See that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For if they did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from Him who speaks from heaven, whose voice then shook the earth; but now He has promised, saying, “Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven.” Now this, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain. (Hebrews 12:25-27, NKJV).
There is coming a day - inevitably, irrevocably - when every mouth will be stopped and all the world will become guilty before God. Until that day, there is hope for repentance, a hope of escape from the wrath to come, but it entails a conscious, willful, and committed acquiescence to an authority and a Person who, for now, allows refusal.
This is a test, the same test taken and failed by our forefather, Adam, who through the beguilement of Eve, his own god-like pride, and the vicious contrivance of the Enemy, refused Him who spoke in the Garden.
The consequence of refusal is death, not merely physical death and illusory annihilation, but eternal and conscious death in the excruciating torment of everlasting regret and separation from the only Source of life and light and good. For separation is the essence of death, though the world would have you believe otherwise.
We are either absent from the body and present with the Lord, awaiting the regeneration of all things, or, through refusal to heed His immeasurably gracious offer of forgiveness and salvation through faith in Christ, we are forever separated from God Himself - sentenced to an inescapable prison where the fire is never quenched and the worm never dies.
The Old Testament picture of this ultimate fate was repeatedly played out in the lives of the Children of Israel, whose actual history entailed both the blessings and curses of the Mosaic Law, the personification of Him who spoke on earth.
That declaration is followed by yet another comparison of the superiority of Christ as Him who speaks from heaven, whose voice then shook the earth. Christ, as the Word of God, speaks with the same authority and power now, from His position at the right hand of God, as He did long ago at Mount Sinai in delivering the Law.
[But] now He has promised, saying, “Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven.” What made physical reality shake at Sinai will, in a time yet future, shake all of Causality - earth and Heaven.
Given this, the statement, much more shall we not escape follows as incontrovertibly as all the promises of God. The forgone conclusion is this: what was inescapable in the past under the Old Covenant, is even more inescapable under the New. No possibility of reprieve exists outside of faith in Messiah.
And to eliminate any doubt of his meaning, the writer of Hebrews, under Divine inspiration, explains that “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain.
Know this, there are two realms of existence; the spiritual realm, which precedes and is the foundation of existence itself, and the physical realm - the sphere of 3-dimensional space and time. It is the physical realm that consists of things that are made, while the eternal and unshakeable spiritual realm is that which will remain.
This is not to say that God did not create them both, but it is to emphasize that He who transcends both space and time, will remake them both - a new heaven and a new earth - and the only thing that will survive the transition are those saved by faith in Christ; the things which cannot be shaken.
To be saved, you must heed the invitation from Him who speaks. You must set aside any false sense of conceit and confidence in your own understanding, and surrender to the unsearchable wisdom of God.
Not that He does not provide sufficient evidence to make this choice rationally and logically, for the evidence is in the anthropomorphic construction of the Universe, the undeniable fulfillment of prophetic history, and the miraculous demonstration of changed lives. Indeed, it does not involve a surrender of intellect or reason, but of pride and arrogance.
These truths were once well accepted, but are now increasingly viewed as wishful thinking. The marginalization is no accident. It is yet another fulfillment of Biblical prophecy:
But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power... (2 Timothy 3:1-5, NKJV).
The warning is clear. When the Day of Judgment comes, no one will have an excuse. God has inscribed His existence on our very DNA, expressed His power in the very vastness of the Universe, and shown His intelligence in the complexity of the life that He has designed and brought forth by the Word of His power.
To deny the God of the Bible is to deny your own source of being. To refuse Him who speaks results only in inescapable destruction.
