One must be chosen into the kingdom of God as stated by Jesus Christ in Matthew 22:14, “For many are invited, but few are chosen.”

What most people fail to understand, including many Christians is the fact that besides the saving grace of Jesus Christ, we are all creatures of hell, as stated in Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”

You may argue, how did I become a creature of hell? I do not defraud my neighbor, I neither kill, cheat, nor steal, basically I am a good person.

In order to understand why humanity is under the wrath of God, we must first go back in time to the beginning of creation in the garden of Eden.

After the Lord God created the heavens and the earth, He created man in His own image, and in His own likeness, and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

The man was free to eat from any tree in the garden, but the Lord God wanted to test the man and see if he was a man after His own heart. Consequently, the Lord God forbade the man to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil located in the middle of the garden with the following ominous warning, you are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.

 

Bear in mind that in paradise, before the fall all animals spoke. Satan choose the serpent because it was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made, and began to tempt the woman by instilling doubt into her mind saying, did God really say, you must not eat from any tree in the garden? Although  the woman said to the serpent, we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will surely die, the beguiler delighted the woman saying, you will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Thus, depraving themselves and future generations eternal life with God in paradise, bringing forth death, mourning, crying, and pain into the world. 

Then their eyes were opened, and they realized they were naked. Thus, bringing forth shame into the world, manifested by the fact that they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

   

When the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden,   but the Lord God called to the man, where are you?

He answered, I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.

Their act of disobedience brought also guilt, and guilt brought eternal separation from God.

And the Lord God said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? The man immediately accused the woman, and said, the woman you put here with me-she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.

Then the Lord God said to the woman, what is this you have done?  The woman immediately blamed the serpent, and said, the serpent deceived me, and I ate.

So the Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.

And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.

To the woman he said, I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.

To Adam he said, because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, you must not eat of it, cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.

And the Lord God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever."

So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

This is the account of how mankind died spiritually, and became hell bound and eternally separated from the love of God.

However, there is hope as stated in Romans 7:24-25, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! 

In order to understand the kingdom of God one must be “born again” as stated by Jesus Christ in John 3:3, “In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”

If you think that is bad, actually, it is far worse. In Matthew 13:10-16 the disciples came to Jesus and asked, "Why do you speak to the people in parables?"

He replied, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.

Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.

This is why I speak to them in parables: "Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.

In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: " 'You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.

For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.'

But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.

To most people, including most Christians, Jesus Christ is another historical figure of the same prominence as Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolph Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, John Kennedy or the Pope, they don’t know that besides being the savior of mankind Jesus Christ is also the creator of heaven and earth and everything in it as stated in the gospel of John 1:1-13, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

In him was life, and that life was the light of men.

The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John.

He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe.

He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.

He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.

Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God--children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.

At this point in time if you are not born again from above by having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, you are another lost soul headed for the lake of fire, as stated by Jesus in John 3:36, Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him."

And as stated by Jesus in John 9:39 “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”

Obviously, if you want to be saved from eternal agony in the lake of fire, your only option is to pray with all your heart to God our father for His mercy, all in the name of His son Jesus Christ.

One must be chosen into the kingdom of God as stated by Jesus Christ in Matthew 22:14, “For many are invited, but few are chosen.”

What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses,

“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”

It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. 

For Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”

Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’”

Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?

What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory— even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? As he says in Hosea: “I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people;
and I will call her ‘my loved one’ who is not my loved one,” and, “In the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘children of the living God.’”  Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: “Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant will be saved. For the Lord will carry out
his sentence on earth with speed and finality.” It is just as Isaiah said previously: “Unless the Lord Almighty had left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah.” Romans 9:14-29

According to the inerrant and infallible word of God the Holy Bible, only Jesus Christ is the way and the truth and the life, and no one can come to the Father except through Him.

For the simple fact that Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Colossians 1:15-20

“For salvation is found only in Jesus Christ, for there is no other name under heaven given to man by which we must be saved.” Acts 4:12

If you want to know what you must do to be saved like the jailer described in Acts 16: 29-31, read on, “The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.”

                                                            Amen