The Churches of Christ greet you (Romans 16:16)
The Bible must be our only authority in religion if we want to please God and go to Heaven. People must give up all the various false doctrines that propagate the many different kinds of denominations and go back to only using the Bible. There were no denominations in the New Testament times and there would be none today if only the Bible was taught and practiced. There would only be the Lord’s one true church, as mentioned in Scripture (Romans 16:16; Acts 20:28; 1 Corinthians 1:2; 1 Timothy 3:15; I Corinthians 12:27; Colossians 1:24; Ephesians. 4:12; Hebrews 12:23.)
How then do we make sure that we are among the few who are saved and not among the many that are lost? Jesus says in (Matthew 7:21-23, “Not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to Me on that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, and cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name? And then will I declare to them, I never knew you, depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness”). Friends, don’t be deceived. If you believe and call Jesus, “Lord, Lord”, you are still lost if you have not done what God says. If we are not obeying God, we are practicing lawlessness. If we ever hope to go to heaven, we must do the will of the Father. This is the only way. Not the will of men, but God’s will. Not our own will, but God’s will. Just because we call Jesus our Lord, this will not save us. Don’t be lazy! Get ready and be sure, finding out how to be saved.
This is why I want to encourage you to study God’s Word and put yourself on trial by being totally honest with yourself to see if you pass the test or if you find yourself falling short and end up being condemned to a lost eternity when your time on earth is finished. This is the challenge we all face. We need to be right with the Lord God Almighty and the time is now because we do not know when our time is up. He is our perfect example, He obeyed His Father, “I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me”(John 5:30); “For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me” (John 6:38).
We cannot go to Heaven by just calling Jesus, “Lord, Lord”. Jesus says in the above scripture, on the Day of Judgement, many will be pleading with Him, calling Him Lord, Lord, and reminding Him of the many wonderful works they had done in His name, but He will say unto them,“I never knew you, depart from Me you who practice lawlessness”. Why? Because they had not done the will of the Father in heaven. Oh, they thought they had, but they hadn’t. They had done their own will or the will of men in their many different denominations. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”(Matthews 13:9).
Heaven must be our number one priority in this short life here on the earth. Nothing is as important. If going to Heaven is not our number one priority then most likely we will not go there. Let us go back to the Bible. As God tells us in 1 Peter 4:11, “If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God.” In other words, we are to speak where the Bible speaks and be silent where the Bible is silent. We must call Bible things by Bible names and do Bible things in Bible ways. To do this we must get rid of all the manuals, creeds, disciplines, and confessions men have written and follow only what we can read in the Bible, because the Bible is our only guidebook to Heaven. The doctrines of men will keep us out of Heaven.
Brethren. This will be the worst thing that will ever be said to an individual, when the Lord on Judgement Day says to the majority of people, “I never knew you; depart from Me”. The majority of people will be told this and be punished forever in Hell. There will be no appeal to this decision. There will be no second chance. We have to get it right the first time. How? By listening and finding out the truth for yourselves.
These people in the above scripture seemed to be honest, but they were honestly mistaken as the majority of people are today. The people seemed to be sincere. ‘And surely there are sincere people today found in different denominations. But the truth is, just being sincere will not save anyone. There will be many surprised lost people on the Day of Judgement who think that it doesn’t really matter what you believe as long as you are sincere. To believe this is to believe a lie of Satan. If it doesn’t matter what you believe, then it doesn’t matter if you believe at all. Apparently many were good people, because they had “done many wonderful works”. But they had not done the will of the Father who is in heaven.
We must dust our Bibles off and start studying them for ourselves. We must stop taking someone else’s word for what it says and find out for ourselves what God is trying to tell us. This is very important, for God says in Hosea 4:6, “My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge: because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you.” It is a very serious matter to be rejected by God because we did not care enough about what God is saying to us in His Word to read and study it for ourselves so we can obey it. When we don’t know God’s will, the false doctrines of men will arise. Instead, people have taken someone else’s word for it. This is the reason there are so many different kinds of false denominational churches today. The commandments of men have the power to turn people away from the truth of God’s word (Titus 1:14).
Man generally wants to do things his way and he doesn’t really care what God thinks. We cannot obey God without doing what God says to do, when God says to do it, how God says to do it, and for the reason God says to do it. Nothing is more important than pleasing God by doing His will so that we can go to Heaven.
We learn from the above scripture, that we don’t go to Heaven by doing the will of men, or by doing what we think is right. The only way we can go to Heaven is by doing the will of the Father, and that Will is found right in our Bibles. Do we really know what the Will of the Father is so that we can be sure of going to Heaven? This is too important a matter to assume we do know or to take someone else’s word for it. One must know what the will of God is before he can obey it. Do you really know what the Bible says that God wants us to do in order to be saved?
What must I do to be saved? This is a very important question. Many people would answer this question in many different ways. The many different denominations give many different and conflicting answers. Only God’s way is correct. The Bible is the only reliable source we can go to for our answer, since it is our soul that will be lost if we follow man’s advice. Our obedience to Christ is a very serious decision and must not be taken lightly. It must be on the Lord’s terms as laid out in the scriptures and not on our terms.
We have already seen in Matthew 7:13-14, 21, only few will be saved, and many will be lost, and only those who do the will of the Father can go to Heaven. We read in 1 John 2:4, “He who says, I know Him, and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” “A liar” is a pretty strong language. A person is lying to himself and everyone else who says he knows and loves God, but does not keep God’s commandments. We know that a liar cannot go to Heaven (Revelation 21:8).
We must do all of God’s will, so that we can go to Heaven. There is no other way. We must do all of what God has commanded us. Our Lord says in Matthew 28:20, “Teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you.” We must do all things God has commanded us. We cannot pick and choose and take a verse out of context but we must take all of what the Bible says.
We cannot be pleasing to God by dreaming up our own plan of salvation as to how God is going to save us. Neither can we choose what scriptures we obey and those we choose to ignore. We must follow His plan and only His plan if we expect Him to save us. Our salvation in Heaven is too great to lose, because if we don’t go to Heaven we will spend forever and ever in a burning Hell. Many people don’t really believe this, but they all will one day.
No single condition, that God imposes, can be ignored. God has no non-essential commands. When we don’t obey a command of God, we have just broken it. Many people think that God will save them, no matter if they follow God’s specific instructions on what they must do to be saved or not. We must obey God by doing what God says to do, when God says to do it, how God says to do it, and for the reason God says to do it. What then is God’s will, so that we can go to Heaven and not have to endure eternal punishment forever and ever? We can find the answer in the Bible if we continue to do a careful study. Thank you and God bless you.
Yours indeed for the cause,
Ramsey church of Christ
Robert H Brown
