17.
Don’t Miss The Party!
How does God decide who goes to heaven, and who goes to hell?
When the
Great White Throne Judgment comes at the end of the final battle with Satan (in
Revelation 20:11), who takes the "up" escalator with the
sheep, and who's on the "down" elevator with the goats?
The kindergarten
answer - "Good people go to heaven,
and bad people go to hell" – is wrong, of course. This greatly
irritates many folks, especially the so-called "Christians at heart":
the Christmas & Easter churchgoers, the deeply humane and kind atheists,
and anyone else with what they consider substantial accreditation in the field
of "good".
To them, the
true answer, Christ's answer (and pardon the bluntness, my friends, but
He would definitely know the right answer on this topic), is callous and
unjust. John the Baptist summarized that answer succinctly in John 3:36: "Whoever
believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the
Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains upon
him."
Translation
(as if the learned reader needed it!): Believe
and obey Christ, and go to heaven after your earthly death. Fail to do so, and
you go somewhere other than heaven – a place where the "wrath of God
remains upon" you. Colloquially, that 'where'
is called 'Hell'.
But, why?
Why, goes the
standard argument, wouldn't a 'just and merciful God' simply look into a man's
heart (as of course, He certainly could), and determine who's been naughty
and who's been nice, like theoretical Santa theoretically does?
Many
theologians, most much wiser than I am, have eloquently expressed the standard,
godly response to this - we are all sinners, there is no such thing as a righteous man,
and it is only through the propitiation of Jesus, through His
sacrifice on the cross at Calvary, that we have been granted absolution
from our sin debt in the eyes of God, that any
man could be viewed as being sufficiently clothed in righteousness for the Lord
Almighty to accept into His sinless Home of heaven. Be you a pastor, a pope or
a king, it doesn't matter: only by
accepting Christ as our Lord and Savior can we be accepted into heaven after
our earthly life has expired.
†
However, my personal
preference among the various descriptions of the situation for the uninformed
strays towards a reframing of the definitions of "heaven"
and "hell" as "being eternally with God"
and "being
eternally separated from God". For, no matter how
"good" you are by whatever arbitrary standards you choose to judge
yourself by (and, just out of curiosity, what
standard of "good" are you using if not the Biblical one?), the
essence of heaven as revealed in the book of Revelation is basically the
eternal worship of the omnipresent Lord – and if in your earthly,
"shadow" life you chose not to open yourself up to even the
comparatively marginal presence and level of praise Christ asked of you
here, would you not be absolutely miserable
spending eternity in the place where that's seemingly ALL that goes on? Wouldn't "heaven" be hellish
for you?
Another way
to consider this version of the question is as follows: When it's your turn at
the Great White Throne, perhaps it's not so much that you will be "judged by what was written in the
books, according to what (you) had done" (Rev. 20:12), as much
as you might be asked one single, crucial question:
"Did
you choose Christ?"
I mean, really choose Christ… chose Him
as your guiding light by which you led your life? Or, did you not?
Simple as that.
If you chose
Christ on earth, you chose to live with Him after the end of
earth. If you did not, then you chose not to live with Him.
"On earth, as it is in heaven." None of this, "Were you a good enough person?"
hogwash. That's not relevant; if you really did choose to obey
Christ while you lived, your actions would have said so. (I am
absolutely convinced that it's impossible to make the saving choice to obey
Christ without it showing up in almost every aspect of your life. If someone who's born again can spend even a
day with you and STILL has to ask if you're a Christian… then
you're not one.)
†
I'd like to suggest another angle on this
whole "heaven or hell" topic. It's not that different, except
that the viewpoint is flipped – away from the human deserving (or not
deserving) to go to heaven, and towards God’s perspective for a change.
Imagine, for a fleeting and idolatrous
moment, that YOU are the fourth member of the mythical "quadrene God" -
Father, Son, Spirit, and You. (Don't
get too comfortable: it won't last long enough for You to blaspheme about Your
new role.)
At the end
of Time, You are going to put on an Eternal Party – we'd call it a “sleepover”,
except there will be no need for sleep ever again! – at Your Place. You
know... Your Place – Heaven.
Who are You going to invite?
Personally,
if it were me, I would only invite the people I liked. But that's
not God's way – excuse me, that's not
YOUR way of doing things. The God of the Bible is the God of Love; so if
You are truly as loving as the Father is, You will probably make it an open
invitation to anyone and everyone. That sounds more like Your style! (But don't get cozy! This isn't going to last!)
So, You
issue an open invitation to every human who has ever lived:
"Party
at Our Place! Starts immediately following the Millennium! Lasts forever! No
cover charge! All the gold you can eat!" (See, now, just listen
to yourself! I told You not to get too comfortable! The Other Three are going
to throw You out any moment now!)
Here's
the catch:
"All you have to do is simply accept this Invitation
sometime before your death, and agree to abide by Our House Rules."
Think about it.
If you're
throwing a party in your own home (notice
the lower case "your"? Oh well, it was Fun While It Lasted...), those
are basically the two conditions your guests would reasonably expect,
right? Let you know they're coming, and follow your house rules.
Pretty basic etiquette, I'd say.
For a party
in your earthly domicile on, say,
Super Bowl Sunday, for example, that translates into, "we need to know how many pizzas to order, so tell us for sure
if you're comin', brah!" and,
"Hey, don't put that glass on the tabletop, you slob! Use a coaster!"
Nothing outrageous; but it IS your party, and you have every right to exclude
gate crashers and to expect some common courtesy.
For a Party
At His Place, a.k.a., Entrance Into
Heaven, God expects the same thing.
If you're planning to attend, He's
looking forward to seeing you There... providing that you RSVP and
follow His rules.
The RSVP to accept His open-to-all
invitation is written in Romans 10:9 - "Confess with your mouth
that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the
dead." Consider that your password into the “speakeasy”, if you
prefer. (That word sounds a touch
sacrilegious to me, but whatever. A minute ago, you were God,
so “speakeasy” is the least of my sins in this essay.) This way of
thinking about heaven also justifies God’s accepting deathbed conversions, too.
Heaven is not so much a reward for
being good as it is a thank you
for choosing to follow the Lord. (So, if you choose to believe in and
follow the commands of a different
deity, it’s their responsibility to provide a life-after-death for you,
assuming they can find a way around the whole “fire-and-brimstone” arrangement
already in place. And, if you choose not to align yourself with any deities, then you have no spokesman
to work for you in the afterlife business. It’s probably like dealing with a
government aid agency on your own….)
The house rules are, admittedly, a bit
lengthy, but they're easy to find – why, you probably have at least one copy already in your home! After
all, it IS the best-selling book in history, and it’s available as an app
for your phone or tablet now, too.
And if you don't want to do one or
both of those things, or you simply don't WANT to go to His stupid party
anyway! – you don't have to. There's
another option. The Lord is certainly not going to force you to come into His
Home if you don't want to – hey, I mean,
we wouldn't force you to come were it our party! The last
thing you'd want to see at your party, in your home, would be some party
crasher who can't follow your rules, right? "Hey!
You! Get off my table! Put the cat down, you jerk! I'm calling the
police!"
Of course,
God won't need to call the police. He IS the police. And this will be
one Party that will never need to be broken up by the cops!
†
So, hey...
...while we're on the subject...
…Have you
accepted your invitation yet?
It's going to be a whale of a great
Party!
I'd really love to see you There!
I mean
it, man.
I'd really LOVE to see you There.
I'd really LOVE to see you There.
Don't
miss It.
Please.
-gps
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