Heaven and Hell: Which God Will You Face?
Revelation 20:11-12 “And I saw a great white throne and the one sitting on it. The earth and sky fled from his presence, but they found no place to hide. I saw the dead, both great and small, standing before God’s throne. And the books were opened, including the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to what they had done, as recorded in the books.”
A lot of times we look at the Old and New Testament and we see two different Gods. We see the loving and compassionate God of the New Testament. The one that so loved us that He sent His only Son to die for us (John 3:16). But then we also see the God of the Old Testament, that destroyed cities with fire (Genesis 19), destroyed the entire earth with a flood (Genesis 7), or caused the ground to open up and swallow people in sin/rebellion against God (Numbers 16). There are times I have almost felt like God was similar to the villain from Batman, Two-Face. And I wonder which way the life or death coin that Two-Face flips is going to land for me. Almost like heads I go to Heaven because I met the loving and compassionate God of the New Testament or tails, I am going to Hell because I met the harsh, judgmental God of the Old Testament.
The truth is, God is not Two-Face. He is not a harsh or mean God one second and a compassionate and loving God the next where we have to worry about whether we caught Him on a good day or a bad one. The God we serve is both loving as well as just. You see, the perspective of compassionate or harsh is really from our point of view, and it depends on one thing - is your name written in the Lamb’s Book of Life?
If our name is found in its pages, we view God as loving and compassionate, full of mercy. Why? Because all of us have made some pretty big mistakes in our lives and done things we wish we could take back or forget ever happened. We have all sinned, every last one of us, and without God’s grace we understand that no amount of good deeds can overcome our sin. God saved us and has a place for us in Heaven in spite of us because we surrendered our lives to Christ and repented of our sins.
On the other hand, if our name is not found in the Lamb’s Book of Life, we have a different eternity and destination, one that is bleak and miserable. Our perspective, though, is different because a just God is giving out the punishment he promised we would receive by choosing to follow the world instead of Christ.
Heaven or Hell? The choice and the God you face at the judgment seat of Christ is entirely up to you. Revelation 20:15 says, “And anyone whose name was not found recorded in the Book of Life was thrown into the lake of fire.”
Is your name in the Book of Life?