Arungelo wrote: Who will enter God's Kingdom? who are humble (like little children) (Matthew 18:3), forgive others from their heart (Matthew 18:35), take care of the needy (Matthew 25:34-36), listen to the words of God and act on them (Matt 7:21-24); and keep their faith (Ezekiel 18:21) will enter GodÂ’s Kingdom. Unfortunately, many search the Scriptures because they think that in them they have eternal life; and refuse to come to Jesus, who is source of eternal life (John 5:39-40). To come to Jesus is to love Him; and to love Him is to keep His commandments (John 14:23-24). His commandment is to love one another the way He loves us (John 12:15). He loved us by staying faithful to the covenant He made with us and freeing us from sin; although we were unfaithful to Him and betrayed Him; and although it involved acceptance of humiliation of infinite magnitude and the most agonizing death.
Hello Arungelo,
Can I be at your service by mentioning some texts, stating, what can make it IMpossible to go into God's kingdom ?
Matthew 5 v 20: For I ( Jesus) tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly NOT enter the kingdom of heaven".
Matthew 7 v 21: "Not everyone who says to me ( Jesus): 'Lord...Lord'...will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only who does the will of my Father, who is in heaven".
Matthew 23 v 13: "Woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourself do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are tryimg to".
I stop with these three textes.There are more. But a posting should not be too long.
In the first text Jesus says that his followers should have quite another way of thinking than the Pharisees. The teachers and the Pharisees thought in earthly conceptions. They did not calculate in the invisible world and had no idea of the Holy Spirit, and the life in a spiritual sense. In those days terms like 'being reborn'and 'baptizm wiht the Holy Spirit were unknown, but Jesus had come to preach 'the kingdom'.
And still now is the conclusion this: the Christian, not willing to be filled with the Holy Spirit and to be reborn by reading the bible with an open, friendly heart, never can be reborn, (1 Peter 1 v 23) as a step forward in becoming a spiritual thinking Christian. But if he does so, then his righteousness will surpass that of the Pharisees, because it is righteousness and wisdom of an higher order. Pray for the filling with the Holy Spirit to learn really to do the will of God.
The following text teaches us, that faith is not a question of the soul. Everyone with his soul in a certain beginning-enthousiasm can say: "Lord...Lord...I honour you" and other good things. But this all should not be a question of the soul, but it should go deeper and deeper to the human spirit, the deepest of your total person. Pray for consolidation of your faith in the deepest of your life.
The third text teaches us, that in the days of the Pharisees there was a hunger in the Israelian people, a hunger awakened through the hearing of John the Baptist. They eagerly tried to discover the land of heavenly beauty, but the teachers of the law, not zealous themselves to get in, not even knowing about this possibility, not in the least touched by the words of either John or Jesus themselves, did not help those searchers to find the door. So: open the door to thinking WITH the Holy Spirit for yourself and open it for others.
