Ticket to Nowhere

The only way to have a “ticket” to heaven is to place your faith in Jesus Christ and his death on the cross as payment for your sins. “Everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (Acts 10:43). To make sure you’re going to heaven, trust Jesus.

And to those who do, Jesus says, “I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2). He’s the only way to heaven.

If the deepest desire of your heart is to give up on any worthless “ticket” that you hoped would get you to heaven, and instead trust in Christ alone for forgiveness of sins and eternal life, you can tell him in a prayer like this: “Jesus, I know I’m a sinner and cannot save myself. I need you as my Savior. Thank you for dying in my place for the payment of my sins and rising again. I believe in you. Please forgive my sins. I want to live with you in heaven someday.”

—DAVE BRANON

Good News Tracts 1300 Crescent Street Wheaton, IL 60187 For helpful Christian literature, please write to the address above or visit our web site at www.goodnewstracts.org. Bible references: ESV.

©2011 Good News Tracts. Printed in U.S.A. Cover Images: ©iStockphoto. Written by Dave Branon. Taken from Our Daily Bread, November 2009. Used by permission.

also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 2:24, 3:18). Then he authenticated his mission by rising bodily from the grave (1 Corinthians 15:1-8).

My wife and I had finished a trip to Jamaica and were trying to get home. However, our airline was having problems. No matter what it said on our tickets, the reality was that we couldn’t leave Montego Bay! Over and over we heard, “Your flight has been canceled.”

Even though we had purchased our tickets in good faith, the airline could not back up its promise to transport us to the USA that day. The ticket I trusted to get me back home got me nowhere. My wife and I had to stay an extra day before boarding a plane that could actually take us home, but eventually the airline got us where the ticket promised.

It was a brief inconvenience, but it could have been much worse. That experience got me thinking about a much more important—and final—destination…heaven.

It requires a “ticket” issued by God himself! But imagine thinking that your eternal destination was heaven, but discovering too late that your “ticket” couldn’t get you there! It happens all of the time.

Many religions and philosophies offer ways to get to heaven that may seem right, but the “ticket” is worthless for entrance into heaven. According to God’s book, the Bible, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death....For the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many” (Proverbs 14:12, Matthew 7:13). In other words, if you trust in the

wrong way, you will get to the gate of eternity but will be denied entrance into heaven to live with God forever.

The “ticket” to heaven has nothing at all to do with something we have done or how religious we have been.

The Bible says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

God’s Word says that there is salvation in no one else but Jesus…“for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

Jesus himself said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). If you trust in any other “ticket”—doing good works, going to church, helping the poor, other religions or spirituality—it will get you nowhere. Nowhere near heaven, that is. It will only get you a one-way ticket to eternal separation from God in hell!

We could never do enough or be good enough to deserve God’s forgiveness and an eternal home in heaven.

Thankfully, Christ has already paid the price for your “ticket” in full when he died on the cross. Jesus “himself bore our sins in his body on the tree….for Christ

also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 2:24, 3:18). Then he authenticated his mission by rising bodily from the grave (1 Corinthians 15:1-8).

The only way to have a “ticket” to heaven is to place your faith in Jesus Christ and his death on the cross as payment for your sins. “Everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (Acts 10:43). To make sure you’re going to heaven, trust Jesus.

And to those who do, Jesus says, “I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2). He’s the only way to heaven.

If the deepest desire of your heart is to give up on any worthless “ticket” that you hoped would get you to heaven, and instead trust in Christ alone for forgiveness of sins and eternal life, you can tell him in a prayer like this: “Jesus, I know I’m a sinner and cannot save myself. I need you as my Savior. Thank you for dying in my place for the payment of my sins and rising again. I believe in you. Please forgive my sins. I want to live with you in heaven someday.”

—DAVE BRANON Good News Tracts Ticket to Nowhere An airline’s inability to produce a flight to the promised destination illustrates the danger of thinking you have safe passage to heaven, then finding you don’t.

Only Christ provides the way to heaven.

Bible references: ESV. Package contains 25 tracts.

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