Will We Enter the Kingdom and have Eternal Life?

Our greatest desire surely must be to enter the kingdom of God. This may be expressed in a variety of way, such as: “Are you ready to enter God’s eternal kingdom?” “Are you prepared for God to say, ‘Well done!” “Have you made yourself ready for God?”

There are some words of Christ that should either give you great comfort—or place terror into your heart. We find it at Matthew 25:46: “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” I think that you can see what I mean—eternal punishment or eternal life, one or the other.

Of course, we don’t want to give any impression to ourselves or others that we can save ourselves and “lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps”—or achieve salvation by what we do or don’t do. This would be more akin to Islam than Christianity. While it may be supported by Muslims, we know that God—and God alone—saves through Christ Jesus and His saving work. He alone is Savior!

I was just reading a “Christian” song earlier that asks this question: “Is my name written there?” In other words, are we prepared to enter the eternal realm of God? It may be asked in a variety of ways but the question basically is, Are you and I prepared to be received by God now to enjoy the blessing of eternal peace and joy in His presence?

Interestingly, I have been doing much reading in the realm of religion lately. As you know, there are a dozen basic “religions” in the world—and no more than one of these (or even none) are correct. We know, from the principle of non-contradiction, that they all can’t be right.

Some of these world religions are, without doubt, false. They are wrong or false and must be rejected. We refer, for example, to several of the world religions. We know that Hinduism is false, although it is followed by some one billion people! God totally and completely rejects idolatry and when someone sets up a religion that says there is a false “god” we know that it is to be rejected.

Further, Buddhism (in its various forms) must be rejected since it amounts to atheism—there is no god (so it is assumed). If someone rejects the “living and true God” (1 Thessalonians 1:9), we know that it is wrong—and false.

Islam must be incorrect, absolutely wrong and false—even though it is followed by two billions of people. Muhammad was an evil and violent false prophet although, granted, he did have a large following. While we may appreciate certain aspects of this religion that comes through “natural religion,” we know that there are countless false statements that make this religion wrong and false.

We might say the same for Baha’i, Zoroastrianism, Jainism, Sikhism, Shinto, Taoism (Daoism), and other non-Christian religions. Likewise, we must reject Roman Catholicism, the Orthodox Church in its many forms, and those like them. There are far too many false ways to be accepted as truth.

By this, we refer to such false teachings and false ways as: prayer to Mary and the Catholic “saints,” making Mary a “saint” (even though she died), belief in purgatory, accepting tradition along with the Scriptures, elevating the so-called “Pope,” promoting infant “baptism,” and accepting many other false doctrines. As you may know, Catholicism does promote countless false doctrines and practice—as well as rejecting true salvation in Christ. By the time that you finish reading this short article, we hope that you can see this yourself.

If these religions do hold to and promote various false doctrines, what about Protestants with its thousands of denominations and various sects that claim to be Christian? We don’t want to be so accepting of wrong (such as what we find above) that we want to endorse something that God rejects—and even hates. Isn’t this right?

There may be about 30,000 different “Protestant” sects, denominations, cults, and groups of all kinds in the world. This would refer to Protestants who profess to be Christians—but are they? As for the so-called “cults,” we know that the Mormons, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Jesus Only people, the Seventh-day Adventists, the “Church of Christ, Scientist,” and those like them claim to be Christians—but are they?

To be a true Christian, we must embrace certain hallmarks. Let’s name a few:

1. We must believe that God created all things through Christ.
2. We must believe in the inspiration, authority, inerrancy, and truthfulness of the Word of God.
3. We must believe in all 66 books of the Bible.
4. We must believe in Jesus Christ—His deity, His “incarnation,” His perfect life, His atoning death, His burial and resurrection from the dead, His present intercession, and His future coming.
5. We must believe that Christ Jesus gave Himself to bear our sins and through His life to give us eternal life.
6. We must believe in the Holy Spirit’s activity—His inspiring Scripture, His work in the world and in our lives.
7. We must believe that God calls and receives people as His own through Christ and the activity of the Spirit.

Of course, there are more to this than what we have presented above but this is sufficient to establish our point.

1. In order to come to God for His rich salvation, we must believe in Him through Christ Jesus (John 3:14-18, 36; 7:47).
2. We must turn from all of our known sin to a life of truth and holiness (Acts 2:38; 3:19; 17:30-31; 20:21; 26:18, 20; Romans 2:4-5).
3. We must confess Jesus as the risen Lord (Romans 10:9-10).
4. We must be baptized (immersed), through faith and repentance, into Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sins (Matthew 28:18-20; Mark 16:15-16; Acts 2:38-41; 8:12; 22:16; Romans 6:3-5; Galatians 3:26-27; Colossians 2:11-13; 1 Peter 3:21).
5. We must allow God to make us a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), with Galatians 6:7-10; Ephesians 2:8-10; Colossians 3:1-4; 1 Peter 1:3-9; 2 Peter 1:3-11; Revelation 2:10-11).

These would be a few of the points that need to be kept in mind as we consider coming to Christ, how to turn to Him, and what is involved in living for the Lord in a wicked world.

Maybe you were expecting a very detailed and thorough presentation of what it means to be saved, forgiven, redeemed, reconciled to God, with an expectation of an eternity with the Lord. We could have given a much more detailed way of understanding this. Further, we could have discussed with you what is involved in living the Christian life. But this was not our intention. Our presentation assumes that you will be able to find further understandings on the website: www.Truediscipleship.com.

Can you now see that the many “ways” that we find in the religious world are really substitutes for the true and living way? We know that of the eight billion people in this world, many do believe that they are right and going to “heaven” (of whatever description we might give to this). Of course, we must exclude total unbelievers who are wrong regarding truth. They, of course, call themselves “atheists” (or maybe “agnostics”).

Thus as we survey the landscape of religion in this world, we see that although people do assume that they are right, they are actually wrong. They expect that they will be received by God after death, but they are utterly wrong. They think that they know the right way and understand what the Creator wants, but they are wrong. Yes, sadly, they are wrong.

Are you right? Have you examined the evidence? Have you checked out the Scriptures and been convinced that God’s infallible Word is true and will lead you aright? Remember that Jesus our Lord has said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to [God] the Father but through Me” (John 14:6). Are you willing to cast off the falsehood, lies, unbelief, untruth, and wrong of “religion” and come to God—just as we read in His own written Word?