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A Daily Encounter reader asks, \"My aunts are of a non-Christian faith and have been good persons all their lives. They are elderly and I\'d like to believe that they will be in heaven. I talked to God about this yesterday. He did not speak directly back to me, but I felt that they would. God is a good and understanding God, and although not all of his children are believers, I think he will use his judgment when it comes to the end times as to who is, and who is not allowed in heaven.\"

Dear Friend: Thank you for your email and for your concern about your aunts. First, however, the only way to know and understand God\'s plan for salvation and who qualifies for heaven is to know what his Word, the Bible, teaches, for God never acts contrary to his Word.

Second, sad to say no matter how good we are, our goodness doesn\'t qualify us for God\'s heaven. None of us is sinless no matter how good we are by humanity\'s standard, and because God is a God of absolute holiness, no sinner could ever survive in God\'s presence any more than a moth could survive in a flame. It just isn\'t possible.

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No sinner could ever survive in
God\'s presence any more than
a moth could survive in a flame.

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Third, God is also a God of absolute justice and therefore all sinners—no matter how small—must be judged, otherwise God wouldn\'t be God. Because God IS God, the just judgment of all sin is death; that is, spiritual death which is actually eternal separation from a holy and just God in the place the Bible calls hell, whatever and wherever that may be.

Fourth, fortunately however, God is also a God of absolute love. That\'s why he sent his Son Jesus to die in our place on the cross to pay the just penalty for all of our sins. If being good, religious, sincere, or being anything else could have qualified us for getting into God\'s heaven, Jesus would never have had to come to earth to die for our sins.

Fifth, to enter God\'s heaven we have to be saved or delivered from sin\'s consequences. That is, we need to be totally forgiven by God and cleansed from our sinfulness. All we need to do is: 1) believe that Jesus is the Son of God; 2) that he died in our place on the cross to pay the just penalty for our sins; 3) confess to God and repent of (turn from) our sinfulness; 4) ask God for his forgiveness; and 5) accept and invite Jesus into our heart and life as our Savior.

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If ever there was an individual who would have qualified for heaven through his goodness it would have been Nicodemus, a religious leader of Christ\'s day.

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By all human standards Nicodemus would have been a model citizen—strong in character, a man of integrity, and a sincere religious leader. It was to this good man that Jesus said, \"Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.\"¹ In other words, unless a man/woman is born again he will not even see the kingdom of God/heaven let alone enter it.

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To be born again meant that Nicodemus, like everybody else, needed to be born spiritually (as well as physically) to qualify for entering God\'s heaven.

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Once, after addressing a group of church workers, the famous evangelist Dwight Moody was confronted by an angry person. \"Mr. Moody,\" she said, \"do you mean to tell me that I, an educated woman, taught from childhood in good ways, and all my life interested in the church and doing good, must enter heaven the same way as the worst criminal of our day?\"

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\"No, madam,\" said Mr. Moody, \"I don\'t. God does. He says everyone who would enter heaven, no matter how good they think they are, or how well educated, or zealous in good works, must be born again [that is, born spiritually].\"

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Jesus replied, \"I am the way
and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father
[God] except through me.

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The difficult thing to grasp is that our sin has made us spiritually dead to God. This is why we all need to be reborn spiritually. To become a member of the human family, we were born physically. To become a member of God\'s family, we need to be born again spiritually. But how can we do this?

Contrary to what many people think, it isn\'t by being good or through good works…or religion. It is simply by confessing our sinfulness to God and by believing that his Son, Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins, and by responding to his call to receive him into our heart and life as personal Lord and Savior. When Jesus spoke to his disciples about going to prepare a place (heaven) his followers, Thomas wanted to know the way to go there. Jesus replied, \"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father [God] except through me.\"² The only way to God and into God\'s heaven is through Jesus and it is through accepting him as our Lord and Savior that we are born spiritually.

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If you\'re not sure that you have been born again spiritually, you can be—right now—by clicking on the God\'s Invitation link below and praying the prayer on this page.

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If you need more information, click on the Know God button below and read the article, \"How to Be Sure You\'re a Real Christian.

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1. John 3:3, (NIV).
2. John 14:6, (NIV).

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