Understanding Christianity: Does Being A Christian Qualify You For Heaven?

The Religion of Jesus

HEAVEN

God's Dwelling Place • The Future Dwelling Place of the Righteous

In the King James Version of the Bible, ‘heaven’ is mentioned 550 times. Heaven’s meanings vary from “the firmament”, as “fowls of heaven”, to “the starry heavens”, and lastly the “heaven of heavens” or the “third heaven”. This “third heaven” will be spotlighted in this article.

The spiritual meaning of heaven is “the place of the everlasting blessedness of the righteous; the abode of departed spirits”.

• (a) Christ calls it his "Father's house" (Jhn 14:2).

  (b) It is called "paradise" (Luk 23:43; 2Cr 12:4; Rev 2:7).

  (c) "The heavenly Jerusalem" (Gal 4:26; Hbr 12:22; Rev 3:12).

  (d) The "kingdom of heaven" (Mat 25:1; Jam 2:5).

  (e) The "eternal kingdom" (2Pe 1:11).

  (f) The "eternal inheritance" (1Pe 1:4; Hbr 9:15).

  (g) The "better country" (Hbr 11:14,16).

  (h) The blessed are said to "sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," and to be "in Abraham's bosom" (Luk 16:22; Mat 8:11); to "reign with Christ" (2Ti 2:12); and to enjoy "rest" (Hbr 4:10,11).

• In heaven the blessedness of the righteous consists in the possession of "life everlasting," "an eternal weight of glory" (2Cr 4:17), an exemption from all sufferings for ever, a deliverance from all evils (2Cr 5:1,2) and from the society of the wicked (2Ti 4:18), bliss without termination, the "fulness of joy" for ever (Luk 20:36; 2Cr 4:16,18; 1Pe 1:4; 5:10; 1Jo 3:2). The believer's heaven is not only a state of everlasting blessedness, but also a "place", a place "prepared" for them (Jhn 14:2).

Above are articles from the following dictionary:

• Easton's Bible Dictionary

CHRISTIAN(ity):

The disciples, we are told (Acts 11:26) were first called Christians at Antioch on the Orontes [River], somewhere about A.D. 43. They were known to each other as, and were among themselves called, brethren (Acts 15:1, 23; 1 Corinthians 7:12) disciples (Acts 9:26; 11:29) believers (Acts 5:14) saints (Romans 8:27; 15:25). The name "Christian," which, in the only other cases where it appears in the New Testament (Acts 26:28; 1 Peter 4:16) is used contemptuously, could not have been applied by the early disciples to themselves, but was imposed upon them by the Gentile world. There is no reason to suppose that the name "Christian" of itself was intended as a term of scurrility or abuse, though it would naturally be used with contempt.

Above are articles from the following dictionary:

• Smith's Bible Dictionary

Preparation of the Roman Empire for Christianity.

About the middle of the reign of Augustus a Jewish child was born who was destined to rule an empire more extensive and lasting than that of the Caesars. It is a striking fact that almost synchronous with the planting of the Roman empire Christianity appeared in the world. Although on a superficial glance the Roman empire may seem the greatest enemy of early Christianity, and at times a bitter persecutor, yet it was in many ways the grandest preparation and in some ways the best ally of Christianity. It ushered in politically the fullness of the times. The Caesars-whatever they may have been or done-prepared the way of the Lord.

Negative Preparation:

The Romans could offer their subjects good laws, uniform government and military protection, but not a satisfactory religion. A universal empire called for a universal religion, which Christianity alone could offer. Finally, not only by what Rome had accomplished but by what she proved incapable of accomplishing, the way of the Lord was made ready and a people prepared for His coming. It was a terrible crisis in the civilization and religion of antiquity. The old national religions and systems of belief had proved unable to soothe increasing imperious moral and spiritual demands of man's nature. A moral bankruptcy was immanent. The old Roman religion of abstract virtues had gone down in formalism [excessive adherence to prescribed forms]; it was too cold for human hearts. Man could no longer find the field of his moral activity in the religion of the state; he was no longer merely an atom in society performing religious rites, not for his own soul, but for the good of the commonwealth. Personality had been slowly emerging, and the new schools of philosophy called man away from the state to seek peace with God in the solitude of his own soul first of all. But even the best of these schools found the crying need of a positive, not a negative religion, the need for a perfect ideal life as a dynamic over ordinary human lives. Thus was felt an imperious demand for a new revelation, for a fresh vision or knowledge of God. In earlier days men had believed that God had revealed Himself to primitive wise men or heroes of their race, and that subsequent generations must accept with faith what these earlier seers, who stood nearer God, as Cicero said, had been pleased to teach of the divine. But soon this stock of knowledge became exhausted. Plato, after soaring to the highest point of poetic and philosophic thought about the divine, admitted the need of a demon or superman to tell us the secrets of eternity. With the early Roman empire began a period of tremendous religious unrest. Men tried philosophy, magic, astrology, foreign rites, to find a sure place of rest. This accounts for the rapid and extensive diffusion of oriental mysteries which promised to the initiated communion with God here, a "better hope" in death, and satisfied the craving for immortality beyond time. These were the more serious souls who would gladly accept the consolations of Jesus. Others, losing all faith in any form of religion, gave themselves up to blank despair and accepted Epicureanism with its gospel of annihilation and its carpe diem morals. This system had a terrible fascination for those who had lost themselves; it is presented in its most attractive form in the verses of Lucretius-the Omar Khayyam of Latin literature. Others again, unable to find God, surrendered themselves to cheerless skepticism. The sore need of the new gospel of life and immortality will be borne in upon the mind of those who read the Greek and Roman sepulchral inscriptions. And even Seneca, who was almost a Christian in some respects, speaks of immortality as a "beautiful dream" (bellum somnium), though tribulation later gave a clearer vision of the "city of God." Servius Sulpicius, writing to Cicero a letter of consolation on the death of his much-missed Tullia, had only a sad "if" to offer about the future (Cic. Fam. iv.5). Nowhere does the unbelief and pessimism of pre-Christian days among the higher classes strike one more forcibly than in the famous discussion recorded by Sallust (Bel. Cat. li f) as to the punishment of the Catilinarian conspirators. Caesar, who held the Roman high-priesthood and the highest authority on the religion of the state, proposes life imprisonment, as death would only bring annihilation and rest to these villains-no hereafter, no reward or punishment (eam cuncta mortalium mala dissolvere; ultra neque curae neque gaudio locum esse). Cato next speaks-the most religious man of his generation-in terms which cast no rebuke upon Caesar's Epicureanism and materialism (ibid., 52). Cicero (In Cat. iv.4) is content to leave immortality an open question. The philosophers of Athens mocked Paul on Mars' Hill when he spoke of a resurrection. Such was the attitude of the educated classes of the Greek-Roman world at the dawn of Christianity, though it cannot be denied that there was also a strong desire for continued existence. The other classes were either perfunctorily performing the rites of a dead national religion or were seeking, some, excitement or aesthetic worship or even scope for their baser passions, some, peace and promise for the future, in the eastern mysteries. The distinction between moral and physical evil was coming to the surface, and hence, a consciousness of sin. Religion and ethics had not yet been united. "The throne of the human mind" was declared vacant, and Christianity was at hand as the best claimant. In fact, the Greek-Roman mind had been expanding to receive the pure teachings of Jesus.

Roman Empire and Christianity

Victory of Christianity and Conversion of the Roman Empire.

Christianity was now acknowledged as the religion of both East and West. It had also grown strong enough to convert the barbarians who overran the West. It restrained and educated them under the lead of the papacy [the office or authority of the Pope], so that its conquests now extended beyond the Roman empire.

Merivale (preface to Conversion of Roman Empire) attributes the conversion of the Roman empire to four causes: (1) the external evidence of apparent fulfillment of prophecy and the evidence of miracles, (2) internal evidence as satisfying the spiritual wants of the empire and offering a Redeemer, (3) the example of the pure lives and heroic deaths of the early Christians, and (4) the success which attended the Christian cause under Constantine. Gibbon (chapter xv of Decline and Fall) seeks to account for the phenomenal success of Christianity in the empire by (1) the zeal and enthusiasm of the early Christians, (2) the belief of Christianity in immortality with both future rewards and future retributions, (3) miracles, (4) the high ethical code and pure morals of professing Christians, and (5) strong ecclesiastical [relating to the Christian Church or its clergy] organization on imperial patterns. But neither of these lists of causes seems to account satisfactorily for the progress and success of the religion of Jesus.

Above are articles from the following dictionary:

• International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia

The Religion of Jesus