BE NOT DECEIVED

Written by Allison Sylvester-Conliffe

At funeral services I would often hear that the deceased has gone to a “better place”!  I have pondered this statement many times and concluded that based upon the Word of God this statement cannot be true for all who die, particularly what the Bible outlines about the candidates for Heaven as opposed to the candidates for Hell!

Here is what I have discovered.  God has created everything on the earth including man!  Therefore as we are born we are His creation. See Genesis Chapter 1.  He has formed us in our earthly mother’s womb as she conceived us from our earthly fathers’ seed.  God loved His creation, He saw that what He had created was good!

Many persons say, because it is their belief, that God is their Father and if so, they reason that they are His sons and daughters.  According to the Holy Scriptures, we are sons of God only if we are led by the Spirit of God.    That means that we have to be born of the Spirit of God!

For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. Romans 8:14 

Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. John 3:3

Jesus said that He will be coming back for those who are His – meaning that He is coming back for those who He knows to be of His stock – those of His household of faith.  He said it in these words –

Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.  In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. John 14:1-3

Contrary to what we have been continuously led to believe, these Words were not spoken to the general populace. 

Jesus was speaking only to His disciples …… and at the very intimate time of the Passover meal – He was speaking to those who were to be entrusted with the call to spread the Gospel.

• He was speaking to those who would have followed Him closely.  
  
• He was speaking to those who were in His service.  
• He was speaking to those whom He had pulled out of the world…those who had been entangled with the pleasures of the world but had accepted His invitation to follow after Him.  
• He was speaking to those who had said “YES” to living after His teaching regardless of the negative consequences.  
• He was speaking to those who had loved Him, and to those whose love for Him was destined to be tested and proven even before His death on the Cross.

Let us examine ourselves.  Are we truly God’s children?  Or are we merely His creation?

As God’s children we are called to resemble Him in our daily lives by our actions, by the choices we make and by our love for Him!  This is achieved simply by our obedience to His Word.  As God’s children we are expected to tell others about Him, and to make disciples on His behalf.  As God’s children we are expected by Father, to only do what we see Him doing.

Jesus came as our Saviour to begin the process of making us God’s sons rather than have us remain just His creation.  God sent Him to reconcile us to Himself after sin entered the world through Adam and Eve, His first children.  After they had sinned, their offspring and future generations, became tainted with sin.

Sin cannot enter Heaven where God is. God loved His creation, but desired us to be sons who would choose to love Him unconditionally.  So He sent Jesus to be the Sacrifice for the sin of mankind so that whosoever believes in Him would be forgiven of their sins, and so be reconciled unto God.

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

This can only become a reality when we consciously confess our sins before God and profess our belief and our faith in Jesus Christ, by accepting Him as our Saviour and by making Him our Lord!

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God! Epesians 2:8.

The Gift of Salvation is Jesus Christ!

The obvious questions that God’s creation would ask are “saved from what?” or “why do I have to be saved?  I am no criminal.”

As I had mentioned before, when Adam and Eve sinned, the human race that would follow after them would have inherited that sinful seed – not by choice – but by inheritance.  Therefore God sent a Second Adam, Jesus Christ.  His job was to repair what Adam had done, and so redeem the human race from their inheritance of the sin nature once and for all.  His coming serves to save us from total separation from God when we die.  However, the choice is ours to make, while we are alive, whether to accept God’s plan of redemption or to reject it outright.  Where we spend eternity is determined by the choice we make – one way or another.

It is so easy to accept this plan of Salvation as the first step to becoming a son of God.

• You simply go to God in prayer and acknowledge before Him that you are a sinner. 
• Then ask for forgiveness of all your sins already committed, and ask Jesus to come into your heart to live there. 
• Commit to turning away from sin and to following the godly lifestyle as written in the Word of God.  
• Ask the Lord to direct you to a Bible believing church where you can fellowship and learn more about this new life and about Jesus Christ.

Congratulations! Once you have committed your life to Jesus Christ in your heart, you have now become born again and have entered into new life with Christ Jesus!

Once you continue with Jesus Christ, you are certainly assured a welcome into the Heavenly Kingdom of God when your sojourn on this earth has ended.

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. John 14:6