MOST DIFFICULT TEST IN HISTORY IS NOW HISTORY
For years, the distinguished All Souls College, located in charming old Oxford, England, boasted of having the world’s most difficult entrance examination. After all able-bodied persons whom had successfully qualified and jumped through the necessary hoops towards the direction of their collegiate admittance, one last hurdle stood in their path, the written exam.
The exam consists of four, 3 hour exams that have a wild variety of questions, which at times seem to be the epitome of nothingness. Questions such as “Is it immoral to buy a $10,000 hand bag?” Or, “Can you love someone if you don’t respect them?” Or, “Isn’t global warming preferable to global cooling?” Or even, “It has been said that architecture is frozen music, do you agree or disagree?” Questions such as these go on for hours and hours and hours, and I can tell you after having read many, they are all over the political landscape.
Finally, the last of four three hour essay tests that has been in place ever since 1878, All Souls sits their potential students down for a three hour written examination based upon one single word. Young writers would then attempt to prove their enlightened abilities were of such a grand scale by putting together a coherent and life-absorbing essayed based upon a word such as “water” or “bias” or “chaos.” I don’t even know how to respond to this one word academic challenge, I suppose I just think to myself, “wow!”
Well, starting in 2010, applicants to All Souls College will receive an easier, supposedly dumbed down test, for the single word entrance exam is now officially a thing of the past. Alumni of All Souls are saddened by the new process, but feel the step does move this post-secondary institution forward. But I ponder to myself, not about the test for All Souls, but for our own tests that we must take while we tread upon this earth, and in the hereafter.
As much as this traditionally feared exam has been through the ages, I shudder to think that there is one great test that we all must face, even those of us like myself who’s GPA was never close enough to ever be admitted into All Souls. And that is the test of judgment before the throne of God, the test that really does deal with The Soul! The Bible in 1 John states, “If anyone confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God resides in him and he in God. And we have come to know and believe the love that God has in us. God is love, and the one who resides in love resides in God, and God resides in him. By this love is perfect with us, so that we may have confidence in the Day of Judgment, because just as Jesus is, so we also are in the world.”
So when you stand in the presence of God and get asked why He should let you into the heaven, it is now the time for the answer rather than the question to be in the form of one single word. Jesus. Is He in your life today?