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Good? > Everyone goes to heaven
Everyone goes to heaven. God loves us and would not really subject
anyone to eternal punishment.
God loves us.
Many people believe we'll all get to heaven (except for a few really
bad people). They say, after all, most of us are basically good.
Here
are the facts: God makes it very clear
that He is just and fair. He doesn't make a set of rules and then
later change them. He doesn't promise one thing and then do something
different. What God has said right from the beginning (Genesis)
is that there is a penalty that needs to be paid if we break His
law (commands). That penalty is death.
We have two
options:
1) If we
never break any of God's laws, in other words if we perfectly
obey all of God's commands, we'll have eternal life with God in
heaven. There is a problem, however. NO ONE has ever been able to
do it. My guess is that not one person reading this has even obeyed
just the Ten Commandments. This means we are all under the death
penalty.
2) If we
can find someone else to die in our place (pay our penalty for
us) that solves our problem. However, every other person is already
responsible for paying the death penalty for their own breaking
of God's laws.
God saw this
problem and He provided a solution. God does not change the rules--that
wouldn't be fair--so someone had to die to pay our penalty for sin
(law breaking). God decided that He would die--and so Jesus Christ
died in our place taking the penalty for our sins.
So we have two
alternatives: We can accept God's gift to us--that Jesus died in
our place, or we have the only other alternative, which is eternity
in hell.
We choose:
If we disobey God, then God let's us. It's our choice. He even says
that those who disobey Him will get their reward here on earth.
This means, for example, that those who spend their time building
earthly treasure can enjoy that treasure here on earth. In America
we have a lot of earthly treasure and we spend a lot of time enjoying
it.
But, our
time on earth to enjoy our earthly treasure is, at most, about 100
years. That is a very brief time compared with eternity.
If while we
are here on earth we recognize we are breaking God's law (we sin),
that the penalty is death, and God (Jesus) has paid that penalty
for us, then our reward will be throughout eternity -- which is
a very long time.
Let's look at
this from a slightly different
perspective.
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