Rick Page Is My Friend

Rick Page is my friend.

Now, you might say "Ed, shouldn't that be 'Rick Page was my friend'? After all, he is gone." To which I must emphatically say "No!" I am not denying that Rick is gone but he is still my friend. You see, he is eternal and so am I. As a matter of fact, you are eternal as well, but in your case it might be that 'Rick Page was your friend'.

Let me explain. Rick knows Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. Consequently, he is in the presence of God right now - worshipping, singing and (perhaps) dancing before God. I say perhaps because as far as I know, Rick didn't dance much. However, in the presence of God, I would guess that he would not be able to NOT dance so maybe I should leave the (perhaps) out of the sentence. At any rate, I also know that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior and that means there will come a day when I will also be in the presence of God and I will see Rick there and we will live eternally in the presence of God. What our relationship will be like is not knowable, of course, but I WILL be with him in heaven and I would suspect that we would still be friends although our focus is going to be on Jesus Christ and not each other.

If you do not know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, you will also live eternally but it will be out of the presence of God. While I do not know exactly how that will be, I know that God tells us that it is a place of grief and sorrow. In Matthew (18:9), it says "...fiery hell." That tells me that it will be a place of unbearable suffering - have you ever burnt yourself badly? Then you know the pain associated with hell - at least in part. 2nd Peter (2:4) says "For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment." That tells me that there will be darkness - whether complete darkness or only partial, it does not say. Revelation (9:2) says: "He opened the bottomless pit, and smoke went up out of the pit, like the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke of the pit." That's a lot of smoke.

So, hell will be hot, hell will be dark and hell will be smoky. Hell will also be without the light of the presence of Jesus Christ; it will not have that "peace which passeth understanding." It will, in other words, be a place that I do not want to experience. But, thanks be to God, I won't experience it. Will you? Will you continue to let your desires, your doubts, your disdain, your arrogance purchase a place for you in hell? Or, will you join Rick and me in the presence of God? It is your choice.

So, you see, Rick Page IS my friend!!