Two Gates
- The Culture gate
- The Kingdom gate
Two Ways
- The wide way
- The narrow way
Two Outcomes
- Destruction
- Life
More to Consider
What is immediately striking about these verses is the absolute nature of the choice before us. We would all prefer to be given many more choices than only one, or better still to fuse them all into a conglomerate religion, thus eliminating the need for any choice. But Jesus cuts across our easy-going syncretism. He will not allow us the comfortable solutions we propose. Instead he insists that ultimately there is only one choice, because there are only two possibilities to choose from. John Stott
In his 1983 acceptance speech for the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, [Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn] recalled the words he heard as a child, when his elders sought to explain the ruinous upheavals in Russia: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened." He added, "If I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire twentieth century, here too I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again: 'men have forgotten God.'" John Wilson, reviewing "Solzhenitsyn and the Modern World, in Christianity Today, Feb 7, 1994, p. 57.
A friend who lives in a forested area found his home overrun with mice--too many to exterminate with traps. So he bought a few boxes of D-Con and distributed them around the house, including one under his bed. That night he couldn't believe his ears; below him was a feeding frenzy. In the morning he checked the box and found it licked clean. Just to make sure the plan worked, he bought and placed another box. Again, the mice went for the flavored poison like piranha. But the tasty and popular nighttime snack did its deadly work. In the days that followed, all was quiet. Just because something is popular doesn't mean it's good for you. It can be deadly--like sin. Craig Brian Larson, in Leadership
