How Can I Get to Heaven?

Short article: God's Plan of Salvation

If you ask most people how to get to heaven, their response will be something like this:

 "If you do more good things than bad things, God will probably let you into heaven."

This false idea has caused multitudes to go to hell. There is nothing that you can do on your own that will erase the sins that you have committed.

That is the reason Jesus willingly shed his sinless blood on the cross to pay for your sins. He came to save you from the guilt of past sins and the power of sin over your life. You are about to read the most important information that you will ever read. It is called the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The word "gospel" means "message." The gospel is God's message to mankind. If you will yield to the gospel, you will be reconciled to God and you will escape eternal damnation in hell and the lake of fire. You will have abundant life right now as you walk with God in spite of all the pain and suffering that is in the world. If you are doubtful that the Bible is true, ask God for the faith to believe it and for help to understand the gospel.

Many people refer to the gospel  as "good news" but it is only good news for those who receive it. To those who reject the good news, the gospel is the stench of death. . . eternal death. Revelation 14:6-7 tells us the message of the everlasting gospel--

"Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters."

There is only one way to do this--through the blood of Jesus Christ. Repent ye and believe the gospel!

The Bible says that no one has is good enough morally to qualify to enter heaven. Each one of us has broken God's commandments. You have personally lied and committed other sins.

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)

 

Let God be true, but every man a liar...( Romans 3:4)

 

The number of good deeds you have done, including giving large amounts of money to church or charities, will not make you acceptable in the sight of God. The Bible says that you are spiritually dead in your tresspasses and sins. Your good deeds do not commend you to God in any way. You have ignored God by living our life in the way that you have seen fit.

 

But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. (Isaiah 64:6)

According to the above verse, we still come up short even when we try to do good deeds because we are not doing them under God's authority. Doing good deeds in your own strength and under your own authority is an unclean thing in the sight of God.

"But I never killed anybody and I'm not a dope addict!" In God's sight you are still spiritually undone and wicked in his sight. You have broken the greatest commandment in the Bible and you are as guilty as a harlot, a whoremonger, a murderer, a thief and a liar. What is the greatest commandment?

"Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with ALL thy heart, and with ALL thy soul, and with ALL thy mind. THIS is the first and great commandment." Matthew 22:36-38

It is easy to see that you have broken this commandment every day of your life. Loving yourself and putting yourself first comes naturally. Those who are not yet reconciled to God do this as a matter of course.

If good deeds could pay for your sins then Jesus died for nothing:

I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain. (Galatians 2:21)

God is holy. We are sinful. By His very nature, God cannot have fellowship with us sinners. There is no amount of "good" that we can do to make up for our crimes against God. They must be punished. And the wages of sin is DEATH- physical death (the casket) and spiritual death (when the soul is separated from God and cast into hell).

The wages of sin is death...(Romans 6:23)

God does not want to remain your enemy and He does not want you to go to Hell.

 

As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die... (Ezekiel 33:11)

 

The Lord is...not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. (II Peter 3:9)

 

In spite of your wickedness and rebellion, God loved you enough to send His only begotten Son to die for your sins:

"... thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins." (Matt 1:21).

Jesus did not die so that you could keep sinning and go to heaven. He came to save you from the guilt and the power of sin. Jesus destroyed the works of the devil on Calvary (I John 3:8). Before you surrender in faith to Jesus Christ, sin dominates you. Sin is your master and you are its servant.

 

You are under the wrath of a holy and just God. Murderers, thieves, fornicators, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, rebels, and all other spiritual lepers will not inherit the kingdom of God. The blood of Jesus is the propitiation for our sins. That means if we will turn in faith to Jesus Christ his blood will take way the guilt of the sins we've committed and it will usher us into a Father-child relationship with God. Through the blood of Jesus, we are to serve sin no more.

Again, the Father sent His only begotten Son, Jesus who is God, to die in your place. Remember that the wages of sin is death--that is why He died, to pay YOUR wages. The Lord Jesus Christ died in your place in order to pay for your sins and mine.

 The world's greatest love story is summed up in the following verse--

For God so loved the world, that he gave his ONLY BEGOTTEN Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16

Jesus said, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13) How can you show more love than giving your very life for someone else's life? You can't. What is more amazing is that Jesus died for us WHILE WE WERE HIS ENEMIES! I mean vile, wicked, pitiful, wretched, unclean, unholy, ungodly, prideful, spiritually filthy.

Romans 5:8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

...Christ died for the ungodly. (Romans 5:6)

God demonstrated his love for you on the cross 2,000 years ago! God is not hateful;  He is loving. He gave His Son for you even though you are dead in your sins.

2:8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
2:9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.
2:10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to this earth to:

 

(1) save you from the GUILT and POWER of your sins and

(2) RECONCILE you unto God. Through faith in the blood of Jesus you will escape the wrath to come and joyfully look forward to heaven--and you'll live an overcoming life. God will be your Father instead of your enemy--but only through the blood of Jesus.

 

..the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. (I John 1:7)

 

For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:23)

 

After His death, the Lord's body laid in the grave three days, but praise be to God, it did not remain there. On the third day Jesus arose from the dead and was seen by over 500 people (I Corin 15:6) before He went back to heaven.

Please remember that Jesus was not some victim or just a baby in a manger. He was and is the eternal God and Savior who came to earth and gave His own blood for your sins. After He accomplished this tremendous feat, He rose from the dead like He said He would:

"Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again..." (John 10:17-18)

...Christ died for our sins...and he was buried, and...he rose again the third day... (I Corinthians 15:3-4)

 

Are you ready to repent of your sins? To repent means to forsake your evil ways and listen to God. All your life you've been your own authority concerning what is right and what is wrong. You've made your own decisions while ignoring what the Lord says in His holy word, the Bible. You've served yourself and not God. To repent means that you turn to God as your authority. It means you can say, "Lord everything you say in the Bible is right. If my feelings contradict the Bible I am wrong. Lord I want to live under your authority, not my own."

 

And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to REPENT. (Acts 17:30)

...TURN TO GOD, AND DO WORKS MEET FOR REPENTANCE. (Acts 26:20)

Repentance must be from the heart. Are you prepared to exercise your will to live for the Lord? Jesus said:

"And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:27)

You must be willing to give up your own authority over your life and surrender it to Jesus Christ. If you want to come to Jesus Christ to be saved you must be willing to live God's way. He will give you the strength to live for him but you have got to be willing for him to tell you what to do. You must turn from living in the way that leads to death. Do you want God to be your Father rather than your enemy? Do you want the Lord and His holy ways? Do you want to be delivered from the powers of darkness you have invited into your life by sinful living? If you do, you are ready to come to Jesus Christ and be saved.

If so, repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. The only one who can save you is the Lord Jesus Christ. You must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved:

When he asked, "Sirs, what MUST I do to be SAVED?" (Acts 16:30)Paul and Silas said, BELIEVE on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house." (Acts 16:31)

If you will place your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be saved from your sins and be born into the family of God:

By grace are you saved, through faith, For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God Ephesians 2:8

If you have placed your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ you will begin your new life of freedom and obedience to the Lord. Now you need to (1) start reading the Bible (Authorized King James Version of 1611--begin with the gospels) and (2) you need to get yourself into a Bible-believing church that uses the King James Bible so you can get baptized and discipled in the way of Christ.

(Important:  We are in the last days--the time of the falling away from the faith of Jesus. (See 2 Thessalonians 2:3) There are few churches that are biblically sound to associate with because so many deviate from the scriptures and promote false doctrines. Read your New Testament several times and begin working through the Old Testament before you consider putting yourself under the influence of institutions that call themselves churches.)

Warning

Once you get saved, Satan will work to try to cause you to encounter false doctrine. Because you are a new born babe in the faith, you will be prone to believe anything people tell you about the Bible. (That is why you need to read it for yourself everyday).

Please heed these warnings:

1. You do not need to "speak in tongues" to show that you are saved or that you have the Holy Spirit. These people take one or two passages out of context and make false doctrine out of them.

2. Water baptism is an important act of obedience but it does not save you. If you are saved, you will get baptized out of obedience. [Make sure a godly person baptizes you. You are better off being baptized by a family member or friend in a swimming pool than by an unproven pastor that you do not know for certain is godly.] Saved people are children of obedience (Heb 5:9). The gospel and baptism are separate--I Cor 1:17. You are baptized in order to outwardly identify with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ and to symbolically show the washing away of sins. So if you are trusting in your baptism to save you, you are wrong. An unrepentant sinner will go down a dry sinner and come out a wet sinner.

1 Peter 3:21 The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

3. Avoid the false Hebrew Roots teachers who try to tell you that you are in disobedience if you don't keep the sabbath days, feasts, holy days, etc. Colossians 2:16 is clear:

Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days.

If you have not surrendered to the Lord Jesus Christ, I hope that you won't continue to reject His offer of eternal life. You are in a dangerous position. John 3:36 says,

". . . he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him."

 You will not make it into heaven on your own "good merits" or by your own conception of who you are and of what you think God should be like. He always has His way--the choice is yours to obey Jesus Christ or reject Jesus Christ.

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