Good News and Bad News
I’ve got Good news and bad news. I know many of you won’t want to hear this, but I am going to tell you anyway.
Boiling it down simply, there is a Heaven, that’s part of the Good news.
And there is a Hell, and that’s part of the bad news.
I’ll make it even simpler, you are going to live forever, but where you live is up to you.
I know there are, sadly, many people who don’t believe in heaven or hell, that when you die, that’s it, gone nothing else.
We’ll I am sorry to have to let you in on this, but just saying something like that doesn’t make it so. I guarantee you will be spending eternity somewhere. The where is up to you.
God has given us the way to spend that eternity with Him, through a faith in His Son Jesus Christ. Jesus said it best, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through Me.”
There is NO OTHER way to Heaven, Jesus is the way.
“Oh, but I don’t believe in all that stuff,” you say. “The Bible is just fairy stories, made up junk for children.”
Well, let’s take a minute and talk about that.
The Bible we have today is made up of 66 books written by over 40 different authors over a period of about 1600 years. But it flows with one constant narrative, that of God’s love for His creation.
The Bible we know of today seems to have been assembled around 200AD and has been read ever since. In fact, the first book ever printed on movable metal type was the Bible and it has never been out of print since; that was 1450.
We have more ancient copies of the Bible and parts of the Bible than any other ancient book ever written.
The Bible is the bestselling book ever.
The Bible has over 3,000 prophecies, most of which have come true. The ones that are yet to happen all have to do with End times and the 2nd coming of Jesus, which leads me to the bad news.
Not only is there a hell, there is also going to come a time the Bible calls the Great Tribulation, a 7 year period that you don’t want to be around for.
As I write this, the world is going through a pandemic known as Covid-19, a fast moving flue like disease that can be deadly. It has kill thousands and has the United States and a lot of the World virtually shut down.
What we are experiencing now in late March of 2020 is NOTHING to what the world will go through during the Great Tribulation. Read the last book of the Bible, Revelation, and you’ll get an idea of what is coming upon the world. But there is Good News.
God has made way, for us to not only bypass this terrible time, if we are around when it starts, but a way for us to live forever with Him in Heaven as well.
That way is by accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior. As Peter is quoted saying in Acts 4:12;
“…there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”
“Oh but there are lots of ways to heaven,” you say.
Sorry, wrong again.
Yes, there are similar teachings in many of the world’s religions, but they CANNOT all be true. They are mutually exclusive, because they all teach different things about god or god’s and some kind of heaven and how to reach it. Only the Bible teaches that God came down to us in the form of His Son, Jesus.
Only the Bible teaches us that we are all sinners in need of a savior; that we cannot hope to be good enough to be saved without Him.
Every other religion teaches that we must reach out to god and work our way to him. But the true God in the form of Jesus reached down to us and He did the work, all we have to do is accept that finished work.
You either believe what I’m saying, or you don’t; that is the choice each of us must make for ourselves. I can’t and God won’t force Himself on you or anyone. But I can tell you that for those of us that have accepted Christ, our lives have never been quite the same. Yes, we still go through hard times, but we know He is with us in those hard time.
Jesus tells us in John 16:33;
“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart; I have overcome the World.”
Heaven is a real place, a place of Love and Light, Peace and Joy. A place to be with the one who created you, who loved you enough to die a terrible death on a cross to save you from your sins, and that’s the Good News.
The bad news is there is a hell, the bible calls it a place of “outer darkness,” a place of pain and suffering. While Heaven is to be with God, in His presence; hell is a place without God, completely without God.
Hell is not a place where you and all your earthly buddies drink and gamble and laugh it up, NO, hell is torment that never ends, even though you wish it would. You will wish you had accepted Christ when you had the chance but that chance will be gone forever.
Without Christ, you have no hope.
That’s the bad news.
We who have accepted Christ know where we are going and, sadly, we know where you are going without Him. That is why we try and share with you what we know to be true. We don’t want you or anyone to go to hell and neither does God.
To accept Christ is a choice only you can make.
Before I close this out, I want to talk a bit about the Great Tribulation that is coming upon the whole World.
I believe that just before that 7 year period starts; we Christians who have accepted Jesus will be caught up in the sky with Him in what we call the Rapture of the Church.
Paul tells us about it in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17;
“16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.”
So, you see we won’t be here on earth for what is coming, but if you are still alive when that happens, you will be.
If you have rejected Christ before that time, after the Rapture, you won’t be able to change your mind. Paul warns us in 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12.
“…They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie 12 and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.”
Here is the bad news straight and simple, if you have not accepted Christ before you pass from this life; you will sentence yourself to an eternity in hell. If you are still alive at the beginning of the Great Tribulation you will have to go through it and won’t be able to come to Christ.
The Good News is that you can avoid all that by coming to Jesus now, before it is too late. It’s as simple as telling Him that you are a sinner and that you need Him to come into your life and forgive you. Asking Him to move into your heart and lead you on the path He wants you to walk.
You must believe in your heart that Jesus died for you on that cross, was buried, and rose from the dead. And that He did it all for you, because He loves you more then you will ever know.
I know it’s hard to believe that it can be just that simple, that there isn’t anything else for you to do, but it’s true. The thief on the cross asked to be remembered when Jesus came into His Kingdom, and Jesus said to him, “Today you will be with Me in Paradise.” He didn’t have to do anything but admit he was a sinner and believe that Jesus would save him.
It was that simple for the thief and it’s that simple for you.
“But how can a sinner like me come before a Holy God, I’m not worthy?”
Don’t worry; none of us were clean when we came to Christ.
Once you let Jesus into your heart, He will begin to work on the rough edges and smooth things out. All you have to do is listen and follow where He leads.
I am not the same person I was when I asked Jesus into my life, slowly but surely, He changed me and guided me down the path He wanted me to go.
Am I perfect? No. But I am a better person and more sure of myself, because I know where I am going.
I know that whatever life throws at me, He will be with me to lead me, guide me and watch over me.
He will be there to watch over you. And that is Good News.
But without Christ there is only bad news.
The choice is up to you, and you must answer the question Jesus asked of His disciples in Matthew 16:15.
“…Who do you say that I am?”