ANNOUNCER: Here’s a question that some people have asked. Can we go to heaven if we don’t keep up on our church attendance? Obviously church is important, but does church attendance have any direct bearing on our eternal state? Let’s answer that question today here on Grace in Focus, and we’re delighted that you’re with us friend. This is a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Our website is faithalone.org. We’d love you to go there and find out more about us, including our national annual conference that is coming up soon. It’s not too late, but you need to get registered soon. It is May the 18th through the 21st. Our theme will be “Believe in Christ for Life.” That’s for the adults. The kids are going to have VBS with the topic of crowns and rewards, and exciting and active curriculum for them. So get signed up today at faithalone.org. 

And now with today’s question and answer discussion, here is Bob Wilkin, along with Sam Marr. 

SAM: All right, Bob. We’ve got a question from DB. There’s an email question sent to radio@faithalone.org. And he’s got a little bit of a statement before the question, but he says, I’m done with Christian churches. I don’t want to participate anymore. Am I still going to heaven? 

BOB: Now, wait a minute—I’m done with Christian churches? And what do he say, I don’t want to go anymore? 

SAM: I don’t want to participate anymore. 

BOB: I don’t want to participate anymore. Am I still going to heaven? Okay. And what else does he say? 

SAM: Well, further down, he says, I don’t enjoy Christian culture. I don’t enjoy Christian churches. But he says, I do believe Jesus and His promise of everlasting life. I have believed in the past. And I still believe Jesus is the son of God and grants us entry into heaven. So there’s a few things here that we can analyze. First, the very easy to answer question is, can you go to heaven if you don’t go to church? 

BOB: And yes, the answer is yes, because there’s no requirement beyond believing in Jesus in order to have eternal life. So in his case, evidently, DB went to church for a while and he’s gotten burned out on church or whatever and doesn’t want to go anymore. But whether he ever went or stopped going, either way, you can’t undo eternal life. So if DB believed in the promise of eternal life, believed in Jesus and His promise of eternal life, then he is saved forever and no amount of missing church or anything else is going to undo that. But the other part you said kind of bothered me, because he said, I believe what? 

SAM: He says, I do believe Jesus and his promise of everlasting life. But then he says, I have believed in the past and still believe Jesus is the Son of God and grants us entry into heaven. 

BOB: Okay. So he says he believes in Jesus and his promise of eternal life. And he believes Jesus is a son of God and he believes he grants him entry into heaven. But yet he also asks, am I going to heaven? How can you ask, am I going to heaven, if you believe the promise that by faith in Jesus, you’re secure forever. 

It sounds to me like what he’s saying is he believes that Jesus is the Son of God. So he believes in the Trinity and he believes Jesus is the second member of the Trinity. He doesn’t say it, but I assume he believes that Jesus died in the cross for his sins and rose again, wouldn’t you say? 

SAM: I would assume, yeah. 

BOB: And it sounds like he is orthodox in his basic beliefs. In other words, he’s going to believe the Bible is the word of God, even though he may not say that and that sort of thing, I’m sure he believes he’s a sinner, that kind of thing. But the very fact that he asks, am I going to heaven, shows that he does not believe that simply by faith in Jesus he’s secure forever. He may have believed that in the past, but right now he’s asking a question. And the question is, if I don’t go to church, can I go to heaven? Because he’s asking that question, it shows that right now he’s lost sight of John 3:16. 

As you know, Sam, John 3:16 doesn’t mention anything about attending synagogue, attending church, going to the temple, offering sacrifices, following Jesus, doing good works, perseverance, reading the Bible, praying, fasting. None of that isn’t John 3:16 or anywhere in John’s Gospel, right? And in fact, Jesus called salvation the gift of God in John 4:10. The apostle Paul called salvation the gift of God in Ephesians 2:8-9. And Jesus also called it God’s gift in Revelation 22:17, taking the water of life without cost or freely or as a gift. So there’s no question, but that it is a gift and it’s simply by faith. So read the gospel of John carefully this time. I know he must have read it before in the past, but he’s lost his focus. He needs to get his focus back on the promise. 

SAM: He’s lost his assurance. If he is a believer, then this is an assurance question. He’s lost sight. He says he believes the promise of everlasting life, but like you said, if you believe the promise, then you don’t have to wonder whether if I do X, am I going to go to heaven? The answer will always be, yes, no matter what you do, you will always go to heaven. But I think it’s interesting here to bring it back to his initial question. The topic of it is, if I stop going to church, do I go to heaven? Of course, if you’re a believer and you stop going to church, you’ll go to heaven. 

But if you’re a believer and you stop going to church, you might lose your assurance. And I think that might be what’s happening here, that it is very possible for believers who find themselves in unloving or unbiblical, resentful bodies of believers to lose their assurance because those bodies of believers might not be teaching assurance. They might be teaching bad doctrine like believing you have to maintain your salvation or work or questioning whether you’re a believer. So again, I don’t know if this has been his experience, but it’s very possible. And that might be why he’s experiencing this animosity towards what he’s calling the church or Christianity at large. 

BOB: And it does sound like some level of animosity. 

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BOB: Let me go off on a bit of a tangent here, Sam, because he’s talking about going to heaven. He’s not talking about having everlasting life. He’s not talking about the fact that he’s secure forever. And it’s interesting, if you study the gospel of John, you don’t ever find Jesus saying he who believes in Me will go to heaven when he dies. What you find is he says, the one who believes in me has everlasting life right now. You’ve got it. And you’ll never hunger. You’ll never die. You’ll never perish. You’ll never thirst. You’ll never be cast out. No one will pluck you out of my hand. You’re secure. So that’s what He promises. And so for the one part, I would say, look, don’t be focusing on where you go when you die. Focus on what you’ve got right now. You’ve got everlasting life that can never be lost. 

Number two, I’d say to DB, do you want to die? Why not be raptured? Wouldn’t it be better to be caught up in the air and meet the Lord in the air? Isn’t that our blessed hope? Paul calls this the blessed hope? So hopefully the rapture is going to occur any day now. And when it does occur, we’re not going to heaven at all. We’re going to go be in the air. And then we’re going to come back to earth and we’ll be with the Lord during the Millennium and the new earth, unless you believe that we’re going to be back in heaven for a short period of time during the Tribulation. A lot of people believe that, but it certainly wouldn’t be a place you’re going to live. It would just be a short stop there on your way back to earth. And I don’t think that’s correct. I think we meet the Lord in the air. We stay in the air. We continue with him all the way to earth and Armageddon. But in any case, that’s the second thing about heaven. 

And the third thing about heaven is recognize that’s not our eternal destiny, not only will we be on the millennial earth after the Tribulation, but Revelation 21 says, I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. And you remember Sam, Jesus said, heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away. This Scriptures are clear all the way through that this world is cursed and it’s not permanent. It’s going to be replaced. We’re going to get a new earth, a new sun, a new moon, new galaxy, new planets throughout the whole universe. Everything’s going to be made new. That’s what we have to look forward to. 

So number one, you need to be sure of your eternal destiny. You need to know you’re going to be with the Lord forever and that you have everlasting life now and that it’s everlasting. So go to to the Gospel of John and read a chapter a day, pray about it. Lord, show me that I’m sure just by faith in Christ. 

And then the other thing is don’t put your focus on heaven, put your focus on the kingdom. When we pray Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we’re longing for the Father’s kingdom as led by his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to come to to earth now. So like in the book of Revelation, Jesus says, I’m coming quickly. Well, that’s what we should long for. 

SAM: And third, don’t separate yourself from other believers, even if there’s animosity, there’s bad blood, whatever your background may be, find a group of believers. It doesn’t have to be a mega-church. It doesn’t have to be a country church. It could be a home church or a Bible study, but find other believers to fellowship with because when you cut yourself off and you make yourself alone, that is when you start to lose your assurance and lose sight of all other kinds of doctrine. 

And if you’re a believer and you’re looking forward to everlasting life, you’re going to be around a lot of Christians for a long time. You might as well get used to them now. I guess you’ll have eternity to figure it out, but you’re going to be kind of surrounded whether you like it or not. 

BOB: I think a verse that comes to mind saying in light of what you just said is Hebrews 10:23-25, where the author of Hebrews says, let us not forsake the assembling of ourselves together as is the manner of some. But let’s encourage one another and all the more as we see the day approaching, the day being the soon return of Christ and the Judgment Seat of Christ. There’s a sense in which we need one another, right? We encourage one another. And part of that encouragement, you’re right, is to keep us doctrinally on track that we don’t lose our assurance. We don’t lose our focus on the rapture and the soon return of Christ. That sort of thing. 

And I like your point. If you can’t find a church that’s anywhere near conservative and teaching the Bible, then either start something in your house or find a Bible study or find something where you can plug in. You need other believers. That’s the way God has designed us, to be encouraged by one another. You know, the old song it only takes a spark to get a fire going? Well, I think part of that was, we all gather together, and as we are gathering together, our spark and our fire grows because we’re using our spiritual gifts to help each other. 

Well, thank you, DB. And thank you all for listening. And remember Sam, let’s do what? Keep grace in focus.

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Now, friend, we thank you for joining us all this week. We hope you have a great weekend. Some rest may be something enjoyable. Some time spent in a Bible-believing, Bible-teaching church, fellowshipping with other believers. And we hope to see you back here on Monday for more Grace in Focus.