Q. What kind of a question is that? Anyone who can read sees signs, tracts, booklets and bumper stickers saying, "God Loves You." Isn't that true?
A. It's true that God offers His love to the whole world, as we read in one of the most quoted verses in the Bible:
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have ever lasting life." John 3:16
However, God's love is qualified, as we read in the Bible:
"The way of the wicked is an abomination unto the Lord; but He loveth him that followeth after righteousness." Proverb 15:9
"For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish." Psalms 1:6
Q. But I am not wicked. I am a decent moral person. Surely the good I have done in my life far outweighs whatever bad I have done. How can these verses apply to me?
A. By God's standards of righteousness even the most moral person is looked upon by God as a desperate sinner on his way to Hell. The Bible teaches that no one good enough in himself to go to Heaven. On the contrary we are all sinners and are guilty before God.
"As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none that understand, there is none that seeketh after God." Romans 3:10,11.
"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" Jeremiah 17:9
Q. If I am such a wicked person in God's sight what will God do to me?
A. The Bible teaches that at the end of the world all the wicked will come under eternal punishment in a place called Hell.
"For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundation of the mountain. I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them. They shall be burnt with hunger and devoured with burning heat and with bitter destruction." Deuteronomy 32:22-24
Q. Oh, come on now! He...