From Dr. Morris at ICR:
Ignorance will not be an excuse when we stand before Him. Ignorance occurs when we do not seek Him daily to check and double-check our attitude regarding the the most important of the Ten Commandments—to love Him above everything.
If we seek Him daily—“give us this day our daily bread”—Jesus being the Bread of Life, and ask Him to adjust our attitude toward Him, then we actively keep ourselves from ignorance by purposefully making Him #1. It is the action of seeking that saves us from ignorance.
Luke 19:41-44 tells us, When He approached Jerusalem, He saw the city and wept over it saying, “If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you when your enemies will throw up a barricade against you, and surround you, and hem you in on every side, and they will level you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.”
The Lord had finally acknowledged to the Jewish leaders that He was their promised Messiah, riding into the city on a donkey’s colt in fulfillment of prophecy (Zechariah 9:9, Matthew 21:1-7), but they refused to accept and prepared to crucify Him. Therefore, Jesus wept over the city, for He knew it would soon be destroyed “because thou knew not the time of thy visitation.”
There are many other cases of such tragic ignorance in the Bible. For example, “Samson…did not know that the LORD had departed from him” (Judges 16:20), and it cost him his great strength and finally his life.
The ungodly sinners in the days of Noah “they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away” (Matthew 24:39). Of the northern kingdom of Israel and its king, it was said: “Strangers have devoured his strength, and he does not know it” (Hosea 7:9). These “strangers” were the pagan Canaanites who had turned the people away from the true God.
This is a real danger facing many church and parachurch organizations of the end times, typified by the church at Laodicea. The Lord says to such churches, “I will spit you out of my mouth. Because you say, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and you don’t know that you are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” (Revelation 3:16-17)
May God deliver each of us from tragic ignorance of our need before Him. We should pray with the psalmist, “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” (Psalm 139:23-24)
Amen.