(A little piece I wrote in response to the execution of terrorist Timothy McVeigh.)
Life is just chocked full of surprises, isn’t it? Take the matter of going to heaven. I just found out that Tim McVeigh is “absolutely in heaven,” according to a local Terre Haute clergyman. Yep. An hour or so before he delivered his defiant stare to his bombing victims’ relatives and felt the lethal injection needle puncture his skin, he asked for a certain prayer to be said. Voila! From an unrepentant mass murderer to a sainted seraph; from the man guilty of the worst act of terrorism in history committed by an American on American soil, to instantaneous celestial bliss. You do have to admit that it is more than a little surprising.
I guess Tim is right up there tooling around the streets of gold with Judas Iscariot. You did know about him, didn’t you? Yeah. I learned this bit of news a few days ago. It seems that Judas suffered some kind of delusional syndrome and he really hadn’t been himself that last week or so before he consorted with the enemy camp, betrayed the guileless Jesus with a kiss on the cheek and sold him for thirty pieces of silver. I am told that history has unfairly painted Judas with a traitor’s brush, conveniently making him the scapegoat for the crucifixion. His distraught condition drove him to become a suicide victim, certainly punishment enough for his innocent mistake. Not wanting to add insult to injury, God had enough grace to ignore his own word and admit Judas into heaven.
Now, I haven’t fully confirmed that the following people have actually made it to “the sunny banks of sweet deliverance,” but early indicators point in that direction. Adolf Hitler, the mad paper-hanger who inadvertently got caught up in his “Final Solution” thing which resulted in the death of six million Jews will most likely be there. (I mean, after all, he was fighting this huge war which probably was a major distraction and prevented him from thinking straight.) Joseph Stalin, the communist leader who ordered the massacre of millions, will undoubtedly make it. His motive was to assist the noble experiment of communism to succeed. Ted Bundy, the serial killer, is already there. (If I’m not mistaken, that has been confirmed.) With the likes of Nero, Herod, Genghis Kahn, Pol Pot, Al Capone, Pretty Boy Floyd, and a gaggle of other tyrannical, butcher, mobster, rapist and crazed killer types, heaven could turn out to be a much different place than I had always imagined. (A city jail? The ACLU? Lawyers?)
Even more surprising may be New Jerusalem’s register of missing persons. I thought it was a given that the Apostle Paul would make it, but some think he was too much of a sexist, authoritarian homophobe to gain admission. Apostle Peter, the designated gatekeeper almost secured his place because he stood against racism, but later lost out when he dared to write about his radical views on oppression of women. King David had an outside chance, but he couldn’t overcome his record for waging for-profit and for-vengeance wars. He tried to slip in on his blood relationship to the occupant of the throne, but nepotism is frowned upon in heaven.
And then, there are the poor, duped masses who died while actually thinking that faith in Christ, submission to God, obedience to the Bible, faithfulness, honesty, personal holiness, sacrifice and walking in the Spirit were important factors in going to heaven. Too bad they didn’t understand the real character traits that God measures before granting acceptance. Tolerance, flexible principles, multiculturalism, universal affirmation of all religions, obeisance to Mother Earth and other demonstrations of a fully evolved conscience speak much more to one’s worthiness of karma, i.e. heaven, than all the silly twentieth century pietistic notions put together.
I hope nobody drowns in these drippings of sarcasm, but I am appalled at the barefaced disfigurement of Bible truths. Heaven is not a general philosophical ideal. The New Age, PC crowd didn’t invent it. Neither can these same sacrilegious interlopers redefine the criteria for entering in. God’s Heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people. “And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” Revelation 21:27. Of course, God stands alone as the final judge of all who enter heaven, but he is eternally committed to fulfill his Word. Certainly, one provision cannot be changed, that which Jesus told Nicodemus: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” John 3:5
Heaven belongs to God. He alone can tell us how to get there, and he has provided all the information we need in his Word. The Bible takes the “guess” out of going to heaven.