A Disturbing Statistic
A Disturbing Statistic
Over 64% of Christians do not believe that Jesus is the only way to Heaven
When Satan reminds you of your past sins, remind him of his future. In my opinion, and unfortunately personal experience, the only time I doubt John 14:6
"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me"
is when I am feeling unworthy, usually because of my sin, and that’s when I start thinking – or at least have in the past – “there must be another way God is going to accept me into His house.” But let’s review the one who puts those thoughts in our head.
Revelation 20 The Thousand Years
“And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain. 2 He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. 3 He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended. After that, he must be set free for a short time.”
The Judgment of Satan
“7 When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison 8 and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—and to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. 9 They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God’s people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. 10 And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.”
Here’s the thing, something likely not to be said these days in our culture. If you can see all that is going on in the world, if you can study history at whenever age of this earth and age of mankind and deny the obvious battle between good and evil, well… That kind of behavior and thought is like the proverbial ostrich hiding its head in the sand, so it doesn’t see the threat all around. That is one’s prerogative, that is part of the free will God gave us all; it is both the blessing and the curse of that gift of choice God imbued in man from the start.
Indeed, there have been times in dealing with the temptations Satan has brought my way to bring me down, or to reduce whatever effectiveness for God I may have, that free will seems to work against me. Or possibly I am susceptible to those temptations in order to discourage me from proclaiming whatever encouragement I am supposed to be giving the saints, that I have wished for some sort of compulsory obedience. That my choice would not exist, that I would simply do God’s will. I have hoped God would, all of a sudden, make the temptation something about which I was not even aware. But it does not work like that.
1 Corinthians 10:13
“13 No temptation[c] has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted[d] beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.”
It seems close in the scripture to my plea above, doesn’t it? Well, the problem that leads me to make the request above still requires an action on my part to invoke this promise. Yes, thank God he is providing a way out of the temptation, but I still have to make the choice to take the “way out”, don’t I? If you remember here that I am asking:
“That my choice would not exist, that I would simply do God’s will”
We all know that is simply not how life works. I think that my opening statement of:
“Over 64% of Christians do not believe that Jesus is the only way to Heaven”
is borne from this whole line of thought. These 64% want there to be another way to Heaven because they know that they are going to sin, but they want no consequences to that sin. So, they make up other ways to avoid having to either obey God or not suffer the consequences set down in the God’s Word. I am not sure if this is laziness, hubris, lack of confidence in their ability to live the way they want to – actually doing what God wants – or simply wanting life on their own terms. Usually it’s a little of all of the above.
And as far as that last one is concerned, (wanting life on their own terms ) it should sound very familiar to us from way back in Genesis. The temptation to eat of the tree of good and evil, so we could be like God and know the difference. How ignorant was man of the bliss of his own ignorance? Nothing has changed.
When Satan is reminding you of your list of sins against our Holy God, he is trying to get you to buy into the idea that there must be another way to get to Heaven. BTW, he knows there is not! This eternal truth we seem to lose sight of:
Revelations 20
10 And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.”
Satan wants you to forget this. He ultimately loses; God always wins in the end. Satan wants us to be in his place, not us to be in God’s place, Heaven. This ultimate goal is always for what is being contended in this life.
The most “bottom line”, as it were, of what this is all about is found in the last book of the popular canon (Okay, that’s my issue – The Bible), Revelations12:
“7 Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8 But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 9 The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him. 10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:
”Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God, day and night, has been hurled down.11 They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.12 Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them. But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.”
The idea that 64% of Christians today believe there is another way to Heaven, other than Jesus, is simply a battlefield tactic of the enemy of God. It is reminiscent of Jesus telling us in John 14:
“14 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. 2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going.” (emphasis mine)
I am sure there are those who think I am an extremist, a fanatic, someone to be taken lightly because of my perspectives. But, really? Look – for those of us who profess faith in Christ – from where does your faith come? If it is experientially based, great, so is mine. If it is through reading the Word, study, classes and maybe even the meetings you have had with your pastor or Godly friends, great, me too. But what it comes down to after all the experiences, reading and study, after all the conversations from one-on-one to group discussions, is your decision, your faith, what do you believe? Going right back to the John reference, above John 14:6 & 7 is pretty clear:
“6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
There is a segment in verse 7 I think is in the same context, but transcends the context itself:
If you really know me, you will know
There is something in this that strikes me as an unhidden secret, the handing of the key to your door into Heaven. Not like the Gnostic idea of secret knowledge that only a chosen few can have for salvation, rather the proof that God wants us all back at the end. The need for us here is to drop all the cultural popular thought stuff that does not agree with the Word. If it agrees with the Word, then I am fine with it.
Look it has been said by the scoffers that the Bible proves itself with circular reasoning, and while in some cases that might be true, which only proves the consistency of the message, it can be a problem if there is no independent corroboration. However, this is where the different authors come into play. Paul tells us in 2 Timothy 3”
16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God[a] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
This is often the cite people use. But there is independent backup, that cannot be denied or even refuted. Peter is NOT Paul, they are two historical people. Yet Peter corroborates Paul in his 2nd book:
2 Peter 1:
19 We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. 20 Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. 21 For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
We have proven in this article, Satan loses the war. Scripture is consistent and inspired not from man’s imagination, but from God Himself. There is only one way to Heaven, and there has never been a “second” way. And the cherry on top of this little “bon mot”?
John 3
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, …
Be encouraged, earthly circumstances change, but God’s Word never does. God wins: We win.
