In your opinion, what does it take for a person to go to heaven? The Bible says:

Trusting Jesus as Savior and Lord is as simple as ABC.

God has great things planned for you. A few things that will be helpful as you take your first steps as a Christ follower are:

Most people answer around 100 questions every day. The answers to some questions do not greatly affect us. For instance, “Do you want fries with that?” “Would you like paper or plastic?” “Will you be paying with cash or card?” “Would you like heavy or light starch?” The answers to these questions do not cause the world to spin off its axis.

However, there are other questions to which the answers impact you for a lifetime. For instance, “What will you be when you grow up?” Most of us will find out ourselves laboring in some kind of profession, so it only makes sense to find something you can tolerate. “Will you marry me?” There are huge ramifications to this question. A spouse is the one person in your life who can bring you the greatest happiness or hurt. “How many kids do you want to have?” Children are a great blessing, but also a challenge.

All these questions are a part of the human experience, but there are other questions that have eternal ramifications for every person who has ever drawn breath on planet earth. These questions are really the questions behind every other question. Get the answers to these questions wrong and everything else in your life will be confused. Get the answers to these questions right and everything else in your life will make sense. Many people can answer one or two of these questions, but very few people can truly answer all of them. Consider the following questions:

Whether God exists is one of the most basic and important questions any person can consider. Opinions about God abound, but answering the question does God exist? demands more than a few seconds of attention and involves a wide range of ideas and evidence. Ultimately, what we see in human experience, science, logic, and history leads to a confident answer: yes, God exists.

This question can be answered through two primary worldviews: Evolution and Creationism. Evolution suggests that we are the result of a gradual biological process spanning millions of years, culminating in complex life forms through mutations and natural selection. However, the Cambrian Explosion and the absence of gradual fossil records challenges this theory. In contrast, Creationism, rooted in the Bible, posits that we are specially created by God in His image, implying inherent worth and uniqueness, much like a masterpiece signed by a renowned artist. According to Creationism, humans are not merely creatures but divine creations with immeasurable value, reflecting God’s attention to detail, as seen even in our fingerprints.

People seek significance beyond mere temporal success. We are created by God for a purpose – to do good works as defined in the Bible. Our lives have deeper meaning when connected to God’s eternal story. This gives us significance both now and in the hereafter, transcending the pursuit of worldly achievements or accumulation of knowledge. By focusing on what God has planned and our connection to Him, we find our true purpose and avoid constantly seeking temporal successes or feeling unfulfilled. Our significance comes from playing a part in God’s greater, holy story unfolding on earth.

Lots of different faith groups and people have claimed many things about the afterlife or lack of the afterlife. No one has ever made a more shocking and exclusive claim about himself than Jesus Christ, stating, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) Jesus all at once affirmed that there is an afterlife and the Bible gives the details. Upon death, a person who has a relationship with Jesus goes to Heaven and a person without a relationship with Jesus goes to Hell. It sounds harsh, but Jesus is either right or wrong, and if right, his claims supersede all other claims (atheism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, etc.). It comes down to this: do you trust Jesus and believe His claims? If you do, there is no need to look elsewhere.

We live in a world of pain and suffering. There is no one who is not affected by the harsh realities of life. We must acknowledge that human beings, who are not eternal, infinite, or omniscients, cannot expect to fully understand God’s purposes and ways. God allows things to happen for a reason. Whether or not we understand His reasons, we must remember that God is good, just, loving, and merciful (Psalm 135:3). Often, bad things happen to us that we simply cannot understand. Instead of doubting God’s goodness, our reaction should be to trust Him. “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5–6). We walk by faith, not by sight.

Using the same criteria by which we judge other historical works, not only is the Bible reliable, it is more reliable than any other comparable writings. Reliability is a question of truthfulness and accurate copying. Writings that are historically and factually correct and that have been faithfully preserved over time would be considered reliable. Higher levels of historical verification and better confidence in transmission make it easier to determine whether an ancient work is worthy of trust. By those measures, we can consider the Bible trustworthy.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the foundations upon which Christianity is built (1 Corinthians 15:3–4). The virgin birth (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:18; Luke 1:27), the deity of Christ (1 John 4:15, 5:5; John 10:30), Jesus’ atonement for sin (Romans 5:10–11; 2 Corinthians 5:21), and His crucifixion are non-negotiable truths, without which Christianity could not exist. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead was the crowning achievement that forever separates Him from any other religious leader who has ever been or will ever live. No other religious figure in history has ever prophesied His own death and resurrection–and then accomplished it.

The word gospel literally means “good news” and occurs 93 times in the Bible, exclusively in the New Testament. In Greek, it is the word euaggelion, from which we get our English words evangelist, evangel, and evangelical. The gospel is, broadly speaking, the whole of Scripture; more narrowly, the gospel is the good news concerning Christ and the way of salvation.