Luke 13-15: A Great Chasm

The same question has plagued mankind from creation on.  Should resources be spent on life's luxuries and feasting, knowing that there will be famine if times get tough, or should resources be stored up in in anticipation of a great banquet feast some day. Just as the prophets warned Israel that a day of reckoning was coming, Jesus warns his disciples that thinking that this earth is the 'be all and end all' will end in disastrous results.  He said to them, “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’
   “But he will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’
    “Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’
    “But he will reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!’
    “There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out. People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last.” - Luke 13: 23-30:  NIV

Jesus makes it clear that anyone who fails to see this present life with the heavenly realm of God in view, is doomed. Jesus illustrates this with the parable of the Great Banquet, the lost coin, and is an underlying theme even in the story of the Prodigal son, where the youngest son squandered all of his inheritance in wild living while all of the father's wealth went to the one who had remained faithful.

In the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, the rich man received his just reward, torment in hell, where he looked into heaven and saw the beggar Lazarus sitting at Abraham's side.  When he cried out to Abraham for mercy the response was ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’  - Luke 16:25-26 NIV

There is a great chasm between heaven and hell, and it is bridged by our decisions here on earth.  Where do we want to be first?  For some, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, while others will take their place at the feast in the kingdom of God.  The last will be first and the first will be last.