David Platt contrasts horrors of Hell with beauty of Heaven to highlight 'urgency' of mission work

In a powerful message at the Cross19 Conference, author and pastor David Platt contrasted the sobering realities of Hell with the beauty of Heaven to highlight the urgency and gravity of the mission that God has given to His people.

In a message titled "Revelation: The Urgency of Eternity," Platt, pastor at McLean Bible Church in Washington, D.C. and founder and president of Radical, referenced Revelation 14:19 to argue that the unreached — those who don't trust in Jesus Christ — will receive the "winepress of God's wrath."

"But they can't trust in Jesus if they never hear about Jesus," he said. "How can they believe if they don't hear? They need to hear."

Platt revealed that recently he was in Nepal, where he witnessed hundreds of bodies put on a funeral pyre and set ablaze just 24 hours after they died.

"Ashes going down in this river, believing it's helpful in the process of reincarnation," he said. "I'm smelling these burning bodies and realizing I'm looking at a physical picture of a spiritual reality. Most, if not all of these people, never had a chance to hear about how they can go to Heaven."

"What will it take [for the] concept of unreached people to be totally intolerable to us?" he implored, adding that there's an "urgency that comes with a view of eternity."

So many Christians have a "paltry" view of Heaven, Platt said, adding: "If we're honest, many of us have a pretty boring view of what it's going to be like. We stand around with each other and sing songs and stare at the light for a few quadrillion years."

But according to Scripture, Heaven is far more than just "choir practice," the pastor contended.

"This is a place we're going to where it's the fulfillment of all our desires in the presence of God; a new earth, a complete earth, not a place where we have nothing to do but float on clouds, but a new earth where we have everything to do, a God to worship, a kingdom to rule, a universe to explore, a family to enjoy," he said.

Continue reading about the Cross19 Conference on The Christian Post.