It has been said, “He is a fool whose plans end at the grave.”  The bible bids us higher than the temporal limits of our seventy plus years on earth.   But sadly, the means of connecting with God, the “pearl of great price,” has been hidden amid the clutter of religious paraphernalia, great stone houses, stained glass windows and ecclesiastical squabbling.  It is sad that so many honest seekers are presented with a religious blindfold, spun around on their chairs, and told to “pin the tail on the donkey” when it comes to the all-important subject of spiritual salvation.

It is the objective of this book to pry that pearl of great price, the “gospel of your salvation,” free from the icy fingers of religious dogma, dust off the clinging vestiges of wrong-headed doctrine and set forth the heart and soul of the Christian message.  We are not inventing anything, or uncovering secret codes.  We are simply blowing away the smoke and setting forth the no-frills truth with denomination-neutral instructions from the Bible on how anyone can take that narrow road and connect directly with God. It may not be in our power to change the whole world, but we can surely change each of our individual “worlds” one heart at a time.

The uniqueness of the Christian faith

Ask any professor of comparative religion in most universities, and they will tell you that Christianity is just one of many religions, and not particularly unique.  Is that really true?  Consider:

• Christianity’s founder claimed to be God in the flesh,
• Christianity’s founder was also in every way a man,
• Christianity’s founder returned from the dead, as personally witnessed by his earliest followers,
• Christianity’s founder stated unequivocally that he provides the only way to God in heaven,
• Christianity’s founder promised that he will someday personally return to rule the earth,
• Christianity’s founder takes up residence in the body of every one of his believers to personally live the Christian life through them,
• Christianity’s entire “benefit package” is transferred through faith—not earned through any form of human effort, especially religion,
• Christianity was foretold thousands of years in advance in the Old Testament scriptures of the Hebrews and revealed to-the-letter in the New Testament of the Christians,
• Christianity’s founder is currently raising up a special cadre of followers to take part in ruling the universe for all eternity.

These are hardly the claims of just another religious also-ran.  He leaves us to decide between whether he was an outright liar, a raving lunatic, or God himself.

Even a casual reader of the bible will observe that Jesus towered over everyone else “in the room” with every encounter.  Kings, religious rulers, prostitutes, peasants, and paupers were halted midstride by his piercing insights and otherworldly wisdom.  No one was his equal.  Had Jesus met up with the likes of Aristotle, Plato, Einstein, Archimedes, Newton, Darwin, Hawking, Carl Sagan, whoever, the results would have been the same—this humble carpenter from the sticks would have silenced them all.

But Jesus’ most audacious claim, the one that would eventually lead to his arrest and execution, was his claim to be God in the flesh.  Now don’t get the wrong idea, this notion of his “Godhood” was not a retrospective invention of his followers, nor was it a fanciful interpretation of what he actually said because in that day, in that culture, such daring assertions were likely to result in public execution or an extended stay in the Roman version of a “the funny farm.”  Yet people today persist in softening and discounting his more audacious claims, and reduced him to a far safer “great moral teacher,” or some such politically-correct diminution.  C. S. Lewis would have none of it:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” ^[i]

Remember, this was the same Jesus who said, “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household.” ^[1]  So much for the “Hollywood Messiah” dumbing-down his message to attract screaming crowds as he uttered sappy platitudes in carefully annunciated phrases in perfect English.  Jesus spoke bluntly and unapologetically, leaving little room for doubt about his identity or his message.

The paradoxical exclusivity and inclusivity of Christ’s message

The following words of Jesus have drawn clenched fists and spitting rage among the religious and non-religious since they were uttered two millennia ago, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” ^[2]  Such exclusive claims did not go down well with anyone, particularly the religious leaders of his day.  He was sweeping all other religions off the table with a single stroke.  Any other approach to God was declared to be futile, regardless of its popularity or the sincerity of its followers.  Period.  Either these were the words of a madman, or someone who knew that his claims would be eventually backed up by verifiable results.

But equally sweeping were the inclusivity of his many invitations to follow him and be with God in heaven, “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.” ^[3]  That word “whoever” is as unconditional as his claims to be the only way to God.

My personal wake-up-call

Up to that fateful moment, my day seemed ordinary enough, just getting the results of some medical tests.  But then time froze as I saw the doctor’s clipboard with my name and social security number at the top and the word “cancer” at the bottom.  In an instant, the dread word “cancer” morphed from an abstract concept to a stark reality. Nothing would be the same again.  While I was a Christian at that time, this called for a depth of faith that I was frankly unprepared for.

As the days that followed my diagnosis whizzed by, I was inundated with recommendations from friends and relatives bearing tales of miracle cures involving anything from massive doses of vitamins to ground peach pits administered in a shady clinic south of the border.  As the quacks and their remedies multiplied, I began sorting my choices based upon two critical questions: first, what are the credentials of the person making the recommendation and, secondly, what do they stand to gain financially.  Not surprisingly, after discarding the crazy-quilt of pill peddlers and unseemly profit motives, common sense clearly pointed me back to my eminently qualified doctor and as a result, I’m here to tell the story.

Interestingly, that process of sorting various medical choices reminded me of that searing moment years before when I abandoned all other options and placed my confidence in Jesus Christ as Savior and protector.  After all, who could be better suited to speak about death than someone who had actually crossed over and come back to talk about it?  Yes, many people claim to have had near-death encounters, complete with details about tunnels and white lights.  But what about someone who was clearly killed in a public execution witnessed by thousands, was expertly embalmed and buried in a sealed and guarded tomb for three days?

I came to cherish the words of an angelic eye-witness to this death and subsequent resurrection that occurred two thousand years ago, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’” ^[4]

Fortunately, most people will never have to face life-threatening circumstances, except of course, when they reach the end of their days.  Sooner or later, like it or not, we will come face-to-face with the hereafter and the possibility of meeting up with our creator.  So I would pose this question to you…What if you stepped out of your comfort zone before that fateful day arrives and take God up on his offer for a divine personal appointment?  Suppose that encounter could usher in undreamed-of possibilities for you that stretched out into eternity?  What’s to lose?

“Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.”  ___Blaise Pascal

Basic Premise of this Book

Unless you just arrived here from the planet “MeepZorp,” as a fellow earthling you were born with a “species problem.”  That is to say, while you are ideally equipped for this rather brief life on earth, you are in no way equipped for life in heaven…absent divine intervention.

To illustrate, in orbit an astronaut needs a special spacesuit to move around outside of his space vehicle or he will immediately perish; likewise, you and I can never survive “the atmosphere” of heaven without being specially equipped.

That “equipment” is ingeniously provided in the form of Jesus Christ himself who, upon the physical death of each of his believers, acts as a kind of “interstellar star ship” to transport and deliver us safely into the heavenly realms—and best of all, we remain safely embodied within him for all eternity.

When Jesus Christ entered the human experience, he did not come as a scrubbed and robed theologian or philosopher.  He came as a common laborer from the backwoods of Galilee with callouses and scars befitting a carpenter.  He wasn’t raised in princely comfort or educated in the higher disciplines.  He was raised in the dusty streets of a tiny hamlet that was under the brutal boot of a tyrannical dictatorship.  He understood the violence, cruelty, injustice, and diminished prospects of an enslaved people.  That is what made his message of a kingdom to come where justice would reign so appealing.  At the same time, his practical down-to-earth teachings seemed to make sense of everyday life in a world that defied reasonable explanation.

God is recruiting volunteers now to join him as family members and partners in the loving fellowship of those taking part in “a tremendously creative project, under unimaginably splendid leadership, on an inconceivably vast scale, with ever increasing cycles of fruitfulness and enjoyment,” ^[ii] as Dallas Willard put it.  Further, we don’t have to wait to die to commence this heavenly life, but upon being born again [the requisite “ticket” to board], we experience inner spiritual transformation that immediately revolutionizes our lives in the here and now.

Tickets to ride are free of charge and anyone may apply, not just “religious” or exceptionally “good” people.  But before proceeding, consider this penetrating question posed by Willard, “One should seriously inquire if to live in a world permeated with God and the knowledge of God is something you truly desire.”  If you do, God promises to create a whole new spiritual “you,” not only fashioning you into a greatly improved citizen of earth, but also making you into a fully qualified citizen of heaven.

Do you want to be a truly successful person?  Here is authentic success—becoming the kind of person God created you to be—to become “fully alive,” as Willard put it.  C. S Lewis wisely observed, “Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth ‘thrown in’: aim at Earth and you will get neither.” ^[iii]  Interested?

 

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