Have you heard of Dr. Stephen Hawking? Have you heard about Dr. Hawking's question?

Stephen Hawking is one of the foremost physicists in the world. He is the poor soul stuck in a wheel chair, although I do not remember which of the debilitating deseases he has. He is a brillant man, measured by men's standards.

Anyway, he posted a question on Yahoo Answers. His question was "How will the world survive the next hundred years?" The full page at Yahoo can be found here.

Out of curiousity I ambled over to look at the page. It has been creating hype on the blog feeds because of the number of answers Dr. Hawking has received. When I look, there were 16,333 responses.

I find this amazing -- first that that many people will express an opinion, especially when many of them are virtually the same; and second that Dr. H would bother to post the question in the first place.

The answers are what you would expect -- hope, space ships, we won't, chaos theory, and so on.

Of the thirty answers on page 1, only one merited any real attention. One reader wrote - "how about TRUST IN JESUS CHRIST, pal!"

I say "Amen!" to this answer, for it is the only correct answer.

But, I worry about the odds - 1 in 30 is a very poor response rate. Now, maybe this is because the Christians either did not bother to read the question, or did not bother to answer. I know I did not pay any attention to the post until today, and with over 16,000 people in front of me, I did not post a rresponse either.

The next hundred, or thousand, years are in the hands of God. He, and He alone controls life and death. This is true of individuals, of nations, and of the world. What we do know is that the world will be here in a hundred years. What we do not know is whether it will be similar to today's world, secular society attempting to bury Christianity, or if the Rapture and Tribulation have come, so that a hundred years from now we will be in the early stages of the Millennium.

If the later is true, us Christians will be enjoying the world from a totally new perspective, in our glorified bodies, busy worshiping God, and serving in His kingdom. The converted Jews who survived the Millennium, along with some unknown number of converted Gentiles will be living in great peace and prosperity on earth.

All of those who are responding to Dr. Hawking and who are not saved will be in hell a hundred years from now since they will not have survived the Tribulation, it it has come.

That is the sad part of this question. Those who do not recognize God and place their faith in Jesus truly are living on a day to day basis with no hope for the future. Instead of responding to Dr. Hawking, we all need to be praying for his salvation and the salvation of most of those poor souls who bothered to suggest they had an idea of the future the doctor might not have.

Jim A