Some 7 years ago I was inspired to write this message, this warning...and boy oh boy was it prophetic turns out.
For Goodness' Sake - Heaven for the Godless
It's Advent and it's about to be Christmas again in America.
WHY DO WE BOTHER, when we apparently don't believe?
American Christians are increasingly abandoning their belief in Jesus' claim of divine authority. One very plausible explanation is that Americans just want good things to come to good people, regardless of their faith. I get that, I'm human and I fall prey to that very human trait.
Did you know that 52% of American Christians believe that "at least some non-Christian faiths can lead to eternal life." And in the spirit of democracy in America, majority rules, not the Holy Spirit.
I personally believe that we've got to this place due to the Liberal media pressure which has increasingly allowed for direct attacks against the "Gospel Truth". Public displays and accounts that 50 years ago would have been deemed "taboo", have now become very common place in our post-modern culture. While it's true that in our society, we meet so many good people of different faiths and it’s hard for us to imagine God letting them go to hell; what we aren't understanding is that just because we are a multicultural society, there is no authoritative source we can point to in that society that will support the idea that this American life will continue in this same way in heaven. It's really very arrogant actually to assume that it will; but that is the West after all isn't it? And the means for this great popularity has become this human construction called (Goodness' sake).
What's really going on here is, many, (a growing majority), believe that the American way is the way to heaven. Regardless who your god is, once you've become American, or allied with them and their ideology, and because of American values which hold dear the principles of religious tolerance and acceptance, it has become Un-American maybe even treasonous to believe and proselytize for the Ultimacy claims of Jesus Christ.
How did this shift in ideology gain a sense of validity in a nation founded upon Christian principles? Many Christians, (even seminary trained clergy) apparently view their didactic text as flexible. According to Pew’s survey, only 39% of Christians believe that the Bible is the literal word of God, and 18% think that it’s just a book written by men and not the word of God at all. It's just a short and sad leap from there for those who believe that the Bible is "just a book written by men and not the word of God at all" to teach others that there is no reason to believe what the Bible teaches when Jesus makes just a few of the many divine claims he made such as these:
Jesus claimed - (please make the time to read these in your bible)
Power over Life and Death (John 2:19-21) (John 11:25-26) (John 14:6) (Acts 4:12)
Authority over Eternal Life (John 6:35) (John 10:9) (John 11:25-26)
Heavenly Origin (John 3:13-18) (John 16:28) (John 17:5)
Claims to be the Messiah (John. 4:26) (John 8: 58) back reference (Isa. 9:6)
Claims the Power to Forgive Sins (John 8:12) (John 10:30-38) (1 Corinthians 3:12-15)
Light of the World (John 8:12)
Authority to Send the Holy Spirit (John 14:26) (John 15:16) (John 16:7) (Acts 5:3-4)
Claims Equality with God (John 5:23) (John 10:11) (John 16:15)
And finally since I've had enough of this, Jesus, under persecution and facing certain death, when it would not have served him to do so, made it very clear:
The high priest asked him, "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" And Jesus said, "I am; and you will see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven."
(Mark 14:61-65)
Since no mere prophet would make these claims of Divinity, (as is suggested in Islam), and since God would certainly not have authenticated a message from a false prophet, the only explanation is that Jesus is indeed who he claimed he was, God.
In the words of the theologian and story teller, C.S. Lewis:
"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg--or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us."
"HE HAS NOT LEFT THAT OPEN TO US"
The multicultural god, the inclusive, tolerant, post-modern god that is gaining in popularity (The Pop-god, American Idol Jesus), "has not left that option open to us." Why go through all this nonsense of Advent followed by Christmas and Lent and Easter if Jesus wasn't truly the Son of God? Why not just be good for goodness' sake, or not...who the hell cares?
If we truly love the God who said he so loved the world that he sent His only begotten Son so that all who believed in him might be saved; and we believe that Jesus is the only Savior sent by the only living God, and that the Bible truthfully reveals the only Gospel that saves ANY people regardless of their culture or nationality, then we had better make our confidence clear in this culture with zeal. Our zeal for the truth, empowered by a revived Holy Spirit in us, should yield a restoration of concern for the evangelizing of those who do not yet know Christ, and an acceptance of the Christ for who he claimed he is . . . for goodness sake.