Those who die in infancy, those who never reach mental responsibility
regardless of physical years lived, and God's faithful in each of the
three great dispensations - Patriarchal, Mosaic and Christian - will
go to heaven. To be among God's faithful means we must obey Christ. He
is "the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him..."
(Heb. 5:9). The writer of Hebrews tells us there is no escaping hell
if we "neglect so great salvation" which has been graciously and
generously offered us in Christ and Christianity (Heb. 2:3). The Bible's
final beatitude says it so beautifully, "Blessed are they that do his
commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may
enter in through the gates into the city" (Rev. 22:14). By
implication this verse teaches that they who do not do his commandments
will be lost. Hell can be escaped but only by accepting God's grace
through faithful obedience on our part. The Ephesian penman eloquently
enunciated this marvelous message in Ephesians 2:8-9, "For by grace are
ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of
God: Not of works, lest any man should boast." Grace is God's part of
redemption; faith is man's part. Grace is unmerited or unearned favor;
faith, as a little girl once described it, is "Believing what God says
without asking questions." (Foy L. Smith, Five Minutes With The Master;
p. 23.) Acceptance of this childlike concept of faith and diligently
following its very heavenly mandate can enable us to avoid hell and go
to heaven in the next life.
CONCLUSION
Relative to hell we should believe everything God has told us. We
should believe its reality because he said it is to be a real place. We
should believe its awful attributes because he has set forth its
horrible nature. We should believe what he says in regard to its
pathetic population. The God of heaven cannot lie and be true to his
own infinite characteristic of perfect honesty. He has not lied in
regard to hell. Unlike the Pope of Rome he has not been silent relative
to the topic of hell. He has told it like it is. Toward the loss of
the ship upon which they were traveling and the physical salvation of
their lives, Paul in Acts 27:25 said to his 275 distressed traveling
companions, "for I believe God, that it shall be even as it was told
me." It is with that same degree of surety that we can view the horrors
of hell as real and awful. These horrors shall be even as God has told
us. Happily...[we all] will turn from the horrors of hell - the gall of
Gehenna - to the holiness of heaven - the glories of God's place of many
mansions....
[Excerpt from the Bible Doctrine of Final Things, by Robert Taylor Jr.]
