one way to heaven

• “There are many paths to God.”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that.

If you mean there are many ways in which some of us come to know the true Lord of the Universe, you’re correct.  My path was via witnessing three terrible, fatal, accidents when I was ten. In a state of fear, I asked God to reveal Himself to me. He did, ten years later, after I waded through a path filled with a lot of mud, dung, and steep terrain. I have another friend who was a Muslim Sheik who came to know the true God when Jesus appeared to him in a vision and said, “Follow me.” This path was supernatural. My friend is now a Christian pastor in the Middle East.

If you mean a path that includes worshipping mother earth, reincarnation, universalism, Islam, or Christian denominations that don’t teach Biblical truth, you’re heading the wrong way.  Not to be offensive, but those are not proper paths to God.

Jesus said, “I am the way, truth, and life. No one comes to my Father except through me.”

Either Jesus was a liar, lunatic, or he was who he said he was: the promised Messiah, the Son of God, the “Son of Man,” the Savior, who has the power to forgive, restore, and eternally save from hell.

The Bible provides the roadmap to the true God (recall, the Bible is the most corroborated historical book on the planet).

One of the earliest articles of faith was set forth in Deuteronomy 6:4-7:  Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” This is known to Jews as the “shema,” and is the foundation of all the commandments of God. It establishes the unity of God, the supremacy of God, and the priority of serving God.

Another is found in  1 Corinthians 15:1-4. “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Jesus died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.”  This article of faith declares the bare essentials for saving faith in Christ.

And there’s one more important truth that will determine if your really on the sole path: Jesus is returning.

In Matthew 24:36-44 Jesus declares (referring to himself), “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father…Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come…So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect Him.”

If we place our faith in Him, trusting His death on the cross to pay for our sins, we will be forgiven and receive the promise of eternal life in heaven. “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son so that anyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). Faith alone in the finished work of Christ on the cross is the only true path to eternal life! “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

There is only one true path to God, and therefore to Heaven.

Are you on the right path?