Jesus Christ told us in Matthew 7:13 that in order to spend eternity with Him we must enter His strait gate. Now He will tell us why.

“… for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many go in thereat.” Note the following: Satan’s gate is wide, entrance is easy and there is no cost involved. To receive salvation one need only perform the prescribed ritual to affect instant salvation. Having been led to believe that he has obeyed God, the salvation seeker does not realize that he has gone through the wrong gate. And throughout the remainder of his life he will be assured repeatedly that he has entered the strait gate, is saved, born again and rapture-ready, and that Jesus Christ is anxiously awaiting the opportunity to forgive his inevitable sins as quickly as he can repent of them. Having jumped through the church- prescribed hoops, the new congregant believes that the fix is in; next stop–heaven. Henceforth he will only need to show up, ‘fess up, pay up and prepare to go up.

Because those who led the seeker through the “salvation experience” dwelt exclusively on John 3:16, the new convert does not realize that he has done the exact opposite of what Jesus commands in Matthew 7:13,14. He is unaware that Satan has made the way beyond his chosen gate extremely broad in order to accommodate the hundreds of conflicting, contradicting, contending, competing, God-rejecting religious organizations that comprise Catholicism/Protestantism. An extremely wide thoroughfare is needed to accommodate all of the various churches, faiths, denominations, nondenominations, congregations, orders, etc. man has devised to satisfy his religious preferences.

The words “go in” indicate that entrance through the wide gate is voluntary. Two “voices” are heard relative to the gates and the churches they lead to: God’s quiet voice coming from the Scriptures and Satan’s loud voice coming from the Institutional Church. Because of its tiny size and the Institutional Church’s rejection of it, God’s church remains hidden from the typical salvation seeker. Of those few who become aware of it, the vast majority reject it outright. Jesus speaks of this:

“Because strait is the (only) gate and narrow is the (only) way that leads to life, and few there be that find it.” The strait and narrow aspects of the way to God’s kingdom were discussed in the previous posting. That few people find and enter God’s gate was noted in the previous paragraph. The remaining issue involves Satan’s power to deceive billions of God-seekers into following him through his wide gate and along his broad way that leads to death for those who remain on it. See Bait and Switch. The weapons of mass destruction that have made the devil ultimately successful are pride, fear and the Lie. Let us begin with pride.

In 2 Timothy 3:16 we are told why it is extremely difficult to persuade church people to embrace God’s Holy Scriptures. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for REPROOF, for CORRECTION, for INSTRUCTION in righteousness.” Convinced that he knows all he needs to know and is doing all he needs to do to insure eternal life, churchman hates to be reproved, corrected and instructed when it comes to spiritual things. When a church person hears God’s Truth he realizes that he is wrong and has been wrong all along. He is shocked to learn that he is not saved and is on the wrong path to being saved. Scriptural Truth is a hard pill for a religious person to swallow–pride makes it impossible for most. In the vast majority of cases the Truth pill is spiritually spit out and thrown away. Being already saved, etc., why bother to swallow it? This sentiment was voiced to me some time ago by a former missionary who said, “Obeying God is just too much trouble.” And Satan smiled. To be continued. L.J.