Question: I hear celebrities and other popular public figures say they believe all people will wind up in heaven when they die. Is this what the Bible teaches?
Answer: Many people don’t even know what the Bible teaches because they have not read and followed God’s guidebook for life. They rely instead on what others tell them or their own logic. As a result, they make mistakes with tragic consequences! Sometimes even preachers of churches, knowingly and unknowingly, teach beliefs that are false. Jesus predicted that people in our day would ignore the scriptures and lead others to do wrong, as well.
Some of the most common false teachings you hear today are:
The Bible has errors.
Jesus isn’t the only way to God.
All religions lead to God.
All good people will go to heaven.
Homosexuality is not wrong.
Don’t judge anyone.
There is no god, there are many gods, or we are all gods.
The world wasn’t created by a god; it just happened.
God inspired men to record his warnings about the future and its false teachers, and those are located throughout both the Old and New Testaments. For example:
Bad things will happen to those who call evil good and good evil, who say darkness is light and light is darkness… Isaiah 5:20
Preach the word of God, the scriptures of truth! Be ready at all times to convince, correct, and encourage with much patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when people will not accept sound doctrine, but to suit their own desires, they will gather around themselves a number of so-called experts who will say what they want to hear, so they won’t feel guilty anymore. And they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to myths. 2 Timothy 4:2-4
But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed. By covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words; for a long time their judgment has not been idle, and their destruction does not slumber. 2 Peter 2:1-3
The Bible reveals to us that the only way to heaven is to accept that Jesus Christ paid the debt to God through His death for the sins we have committed. People can’t work to reach heaven in any way; our passage is a gift from God and available only through Jesus. (John 14:6) Other religions teach that people must earn their own salvation in some other ways.
God gave us His eternal truths in the Bible so that we would mold our lives to them, not reshape them to fit our lives. What are you molding your life to fit?
