Do all believers go to heaven?
Channel: Joseph Valles
Date: 2019-01-20

Do all believers go to heaven?
Will I go to heaven if I go to church?

Do all believers in Jesus go to heaven? Will you go to heaven if you go to church every Sunday and take sacrament? The sobering answer is no, not all believers go to heaven and you can't earn your way to heaven by going to church every Sunday. So what do you have to do to go to heaven? First, you must accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior. The second key is that you must repent and be baptized. You can't go to heaven if you don't repent. But what does it mean to repent? Is it good enough to stop smoking? Can you still watch porn occasionally? Repenting is a change of heart. It is a decision to turn away from the evil in your life and to turn toward love. To repent you must decide to completely forsake evil ways and choose to live for love instead. This is a common sense idea. Imagine life was a movie, where there is a battle between good and evil. A repentant person tries to live like the good guy as much as possible and tries as much as they can to avoid being like the bad guy. Everybody knows what good and evil are. Every time you do something wrong you can feel it in your heart and in your conscience. Likewise, every time you do something good, you get a good feeling inside. Repenting means avoiding the wrong kinds of thoughts and actions and choosing the right ones. The 10 Commandments are a good rule of thumb to see if you're on track to repenting. Do you lie? Are you rebellious toward your parents? Do you do sexually immoral things like having sex outside of marriage or masturbating? Do you ever cheat or steal or deal dishonestly? Do you raise your voice toward others or treat them harshly? All of these things feel wrong and we feel guilty when we do them. A true follower of Jesus tries their best not to do these things or anything else that feels underhanded or induces a sense of guilt in them. If you avoid these things, which are known as the 'sinful nature', and you instead embrace your good nature and do the things that make you feel good inside, then you've truly repented and turned toward Jesus. Only Christians who repent can enter the Kingdom of Heaven.