To the editor:
If you were headed for a cliff, blissfully unaware, would you want someone to warn you? Or would you rather go on your merry way and plunge into the dark abyss?
Millions of people are headed for eternity, blissfully unaware of their real fate because they don’t know for themselves what God’s book, the Bible, has to say about their end. They’d apparently rather stick their heads in the sand and depend upon other people are even institutions, even entire churches, to tell them where they’re headed – unwilling to take the time to read it for themselves in His Word.
How many times have you attended funerals where the priest or minister expounded on what a “good” man or women they were, and you had to almost restrain yourself from checking the casket to see if you were at the right funeral? Isn’t it peculiar that obituaries always say people have gone on to their eternal reward in heaven or entered into their heavenly rest, and then they give proof of this by listing their “good works,” when those who know these people are aghast that this could be true because they lived more like the devil than Jesus?
It is a popular belief today that hell is only for very, very, very evil people like Hitler. But this is not what the Bible clearly says. In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says in Matthew 7: “…wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”
Does this sound like everyone is headed to heaven? Far from it.
I have a great deal of respect for Mother Teresa. She was a “good” woman who loved people and spend her entire life doing good works. But if she did not do what the Bible states concerning what we all must do to be saved, she will not be in heaven. Good works have nothing to do with being saved. They may be “proof” you’re a “good” man or woman, but “bad” men or women can do good works. No one can earn their way to heaven. There is a big difference between being a “good” person or a “saved” person.
We are all headed for that cliff called death, and there is a huge abyss beyond it called eternity. We will all go over that cliff one day and spend that eternity in heaven or hell. God loved us enough to leave His guidebook for us so that one day we may spend eternity with him. Be smart and saved by reading it. May I suggest the Gospel of John, Romans and Ephesians to start? My best prayers are with you.
Clare Kierstead
Presque Isle
