Monday, January 24, 2005

“Are you going to heaven?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I am a good person. I don’t think God would send a good person to hell.”

Amazingly enough there are still these people in the world. They believe they can purchase a ticket into heaven simply by being a good person. Even more now than ever before people are following this line of thought. They are either too afraid of offending someone or they just dont want to exhaust the time and effort of believing in God, so instead they decide not to believe in one particular religion or another and they simply believe they are good they will get into heaven.
Unfortunately these people are in for a rude awakening.

I am not politically correct when it comes to God and I do not make excuses for my faith. I am here to tell you the truth. Good deeds will not get you into heaven. I don’t care if you are the kindest, gentlest soul who has ever walked this planet. If you do not believe in the one true God and His son Jesus Christ, you are not getting in. It’s as simple as that. The price that Jesus paid he paid for us all. He paid the price so we don’t have. God took man out of the equation when he wiped our sins clean for us with the blood of Jesus Christ.

I am writing this because of a recent interview I saw on “The O’Reilly Factor.” Mr. O’Reilly was interviewing Dr. Tim Lahay and Mr. Jerry Jenkins (the authors of the famous “Left Behind” series). During the course of the interview Mr. O’Reilly asked Dr. Lahay if a good person could get into heaven. Dr. Lahay replied with a simple ‘no, not if they didn’t have Jesus in their lives’. Apparently this was not the answer Mr. O’Reilly was looking for and he wanted to debate on the subject. Mr. O’Reilly like so many others in our society today has a problem with a Christian claiming that Jesus is the only way to God and therefore the only way to heaven.
We are living in a world where various religions are accepted openly and freely, that is unless you are a Christian. Tell someone you are a Buddhist and they seem fascinated, but the second you say to someone, “Have you heard about Jesus?” the conversation is over. Our faith does not suit today’s generation because we do not allow that you can believe what you want. It is much easier to not believe in God, live a good life and hope that is enough (just in case there is a heaven).
On the other hand we have those who are genuinely confused because there are so many faiths out there, they are not sure which one is the real. So many of us started out like this, but the people I am referring to are the ones who would rather stay in the dark than exhaust the effort to educate themselves and learn the truth. It is easier to stay in the world, blind to the ways of God than it is to actually search for Him.

I will close with this simple verse:

“I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
- Jesus (John 14:6)

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