Listen, we started a new series last weekend. I’ve got a question. All of us have questions. You, obviously, have lots of questions. You are inundating me with them. I love it. It’s awesome. This was gonna be a two-week series. This series may last until Jesus comes. I don’t know when that will be. I’m loving it. I just dig this kind of thing.
So this week, we’re gonna deal with afterlife issues. Here’s what I want you to do. Here or in the campuses, warehouse, chapel or wherever you might be, during this service, while I’m speaking, I want you to text in your question about, specifically, heaven, not so much hell. I’ll be talking about that a little bit, but heaven, afterlife, whatever you want there. And then a little bit later in the service, we’re gonna vote on which question you guys want me to tackle, one or two questions. Some of you complained that we don’t vote enough at Seacoast. We’re gonna be Baptists today, baby, and we’re gonna vote. So here’s what you do. Text "afterlife" and then whatever your question is and text it to 99503. Be sure to get "afterlife" at the beginning and that way we will have record of it. They’re gonna pick two or three of the top ones, or three or four of the top ones and then we’ll tell you what we’re gonna do with them in just a few minutes.
Recently, I celebrated a birthday. We always do family things at birthdays and so we had the whole family; kids, grandkids, everybody over to enjoy a good bowl of soup. Not a birthday cake. It’s fast time, so we were eating soup. It was great. I’m loving the fast. Are you loving the fast if you’re doing it? I am. It’s such a spiritually intense time. I’m loving it. Three of us in this room are loving it. The rest of us are hating it and some of us are going, "What are you talking about?"
So we had the kids over. The little granddaughter is 10 months old. She’s starting to motor around. She climbs around on furniture and stuff. I thought, "It’s time for her to walk. Let’s walk --10 months old." So I took her out and she loves grabbing my fingers. I’m pulling her along and I just took her fingers off of mine and left her standing there. You should have seen the look on her face. It’s like, "What is up with this? What are you doing?" I know she doesn’t understand the concepts of love and trust, but if she did, here’s what she was saying, "Do you really love me? Why did you do what you did? I don’t understand this. I thought I could trust you. I’m not sure now." Have you ever felt that way about God?
That’s what some of our questions are asking, especially this weekend. These are gonna be tough ones, I’m telling you. I’m warning you today that these are gonna be tough ones. I said last week that the cool thing about Seacoast is that there are some things that we have got to believe together. There are some absolute fundamentals. Then there is just a whole lot of stuff where we’ve got room to argue, nicely, but to disagree on. You don’t have to agree with me on everything. You have a right to be wrong. That’s my philosophy on life. I think I’m right; you have a right to be wrong.
I hope you take the things we talk about, I hope you take them home and talk about them. I hope you take them to the restaurant and talk about them. I hope you take them to your small group and friends. Talk about them. Discuss them. Debate them. And hopefully, they will spark you to really dig and search, because it’s one thing to have an opinion, it’s another thing -- how can you back it up? What does the Bible say? What does God’s word say?
The questions today go to the heart of trusting God. They really do because here’s what we’re asking with the questions we have today is, "God, do you love me?" Bigger than that -- and can I trust you -- bigger than that is, "God, do you love everybody in the world as much as I do, and can you trust them?" It’s interesting with the questions, and they’re good questions, but we take the high moral ground with these questions. Do you believe that? We’re taking the high moral ground with God Almighty and we’re saying, "God, I love the world. I love people in Africa, India, wherever, all kinds of religions. Do you love them as much as I do?" And hopefully, at the end of the day, we’ll have a response to how much God really does love us and everybody else.
So what I want to do is jump into the questions. First question, I think, comes from Karen in Mt. Pleasant. Karen, fire away.
Question: Hi, Pastor Greg. This is Karen from the Mt. Pleasant campus. My question is one that’s very important to me because my brother and I get into this conversation all the time. He lives in Europe and has a lot of friends from different faiths and has been to Israel. He grew up the same way as me. He is a Christian, but he wants to know how come Christianity is the only way to heaven. All of his friends practice their faiths religiously and they’re good people and I don’t know how to answer that question for him. Obviously, it’s a big deal and I would like to know how to answer that question.
That’s a good question, Karen. Let me just paraphrase it like this. Here’s the question, "Aren’t all religions fundamentally the same?" It’s the idea that although we’re different in small ways, at the end of the day, they’re all about God and everybody kind of goes to the same place and let’s sing Kumbaya and be happy together -- that’s kind of the deal. What’s the answer to that? My answer is I wish they were. I wish they were all the same. It’s like in school. Do you remember taking a test and wonder how you did and the teacher gets up and says, "Everybody gets an "A" today." Don’t you like that kind of teacher? And that’s what I hope the answer is.
The problem is that all religions have major differences. They have small similarities, but there are major differences. When you look at Buddhism, Buddha was an agnostic, which meant that he really didn’t believe in God at all. Hinduism believes in God, you betcha, they have 330 million gods. Islam, on the other hand, has one god, Allah, and he is supreme and that’s it. If you want to really be an offense to Islam, then you declare that Jesus is God and that, as Christianity believes, that there is one God, a triune God in three distinct personalities and persons, and that’s just egregious to the Islamic faith. The Jewish faith and Christianity is the most similar, in fact, similar in most degrees other than the Jews believe that there is a messiah who is coming. Christianity believes that the messiah is Jesus and has already come and will come again.
But the bottom line is that they’re majorly different, so I would say that they can’t be all right. Would you agree with that? There’s major contradiction within them. And then Jesus comes and during his ministry, he makes an incredibly radical statement. John 14:6, Jesus answered some questions about himself and he said, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Pretty clear. He says, "I am the way." It separated him from all of the sects -- not S-E-X, S-E-C-T-S -- of the area. It separated him from the major religions of the area, and still does today because he says, "I am the way." Now what did he mean? Well, let me tell you what happened. It got him crucified. It was that strong of a statement. Sometimes you wish just give everybody an "A". Lets don’t say it like that, but it did, it got him crucified. What did he mean and what did he say?
Luke 19:10, he clarifies a little bit and he says, "For the son of man," that’s who he called himself, "came to seek and to save those who are lost." He said, "There are people who are lost and what I’ve come to do, I am the way, and what I’ve come to do is to find them." And then he clarifies that, what are we lost from. In John 3:36, he says, "Anyone who believes in God’s Son," he’s referring to himself as that, "will experience eternal life. And anyone who doesn’t obey the Son will never experience eternal life." What’s he talking about eternal life, saying that God created man to experience life? God, the Holy Spirit, breathed into man, his life. God intended man to live forever and then man sinned and life left -- eternal life. Man must now die. And Jesus says, "I have now come to restore that. I have come, and if you believe on me, you will receive back your eternal life. Those who don’t obey, they will never experience eternal life, but remain under God’s angry judgment." What is up with that? What’s God mad about and is that fair?
I have a friend who recently, about a year or year and a half ago, discovered a small spot on the bottom of his foot. He didn’t think anything of it, but it began to grow, so he went to a doctor and he decided, "Well, we’ll just watch it. I don’t think it’s anything." It grew more and more and it began to actually impede his daily activity and he would walk with a limp. Several of us had said, "You have got to go and really get an opinion. Let’s really figure out what this is." He put it off and he put if off and he put it off. Finally, a year later, he went to another doctor and they did a biopsy and they found that it was a melanoma. A lot of you are familiar with that. It was a form of cancer and it had grown to a category four or five, I believe, melanoma.
The doctor said, "This is serious. We’ve got to treat it right now or it will take your life -- not ’it could’ but it will take your life." He asked, "What’s the treatment?" The doctor said, "We’re gonna have to do surgery. We may have to cut a portion of the foot away, which could cause some discomfort and, obviously, some problems for you motoring around in the future. Also, we may very well need to do some serious chemotherapy, which could be very, very uncomfortable, but that’s probably what we’re going to have to do." So he did and he’s actually doing well.
I did a little study on cancer just to know how I can pray for him to study the melanoma. I’m not an expert on it, but it seems that cancer is genetic damage to an individual cell and cells divide quickly and disrupt the whole process of the body and sometimes invade things and often spread their DNA to other parts of the body. There are drugs that kill cancer cells, but oftentimes, they kill other cells, too. That’s why you lose your hair and some of those types of things when you’re doing chemo therapy and some of you are very, very familiar with that.
What causes cancer? Some things are out of our control. Sometimes it’s a chromosome issue or it could be a gene mutation. Some things we can control. They tell us that alcohol used wrongly or tobacco or too much sun or asbestos or whatever, exposure to those can cause cancer, but the bottom line is that cancer is not your friend. Cancer is the enemy of the body. A doctor does everything he can to eliminate it. That’s their job. That’s what they do, to kill cancer, to destroy it, to eliminate it.
My friend’s doctor could have said to him, "I know that surgery is pretty extreme and chemotherapy is gonna make you very, very uncomfortable for a period of time, very sick. Let’s just skip that. Why don’t you go home and take some ibuprofen and see how that works for you?" Would that be the kind thing for that doctor to do? No, not at all. He knows what is true. He knows what is right. The kind thing for him to do is to tell the truth; otherwise my friend is sentenced to sure death.
The correlation is that sin is the cancer on the human race. Sin was introduced in the garden and it’s a part of the genetics now and it spreads very, very quickly. We’re all exposed. In fact, I would even say, to make the analogy even closer, we are all actual cancer cells and if allowed to spread, we will destroy, ultimately, this thing called the "human race." God is like the doctor. God is justified in his anger against sin and his anger or his fight against this cancer that would destroy. It must be killed or cut out and we see examples of that all through the Bible, the Old Testament.
If you read the story of Noah and how God destroyed the earth during Noah’s time, if you read the scriptures just before, it says that man’s heart was on evil all the time. All the time. This cancer had so spread and so invaded and was so pervasive that it said that everybody’s heart was on evil all of the time. Can you imagine? Can you imagine a place where everybody’s heart was on evil all of the time, where sin was pervasive? There are pockets in the world right now where that happens; where there’s lawlessness, where women can’t walk by themselves for fear of assault or rape, where men have to defend themselves constantly with whatever weapon is available because packs of people roam and kill? It’s just horrible where there’s lawlessness. There are pockets of that all around the world.
Now if there were good people in the middle of that, and God said, "I’m going to eliminate those who are evil because they are so evil, and I’m going to save those who are good," would God be wrong in doing that? In fact, our cry is, "Why doesn’t he?" in some situations. In Noah’s situation, God said, "Here is the ark. We’re going to take those who have not been permeated or have not been infected by this sin, we’re gonna take them away and start over again." God was justified because had he left him, the cancer would have destroyed all of humankind.
So now, God sends Jesus Christ. Let’s suppose there was a drug that rather than just killed cancer cells, let’s suppose that a drug was invented that actually regenerated those cells and made them useful again so that there wouldn’t have to be invasive surgery and they would not have to be killed, everything around. That would be incredible, wouldn’t it? Well, that is exactly, exactly what Jesus provides. God said, "There is this cancer in humanity called "sin" and it’s destroying everything."
Jesus came and he became the antidote to that cancer. Now it doesn’t necessarily have to be cut out, but it can be regenerated and made like new. Jesus says, "If you will believe in me, I will restore life to you, so that when the day of judgment, when all cancer is cut out, when all sin is dealt with, you will not be one who is dealt with, but you will be one who has life. And, oh, by the way, there’s not a lot that you can do about the cancer that is growing within you because it is inherent, but there are other things that cause that sin to return and why don’t you avoid those things as you follow me. When you slip up, get a new dose of the antidote and you can experience life." That’s the gospel and how it is.
Jesus is saying that God is justified in his anger toward sin. That’s not the issue. He has an antidote, and to be honest with you, if we knew the cure to cancer or any other disease, and we said that we’re only gonna share it with those around us, that would be cruel, wouldn’t it? And if what Jesus is saying is true, and it is a major difference in world religions and it is a cure for what ails man, then to just say, "Well, everybody gets an "A" is like a doctor saying, ’Take some ibuprofen and I hope you’re OK.’" So I don’t believe that all religions are alike. So let’s go to the next question.
Question: Hello, I’m Richard from the West Ashley Campus and my questions is: If you’re a monk and you had never met any Christian in your entire life; therefore, never even heard of Jesus, then you ended up dying, would you go to hell?
Good questions, Richard. I’m not sure a monk means a religious person. I think he’s talking about somebody who lives in a village -- that’s what we always think of, a village in Africa or India somewhere. If what I said in Question No. 1 is true, what about this guy who has never heard? Is God just going to damn him to hell? Is he not going to have eternal life? Is that how God thinks? So the question is: What about people around the world who have never heard?
That’s a great question and it goes to the root of what I talked about in the beginning, does God love them as much as I do because I feel terrible when I think about people who may never had a chance and will God just -- will that be how God judges? Here’s the truth. On judgment day, I don’t believe there will be anybody who says, "I never knew. If I would have known, I would have done something about it, done something different." You say, "Well, Greg, how could you make that statement?" Let me tell you how.
I believe that God cares about the person in that village, or wherever it happens to be, more than you or I do. I believe that is the love of God. I believe that God is reaching out to them all of the time. He’s initiating conversations all the time. Really, how does that happen? Look at Romans 1:19. I’m gonna give you four ways that God reaches out and speaks. Romans 1:19 says, "They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them, for ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities as eternal power and divine nature, so they have no excuse for not knowing God."
Here’s the argument of the writer of Romans says. He says, "God speaks to everybody through creation." When you walk out in the morning and you see the sun in the sky or you walk out at night and see the stars, when you observe a baby being born, there is something about that that cries out for something bigger than where you are, that says, ’There is a creator.’" Now there are some people that will deny the creator and say, "Well, that can be explained by other things. There is no creator." That’s true. There are people like that and Paul talks about them in here, but that is a choice that they have to make. At some point, you have to go, "Either there is a creator or there is not and creation points to evidence that there is.
So God is constantly to everybody on the planet, he gives the same opportunity to say, "Acknowledge that there is a God because of what is." But that’s not all. In Romans 2:14-16, he says that God is speaking to everybody through their conscience. It says, "Even gentiles who do not have God’s written law," God’s written law was confined then to only the Jewish people, and the writer of Romans says, "Even gentiles who have never seen the written law, have never experienced Judaism, he says, "show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it without even hearing it." They demonstrate that God’s law is written on their hearts, for their own conscience and thoughts either accuse them or tell them that they’re doing right." This is the message that I proclaim that the day is coming when God, through Jesus Christ, will judge everyone’s secret life."
What’s he saying? He’s saying that every Buddhist, every person who follows Islam, every Christian and even most Clemson fans have a conscience. They have a conscience that there is something inside that says, "This is right. This is wrong." And it says that God will, someday, at judgment time, judge them for what they have done with what they know will be right or wrong. What they know, they will be judged on. That’s not all. God speaks through creation everyday. God speaks through our conscience constantly. And then, God is reaching out by his Holy Spirit and initiating conversations with everybody.
Look at this. John 16:26, says, "But I will send you," this is just before Jesus is going to leave, he sits down with his disciples and says, "I will send you the advocate, the spirit of truth, and he will come to you from the Father and look at what he’s going to do. He will testify all about me." The Holy Spirit is one of the least talked about, least understood parts of the trinity that we know as God. He’s a person and he comes and has responsibility, part of his responsibility to convict of sin. When your conscience convicts you, that’s the Holy Spirit.
But another part of his responsibility is to reveal Jesus, is to testify about Jesus and I believe that that is what the Holy Spirit is hard at work doing, not just here in America or Mount Perfect, he’s doing it all over the world because God doesn’t want anyone to perish. God doesn’t want anyone to have to be cut off in the end because of the cancer of sin. He offered Jesus Christ as a way, as an antidote, and now he wants everybody to experience life. That’s the heart of God, is to experience life. God is not about damning people to hell. God is about providing a way for people to experience life. So the Holy Spirit is at work all of the time. How does he work?
Most of you probably read or heard about the plane that landed on the Hudson River. Did you hear about that? There were a lot of reports about it. The pilot did an incredible job. I heard an interview with several passengers on different television stations and one of them said that she was texting her husband at the time. Another one said that she had her phone and she was going to make a call. The lady next to her said, "Put your phone down. It’s not time to call; it’s time to pray." And what everybody on the plane was doing, was praying. Observation, when the plane’s going down, there’s not too many atheists. Would you agree?
In that moment, the Holy Spirit uses those times to reveal Jesus, to convict of sin and to reveal Jesus. That’s part of what his deal is. People ask me regularly, "I have a relative that I’m not sure ever committed their life to Christ. Will they be in hell?" My answer is, "I don’t know. What I do know is that the Holy Spirit worked overtime on them until their last moment of breath."
I had to laugh last night when a guy came up to me after church and said, "That really bummed me out." And I said, "Why?" And he said, "My dad was an absolute --," and he used a word. And he said, "You’re telling me that he just might be in heaven. What a bummer." I said, "I don’t know," but I do know this -- that God makes it very, very hard for someone to go to hell. You’ve got to reject him and resist him and resist him and resist him until the very last moment.
I think in those moments, whether it’s in America, India or anywhere else, God loves everybody and the Holy Spirit is at work revealing truth to them and revealing Jesus. And in human conversations, speaks to them. God works through creation and conscience and the Holy Spirit. Romans 10 says, "How will people know if there isn’t a preacher?" One great example of that is Paul in Athens. Acts 17 says, "Paul then stood up in the meeting of the --," something, I’m not even gonna try it -- and said, "Men of Athens, I see that in every way, you are very religious." Now this is a group of people that worship a lot of gods. Paul doesn’t go in there and say, "Your god is evil. Your god is demonic. Let’s sprinkle stuff on it and get rid of it." That’s not what he says.
He says, "I see that you’re very religious. You worship a lot of gods. As I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription, ’To an Unknown God.’" What he’s saying is, "Boy, there are a lot of gods here and a lot of stuff that you’re worshipping and even as I was walking around, I found one to an unknown god, which signifies that evidently, it’s not working for you. Evidently, some of the other gods, it’s not paying off. There’s this unknown god that you’re worshipping and you don’t know who it is or what it is, but there’s life in there somehow."
He says, "Let me explain it to you. The god who made the world. Now what you worship is something unknown. I’m going to proclaim to you, I’m going to tell you who that unknown god is. God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of the heaven and on earth and does not live in temples built by hand and he is not served by human hands as if he needed anything because he, himself, gives all men life and breath and everything else."
He says -- verse 26, great verse, "From one man, he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live." He says that everybody, all through history, that God determined the exact times and places that they should live. He determined that you should live right here, right now, at this time. He determined that some of my friends in India live right then, right there, that people in Pakistan live right there, right now. Why? 27, God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him although he is not far from each one of us. He said that he planted you in this time and he planted things around you and situations and circumstances and heaven and the Holy Spirit and conversations so that you could find God. That’s not just in America. That’s everywhere.
And Paul walks into this place where they’re worshipping everything and rather than condemn them, he says, "Here’s something you’re worshipping, probably because these things aren’t getting it. Let me tell you why that’s good, who that is and explain it to you." When I go to India, my heart breaks. When I see some very sincere Hindu people searching after God in sincerity, and their God is not paying off. And their God, it’s not getting it and there are questions inside, and there is nothing like being able to say, "Let me tell you about the God who brings life." That’s what God wants to do.
So what about people around the world that never heard? Worry about them in that you ought to go in order to be part of the ______ process, but God loves them more than you do and he’s speaking to everybody constantly. All right, let’s go to the third question.
Question: Hi Pastor, my name is Karen and I’m from the Mt. Pleasant campus and my daughter, who is a non-believer was visiting and we drove by Seacoast and I was telling her about the question series and she has a question for you. She has married a Jewish man. They are raising their child Jewish and she wants to know how we think an 11-month-old baby can go to hell.
Wow, that’s a passion there. She wants to know if God cares as much as she does about her 11-month-old grandson and because her son-in-law is not a Christian, that baby is raised as a Jew, will that baby go to hell? I have several things to say about hell, but let me deal with that one real quick.
No. 1, in that situation or any other situation, I believe that God has a special place in his heart for children. We’re all stained by sin, so everybody just doesn’t get an "A." But that being said, children, those who are not mentally capable, perhaps by a disability that they have, aborted babies, miscarried babies; God has a special place for them. Jesus said, "Suffer the children to come unto me." He said, "Your faith has to be like one of them." And I believe that -- and I’m going to talk about this a little bit more next week, but I believe that God has a special place.
What about the Jewish people? You know what? Let me deal with that in just a minute. Let me talk about hell for just a second. Here are some things I know about hell. No. 1, God is for you, not against you. God doesn’t want to damn anybody to hell. That’s not his deal. In fact, why is there a hell? Hell was not created for you. Hell was created for the author of sin, the cancer, the disease that’s destroying the human race. Hell was created for Satan and his angels who rebelled against God, as a place where they could be apart from the presence of God in the last days when God finally cuts off sin and if they do not repent -- could they? Sure, they could. If they do not repent, then hell is a place for them.
It was never meant for you. It was never meant for man. God doesn’t want you to go there. As I just told you, he’s doing everything he can to keep you out and to give you life. But God does allow you to choose. Don’t make any mistake. Hell is a choice. If you thumb your nose at God all of your life, your physical life here, you say, "God, I want distance from you. I don’t want anything to do with you," and God has drawn you through your creation and your conscience and through the Holy Spirit, and through testimony and you go, "No, I’m not interested." Why would God force you to be in his presence forever? Why would it not make sense that you have distance for eternity? That’s what God says. God doesn’t do a lot of damning on the last day. God says,
"Have it your way. Have it your way."
Hell is the permanent consequences of choosing to live a life apart from God. Here’s another thing that I know about hell. It’s not my job to determine who goes there. What about Jewish people? You know, they gotta deal with God. What about other people? You know, that’s a God thing. That’s a God thing and he has always set aside the Jewish people as a special people in order that he might be reflected through him. What’s he gonna do? That’s not my job. My job is about me and you, who are outside of those realms and tell you, "Here’s the good news. Jesus came. He was the antidote for sin and cancer and God loves you and he is just."
Now you don’t get to determine who goes to heaven or hell, but you do get to determine what question I answer next. Here’s what we’re gonna do. You’ve been texting throughout the service. We’re gonna put on the screen the top three questions that you had and then we’re gonna vote and determine which one you’d like to hear the answer to today. So let’s put them up. What are they? "Will I know my family in heaven?" Good question. Next one, "Do we go to heaven right after we die or is there a waiting period?" That’s a good question. Third one, "Can people in heaven see us on earth? Wouldn’t they be sad as we do wrong?"
Wow. One of the earlier services said, "Will we be married in heaven and if so, which wife?" OK, so here’s what I want to do. Here’s all three of them. Let me give you some instruction. Only at Seacoast. Actually that was in the New Testament, too, asked for a different reason. If you want to know the answer to No. 1, text "afterlife 1" to 99503. "What about a waiting period, ’afterlife 2.’" "Will our relatives see us; won’t that make them sad -- ’afterlife 3.’" So go to work on that right now and while you’re doing it, I asked our staff if they would answer two or three quick questions. So take a look at the screen.
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Question: Hey, Seacoast. As Pastor Greg said, you’ve been sending in so many questions, we’re gonna try and hit a couple of them for you real quick. A lot of you have been asking about the existence of ghosts. Are they real? Do we believe in them? Well, I thought we’d bring in Pastor Jim Miles, whom -- there he is right there. Some of you may not know that Jim used to own his own touring company in Charleston, South Carolina, which used to be known as the most haunted city in America. So Jim, what’s your stance on ghosts?
Question: Actually, I think it’s kind of a gray area. I might surprise people, but the Bible does have a few instances that suggest that the living can come in contact with dead people. A great example is in 1 Samuel, when Saul contacted Samuel for advice on a battle. So although they are in there, the wealth of evidence suggests that what’s going on is not ghosts like you’d think in a haunted mansion, but really supernatural activity. That can be found in the sixth chapter of Ephesians when Paul reminds us that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, the authorities and the powers of this dark world. That’s in this world. So supernatural activity, certainly. Ghosts, maybe? I’ve never seen one.
Question: I’ve been dead since 1973, Jim.
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Question: It turns out there have been several questions about the issue of baptism, so we talked to Long Point campus pastor, Josh Surratt. Josh’s question is: Do you need to be baptized to be saved?
Question: OK, this is an issue that’s been debated by Christians for several centuries and I would argue that you do not have to be baptized to be saved and I want to point to a couple of scriptures to talk to you about that.
One is Ephesians 2:8-10. It talks about the fact that we’re saved by grace and not by works of our own and that would indicate to me that nothing that we can do can earn our salvation. Also, many of you remember the story as Jesus was dying on the cross, that one of the thieves cried out to him and asked to be saved and Jesus said, "I assure you today you will be with me in paradise," obviously, without being baptized.
So with that being said, I would say that we do not have to be baptized to be saved. However, as a Christ follower, it’s a great idea to be baptized. It’s a first act of obedience that God calls us to and it kind of identifies us as believers and as followers of Christ. So baptism for salvation does not work, but baptism as an act of obedience is a great idea.
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Question: Finally, there have been a lot of questions about the Rapture and when it might happen. Now there’s a lot of speculation on the answer to this question, so I thought we’d take a quick poll around the Seacoast office and ask a bunch of pastors and staff members to see what they think. Let’s start with -- oh, he’s not here. All right, Jason Surratt, I -- that’s weird. Well, surely, Josh is -- it’s 10:00 on a Tuesday. What are these people doing? Surely, Michael Morris is here. He’s one of the holiest people -- what on -- OK, now he’s got to be here. Hey -- all these people I know are gone.
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Wow. OK, here’s our question. You guys maxed out the number of votes evidently. I don’t know what that means, but I can’t remember the questions now. No. 1 was, "Do you immediately go to heaven?" Is that right? "Will I know my family?" OK, No. 2 was what? "Do we go to heaven right after we die?" OK, all right. No. 3, "Can people in heaven see us?" No. 3 was the winner, wasn’t it? OK, good.
This is what I’m gonna do. I’ve only got a couple of minutes to answer this one. This series is so fluid. I’ve never done anything like -- this is like doing it without a net, trapeze walking. It was gonna be two weeks. It’s now gonna be, maybe, until Jesus comes. Did I mention that? I had no idea what I was gonna do next week. We’re gonna do heaven next week. We’re gonna do afterlife questions next week and go really deep into this.
So let me just skim this one. The question was, "Do they see us? Wouldn’t they be sad as we do wrong?" Let me just skim it. Next week, I’ll get in-depth on why I believe -- let me just give you some things. Revelation 6: 9-11, talks about martyred saints around the throne of God and it says that they were crying out that their blood would be avenged. "When are you going to go back, Jesus, and rescue and deal with the things that need to be dealt with?" They were immediately in the presence of the Lord. Evidently, they weren’t in a soul sleep kind of a deal. No. 2, they could evidently see some things about what was going on, on Earth, now, and they were concerned about it.
Hebrews 11 talks about a mighty cloud of witnesses who are cheering us on. How could they cheer us -- who is that? That’s the saints that have gone on before us. How could they cheer us on if they didn’t know what we were doing? That’s a question that I have. Mount of transfiguration, remember we studied that in our Luke series and there was Moses and Elijah, right, who were there. They were talking with Jesus and the disciples heard them and what were they talking about? They said that they were asking him questions about the fact that he would soon be leaving from Jerusalem and would do the deal that he came to do. They evidently knew what was going on and they knew a timeline, too, of that happening. So they must have known something going on here.
Luke 15:10 is an often misquoted scripture. It says, "There is rejoicing in the presence of angels when someone becomes a believer, when a sinner repents." Oftentimes we say, "Well, the angels are rejoicing." Well, they might be, but it says the rejoicing is in the presence of angels, which would lead to indicate that the saints are rejoicing and the angels are being a part of that. So I believe that, to some extent, that God gives those who have gone ahead, the ability to see some of what’s going on here.
You say, "Well, what about all the junk or unbelieving friends or whatever, wouldn’t that make them sad?" Very possibly. I believe that one of the things, and we’ll talk about this next week, I believe that one of the things that the saints who have gone ahead do, is they are praying for us. That’s part of cheering us on, praying for us. It gives me great comfort to know that those who have gone ahead are praying for me. Now the Bible doesn’t say that we need to pray to them, but they are praying for us.
What about being sad? The heaven that we go to when we die is not the same heaven that we will be in forever. We’ll talk about that next week. The intermediate heaven or the promise that there would be no tears in heaven, that there would be no crying, no sickness, no sin and all of that, that’s about the second heaven, the ultimate heaven. The intermediate heaven, that’s not a promise. I believe that Jesus grieved over the church. He grieved over people. I think he probably still does. There very well may be some of that, not horrid grief, but a sense of, "I need to pray." They understand now the power of prayer and what is positive and what is not.
So I think it’s entirely possible that there are days in heaven where there would be a feeling for those who are making bad choices or wrong choices. Does it pervade? Is there depression? Absolutely not, because there are answers there. If that whet your appetite a little bit, we’ll talk next week just a little bit about heaven. Send emails to Pastor Greg at seacoast.org if you have any questions about heaven. We’ll also take a lot of the things that you’ve texted in today and deal with that. All right, let me just hit one more quick thing and then we’ll be done. Let’s go to another question.
Question: Hey, Pastor Greg, this is Nat Carvolhu from Unfiltered Service. I was just wondering what happened to Judas? Is it possible that he went to heaven? Did he really believe? I’m just wondering.
Judas, interesting. Could he have been saved? Another one that came in just like that was about Jeffrey Dahmer, the guy that ate all the people. He claimed to have been saved before he was killed in prison. Will he go to heaven? What’s the answer? Romans 10:13, it says, "For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." Everyone. Does that mean that I can live next to a serial killer in heaven? Yes, just keep your doors locked, OK? Actually, they’re transformed. Judas might be there, don’t know.
Last question because this one was along those same lines, "Who can be forgiven?" I have a friend who is distant from God, can’t respond to God because she believes that because of an abortion that she did, that God could never forgive her. All of these questions are in the context of some real stuff going on inside. My response is for you to reassure your friend that she is wrong, that there is absolutely no sin other than the unpardonable sin -- how about we talk about that one week. Do you want to talk about that? Not today.
There is no sin -- Isaiah says that the sins of those who are forgiven are as far as the east is from the west. They are cast into the sea. I don’t care what you’ve done. I don’t care if it’s murder, adultery, abortion. Are there consequences in this life? Absolutely. But is it unforgivable that someone who has failed could never go to God? Absolutely not. The blood of Jesus is enough for any sin. Jesus came and he became the antidote to sin -- past sin, current sin, future sin. You know what? That tells me something. That tells me that God loves not just me, but he loves everybody in the world. He is hard at work making it really hard for anybody to miss God’s grace and he can be trusted.
Let’s pray. Father, I thank you today for your kingdom. I thank you for the wonderful questions that our people are asking because they want to know about you. They want to know more. Lord, we want to be reassured that you are a loving God who is trustworthy, as well as just. God, I ask that you would make these next few moments in time a time of reflection and that you would draw us to you. In your name, we pray. Amen.
