“He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood and has not sworn deceitfully” (Psalm 24:4)
THOUGHT:
Eternal life is not something to be trivialized whatsoever. Every person ever alive -from Adam until the end of time, will spend eternity SOMEWHERE. There is no mulligan (do-over); no purgatory or annihilation. Each person who ever lived was assigned a fixed amount of time of life here on planet earth, then departure to the after-life, immediately followed by the Judgment. Just before we die, and there is ample first-hand evidence of this, the person knows his/her eternal destination.
When an atheist dies, that in which he did not believe and spread lies about “big bangs” and “evolution” immediately becomes very clear, but too late to do any correction in thinking. When a child of God leaves this world behind, Hope becomes sight. Then, Faith is rewarded.
This is the essence of Psalm 24 verse 4. Verse 3 basically asked a rhetorical question about who gets to be in Heaven, and therefore, allowed to be in the very Presence of God. The answer is 2 Corinthians 5:17 "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come". How does a person become a new Creation, while in the same body, same home, same job or financial condition? This only occurs via the process of regeneration….being born-again….saved.
A person made new by Christ, while living among everyone else in this world, is by definition made and washed clean by the Precious Blood of the Son of God. The Supernatural Blood of the Savior washes us as white as snow, so that we can appear, through and in Christ, before the Father on that Great Day of the Lord.
But there is more. We not only have to be made clean by the Blood of the Lamb but must believe the right things about God. It is a known fact that, basically, people do not go to hell for what they do, but for what they believe. Believing in the unbiblical prosperity gospel if you are truly born-again is error and heresy, but the person is still saved. This sort of belief will suffer loss before the Bema of Christ.
However, believing one is heaven-bound because your grandmother or your dad was a true believer, and all you have to do is get baptized and give $20 in church now and then etc., will not lead a person into a personal relationship with Christ. Another thing that will lead millions of most of the last few generations etc. into eternal separation from God is the increasing amount of evidence (from Barna and others) that these people believe ALL religions are the same and lead to Heaven. This is rank heresy. These will never ascend to the Mountain and Throne of the Lord.
Falsehood in belief will send a person away from God the second they leave this earth. That includes believing the Amazing Sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross is similar to a religion with 300 million gods or some overweight guy with a bald head sitting cross-legged or the other one with over a billion followers. Mixing the Power, Passion, and Purity of Jesus Christ with that is heresy as is swearing in His Name or the Name of the Father. Most adults have to swear or agree to procedures at their place of work, depending on the level of security or in the military or court etc. This is not the kind of swearing of which the Bible speaks, but the use of the Lord’s Name to lie, mislead and other such conduct. Jesus warned about oaths and believing the correct things about the Kingdom of God.
ACTION:
We need to reexamine our theology. We need to develop our thinking to more like the Mind of Christ. People say that “doctrine” goes not matter….well, it matters to God. Read the book of Job, especially Chapters 38-41 and see if “doctrine doesn’t matter to God. Secondly, do not swear on anything -not on the hair of your head, your children and definitely, not on Heaven or Earth.
