GrayAngel
Senior Member
There are only two options for the afterlife: eternity with the true God and eternity away from Him. Can you say that any of us are deserving of an eternal afterlife of perfect bliss? No. Imperfect people cannot justly receive such a reward. It is only through Christ's sacrifice that we can be justified by proxy and enter in. The rest will enter into Hell.
Whichever way you go, however, you will be judged based on your actions. In Heaven, there is no condemnation, so the judgement will only be points in favor of the ones who are there. In Hell, however, people are judged for ALL they had done, good or bad, and they are given fair treatment.
I highly doubt that Hell is like it is like it is depicted, as a place of fiery torment. Perhaps for some it will be that way, but to throw everyone into the same fire would hardly be fair. I suspect Heaven and Hell are a little different from their literal descriptions in the Bible.
It is a sin to give what rightly belongs to God to a false deity. Muslim's, for example, have done Jesus a great insult by reducing Him from Son of God to "just a prophet." But this is not all that is counted against them. They will have to give an account for everything they'd done in life.
Do you know why Muslims tend to hate Israel so much? It's because, according to the prophet Mohammed, the Jews (along with Christians) are no longer God's chosen people. The fact that Israel is still on the map is evidence to the contrary. The history of the rebirth of Israel is unlike anything we've seen in history before. Never has a nation been so thoroughly scattered for such a long period of time and then regathered to rebuild. Today their population is around 7,859,300.
Muslim nations have been trying to remove Israel since it sprang up again, but despite being opposed on all sides, it's still there.
Of course, some Christians have the idea that God's favor has shifted from Israel to themselves, but this is not true. When God makes a covenant, He keeps it. He promised Israel that the land would be theirs until the end of the age. However, just as He has in the past, when Israel turns away from Him, He sends the surrounding nations to oppose them. The Jews rejected God by rejecting Jesus, so they will not have peace. But they are still God's people, just as they've always been.
As I said, no one can deserve Heaven no matter have good they are. No one is perfect, so no one deserves perfection. But Jesus was perfect, and His sacrifice serves as the only way a just God could allow us to have what we cannot ever earn.
While many atheists may not be actively campaigning against Christianity and religion in general, all atheists have their realms of influence, and their ideas affect the way others will see the world themselves. Others, however, are very hateful towards religion, and they do whatever they can to oppose it.
There are many reasons to believe that the Christian God is the right one. Several hundred prophecies pointing to Jesus' life, written hundreds of years before His birth, are some of those reasons. There's also the fact that if you hold the Bible to the same standards as a history book, it would pass with flying colors as a source more reliable than any other.
Put these other religions to the test. Investigate them with an open mind and see which one holds the most evidence for its views. It has been done before, and the choice has been--in every instance I've heard of--Christianity.
Religions are man-made inventions. There are many of them because people like to distort the truth and make others think the same way they do. Even Christianity will not get you to Heaven. Simply aligning oneself with the central beliefs set by a church is not enough. Jesus did not ask us to join a club but to take action. We live in His footsteps, picking up our cross, dying to sin and being raised to new life. This is what saving faith looks like.
If you want to find stronger evidence for God, keep looking. He converted Saul with a bright flash of light and a loud voice when He wasn't even asking for it. He provides evidence wherever He wants to. Ask for it, look in the right places, and there's a chance you'll find some pretty strong evidence.
Personally, I've had a few of those undeniable signs before. I can't convince someone else with them, but I can't deny what I've experienced with my own senses, what others around me have also seen and confirmed to be true.
Just in this past mission trip I was on, there was one of those experiences. We were split up in groups at the time, and we walked around a college campus to talk with people. One group was in the middle of praying for someone when they noticed how loud and distracting the TVs were, and one of them prayed for God to remove the distraction. Immediately, the power went out over the whole campus. I was in a different group at the time, so I only saw the lights go out, but someone told me the rest of the story later.
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It was an intentional understatement, the opposite of a hyperbole. Anyway, you're not even supposed to comment on another Christian's answers here.
