The Myth of Many Roads to Heaven

Posted in , By Nick Smith 0 comments

Last week, I started looking at a few of today’s myths and the truth behind them. I’m continuing that this week by looking at the third question that I asked:

3) There are several ways for a person to make it to Heaven.

This is a myth that is probably as old as time, but that has become especially prevalent in today’s American culture. We want God the same way we want our fast food: made to order.

“I’d like a large helping of love, a standard salvation, but please hold the devotion.”

Unfortunately for us, it doesn’t work that way. As Proverbs 16:25 reads, "There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death." The way that seems right to many of us nowadays is to see Heaven as a bicycle wheel. There are spokes all around the wheel and you may take one spoke to the middle and I may take another spoke, but in the end, we’ll all end up in the middle.

Quite simply, this is a made-up truth that we latch on to in order to avoid the inconvenient aspects of true devotion to Jesus Christ, the one and only “spoke” that leads to heaven.

The Bible is pouring with verses in support of this Truth. There are two that are most striking for me. In both of these instances, it is Jesus who is speaking.

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” -- Matthew 7:13-14

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” -- John 14:6

An image that depicts this well is to imagine a large canyon (which represents death) separating us from God. We can try as hard as we would like, but nothing we can do ourselves will get us across the canyon (see my post last week). We can try as many different routes as we like, but the canyon is infinite and there is only one way across. Only Christ’s sacrifice will bridge the canyon.

If you’re one of those who has “traded the truth of God for a lie” (Romans 1:25), there is no time like the present to set things right. Sometimes the quickest (and only) way to get to where you need to be is to turn around and go the other way.

Go the way of Christ and you won’t be let down.