“The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God” (Ps. 9:17)...
Now this clearly indicates two things:—“First, that wickedness is going to get its appropriate punishment. Second, that God is not going to allow anybody to push Him out of mind and remembrance.
Sin always entails suffering. The sorrow and the suffering that follow as a consequence are sometimes seen in this life. They always follow with dread certainty in the life that is to come. Then just because this is so, and because in our heart of hearts we know it is so, we do not like to think of God. We dismiss Him from our thoughts as far as we can. And succeeding in forgetting Him, we seal our doom.
But we are warned in order that we may escape. For there is a way of escape.
“He that hears My word, ”
said the Son of God,
“and believes on Him that sent Me, has everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death to life” (John 5:24).
If, instead of forgetting God, you turned to God; if, instead of living for yourself and rejecting the Lord Jesus, you owned your guilt and need and believed in Him as just the Saviour you need, as the One whose precious blood shed on Calvary can wash your sins away, you would be saved and become the possessor of everlasting life—a life that you would begin to enjoy here and now. Moreover there would be no condemnation for you. The dark judgment-cloud of hell would disappear out of your sky.
This is the way of escape. Do not resent the warning. Rather accept it with thankfulness, and make salvation your own."
F.B.Hole, excerpt from “YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED”