I have a startling revelation for Christians and Non-Christians who play the role of God Almighty by judging who will go to Heaven and who will go to Hell: No one can know the condition of a person’s heart (soul) at the point of death except God Himself!
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings. (Jeremiah 17:9-10)
According to The Bible:
Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. (Matthew 7:1-2 NKJV)
By the time all is said and done by God, I suspect that many Christians who make it to Heaven will be shocked by who made it in! Likewise, many non-Christians who believe they are going to Heaven based on their self-imposed morality and good deeds will be shocked to find themselves in hell, a place of eternal torment that they do not believe exists!
Every living soul has faith in something or someone. A horizontal ruler can be used to illustrate the degrees of faith. Zero on the left represents no faith at all, while Twelve on the right represents great faith. The dilemma is what people believe in. They either believe a lie and the one who spoke it or they believe the Truth and the One who spoke it. From a Christian’s viewpoint, a person who does not believe in God or that The Holy Bible is His Written Word is at faith level Zero. From an Atheist’s viewpoint, his faith level is Twelve because he has completely sold into the lie that there is no God. Christians who believe in God and that all things are possible with Him are at faith level Twelve. Christians and Atheists do not communicate well because their beliefs differ and they consider each other to be at the opposite end of the faith ruler.
Christians believe, by faith, that GOD Almighty is I AM (YHWH or YAHWEH) and that The Holy Bible is His Written Word. It is upon the basis of their faith that Christians communicate with lost, Hell-bound sinners. The Apostle Paul describes faith as follows:
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)
But without faith it is impossible to please Him: for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. (Hebrews 11:6)
A Christian’s faith is founded on the Truth of the Written Word of God (The Holy Bible) which, from cover-to-cover, testifies that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of the world. Therefore, a non-Christian (unbeliever) should not be offended or angered when a Christian answers his questions according to what The Bible says. A Christian’s faith increases as he hears, reads, studies and meditates on the Word of God:
So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10:17)
On the flip side, a Christian should not be offended or shocked when an unbeliever presents his argument based on what he believes. This person’s faith may be based on what he was taught by his parents, teachers, or someone else of influence. An Atheist, for example, is a person who believes that God does not exist. Likewise, an Agnostic is a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (such as God) is unknown and probably unknowable. I do not presume to know the foundation upon which they base their faith. As a minister, my concern is their spiritual state and my objective is to lead them out of spiritual darkness into the Light where God dwells by sharing the Truth of God’s Word. Why? Because The Holy Bible says:
The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good. (Psalms 14:1)
All of Creation (the Heavens and all life forms on Earth) declares the Glory of God, The Creator:
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth His handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. (Psalms 19:1-3)
The diversity of every life form, the perfection of Earth’s location in relation to our moon and sun, etc. all point to a Divine Plan and Planner. The stars, the moon, the planets, the galaxies all have a voice and no voice is without signification (1 Corinthians 14:10). Those who do not believe that God Almighty exists and reject The Holy Bible as His Written Word are spiritually dead, blind and deaf because they cannot see or hear God in His Creation.
Satan is responsible for their spiritual blindness:
But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. (2 Corinthians 4:3-4)
I say again, no Christian or non-Christian can know the condition of a person’s heart (soul) at the point of death … only God Himself knows. Before proceeding with this train of thought and for the benefit of non-Christians, some foundational basics concerning the Christian Faith should be covered.
FIRST, God created Adam and Eve (progenitors of the human race) to fellowship with Him, as described in Genesis 3:8. God made a Covenant with Adam, which they of their own free will chose to break by covenanting with Satan (the serpent) in the Garden of Eden. Eve was deceived by the serpent; however, Adam outright disobeyed God’s commandment to not eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. When Adam and Eve broke covenant with God, they lost their innocence when they attained knowledge of evil (of which God wanted to spare them) and they exchanged God’s Blessings for Satan’s unholy package of curses which included spiritual and physical death, every known and unknown sin, depravity, perversion, sickness, disease and poverty. (Yes, Satan is responsible for evil, NOT God Almighty!)
At this point, I need to depart from this foundational truth long enough to expose yet another lie of Satan which is causing many Christians and non-Christians to be confused and misled about the character and nature of God—the lie that God created evil. The basis for this false belief is the misinterpretation of the following Scripture reference:
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. (Isaiah 45:7)
The Truth is revealed in the Hebrew translation of the word evil (“rah”) which in this context means that God does not create evil in the moral sense, nor does He approve of, or bring, evil. The correct translation is in the sense of disaster or calamity. For some people, this may raise the troubling question as to why a loving God would bring disaster and calamity. Although I do not presume to have all of the answers, by faith I believe that as Sovereign Creator and Righteous Judge, God’s Permissive Will allows disaster and calamity to occur because of Adam and Eve’s original sin which brought suffering and tribulation and to humble proud, stubborn and unrepentant sinners who reject Jesus Christ as Savior, as well as to teach, guide and discipline Christians.
To return to my original train of thought, Adam and Eve’s decision to covenant with Satan resulted in a wide gulf that separated them from God’s Presence, Relationship and Fellowship. In the Old Testament under the Old Covenant, the shedding of animal blood atoned for sins. This is why God provided animal skins to cover their nakedness, of which they became aware after they sinned by eating the forbidden fruit (Genesis 3:21).
SECOND, to bring mankind back into right relationship and fellowship with Him, God devised a Plan of Salvation. He loved mankind so much that He gave His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to redeem man from the curse of spiritual death (John 3:16). Jesus Christ The Son of God, conceived by The Holy Spirit and born of a human virgin, came into this world to destroy the works of Satan accomplished in the Garden of Eden. Jesus succeeded! (1 John 3:8) Jesus was the sinless, spotless sacrificial Lamb of God whose shed Blood atones for sins under God’s New Covenant (Hebrews 4:15; 1 Peter 2:22). When Jesus was crucified on Calvary’s Cross, He took upon Himself all of man’s sins, sicknesses, diseases and infirmities, redeeming us from the wages of sin which is spiritual death (Romans 6:23). In so doing, He triumphed over the devil, who was ignorant of God’s Plan of Salvation; otherwise, he would not have crucified the Lord of Glory (1 Corinthians 2:8). When Jesus was resurrected from the dead and ascended into Heaven, He bridged the wide gulf that existed between man and God which was created when Adam and Eve sinned and fell from grace. Therefore, it is only by the Name of our Resurrected Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ, that men can attain salvation:
Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. (Acts 4:12)
THIRD, to expose and refute two more lies of Satan: 1) God did not create hell for people; He created hell for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41); and 2) God does not send people to hell.
The truth is, with a lot of help from Satan, the Deceiver, people unwittingly send themselves to hell by willfully rejecting Jesus Christ as Savior (2 Corinthians 4:4; Revelation 12:9). Satan, his demons and his human subjects are responsible for deceiving millions of people into believing that a literal place of eternal torment called hell (sheol, hades, tartarus, ghenna, outer darkness, etc.) does not exist. This lie contradicts the Truth of God’s Word which references hell over 130 times, not to mention the personal testimonies of people who died, went to hell, and were commissioned by God to return to life in order to warn people that hell is REAL. So, just because a person chooses not to believe that hell is real, does not change the fact that hell exists. Such a person will come to believe in hell while he is alive and can be saved to prevent going there, or he will believe in hell after he dies and finds himself there and can do nothing. When an unbeliever dies and finds himself in hell, he will find Satan waiting to welcome him grinning from ear-to-ear and gloating, "Gotcha!" Once a soul enters hell, there is no hope or way of escape.
FOURTH, Believing that there is One God, from an intellectual standpoint, is not how a person's spirit and soul go to Heaven when death occurs. Devils believe in God too, and tremble, but they do not dwell in Heaven (James 2:19). A person can possess head knowledge about The Bible and Jesus Christ, but his/her “heart condition” is what is relevant to God, who sees and knows every heart. Salvation or the Washing and Regeneration of a person's spirit by The Holy Spirit is a miraculous event that occurs instantaneously when God’s conditions for Salvation are met; namely, a sinner must humble himself before God and with godly sorrow repent of his sins and/or sinful lifestyle, acknowledge his need for Jesus Christ as Savior, and surrender his heart to Him.
Every person who experiences the spiritual New Birth is changed on the inside and transformed into a new creature (Titus 3:5; 2 Corinthians 5:17). This transformation is described as follows:
A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. (Ezekiel 36:26-27)
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)
If a person professing to be a Christian is committing willful sin and is not willing to repent, he has either not be “born again” by The Holy Spirit, or he is in a backslidden condition, being ruled by man’s fallen carnal nature instead of being ruled by The Holy Spirit. Tragically, churches are full of people who go to church on Sunday but live like a devil the rest of the week. Jesus had the following to say about such people:
Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. (Matthew 7:21-23)
This people draweth nigh unto Me with their mouth, and honoureth Me with their lips; but their heart is far from Me. But in vain they do worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. (Matthew 15:8-9)
Church attendance/work, water Baptism, doing good deeds, and trying to live as a good person does not constitute Salvation. Nor is a person saved because a parent or grandparent attends church. Piety means nothing without atonement for sin. In order to be saved, every man, woman and child must surrender his heart to Jesus Christ and his spirit must be washed and regenerated by The Holy Spirit.
So, what about people of different religious persuasions (Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Atheism, Agnosticism, Scientology, etc.)? Are they going to Heaven, or to Hell?
The answer to this question is based on mankind’s only source of Absolute Truth—The Holy Bible. If a non-Christian hears the Gospel of Jesus Christ at least once during his lifetime and rejects Jesus Christ as his Savior and continues to reject Him to the point of death, then he will go to Hell. This is not my opinion—God said it in His Word and that settles it!
If, however, a person of a different religious persuasion accepts Jesus Christ as his Savior before he draws his last breath, he will go to Heaven. Although it is foolhardy and dangerous for a non-repentant sinner to wait until the point of death to confess Jesus Christ, death bed confessions do occur and are Biblical, as illustrated in the account of the penitent thief (Luke 23: 39-43). The danger of a person delaying making a decision for Christ at the last moment is that death can occur suddenly (car accident, heart attack, stroke, etc.), leaving no time for him to confess and receive Jesus Christ as Savior.
What about people who never hear about Jesus? Are they going to Heaven or to Hell?
If a non-Christian dies, having never heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ during his lifetime, according to Romans Chapter 2, he will be judged by God according to the law that He put in our conscience. That judgment is known only by God. Jesus said: “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin.” (John 15:22. NKJV)
God's Plan of Salvation is no different under the New Covenant than it was under the Old Covenant. Only the Sacrifice for sin atonement has changed. Under the Old Covenant, the shedding of the blood of animals atoned for sin. Since God gave us a New Covenant, no one can be saved under the Old Covenant any more. They can be saved ONLY under the New Covenant and the Blood of Jesus Christ, the Sacrificial Lamb of God, is the atonement for sin.
People who believe that ALL Jews go to hell when they die because they are not Christians are ignorant or misinformed. Thousands of Israelis who call themselves Messianic Jews are Heaven-bound because they believe and have accepted that Jesus Christ, also a Jew, is indeed The Messiah and Savior of the World.
People who believe that ALL Muslims go to hell when they die have confined God to a box and limited His Love and Power to save people to the uttermost parts of the earth. A Muslim may be born and raised a Muslim, but he doesn’t have to die a Muslim. Jesus Christ loves them, too, and He is revealing Himself to them through night dreams and daytime visions:
And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit. And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the LORD shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the LORD hath said, and in the remnant whom the LORD shall call. (Joel 2:28-32)
Many people believe that tribal heathens whom Missionaries haven’t reached with the Gospel message will go to hell. I disagree because I know my Heavenly Father, with whom all things are possible (Matthew 19:26). I do not believe that God would create a race of people and then not reveal Himself to them or give them opportunities to know and worship Him right where they are and at their level of spiritual awareness! Although I cannot prove or disprove this statement, I believe that God has imprinted into the DNA of every human being, an innate, inexplicable spiritual hunger and longing to seek and be bonded with their Creator. This would explain why every tribe and nation has a religion and a god that they serve and worship. The problem is Satan counterfeits everything that God creates. Through deception and lying signs and wonders, he influences people to become involved in false religions because he does not want them to seek and fellowship with One True God and to know His Son, Jesus Christ.
A non-Christian—one whose spirit has not been “born again” (transformed by the New Birth of Washing and Regeneration by the Holy Spirit)—walks in spiritual darkness and therefore cannot understand or interpret The Holy Bible. The preaching of the Cross is foolishness to this person (1 Corinthians 1:18). Interpretation of the Scriptures is imparted by The Holy Spirit, who guides Believers into all Truth (John 16:13). This explains why an unbeliever will always reject the Divine Inspiration, Inerrancy and Truth of God’s Written Word (The Holy Bible), upon which Christians base their faith.
Interestingly, people choose to believe in Heaven which is referenced over 500 times in The Bible, but deny the existence of Hell, referenced over 130 times. They also reject the idea that a loving God could possibly judge as a lost sinner, a person who is basically good and tries to live a moral life apart from the saving knowledge and atoning Blood of Jesus Christ. While it is true that God is Loving, Merciful and Gracious, He is also a God of Righteous Judgment and Wrath. For example, He judged and destroyed the pagan cities of Sodom and Gomorrah because they were steeped in homosexuality, bestiality and other perverse sexual sins.
Because Adam and Eve broke covenant with God, we their descendants inherited through Adam’s bloodline the sin nature and the previous-named curses, as well as tribulation and suffering. Fortunately, no human being has ever had to suffer like Jesus Christ did before and during His Crucifixion. His Father did not coerce Him to sacrifice His life for every man, woman and child; Jesus willingly gave His Life because of His Love for mankind.
The Bible says that God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34), which means that He does not play man’s “partiality and favorites” game. If an unrepentant sinner has knowledge of Jesus Christ and rejects Him as Savior to the point of death, then that soul will not go to Heaven. Jesus was very clear about how a person inherits eternal life when He told His disciples:
I am the way and the truth and the life: no man comes to the Father but by Me. (John 14:6)
Consider the following scenario. If an unrepentant sinner who rejects Jesus Christ was allowed to enter into Heaven on the basis that he was a good person, this constitutes confusion and contradicts God’s Written Word. If unbelievers are allowed into Heaven, then the Son of God died on Calvary’s cross in vain. This devalues Jesus’ sacrifice and the purpose of His shed Blood which was to redeem mankind from the curse of spiritual death! If unbelievers are allowed into Heaven, there would have been no reason for a Plan of Salvation or a Redeeming Savior since EVERYONE on planet Earth would go to Heaven when they die, including unrepentant murderers, pedophiles, etc. (Yes, the Universal Salvation doctrine constitutes heresy.) God is Holy and Heaven is His holy abiding place. Believers (“born-again” Christians, whether Gentile, converted Jew, converted Muslim, etc.) are allowed to enter Heaven, not based on their good character and deeds, but because they have surrendered their hearts to Jesus Christ. When God looks at a Christian’s heart, He is not looking for the person’s self-righteousness which the Prophet Isaiah described as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6); Rather, God looks to see if the person’s heart is covered by His Son’s Blood, which is what makes a Christian righteous.
BE NOT DECEIVED PEOPLE! (Ephesians 5:6). DO NOT MOCK GOD! (Galatians 6:7) God is not the author of confusion, He does not lie, and He does not contradict or go against His Spoken and Written Word. Jesus did not come into the world to condemn the world, but to save it. But of His Father, He said:
And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. (Matthew 10:28)
IN CLOSING, I wish to say that Jesus Christ has many diverse ways to reveal Himself to a lost, dying, Hell-bound soul. Think about it! God is the author of every known language, numbering over 6,000! He will speak to people through His Written Word (The Holy Bible). He will speak through a Christian preacher or missionary. He will speak one-on-one in an audible voice. He will speak through His Creation. He will speak through a person’s conscience and common sense. He will send a Christian across an unbeliever’s path to share his personal testimony, and He will speak through night dreams and daytime visions. All things are possible with God and His tender mercies and grace know no boundaries or limitations! His Will and Heart’s Desire is that no person should perish, but that ALL should come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). Therefore, rather than speculate and debate about the eternal destination of people which God alone knows, why not choose to believe, as I do, that Jesus Christ is able to reach and save souls from the guttermost to the uttermost!
EVEN SO, COME LORD JESUS!
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