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Transcript 398A — Do "Good" People Go to Heaven?
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Brother Camping, good evening. My question is, do good people go to Heaven?
HC: The question is, do good people go to Heaven? It all depends on what you mean by good.
CALLER: Now I'm talking about people that are good, you know. They do the right things.
HC: Upright, decent, solid citizens of the world.
CALLER: With good principles, and good ethics, and good religious practices. They try to do the right thing by everybody.
HC: They practice the Golden Rule, and so on.
CALLER: Yes.
HC: No, they do not go to Heaven. That is the path to hell. Jesus said, "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." The only way we can go into Heaven is to acknowledge the sad but dismal fact that we're a sinner, that all of our goodness is as filthy rags. It is self serving, it is not ultimately to God's glory. It's looking upon ourselves through rose-colored glasses, not really looking at ourselves against the standard, against the yardstick of the holiness of God. Once we measure our goodness, whatever we think this may be, against the perfection of God's holiness, then we see that really it isn't good at all. It's tainted with sin everywhere, and the wages of sin is death.
Therefore the only way we can go to Heaven is to acknowledge our sins, to cry out to God for mercy, and trust only in Christ as our Savior.
CALLER: Well, I think this is where a lot of people have a great misunderstanding, just exactly what you're saying.
HC: I think you're correct. I think that lots of people feel that a good God certainly will look upon all of their good things they are doing, and forgive the few bad things they've done, that He'll weigh the good against the bad and come out in favor of the good, and certainly all is going to be well. That path will lead to hell.
CALLER: That's right. That's what I'm finding in my Christian walk. This is a question that I run into, and I'm glad you cleared that up. Of course it says in the Bible that we're just filthy rags, according to God's standard. But a lot of people believe that they're here on this earth, and they're doing to the best of their ability, not realizing that it's filthy rags. And when you tell them that, it kind of hurts them.
HC: Yes.