutralize all the power of the gospel." Ibid., 34. If there is a sin in my life and I cling to that, what will it do? It will neutralize all the power of the gospel. Every sinful indulgence strengthens the soul's aversion to God. The man who manifests an infidel hardihood, or a stolid indifference to divine truth, is but reaping the harvest of that which he has himself sown. In all the Bible there is not a more fearful warning against trifling with evil than the words of the wise man that the sinner "shall be holden with the cords of his sins." Proverbs 5:22 KJV. He is held, he is holden (that is the old word) by the cords of his sins. It has become too late to change his mind. Because he can't? No, but he won't.

And so, the prophets have a lot to say about this. There will be people who will be bound in sin until it is too late and then they will realize what has happened. Look what Jeremiah says is going to happen at the end of the world. Now we are not going to study the context of this verse, this is in Jeremiah 8, but this is about the end of the world, that is the context of the verse. And it says in Jeremiah 8:20, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved!"

There will be people who will realize that it is too late now to change their mind. You see as you go through life, you are making decisions and the decisions that you are making are having an affect on your habits and your character until you are going to become set in your ways. And that is the reason, friends, that as you read through the Bible over and over again, the Bible writers appeal to people and they say, "Surrender to the Lord now." Why? Because if you keep on going in the way of sin, you are going to become what Paul calls in Hebrews 3, "hardened through the deceitfulness of sin."

I remember a man and his wife, wonderful people, they live right out here in Rose Hill. They came to our Prophecy Seminar a few years ago and when we were meeting back in the other end of this building. We were meeting there for church and they used to come there for church every Sabbath. I gave them Bible studies, then they quit coming. I went to visit them at their house. I could drive right up to their house right now, they just live about three miles from where I live. They were friendly, but I read to him this chapter in Hebrews 3 about the deceitfulness of sin; if you do not do what you know is right. You see, when once you know the three angels' messages and you know the truth about the law of God, there are people out there that do not know yet, their hearts are not hardened. But once you know the truth and you do not do it, every single week that you disobey the truth, you know what is happening to your heart? It is becoming hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. I warned this man about this. I said, "Be careful. Be careful. You will go and the time will come (and this is the scary part of it, because it really happens) when you can disobey the law of God and it won't bother you anymore--then you are in trouble. Your heart has become hardened through the deceitfulness of sin."

Jesus talked about this over and over again. We could read it in a number of the gospels. Let's just turn to a passage first of all in Luke and then we will maybe read one in the gospel of John. Look in Luke 13. Jesus taught here that there is coming a time when it will be too late to make up your mind, too late to change your mind.

Luke 13 starting with verse 22, "And He went through the cities and villages, teaching, and journeying toward Jerusalem. Then one said to Him, 'Lord, are there few who are saved?' And He said to them, 'Strive [that is struggle] to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the Master of the house has risen up and shut the door. . .' "

Now what door is that? That, friends, is the door of salvation. Was there a door on the ark? Yes. When that door was shut, the door of salvation was shut. Is there a door into the heavenly sanctuary? Yes there is. Revelation 3:7 and 8 talks about that door and it was open. But I want to tell you, friends, if you study the typical service among the children of Israel, if your sins were going to be forgiven, the blood had to be taken into the sanctuary and applied to your case and when that door to that temple is shut, if you are not saved already, you are lost forever, and it is too late to change your mind.

"When once" Jesus said, "the Master of the house stands up and the door is shut." Now is that an arbitrary act? Oh, no. When the door is shut, it is shut because everybody in the world has fully made up their mind what their position is going to be. And the door is shut and then there are going to be people just like there were in the days of Noah and they are going to come and knock on the door. Look at what Jesus said, "and you begin to stand outside and knock at the door; saying, 'Lord, Lord, open for us,' and He will answer and say to you, 'I do not know you, where you are from," then you will begin to say, 'We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets.' But He will say, 'I tell you I do not know you, where you are from. Depart from Me, all you workers of iniquity.' There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and yourselves thrust out." Luke 13: 25-28

Jesus said there was coming a time when the door of salvation will be shut and you can knock all you want to, but it is too late, the door is shut. Why is the door shut? Let me read another statement from Desire of Ages, 587, about why the door is shut. I want you to see that God does not shut the door as an arbitrary act just to keep somebody from being saved. No, that is not the way it is at all. God shuts the door when there is no hope that the person is ever going to go through the door so that there is no use in keeping it open anymore. See the plan of salvation is not going to go on forever. I think of this often when I preach, there is coming a time,(I do not know when it will come) when I will never be able to give anyone the invitation to surrender their heart to Jesus and follow Him; I will not be able to give that invitation anymore. You will never hear another gospel invitation again through all eternity. There is coming a time when you will either be saved or it is too late.

Why? This is from Desire of Ages, 587, "In every age there is given to men their day of light and privilege, a probationary time in which they may become reconciled to God. But there is a limit to this grace. Mercy may plead for years and be slighted and rejected. . ."

Oh, friends, we do not comprehend the long-suffering and forbearance of God for sinners. It is the most wonderful news in the world. If you hear the Holy Spirit speaking to you this morning and saying, "Do you want to follow Jesus? Do you want to give your life to Him? Do you want to obey Him?" That is the call of mercy. You may have all kinds of sins in your past. You may have committed every sin that it is possible for a man or woman to commit, but Jesus died on the cross so that He could forgive you; all of your past, so that He could give you a pardon. He paid the price for all of those things that you have done. The call of mercy is the plea that Jesus says, "All of your past I will forgive you, if you will just accept Me and follow Me." She says, "Mercy may plead." For how long? "For years." How many years? Many years.

Oh, friend, I think of it so often and I do not want to get emotional, but I do want to face some facts and I become more and more cognizant that none of us know when is the last time that mercy will make us an invitation. I remember when I was growing up, I heard the story of one of our evangelists, one of our well-known evangelists, around the turn of the century who went down in the Caribbean. He had a group of young men that he was going to train to do public evangelism. It was the first night of the meeting and he got up. Now when we have a prophecy seminar, we have 24 nights, right? He got up the first night of the meeting and he went through the whole message. He went through everything all in one shot. He covered every single subject he was going to cover the whole series of meetings; he covered them all in the first night. It took a long time. And he wondered himself, "What in the world did I do? Here I am supposed to teach these people to do evangelism and I am doing everything that I have told them not to do." He covered the Sabbath, the Law of God, the state of the dead, the three angels' messages, the judgment, the millennium, everything, covered it all in one night.

"What is going on? What am I going to talk about tomorrow night?" He made an appeal. And some people came forward and gave their hearts to the Lord that night. They heard the whole message that night and they came forward. Do you know what happened that night? There was an earthquake in that city. They did not finish that series of meetings; that was the only meeting they were able to have. Some of those people who came forward were dead the next morning, but they were saved. Friend, you do not know when is the last time you are going to receive an invitation of mercy. That is why the Bible says over and over again to do it now. Now, Paul says, "today is the day of salvation." Do not wait until some other time. You do not need to know everything. All you need to say is, "Lord Jesus, I am choosing to accept You as the Lord of my life. I am choosing to obey and follow You and trust You as my Saviour from sin." That is all you need to do. You do not need to know everything, you just need to make a commitment.

Jesus Christ has never failed someone who has made a commitment to Him. Do not wait. It says, "Mercy may plead for years and be slighted and rejected; but there comes a time when mercy makes her last plea." Now here is why the time comes when you cannot change your mind. Listen to this sentence, "The heart becomes so hardened that it ceases to respond to the Spirit of God." Desire of Ages, 587

Now that is scary. If you have heard the gospel story and you have not accepted it, you have started to harden your heart. If you go out of this room today and you have not, in your mind--this is something you do in your mind not in your hand--and in your mind you have not surrendered your heart to Jesus as your Lord and Saviour, you will be more hardhearted when you walk out than when you came in. And if that process goes on in your life, you hear the gospel story, you hear the love of Jesus and you resist it, the time will come when you can hear the gospel story and it will not move your heart anymore and your heart will become hard and when the Holy Spirit appeals to you it says, "The heart becomes so hardened that it ceases to respond to the Spirit of God." Ibid. And when the heart ceases to respond to the Spirit of God, it is so hard that it will not respond anymore, here is what happens, "Then the sweet, winning voice entreats the sinner no longer, and reproofs and warnings cease." Ibid. Does God quit? God quits. Why does He quit? Because he is arbitrary? No. Because the person got himself into a position where he was so hardened, there was nothing that the Spirit of God could do to reach his heart anymore.

Oh, friend, do not let that happen to you. The way for it not to happen is to make a decision and to keep making a decision. If you do it every morning, soon it will become easy. Say, "I'm surrendering my life to You. Jesus is my Lord and my Saviour. I will obey and follow Him. I will do His will." The Holy Spirit will lead you step by step. If you make a full surrender, God will get you to the place where you need to be. Then He will take responsibility. I meet Christians sometimes and they say, "How will I get ready for the end. How will I be ready for the second coming?" Well, if you have made a full commitment, if you have surrendered yourself totally and completely to the Lord, then He will take responsibility for that and you do not need to worry. Read it in Philippians 1:6. The problem is, if you do not make that commitment, there is nothing that can be done. And the time will come when the Spirit of God will quit. Not because God does not love you, not because He is doing something arbitrary, but because you have placed yourself in a condition where you have passed the "go-no-go"point. You cannot change your mind anymore. You have made a decision so many times that you are totally and permanently fixed in that decision.

Now the Jews did this in the time of Christ. In fact, that is what the reference in Desire of Ages, 587, is all about. The Jews did this in the time of Christ. You read about this here in John 6 and this is one of the most wonderful chapters in the Bible and also one of the saddest, all at the same time. This is the day after the feeding of the 5,000. The feeding of the 5,000, as you will read in about verse 4, occurred about Passover time and that was one year before the crucifixion. So it is about Passover time, A.D. 30 is when this happened, the day after the feeding of the 5,000. In John 6:60 it says, "Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this, said, 'This is a hard saying; who can understand it?' " And then look at verse 66, "From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more."

Now I want to ask you a question about that. Did Jesus do anything arbitrary? Did He force them not to follow Him anymore? Had they reached a point where it was impossible for them to be saved? They had come to a place where, although they could be saved by following Jesus, they had come to a place where they would not. They could, but they wouldn't.

Now I want to tell you, friends, you are going to see these people, if you are saved, one of these days at the end of the millennium. You are going to see all these people on the outside of the Holy City, these people that we are talking about right here. There were thousands of them, I mean, it was all over Galilee. The popular feeling that was in favor of Jesus a short time before, completely turned against Him. Thousands and thousands of people turned against Him. And you are going to see them all on the outside of the city. It was too late because they couldn't? Because they wouldn't. And when you understand that, there are a lot of stories in the Bible, including the story of the flood, the story of the captivity and a lot of others, that you see in a completely different light.

You see, when I read those stories as a boy, I thought it was something that God did. God said, "This is the line and when you go past that line. . ." That is actually not the way it is. God said, "Yes, there's a line all right. There's 120 years." But He said that because He knew that by that time, people would fully make up their minds and there would be no use to have time go on any more.

Did you know that will be the way for the whole world in the end? Did you know that the end of the world does not come for some arbitrary reason? The end of the world comes as a result of the preaching of the three angels' messages, everybody in the world is going to make up their mind and they are going to make it up so firmly that they are going to be on one side or the other. And they are not going to change. They are going to come to the point where they are fully convinced that this is the way they are going to stand, one way or the other. Maybe I should just read that to you. This is in Desire of Ages, 763, it says, "That the law which was spoken by God's own voice is faulty, that some specification has been set aside, is the claim which Satan now puts forward. It is the last great deception that he will bring upon the world. . . The warfare against God's law, which was begun in heaven, will be continued until the end of time. Every man will be tested. Obedience or disobedience is the question to be decided by the whole world."

What is the question? Are you going to obey God's law or are you not going to obey it? By the way, that is what the Sabbath/Sunday controversy is all about. That is what the three angels' messages is all about. The question is not so much a day, the question is, Who is going to be God? That is the question. Who has the authority to tell you when and what you are going to do? Who does have the authority? Who will you obey?

"Obedience or disobedience is the question to be decided by the whole world. All will be called to choose between the law of God and the laws of men." Ibid.

So you are going to have to make a decision. Every single person in the world is going to make a decision as to which side they are going to be on. Friend, which side are you going to be on? Are you aware of the fact that the decisions that you are making day by day are affecting your final decision? Are you aware of that? And that if you make the wrong decision today and you decide to disobey today and you decide to disobey tomorrow and you decide to disobey the next day and you do that 100 times or 1,000 times, do not think, friend, that it will just be real easy to just flip around right at the end and go the other way, because it will not happen. There comes a time when it is too late to change your mind. You are set; you have gone so far down the runway, you are going so fast you cannot stop now.

"Here the dividing line will be drawn. There will be but two classes. Every character will be fully developed. . ." Ibid. See when you character is fully developed, you have passed the time to change your mind. Your character is now fully developed. You are on one side or the other. "And all will show whether they have chosen the side of loyalty or that of rebellion." Ibid.

So these people here in John 6, they came to the time when it was too late to change their mind; too late because they couldn't? Too late because they wouldn't. Friend, that time is going to happen to me and that time is going to happen to every one of you. There is going to be a time when it is going to be too late to change your mind and the decisions that you are making day by day are going to affect the final decisions you make at the end of the world. Because the time is coming when your decision will have been made so many times that your mind will be fixed and no further evidence or time would change your mind. That is very evident in the book The Great Controversy. Let me read to you just a paragraph from chapter 42, page 662, and it is talking about when Jesus returns to this world.

You remember from your study of Bible prophecy that when Jesus comes again what is going to happen to the saints? They are going to go up. That is found in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-18. And what is going to happen to those who do not go up? They are going to be destroyed. So the wicked will be destroyed and the righteous will go with Christ to heaven and they will reign there with Him for a thousand years, but you read in Revelation 20 that at the end of the thousand years Christ is going to return to this world again and all the people in this world that have ever lived, that are not saved, are going to be raised. Everyone is going to be raised, all the unsaved.

This paragraph describes what is going to happen at the end of the millennium when the unsaved are raised. Now there are people today, you can even go to Christian churches in Wichita that will tell you that if you are not saved in this life, do not worry about it, you are going to have another chance. But if you read the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, you will notice that Jesus did not teach that. If you are not saved before you die, you are never going to be saved. You just read the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16 and that is very clear.

Now notice what she says is going to happen when Jesus comes at the end of the millennium and raises the wicked. Here is what it says, the wicked have now been raised, she says in the first paragraph, "He bids the wicked dead arise to receive their doom." Now notice what happens, "Every eye in that vast multitude is turned to behold the glory of the Son of God. With one voice the wicked hosts exclaim: 'Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord!' " The Great Controversy, 662. By the way, do you remember what Jesus said to the Jews the last time He walked out of the temple? He said, "You will not see me after this until you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!' " That is when they are going to say it, when they are raised at the end of the millennium.

"It is not love to Jesus that inspires this utterance. The force of truth urges the words from unwilling lips. As the wicked went into their graves, so they come forth with the same enmity to Christ and the same spirit of rebellion. They are to have no new probation in which to remedy the defects of their past lives." The Great Controversy, 662. Are they going to have another chance? No, they are not.

"Well," somebody says, "Why? Why doesn't God give them another chance?" Now notice the next sentence, "Nothing would be gained by this." Ibid. If God did give them another chance, would it make any difference? No. Nothing would be gained, their characters have been fully developed and they would do the same things they did the first time. They spent one whole lifetime rebelling against the Lord and disobeying His will. If He gave them another chance, they would do the same thing again. It says, "A lifetime of transgression has not softened their hearts. A second probation, were it given them, would be occupied as was the first in evading the requirements of God and exciting rebellion against Him." Ibid

So why do they not get another chance? It would do no good. You see, friends, you are making decisions day by day that are determining your eternal destiny. Did you realize that? And people do not go one way and just go until they are 60 or 70 years of age or 80 years of age and then turn around. I told you at the beginning that just does not happen. People that are converted when they are old, when you study their past life, you find that some gospel seed was planted in their life some time when they were young. You do not go one way all the time and then right at the end of your life, flip around. It does not happen. There comes a point when it is too late to change your mind.

But the reason you are here, friend, is because the Holy Spirit is working enough on your heart that you came to worship the Lord today. And that means that you have not crossed a line yet where you cannot make a decision and say, "Lord, I'm going to yield my heart, my life, everything to You. I want You to be the Lord of my life as well as my Saviour from sin." Remember, friend, Jesus cannot be your Saviour unless He is also your Lord. We will not get into that today, but read the book of Acts, it is very clear. Jesus cannot be your Saviour from sin unless He is also the Lord of your life. Do you want that experience? Do you want to make that decision today? Just because you have made it before does not mean that you cannot make it again. You should be making it every day, saying, "Father in heaven, I'm yielding my life to Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour. I want to do His will. I want to obey Him today."

As you do that every day, as you choose to obey Him, to follow Him, to keep His law, when you come to the final test, many Christians are worried, "What will I do when the national Sunday law comes? What will I do. . ?" If you are making the right decisions today, and you have made those decisions 100 or 1,000 times, when you come to the final test, you will make the same decision you have made all along. The Lord will help you to do it. But if you are going to be ready then, the important thing to do is to surrender yourself to the Lord now. Do you want to do that? If that is what you want to do, I want to invite you to pray with me. Let's ask the Lord to help us to make the decision now, so that when it is too late to change our mind we will have made the right decision.