The Net Effect

The problem with nets is that you never know what you are going to catch in them.  It's not like the residents of the body of water has a choice or not.  The net comes by and you are caught up in it.  The net does not discriminate between fish and crustation or between crustation and debris. 

When I was a boy, my father had a favorite fishing place in Lemont Illinois. It was not a park or grove it was a large flat area where a company was querying limestone. It happened to be next to the Des Plaines River.  One time while we were fishing a group of men came and they unloaded a large net.  Several of them put on waders and went out to the center of the river carrying one end of a large net. Several other men entered the river closer to the shore and they started walking slowly against the flow of the water.  With a child's curiosity, I watched as they worked the river.  After a while, the men in the center of the river started towards the shore and very soon the nets were hauled in.  Every sort of swimming creature was caught up in the net including some of the fish my father was hoping to catch!  The men with the nets were there to harvest crayfish from the river and did they get a lot of them.  Anything that was not a crayfish was tossed back into the river as they were not what was on the menu that day.  They packed the crayfish into some drums, gathered up their nets and left and my father who had seen the large fish that the men had thrown back was convinced that some of them would now be ready to chomp on the bait he flung into the water at the end of his fishing pole.  He caught nothing but the rays of the sun that day when the men came by with their nets. 

Jesus tells us that at the end of time the net of God will gather us all in.  There will be no escape.  Those that are friends of God will be carefully segregated from those who are not friends of God and the former will be lead to heaven while the later will be sent to a place where God does not dwell.  This parable is a warning to the enemies of God but it is also a promise to those that love the Lord that the attitudes of each group will be the governing factor as to where you will spend eternity.