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KNOCKING ON HEAVEN'S DOOR #10

"BUT I NEVER SAW THE DOOR!"

Political commentator and sports fan George Will once suggested that there are really just two seasons in life: baseball season, of course, and . . . The Void. Every March, I'm sure he and millions of others look forward to that wonderful moment when their favorite team takes its place in the field for the first of 162 magnificent contests. Surely THIS will be the year. After all, batting averages are still perfect. Nobody's made an error yet. Your team is right there in first place — tied with all the others. To steal from the old Christmas song, "It's the most wonderful time of the year."

Pastor Bill Hybels, who likes baseball AND Christianity, has compiled what he suggests to people is the "(quote) All-Universe Hall of Fame." This is better than the "All-Century" team we heard about not too long ago. This is "All-UNIVERSE." If you get into THIS exclusive club, he suggests, the rewards and payoffs are just unbelievable.

Well, how good does a player have to be to qualify? Here are the three guidelines Hybels suggest in his book, Becoming a Contagious Christian. Number one, play consistently for five years. Okay, a lot of players have done that. But here's number two: you have to have played error-free ball that entire time. Not one miscue. Not one passed ball. Not one fumbled grounder. Not one errant throw. You have to be absolutely perfect in the field for those five years.

Well, ouch. That cuts down the field a bit. Even the incomparable Ozzie Smith, the wizard shortstop from St. Louis a number of years ago, had one or two balls go through his legs. But listen to number three: you have to bat 1.000. Not just on Opening Day, which a few players manage. But for the whole five years! You have got to get a hit every single time you go up to the plate. For five years.

And right there you close up the book and toss it in a trash can. Because it's obvious that the "All-Universe Hall of Fame" has exactly zero members. Nobody's ever done it. Nobody ever will. Mathematically speaking, we have here what we call the null set, or the empty set. Nothing in it; no players who have played five years with no errors and no outs.

And yet THAT, Hybels says, is the Christian message. This is the gospel. Not one of us in all human history has qualified for the "All-Universe Team."

"ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

That's Romans 3:23. And to really nail it down, he then quotes as well, James 2:10:

"For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just ONE POINT is guilty of breaking all of it."

I guess that verse is there to keep any of us from saying to God, "Hey, I've got a PRETTY GOOD batting average. I don't sin as much as my neighbor. I haven't made THAT many errors." According to God's infallible "Elias Sports Book" statistics, as soon as you ground out a single time or drop one fly ball, you're disqualified.

But then we have Jesus. A perfect life. No errors. No outs. No mistakes. And He, as the only perfect Player to ever take the field — and He DID take it, by the way — says to us: "I am the Door. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." And His perfect batting average is posted to OUR name. Right there, friend, that IS the gospel message. We all join the "All-Universe Team" based on the perfect score posted by this incredible pinch-hitter.

Now again to this amazing statement in the Word of God, said by Jesus Himself: "I am THE Door." We've been saying for two weeks now that Jesus Christ isn't A way back to God, or that He's ONE of the options for salvation. He is THE way back. THE way and the ONLY way.

We've got a quote to pass along, and I share it fondly, because this great Christian man, Dr. W. A. Visser't Hooft, first General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, worked with our longtime friend John Weidner to rescue hundreds of people from the Nazis during World War II. But in his book, No Other Name, he makes this bold statement:

"It is high time that Christians should rediscover that the very heart of their faith is that Jesus Christ did not come to make a CONTRIBUTION to the religious storehouse of mankind, but that IN HIM God reconciled the world unto Himself."

Did Jesus come to simply flesh out or add to the wisdom of Buddha and Plato and Socrates? No, friend, He came as the Door. He came as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. He came here to be the ONE way you and I can go Home again.

But now this leads to our final thought of the series. All right, Jesus Christ is the Door. The only way back to the Father. He said in John 14:6:

"NO ONE comes to the Father except through Me."

So we have to ask here: is this statement binding? Does it mean what it sounds like? Can only those who specifically confess and acknowledge Jesus Christ as their Savior get to heaven? What about all of those Jews — sincere, godly people — that Dr. Visser't Hooft and John Weidner labored to save from the Nazis? Does John 14:6 doom them to eternal lostness because they never went through that Door marked Calvary? What about millions of people through the centuries who lived in a time or a place where the name of Jesus never came into their lives? What if, geographically speaking, through no fault of your own, you lived ten thousand miles AWAY from that Door and just never did get the chance to walk through to the streets of gold? Can you still be saved?

There are those who say that the answer is no. Unless you confess Christ — no.

"‘Exclusivism,'"writes the wonderful evangelical author John Stott, ". . . is used to denote the historic Christian view that salvation cannot be found in other religions, but ONLY in Jesus Christ."

Now friend, let me say this with all humility and caution. God decides who He will save — not us. He is the Judge, not us. And we must always let God be God. But I do want to share the other side of this coin, and tell you what WE believe here at the Voice of Prophecy. And I'm going to quote again from this same source, John Stott:

"‘Inclusivism' allows that salvation IS possible to adherents of other faiths, but attributes it to the secret and often unrecognized work of Christ."

A faithful Jew, a devout Muslim, a well-intentioned Buddhist might be born, live, and die without ever walking through the Door marked Jesus. They might never have heard about Calvary, or at least never in a way that made a concrete "Choose ye this day" impression on them. But Jesus, who lives today as our Savior, could still be working on their hearts, Stott writes, in a quiet and unrecognized way. In other words, they could be saved BY Christ even though they never KNEW Christ.

C. S. Lewis, who was such an ardent defender of the Christian faith, and who wrote about world religions with great insight, and returned again and again to the unique nature of Jesus as the "Door," has this to say on the issue:

"Here is another thing that used to puzzle me. Is it not frightfully unfair that this new life" — meaning Christianity and eternal life — "should be confined to people who have heard of Christ and been able to believe Him? But the truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about the other people are. We DO know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do NOT know that only those who KNOW Him can be saved through Him."

Interestingly, in this very Bible passage — John chapter 10 — where Jesus says, "I am the Door," or "I am the Gate to the sheep pen," He ALSO says:

"I have OTHER sheep that are NOT of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to My voice, and there shall be one flock and one Shepherd."

Is it possible that good, honest people through the centuries have heard an inner voice . . . and followed it? "Love your neighbor"? "Be an obedient citizen"? "Follow the principles of heaven"? And they followed that voice, not KNOWING it was the voice of Jesus. In essence, they were walking through a Door without recognizing the five letters, J - E - S - U - S, which were emblazoned across the doorjam.

Having said that, friend, let's rejoice that we HAVE heard the good news. We HAVE seen the Door, AND the name written in glory above it. I would not want to spend a lifetime knowing about Christ, being aware of what He did on Calvary for me, thinking about His offer, weighing it, and then never accepting it . . . only to meet up with Him when the last trumpet blows, and have to explain to Him why.

C. S. Lewis closes his thought with this:

"In the meantime, if you are WORRIED about the people outside, the most unreasonable thing you can do is to remain outside YOURSELF. Christians are Christ's body, the organism through which He works. Every addition to that body enables Him to do more. If you want to help those outside you must add your OWN little cell to the body of Christ who alone can help them. Cutting off a man's fingers would be an odd way of getting him to do more work."

In other words — by all means — walk through the Door yourself. And then immediately . . . pick up a megaphone.