MAN'S WASTED POTENTIAL

              By A. W. Tozer

             Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire,
              prepared for the devil and his angels.
                                                                    -- Matthew 25:41
 

                  God has made it plain that hell is a real place - a final
              abode for people who do not want to love God and serve
              Him!

                  The sadness and the tragedy of this fact is that these are
              human beings, all dear to God because He created them
              in His own image.  Of nothing else in the Creation is it
              said that it was created in the likeness of God!

                  Because fallen and perishing man is still nearer to God's
              likeness than any other creature on earth, God offers him
              conversion, regeneration and forgiveness.  It was surely
              because of this great potential in the human personality
              that the eternal Word could become flesh and dwell
              among us.

                  We are assured in many ways in the Scriptures that God
              the Creator does not waste human personality, but it is
              surely one of the stark tragedies of life that human
              personality can waste itself!

                  A man by his own sin may waste himself, which is to
              waste and lose that which on earth is most like God. The
              man who dies out of Christ is said to be lost, and hardly a
              word in our language expresses his condition with greater
              accuracy!

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              Yours in Christ,
              Paul N. F.