If sinners cannot go to heaven, then why do Christians preach that sinners can go to heaven?
Those sentences which are colored in orange are from Maharishi Dayananda Saraswati book Satyarth Prakash (The Light of Truth) and those which are colored in black are Jerry Thomas’s response.
"And there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh a lie…." (21:27)
C. ~ If this be the cause, why dot he Christians say that even sinners can go to heaven by turning Christians. This not true. But if this be true, St. John, the Divine, shall never be able to enter heaven since he has told such lies in this book and even Christ count not have gone to heaven, since how can one burdened with the sins of innumerable sinners enter heaven where even a single sinner is not allowed to get in?
Answer: Maharishi assumes that sacrificial death of LORD Jesus Christ is taught as a license to sin. Those who believe in Christ are dead to sin and would have the power to lead the life in righteousness. Let me first clarify that understanding before I answer Maharishi’s another false charge. That itself would clear that the people who are mentioned in the above passage are not believers who accepted the grace of God through LORD Jesus Christ.
Romans 6: 1- 13 “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be [in the likeness] of [His] resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with [Him], that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but [the life] that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.”
So the passage of Revelation cannot be about the believers of LORD Jesus Christ.
Further, the very same passage of the Revelation itself speaks about the free gift of salvation and about those who are unbelievers. Let us read the entire passage so that we may not wrench the passage out of its context like Maharishi.
Revelation 21: 5-27 “Then He who sat on the throne said, "Behold, I make all things new." And He said to me, "Write, for these words are true and faithful." And He said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life FREELY to him who thirsts. He who overcomes shall inherit all things and I will be his God and he shall be My son. But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls filled with the seven last plagues came to me and talked with me, saying, "Come, I will show you the bride, the Lamb's wife. And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the great city, the holy [fn] Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God. Her light [was] like a most precious stone, like a jasper stone, clear as crystal. Also she had a great and high wall with twelve gates, and twelve angels at the gates, and names written on them, which are [the names] of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel: three gates on the east, three gates on the north, three gates on the south, and three gates on the west. Now the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. And he who talked with me had a gold reed to measure the city, its gates, and its wall. The city is laid out as a square; its length is as great as its breadth. And he measured the city with the reed: twelve thousand furlongs. Its length, breadth, and height are equal. Then he measured its wall: one hundred [and] forty-four cubits, [according] to the measure of a man, that is, of an angel. The construction of its wall was [of] jasper; and the city [was] pure gold, like clear glass. The foundations of the wall of the city [were] adorned with all kinds of precious stones: the first foundation [was] jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, the fifth sardonyx, the sixth sardius, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst. The twelve gates [were] twelve pearls: each individual gate was of one pearl. And the street of the city [was] pure gold, like transparent glass. But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb [is] its light. And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it. Its gates shall not be shut at all by day (there shall be no night there). And they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it. But there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb's Book of Life.”
So, this very passage speaks about salvation as a free gift and then speaks about those who rejected that free gift. Therefore it does contradict anything that the rest of the Holy Bible has clearly taught.
