Christians Listen Up If You Want To Make Heaven

Posted by Pastor Mark Slay

There are many things in the Scripture that we can sometimes give minimal importance to not realizing that God puts much more importance on it than we do. We know everything in the Scripture is important, but we have to be able to recognize the things that He gives greater importance to and the things that He gives lesser importance to.

We are right at the time before Jesus comes and Matthew 24 tells us something about this time in history. It says, "Because lawlessness is increased, most people's love will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved." And Timothy also tells us something about the times that we are in right now. Timothy says, "But realize this, that in the last days difficult (King James says perilous or we could say dangerous) times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these."

People have been brainwashed into thinking that because they are Christian, they are eternally secure and that just isn't true. I like to say you can be eternally secure as long as you want to be. As long as you do what you are supposed to do then no one can snatch you out of His hand but if you don't do what you're supposed to then you cannot be secure in your eternity. We can see one example of this in Mark 11. Verses 25 and 26 tell us this: Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions. [But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your transgressions.] Notice He is still your Father, but He won't forgive you because He can't. And we know that if you're not forgiven you can't make Heaven.

So we can see that this is very serious to God and unforgiveness is one thing that can jeopardize your eternal security. There are some things that you can do that will not jeopardize your eternal security. For instance, if God lays it on your heart to call someone and He's really trying to get that message over to you and you ignore it or just don't get it, that is not going to jeopardize your eternal security.

What we read in Matthew 24 that - Because lawlessness is increased, most people's love will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved - is another thing that is very serious to God. Only the one who endures to the end without their love growing cold will be saved.

We read Timothy's description of why, in these last days, people will be severely tempted to allow their love to grow cold. These things have become more and more prevalent as we approach the return of the Lord. Thirty years ago kids were looked down upon for being disobedient and rebellious. Now they are applauded for it. Go back and read that list and see if these things haven't increased dramatically in the last 30 years.

If you are on the receiving end of any number of these things it will be very hard to deal with; it will be hard to deal with people. But we can't let it bother us. We have to go on loving. Get in to the mode of loving your enemies or you won't make Heaven. And of course, if we see ourselves in any of these characteristics mentioned in II Timothy, change it.