Aunt Nina's Wisdom by passtheword on Blogster

Back when I was a teenager. my aunt once told me about some interesting "knowledge" she gathered from a lady who was seated next to her on an airplane flight. She told my aunt she had read in a magazine that about 85% of people don't use the entire capacity of their brains. In other words, they didn't use their noggins to their maximum capacity. That's sort of a scary thought if it that were true. That would mean only 15% of people use their minds to the fullest. My brother, mother and I thought this was really funny at the time, but after living in this world for almost forty years, I'm beginning to wonder if there isn't some truth to that statement. If you don't believe me, just watch some of those reality shows where people do the most insane things. Or, how about some of the people who get arrested, and some of the crazy things they'll do to get themselves caught. You know...like the bank robber that'll hand a teller a hold up note, and it'll be on a piece of paper with some type of identifying information on it. You wouldn't think people would do that, but it happens.

Of course, all of us would consider ourselves in that 15% bracket of fairly intelligent people. We'd never want to admit we were part of the 85% that's "not with the program". Unfortunately, if that statement about the 85% were true, then some of us have to be in that category. I started thinking about this little bit of "wisdom" that my Aunt Nina shared with me many years ago, and I thought, "that's just how people think about Heaven and how they're going to get there". I was listening to a christian radio program not too long ago, and it stated that about 50% of the population has the incorrect information about how to get to Heaven. These people fall into two categories:

Those who believe that everybody goes to Heaven when they die,

And those who believe that you can go to Heaven based our your "good works". In other words, if a person's "good deeds" exceed his "bad deeds" then God will let that individual into Heaven.

If that statistic is valid, then there are half, yes, half of the people who won't be going to Heaven. People who believe with all their hearts they are going to Heaven but are damned, on the way to an eternity in Hell. That's a sobering statistic. Those two theories people espouse about how to get to Heaven don't hold up for a couple of reasons:

A. The notion that everybody goes to Heaven when they die doesn't work because it eliminates the realities of fairness and judgment. God is just, and He must punish sin. We wouldn't expect a judge to have two people who did the same crime, and pronounce judgment on one of them and exonerate the other. It's not just, and obviously it wouldn't be fair to allow some into Heaven that tried to live Godly while others lived in the opposite fashion. Of course, God doesn't view "goodness" like we do, I'll get to that shortly.

B. Secondly, God doesn't keep a calculator up in Heaven adding up your "good deeds" verses your "bad deeds" and then adds them up at the end of your life and determines where you fit on the "scale". How would you know what God considers "good"? And what the value of that "goodness" would be? How would you know when you "tip the scales", and your "bad deeds" exceed your "good deeds", and God reverses His decision about where you'll spend eternity. There's no way to determine that because we don't have access to that information. I've been thinking about that 50%, too, and I wonder if that number who are unsaved is much higher. There are also people out there claiming to be Christians, and who really aren't. These are the people who know about salvation, know the Bible inside and out, but never have made a decision to be saved. People who go to chuch every Sunday and are unsaved, living every day believing that they are. A lot of folks who live in the United States even consider themselves Christian, because we live in a Christian nation. That is another misconception that people hold...if I live in a Christian nation, I'm by default a Christian. Unfortunately, that's not the case.

So...how do you know if you're really going to Heaven when you die? The good news is that God, although just, is also merciful, and He doesn't want us to have to guess about eternity and where we'll spend it. Remember I was telling you about how God views goodness? God doesn't look at all the things we consider "good". To Him, they're as "filthy rags in His sight". It tells us so in the book of Isaiah. Those deeds have no merit with God, whatsoever. Not only that, but God says if we're guilty of breaking part of the law (just one commandment), then we're guilty of breaking the entire law (see James 2:10). Yes..the entire law. If that's the case, and we have to be perfect, how are we ever going to get to Heaven? None of us could make it under those requirements.

God knew before He created us that we would be imperfect and would fall into sin, so He made a way for us to escape eternity in Hell. He sent His son, Jesus Christ, who was God in the flesh, to pay for the penalty of our sin. The Bible says there is no "forgiveness without the shedding of blood". That's why Jesus had to go to the cross and die to pay for our sin. When we accept that payment, and acknowledge it is God's way of saving us from Hell and allowing us into Heaven, then God forgives those sins and remembers them no more. He pays for the sins we've committed in the past and the ones will unfortunately do in the future. It's God's way of saying "I love you and I want you to be with me in Heaven". If we'll just call out to God in sincerity, ask Him for forgiveness, and ask Him to save us by inviting Jesus into our life, then our home in eternity is secured. We'll no longer have to worry about whether we're good enough to get in or just figure we'll get in like everybody else. We can know with absolute certainty.

For those of you who are saved, I hope that statistic about 50% of the world being unsaved and damned is wrong. I put up a post about that percentage on a christian message board, and someone told me I was an "optimist" and that the 50% number of unsaved people is probably much higher. It wouldn't surprise me. The Bible does tell us that "narrow" is the road to salvation and "broad" is the road to destruction. We should be doing all we can to tell the world about the One who can save them from an endless eternity in Hell. If the condition of the world is any indication, the judgment of God is just around the corner and we better get to work!