Heaven and Hell

LAST THINGS
HEAVEN AND HELL
DR. JIM DIXON
2 THESSALONIANS 1:5-10
AUGUST 20, 2006

Some of you have studied philosophy and theology in college or perhaps to a lesser degree in high school. I know that some of you are familiar with the concept of dualism. Philosophical dualism can take many forms. There is metaphysical dualism. There is epistemological dualism. There is ethical dualism. But generally speaking, dualists and particularly ethical dualists believe that in the universe there are two equal and opposing forces perpetually at war. For instance, in ancient Zoroastrianism people believed that good and evil were equal and they were opposing and their battle was perpetual world without end.

We see in all of the religions of the world a little bit of dualism, so you hear about angels at war with demons, wars in the supernatural arena. Even in Chinese philosophy the concept of Yin and Yang contains a little bit of dualism. In the Bible, in Christianity, dualism is modified. In the Bible, in Christianity, God is opposed by Satan and by demonic powers but they are not equal forces. The Bible tells us God is omnipotent. God will prevail. God will be victorious. In the Bible Christ is opposed by antichrist and by the powers of darkness and by the spirit of antichrist but they are not equal powers. Christ will prove Himself omnipotent and Christ will be victorious and Christ will prevail. So, the Bible tells us that our destiny, your destiny, my destiny, is tied to what we do with God and with His Son, Jesus Christ. The Bible tells us that there really ultimately are only two destinies and they are Heaven and Hell. How are you doing this morning as we’re gathered here? Are you on your way to Heaven or are you on your way to Hell?

Next week we’re going to look at Heaven and we’re going to look at the millennium. We’re going to look at the New Jerusalem. We’re going to look at the New Heavens and the New Earth. We’re going to look at all the beautiful complexities of Heaven and it’s going to be a lot of fun. Today, however, we are going to look at Hell and I’m not so sure it’s going to be fun although it is just as important as looking at Heaven. When we look at Hell, we see biblically that it also has much complexity as Hell is described in the pages of Holy Scripture. I think some of the teaching today will perhaps be surprising to many of you. I want us to begin by looking at three different views of Hell. In the Christian world there are basically three different views of Hell. The first view of Hell is called annihilationism.

In ancient religions there were many concepts of Hell—some of them bizarre, some of them kind of gross, some of them kind of funny. In the ancient Egyptian mythologies, there was this belief that when a person died, their soul went to the god Thoth, the baboon-headed god whose name was Thoth, and he weighed the soul. So, your soul would go to Thoth and Thoth would weigh your soul, and if your soul was too heavy, if it was laden with sin, then your soul would be condemned to Hell and your soul would be sent to Ammit and Ammit was this deity in Egyptian mythology that had a bizarre body. It had the head of a crocodile, the body of a leopard, and it had the gross hindquarters of a hippopotamus. Your soul was sent to Ammit and Ammit would devour your soul. He would just chew on your soul for a long period of time, causing you much suffering. Then finally after a course of time, Ammit would travel out into the vast deserts of the great Sahara, the size of the Continental United States, and there in the vast deserts of the Great Sahara, Ammit would defecate and your soul would pass as eternal excrement on the desert floor. Pretty amazing theology, but a kind of annihilationism. The word annihilation comes from the Latin “nihil” which means, “nothing.”

So, what do annihilationist’s believe? They believe that Hell is punitive and they believe that Hell is temporary. In terms of time, Hell is finite according to an annihilationist, so it’s punitive but it’s finite. Then after a period of time your soul is simply eradicated. It comes to nihil. It comes to nothing. It ceases to exist. It is removed. This is annihilationism. Hell is temporary and punitive. Some people may go to Hell for a period of just a few weeks. They haven’t been so bad. Other people will go to Hell perhaps for a thousand years and they’ll experience the punitive nature of Hell then that will be followed by annihilation and they will experience loss of being.

Now, today more and more hyper-Calvinists are becoming annihilationists. They are taking this view of Hell. Now of course hyper-Calvinists believe in the doctrine of predestination. All Calvinists believe in the doctrine of predestination. Of course, Calvinists believe that God has predestined certain people for Heaven and they are called “the elect.” They are the chosen but, you see, hyper-Calvinists are double predestinarians so hyper-Calvinists believe that God has not only predestined some people for Heaven but God has predestined other people for Hell. That’s hyper-Calvinism.

Some hyper-Calvinists are supralapsarian and some are infralapsarian. To your great joy, we don’t have time to discuss those things today. But for hyper-Calvinists the big problem is the justice of God. If God predestines certain people for Hell, no matter how culpable they might be, no matter how they might have abused and violated their God-given freedom, still they were predestined for Hell and they had no chance to go anywhere else. How could Hell be punitive and eternal? Therefore, in their need to establish the justice of God, they espoused this doctrine of annihilationism, that the soul simply ceases to exist. Many hyper-Calvinists are taking this view today but let’s see if this holds up biblically. Let’s see what the Bible has to say about annihilationism.

We can look at three Greek words used in the Bible to describe the punitive nature of Hell. The first is “apollia” and this word means “destruction” in the Greek. The second is “olothreuos” and this word means “ruin” in the Greek. The third word is “phthora.” Phthora mean “corruption” in the Greek. And so, you have these Greek words that are all used in various Bible passages to describe the punishment of Hell, destruction, ruin and corruption. The question is, can any of these words mean annihilation? Can any of these words mean, “loss of being?”

Some annihilationist scholars have written books claiming that these three words can mean “loss of being” but the predominant view in the scholarly world is they can’t. Rarely the word “appolia” can mean annihilation but normally it doesn’t mean “loss of being.” Normally it means, “loss of well-being.” You understand the difference. There’s a vast difference between “loss of being” and “loss of well-being” and so what the Bible is telling us through these three words is “Hell is not loss of being” but “Hell is loss of well-being.”

Now annihilationists have countered by saying, “Well, we agree. Hell is loss of well-being but that loss of well-being is temporary. Then comes annihilation.” There might not be a Greek word to express in the Bible this concept of annihilation but we believe it’s true nonetheless. The problem for annihilationist’s then is this other Greek word, this fourth Greek word, “aionios.” This word “aionios” is the Greek word for “eternal” and of course our Lord Jesus Christ tells us, “The Father judges no one but has given all judgement to the Son that all might honor the Son in the same way that they honor the Father.” Jesus said, “Do not marvel at this. The day is coming when all who are in the tomb will hear My voice and come forth, some to everlasting life, “aionios zoe,” others to everlasting destruction, “aionios appolia.”

Now here’s the issue. Annihilationist’s claim sometimes (they admit it is rare) aionios can mean something less than eternity. Sometimes aionios can simply mean “a long time.” So, this is what they do with Hell. They say when it comes to Hell, aionios just means, “a long time.” It doesn’t mean eternity. Of course, they don’t do the same thing with Heaven. With Heaven, they say it means “eternity.” This violates the Greek language principal of parallelism because in the Greek language, the grammatical concept of parallelism insists that if on one half of a parallelism you give the word one meaning, you must give it the same meaning on the other half of the parallelism. So, if everlasting life means eternal, then everlasting destruction must also be eternal and therefore annihilationism doesn’t really fit with scripture. I would say that annihilationism as a view of Hell is a small possibility biblically but not likely.

A second view of Hell that we find in the Christian world is called Universalism. Of course, Universalism is very old. Some of the early church fathers were Universalists. Origen, who was born in 185, one of the early church fathers, was a Universalist. Of course, in 553 at the Council of Constantinople, Origen was condemned, hundreds of years after his death, for the heresy of Universalism. What is Universalism? Universalism is the belief that ultimately everyone is going to be saved. All souls eventually will find their way to Heaven. In Universalism, salvation will be universal and so most Universalists believe in Hell but they believe Hell is temporary and they believe it is remedial .So Universalists view Hell as temporary and remedial and a person, when they die, if they’ve done horrible things, may indeed go to Hell and they may go for varying lengths of time but Hell is basically remedial to make them fit for Heaven and that they might ultimately find themselves in the presence of God.

Christian Universalists look at a number of biblical passages seeking to find support. For instance, they look at Ephesians, chapter 4, and I Peter, chapter 3, and they believe that these passages reveal that God will indeed take people from Hell and put them in Heaven. In I Peter 3, which is a very difficult passage, we’re told that our Lord Jesus Christ, between His death and His resurrection, during that 3-day period between His death and resurrection, “traveled in His Spirit,” and went and preached to the spirits of those who disobeyed in the days of Noah when God brought a great deluge upon the earth in judgement. And so, Jesus, in His Spirit, we’re told in I Peter 3, went and preached to the spirits of those who disobeyed in the days of Noah. The word for “preached” is the Greek word “kerusso,” which normally means “to preach the gospel.” It’s a difficult passage.

In Ephesians, chapter 4, we’re told that Jesus not only ascended but we’re told that Jesus descended into the lower parts of the earth. We’re also told in Ephesians, chapter 4, that Jesus led a host of captives on high. So, Universalists combine these two passages, I Peter 3 and Ephesians 4, and they say, “There you have it. Jesus went into Hell and he led a host of captives on high.” But here’s the problem: first of all, both of these passages are very difficult with many possible interpretations, but secondly the passages do not tell us that Jesus went into Hell. They tell us that Jesus went into Hades and there’s a huge difference. You see, in the Bible and in the Greek, Hades is simply the keeping place of the dead. It is not Hell. People who do not belong to Jesus Christ, when they die they go to a keeping place and there they await the final judgement. No one is in Hell today. People await the final judgement and souls that are apart from Christ when they die, they go to a keeping place called Hades and so these passages tell us that Jesus went there. Jesus went there and He did something that we don’t fully understand but whatever it was it doesn’t mean Universalism.

Universalists look to other passages of scripture such as I Corinthians, chapter 15, verse 22, where the Apostle Paul writes that, “As in Adam, all shall die, so in Christ shall all be made alive.” Again, they say, “There you have it, Universalism. All die in Adam. All live in Christ.” They focus on the word “ponta,” the Greek word for “all.” What they should be focusing on is Adam and Christ, because if you look at this passage I Corinthians 15:22 in the Greek, what it’s clearly saying is, “All who are in Adam die—the whole human race experiences death,” and, “All who are in Christ, shall live.” But you see, the whole human race isn’t in Christ. All who are in Christ are simply those people who believe in Christ. So the passage does not teach Universalism.

I think the real clincher as we look at the view of Hell that is called Universalism is that you look at the Greek words in the Bible for Hell and they are not words that are remedial. “Apoleia” is not a remedial word. It means “destruction.” “Olethros” is not a remedial word. It means “ruin.” “Phtheiro” means “corruption.” These are not remedial words. They describe a punitive nature. They describe Hell as punitive, not as remedial.

It is also true—and this is the real clincher—the same problem that annihilationism has is the problem that Universalism has, and that is that Hell is not temporary biblically. The word “aionios” and with this whole concept of parallelism must be taken to mean, “eternal, never-ending,” “world without end.” So, we look at the concept of Hell biblically and it’s something that is eternal. It’s not something that is temporary.

Karl Barth… I should mention Karl Barth before we move on because I know he is on the outline on the screen. Karl Barth was a great German theologian in the 20th century, perhaps the greatest theologian in the world. He wrote in 1962 his Church Dogmatics, a vast and very long systematic theology that many of us had to suffer through when we were in seminary. Karl Barth was just enraptured by the love of Jesus Christ. There was that beautiful moment when he was being interviewed by scholars all over the world and they asked him, since he was considered kind of the summa bonum of scholars, what, in his opinion, was the greatest theological truth in the Bible. Karl Barth began to sing, “Jesus Loves Me, this I know.” Isn’t that great? He was just caught up in the love of Jesus Christ. But Barth believed, because God is love, ultimately Hell must cease to exist or love won’t triumph. But I think this is a misunderstanding by Karl Barth, a misunderstanding of both God’s love and God’s justice. You see, God loves people too much to force anyone into Heaven. God is not going to force anyone into Heaven. Heaven is for people who love God. God made us for Himself and we find our fulfillment at the level of our soul through God. And Heaven is for people who want to live for God and rejoice in God and enjoy God. Heaven is for people who want to serve God, but there are millions of people in the world today and throughout history who really want to serve themselves and to live for themselves and God will not force them into Heaven. God will honor their will for all eternity.

I want us to take a look at the third view of Hell that’s in the Christian world and it’s called traditionalism. This is the orthodox view of Hell, traditionalism. When we say orthodox, we’re not referring to the branch of Christianity called the Orthodox Church. Orthodox is simply a word which means, “right thinking,” and orthodoxy has to do with right thinking as it has been described by the church historically. So, you have orthodox Protestants and you can have orthodox Catholics and you can even have orthodox Orthodox people, but we won’t get into that.

This orthodox view that historically the Church has regarded as the right view is called traditionalism. By this view of Hell, Hell is punitive and it is never-ending. I know this is a hard view but if you want to be honest with the Bible and fair with the Greek, you have to come to this conclusion. This is what biblical passages teach us if you want to take the most honest view of the Greek; and that is Hell is punitive and it is never-ending.

I think the problem that most people in the world today have with this concept of Hell is they really don’t understand the nature of Hell and the whole issue of suffering. I think many people in our culture and in our world have images of Hell that really don’t fit the Bible. One such image you can see in a clip from a movie that starred Robin Williams and was called, “What Dreams May Come.” It shows some very heavy scenes, like people floating up to their necks in primordial ooze forever. Of course, people look at stuff like that and think how could God, if God is love and if God is just, make people (no matter how evil) float forever and ever and ever up to their necks in some kind of primordial ooze? How could God do that?

Of course, the answer is God isn’t going to do that. That’s Hollywood, so what we want to take a look at is what the Bible has to say about Hell. In the Bible there are a variety of images of Hell. Of course, in Revelation, chapters 19, 20, and 21, Hell is called “a lake of fire.” In Revelation, chapters 9, 11, 17, and 20, the Bible speaks of people after death being sentenced to the “bottomless pit.” Jesus, in many of His parables, spoke of Hell as the outer darkness. You remember in the Parable of Talents and the worthless servant, Jesus said, “Cast him into the outer darkness. There men will weep and gnash their teeth.” “Zophos” and “skotos,” two Greek words meaning “darkness,” are used by Jesus and in other passages of scripture to describe Hell. Hell is darkness. Hell is the outer darkness. Of course, one of the favorite images that Jesus had of Hell was a garbage dump, and so Jesus called Hell “Gehenna,” which in the Greek is “geenna,” which in Hebrew is “gehinnom.”And of course He was referring to the Hinnom Valley, one of the valleys that surrounded Jerusalem. Jesus said, “Hell is like the Hinnom Valley,” which was a garbage dump where they just, for centuries, had thrown their garbage. It was a place that was less than nasally palatable. So this was another image of Hell.

In the Bible you have a variety of images of Hell, none of which are meant to be taken literally. That’s why they’re so diverse. They’re figurative images and they all connote suffering. They all represent the concept of suffering. Hell is going to involve suffering. There’s no doubt about that.

Of course, the issue is, why? Why are people in Hell going to suffer? I remember many years ago when I was young, I used to watch Twilight Zone from time to time by Rod Sterling. There was one episode that was kind of funny. This guy was going down the street in a major city and he was being chased by the police. He had done some bad stuff. He finds this kind of like duct or vent that is real large. He jumps into it and finds himself just descending and he descends all the way down into Hell. In Hell he finds himself in this big room and there is no exit, not even any windows. There’s a couch and on this couch there is this grandma and grandpa and they’re looking at slides of their vacations. He notices that there’s this vast storeroom with nothing but slides and suddenly he realizes he’s going to spend eternity watching this couple’s slides.

I suppose that that would be one kind of suffering, but we want to look biblically. Biblically why does Hell involve suffering? There’s no question that suffering is partly caused by divine affliction. This is the judgement of God that they should suffer. And so, in our passage of scripture for today it says, “The Lord Jesus will be revealed from Heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance upon those who do not know God and do not obey the Gospel of the Lord Jesus. They shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction.”

There’s no question that this suffering, in a sense, has its root in divine judgement. But understand this doesn’t mean that God is in Hell torturing people. Nowhere does the Bible tell us that God is in Hell torturing people. God is not there. He doesn’t have a whip out and He’s not just lashing people forever and ever and ever. This isn’t what Hell is about at all. In fact, the Bible tells us God is not in Hell at all. That’s why people are suffering and God knows this when He assigns people to Hell. Whether we think of Hell spatially or whether we think of it as a state or a condition, it is a reality in which God is not present. It says in our passage of scripture for today, “They shall suffer exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His might.” God will not be there and that is at bottom what causes suffering, the divine absence. God will not be there.

I know this is difficult to harmonize with omnipresence, but there’s some sense in which God is just completely removed from this eternal condition called Hell. Understand that in this life God is omnipresent. God is everywhere present and there is no one in this world—even the most entrenched Atheist—who doesn’t have something of God’s presence surrounding him or her. The Bible says, “In God’s presence is fullness of joy, that all joy comes from God.” Happiness comes from God. There’s no one in this world that’s completely miserable because God is everywhere. The Bible says, “In God’s presence is fullness of joy. At His right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Suffering comes from the absence of God, which no one in this world, in this life, has ever experienced. And so Hell will be this unique place where God is just utterly not there. I can’t imagine what that would be like for the human soul. No human soul in this world ever experiences that. So, what causes the suffering? God will remove Himself. After all, that’s what people wanted. They wanted to live for themselves and God will give them that eternal opportunity.

There’s another cause of suffering in Hell biblically and it has to do with eternal self-centeredness and eternal self-reign. In the Bible in II Timothy, chapter 3, starting with verse 1, the Bible says that, “In the last days there will come times of stress and people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, inhuman, implacable, profligate, slanderous, treacherous, fierce and swollen with conceit.” These are images of fallen humanity in the last times and that’s all just going to continue right into Hell. People who are forever removed from God are going to be in a state and condition where all those attributes are manifested. To live for yourself is just vacuous at the level of the soul and that’s the reality of Hell biblically.

I want to seek to answer just a few questions about Hell and there are a lot of questions asked about Hell. Of course, people don’t ask the same questions about Hell that they ask about Heaven. They don’t say, “Will I know my loved ones?” “Will I still be married?” But they have questions about Hell. One question is, “Is Hell layered? Are there various levels of Hell?” Of course, that’s kind of a spatial concept but what they mean to say is, “Are there a variety of levels of suffering? Is Hell the same for everybody or will there be varying experiences in Hell and will there be varying levels of suffering or punishment in Hell?”

Of course, if you look at Michelangelo’s Last Judgement you see a layered Hell. If you look at Dante’s Inferno, you see a layered Hell. The Church historically through the ages has viewed Hell as diverse. I think there are biblical reasons for this. We know in Luke, chapter 12, that at the eschaton, at the Judgement Day, punishment will vary. Jesus says clearly, “Punishment will vary” in Luke, chapter 12, and we also know in the Bible from a variety of passages that not all sin is equal. We know in the Bible that there are degrees of sin and degrees of punishment. That being the case and knowing that God is just, I think it is reasonable to assume that yes, Hell is going to vary. It’s not going to be the same for everybody. God is just.

I think secondly people want to know, “Are there states or conditions between Heaven and Hell?” People have asked me this oftentimes. “Is there just Heaven or Hell or is there stuff in between? What about limbo? What about purgatory?”

Of course, for many centuries the Catholic Church and more recently the Orthodox Church had the Doctrine of Limbo, from the Latin “limbus,” which means, “edge” or “border,” and the idea was that there was a state either at the edge of Heaven or at the edge of Hell or somewhere in between. This reality is called limbo. There was limbus infantum, which had to do with infants and babies that were not baptized and died. They were sent to limbo. In addition to limbus infantum there was limbus patrum. Limbus patrum was Abraham’s bosom where the Old Testament saints were sent and it ceased to exist when Jesus descended into Hades and released them. This was old Roman Catholic theology but today the Catholic Church no longer has a Doctrine of Limbo and they believe that between Heaven and Hell there is nothing. There is only Heaven and Hell.

Of course, you say, “What about purgatory?” But we saw a few weeks ago that today the Catholic concept of purgatory is not a place between Heaven and Hell but part of Heaven where people are sanctified before they go into all the glories of Heaven. I think the answer biblically with regard to this question, “Are there states and conditions between Heaven and Hell?” would be “no.”

Another question is what’s going to happen to non-Christians? I’m sure many of you have asked this question. Are they all going to go to Hell? Of course, I think the answer varies. There are people who reject Christ. There are people who, through the course of their life, hear the gospel, understand the gospel and simply reject it. In the final analysis when the day is done, they will have rejected it and I think they are lost. Yes, I think they are destined for Hell and eternal separation from the presence of God and they have chosen that. But I also say that this is tied to the concept biblically of the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit because in John, chapter 14 and John, chapter 15, Jesus said that He would “send the Spirit,” and He said, “The Spirit of God would bear witness to Him. He would take what is Mine and declare it to you.” He said, “The Spirit will convict the world of sin and draw people to the Savior.” So, this is the work of the Holy Spirit but when we look at other passages in the Bible like Luke, chapter 12, and Mark, chapter 3, we see that Jesus refers to blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, which I believe is rejecting the testimony of the Holy Spirit to Jesus Christ. If you go through your life and the Holy Spirit tugs on your heart again and again and again and you reject it again and again and again your heart is hardened and you reach the point of what the Bible calls in I John mortal sin,” sin that is “prosthanatos,” “sin that is unto death,” then you’ve blasphemed the Holy Spirit and you are lost. You’ve rejected the Holy Spirit’s testimony of the Son of God. That’s a serious, serious thing.

There are other people of course who have not heard of Christ. They may live in other nations and cultures. They may have lived here in America prior to the coming of the gospel. They may not have heard of Christ. And yet there’s this other category of people surely who’ve never really understood the gospel. I run into them all the time. I talk to them in my office. They never really even understood the gospel. What’s going to happen to them we don’t know. We know it’s in the hands of Christ because Jesus said, “The Father judges no one but has given all judgement to the Son.” I think there are passages in the Bible such as Romans 2, verses 1-16, that indicate perhaps God will judge such people in accordance with their measure of light and how they responded to that. It’s a tough subject.

In Romans, chapter 2, we’re told… Paul is clearly talking about non-Christians and he tells us that “God will judge the secrets of their hearts by Christ Jesus and their conscience will accuse or perhaps excuse them in that day.” We don’t know what that means. It’s a tough passage of scripture but certainly God is just and Jesus is just. In John, chapter 9, Jesus said to the Pharisees, “If they had been ignorant, they would not be condemned but because, by their own admission they have knowledge, judgement hangs over them.” Obviously God looks at our measure of light. These are tough subjects.

C.S. Lewis had a lot of controversial perspectives. That’s why today he’s loved by evangelicals and he’s also loved by liberals. No one was sure what he was saying. C.S. Lewis with regard to salvation said, “There are many people out there who take the name of Christ and call themselves a Christian but they’ve never really responded to the Spirit of Christ and they’re not going to Heaven.” He said, “There are other people out there who have never called themselves a Christian and have never professed Christ but inwardly they’ve responded to the Spirit of Christ and they will be received by Christ at the Last Judgement.” These are very controversial statements and highly speculative. You don’t need to go there. The answer is those who know Jesus Christ and have given their lives to Him truly are saved. Those who reject Christ truly are lost. For everyone else, it’s in the hands of Christ. We don’t judge. It’s in the Lord’s hands.

There are lots of questions, but as we close, I want to make sure you’re aware of the keys of Heaven. There are keys to Heaven and they all belong to Jesus. In Revelation, chapter 3, Jesus said to the Church at Philadelphia, “I have the keys of David.” I think you all know how important keys are.

Just two weeks ago Barb and I were up in the mountains. We took our bikes and we were taking a bike ride into Vail. As we rode our bikes into Vail, we came past a building called the Vorloffer, which has condos and we kind of flashed back to many years ago when we stayed at the Vorloffer. We had a room up on the third floor and we locked ourselves out. Barb left her purse inside. My wallet was locked in my car. Jesus says, “Fear not. I have the keys of death and Hades.” As we’ve already seen, Hades was simply the keeping place of the dead, but Jesus was saying He can unlock it so you don’t even have to fear death. Jesus can release you from death and He can grant you entrance into the Heavenly City and all the treasures of Heaven. He’s the key.

So, this morning as we close, I just want to make sure that you’ve embraced the one who has the keys, that you’ve given your life and your heart to Jesus. I want you to understand that you must take Him not only as your Savior from sin and embrace His sacrifice on the cross because He died for you, but you also must embrace His crown if you would be saved, if you would be a Christian. You must embrace His crown, His reign, His Lordship. You must become His apprentice. You must join His disciples. In the moment you make that commitment, He saves you but you must make that commitment and nothing short of it. Jesus said, “Go into all the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things I’ve commanded you.” This is salvation: that you would become His disciple. Maybe today you’ve felt the tug of the Holy Spirit in your heart. You want to seal your eternal destiny. You know who has the keys. You can do it this morning. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.