The scenery is so lush and beautiful and the climate is so mild in the Hawaiian Islands that sometimes they are spoken of as “Paradise.” Recently a new company, Johnson Airways, advertised shockingly low rates to Hawaii: only $89 dollars for a one-way ticket out of Los Angeles! The price was the lowest of all the bargain rates, almost too good to be true. Purchasing the tickets was a painless procedure on the Internet, and customers began snapping up the tickets. They had only to put in their credit card numbers and select the flight they wanted from the schedule. In return, they received their e-tickets promptly.
There was only one problem. Johnson Airways was the scheme of a college business student who set up a very complicated, attractive Web site in order to defraud unwary customers of their money. Johnson Airways didn’t possess a single aircraft, much less the fleet it would have needed to make all the scheduled flights. The young man who developed the Web site and collected the money was soon arrested by police for fraud and will probably spend some serious time in jail. Many of the customers who bought tickets were unable to recoup their losses.
Hawaii is a beautiful place, but it is not paradise on earth. Even in Hawaii there is still a plentiful supply of sorrow, tears and death. Only in the paradise called heaven will these things never be allowed. Heaven is a place of pure love, light, joy and life, where sorrow of any type will never come. The joy of heaven comes from knowing God, and seeing Him as He is. These joys are so great that they are impossible to describe with words. God wants everyone to share in the joy of that wonderful place. He invites everyone to come.
The only problem is sin. Sin effectively bars a person from heaven. This is a problem indeed, “for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:2323For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; (Romans 3:23)). To deal with this problem, God sent His Son into the world. At the cross the Lord Jesus gave His life to do away with the problem of sin forever. The Lord Jesus stood in the gap between a holy God and sinful humanity. The ransom He gave was His life on the cross. Because of that ransom, every person who believes on the Lord Jesus will have their sins forgiven and will be made fit to enter into God’s presence, for “there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:55For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; (1 Timothy 2:5)).
Lots of people these days are buying into the concept that human beings are not sinners, and everything will eventually be all right with their souls even if they never come to Christ. Don’t believe it! The only way of salvation is through faith in Christ, who died to put our sins away. Every other way of salvation is a hoax, fraud or deceit perpetuated by sinful man. Don’t be taken in by any false schemes, for if you die without having come to Christ, you will never be able to recoup your losses, but you must spend eternity banished into hell and out of His glorious presence forever.