Rescue

Are You Certain Where You Will Go When You Die?

Many believe that they are mostly good people. They often say, “If I live a good life and treat everyone fairly, then if God wills it I’ll go to heaven or paradise when I die.” The Bible tells us a different story. In Genesis we read that God told Adam not to eat certain things and as long as Adam was obedient he had a good personal relationship with God. When Adam sinned he made the mistake of believing the ideas of the serpent who told Adam that he would not really die. Adam made a very human mistake and for that he was cast out of the garden and cursed by God. God told Adam that in the day that he ate the forbidden thing he would truly die. Satan told Adam that God was too loving, too kind to ever really kill him, but that God was afraid that the forbidden thing would make Man like God. Satan told Adam that god was lying to him in order to jealously protect God’s power from belonging to Adam.

We all know from the story in Genesis that God did not smite Adam dead, but instead cast him out of the garden. Adam lived a 1000 years and had many healthy children. So where was the death promised by God? Was the serpent right? No. What Adam earned was the end of the close personal relationship with God that had sustained him. What Adam earned was the deterioration of his body due to aging and viral infection. What Adam earned was spiritual and physical death that could have been avoided.

Adam’s sin was disobedience and doubt of the character of God. The word sin comes from Archery. When an archer misses the target the judge or announcer will cry out “Sin!” What the words Evil and sin refer to are really nothing more than failing through human imperfection or through stubbornness to obey the commands that God has given us for our own Good.

Goodness is obedience to God’s command and laws. In fact the word good comes from the name God. The word righteous means to be correct; to be right. When we say, I know I’m right about this thing, no matter what that thing is, we are claiming to be righteous regarding that thing. When a child learning his maths adds 2 + 2 and answers “four” that child is right. In reference to maths, he is righteous.

However, when it comes to justice, what we call fairness and impartiality, we humans are woefully unrighteous. When it comes to obeying God’s command to never lie, never steal, never desire what belongs to someone else – we all fall short. We are all unrighteous. As the New Testament says, there is none righteous, no not even one.

This greater context of obedience to God is the most important part of our lives, and we all fail; we are all evil. Even as small children we lie and steal, we stubbornly desire what belongs to others.

God is merciful, or he could easily destroy us all and send us to eternal punishment. We would deserve it.

When we fail to meet the goal of obedience, when we sin, we displease God. This makes us impure, unfaithful, bad servants. Heaven or as some call it, Paradise, is God’s place of residence. God is holy and he cannot allow unholiness to abide in his presence. During the Jewish sacrifice for the atonement of the sins of the people, the priest had to first atone for his own sins, or when he entered the holiest part of the temple he would fall dead. He wore bells on his hem and a rope on his ankle so that if he died it would be heard and he could be pulled out safely.

The ultimate goal of life is to be found worthy when our life is over and judgment comes. If we are worthy we can come boldly into the presence of God and live with him, without fear, for eternity. What we need to do is reclaim the innocence and the relationship with God that Adam forfeited for his own family and for all the generations of his decedents.

The New Testament (Muslims call it the Injil) tells us that everyone is the same before God because all have sinned and failed to live up to the perfection of God. Because we inherited the trait of disobedience from our father Adam, at least in a spiritual sense, we all become disobedient and are permanently spoiled by our selfish disobedience. Because of this there is no human born who can satisfy the requirement of obedience and restore a right relationship with God.

The only answer is to purify oneself like the priests of old, through sacrifice. But no sacrifice can make one perfect. Nothing we ever do can make us good enough to overcome our human nature to disobey. We need to be forgiven and made perfect but we can’t do it for ourselves. God’s plan of salvation made that possible. He knew we were not capable of resisting temptation entirely, so he made a way for us to be changed entirely, transformed and perfected.

This cleansing is not the result of our own efforts, but is achieved by following this simple method:

1) Show remorse for your past life. Recognize the depraved state of your soul as an illness that needs a cure.

2) Accept on faith that Jesus is the son of God and that his words, works and teachings are infallible. Accept his teaching that his death is a perfect cleansing sacrifice for your past life of sin and will empower you to live a Godly life, and that his resurrection is a token from God promising that we too will be resurrected to live with God in paradise.

3) Change the course of your life permanently so that those things which were disobedient to Biblical Morality are no longer a part of your life. Take advantage of the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit to live without habitual sin. Dedicate your life to correcting the wrong you have done (i.e. thieves become philanthropists, killers become defenders of life, home wreckers and adulterers become those who mend marriages starting with their own, etc).

4) Seek an ever more profound relationship with God that grows deeper passing through stages until it surpasses the recorded instructions of the Apostles and develops a momentum that carries you through your entire life.

If you still have doubts, ask God to reveal to you the truth bout this tract. If you open your heart to God and allow him to tell you in your heart if this is truth or fiction, he will not disappoint you. Ask him and he will show you the truth.

If you are prepared to accept this truth and would like to begin your exciting life with Christ, in the presence of the Spirit of God the master and creator of the Universe, simply pray a prayer similar to this one. Speak from your own heart and ask God to cleanse away all your sins. Ask him to accept Jesus death on the cross as a sacrifice for your sins. Ask Jesus to live inside you and guide you on your path through life. Ask him to give you the power live like a child of God instead of a child of Adam, free from the slavery of sin and able to boldly enter into the presence of almighty God.

When you have finished get a copy of the Bible, both old and new testaments and find a good church to fellowship with. Praise God for his blessings and his mercy.

Let us know about your decision at Rescue@WEAPchurch.org

A WEAP Publication.
© 2004 Wesleyan Episcopal Assemblies Pentecostal.
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