Looking for Heaven in All the Wrong Places

By: Lisa Van Houten

Last year, just days after the attempted assassination of President Trump in Butler, PA, I wrote in an article for our newsletter: “Proverbs 21:1 tells us that God turns the heart of a king wherever He will.  The Lord is also sovereign over the turning of a former president’s head.  President Trump recognized this as well, stating it was ‘God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.’”  

We also encouraged our readers to pray that as God turned his head, that He would turn President Trump’s heart to salvation in Christ.  Included in that newsletter edition was a postcard to send to him which stated in part: “We pray now that you will seek the same God who spared your life in Butler to save you eternally. We pray that the recognition you rightly gave God after the shooting will not be just a ‘blip’ in the record of your life, but that it will be the beginning of a real relationship with Him.” 

Since that assassination attempt, we’ve seen President Trump reference God more than any president in modern history and far more than in his first term.  And as a man knocking on the door of 80 years old, he seems to also be knocking on the door to Heaven.  However, he still doesn’t seem to understand that it is Christ who is knocking on the door of his heart.

It’s not every day that the President of the United States goes on national television and brings up the topic of Heaven.  Yet, when speaking on Fox News in August regarding his efforts to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, President Trump did just that, stating: “If I can save 7,000 people a week from being killed, I think that’s a pretty [good thing].  I want to try to get to Heaven, if possible. I’m hearing I’m not doing well. I am really at the bottom of the totem pole.  But if I can get to Heaven, this will be one of the reasons.”

Whether he spoke in jest or in sincerity, the President is grievously mistaken.  His commendable efforts to bring peace to a war-torn region will hopefully save lives, but it won’t save his soul.

Sadly, it’s an erroneous assumption vast numbers of people believe.  “I try to be a good person.”  “My good deeds outweigh the bad.”  However, God doesn’t grade on a curve and we can’t earn our way into Heaven by saving lives or doing good works.

Last week President Trump also made a comment in the Oval Office which caught my attention, as it contained both truth and grievous spiritual error.  He said: “If a country doesn’t have religion, doesn’t have faith, doesn’t have God, it’s going to be very hard to be a good country. You know, there’s no reason to be good. I want to be good cause you want to prove to God that you’re good so you go to that next step, right?”

His first sentence echoed our founding fathers who understood that when a nation abandons faith in God, when citizens see themselves as the arbiter of what is considered “good,” when there is no moral authority recognized beyond one’s self, we become a nation where everyone does “what is right in his own eyes.”  We see that played out every day in the headlines where consciences are no longer restrained and freedom is used as a pretext for evil.  As John Adams said: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion” and George Washington warned in his farewell address: “Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

But where President Trump gets it terribly wrong is again believing that being good will “prove” to God that he, or anyone, is deserving of salvation.  We can never be good enough – that’s why we need a Savior.  Christians pursue goodness, and the rest of the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23), not to earn God’s favor, but in response to what He has done in and for us!

Then earlier this week, while speaking with reporters on Air Force One on his return from the historic events in Israel, Peter Doocy of Fox News asked President Trump: “You talked about how you hoped to end the war in Ukraine because it might help you get into Heaven. How does this help? Does this help?”

President Trump answered with these heartbreaking words: “You know, I’m being a little cute. I don’t think there’s anything going to get me to Heaven, okay? I think I’m maybe not Heaven-bound. … I’m not sure I’m going to be able to make Heaven.”

President Trump has numerous Christians surrounding him; just last month he heard the Gospel message of salvation through Christ alone repeatedly presented at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service.

Yet the man who has worked hard all his life to earn the earthly rewards of his labor, can’t seem to wrap his heart and mind around the fact that he can’t earn Heaven.  Salvation is a free gift of grace – received not because of anything we do, but because of what Jesus Christ did!  There is no way to make up for past sins, no way to tip the scales of judgment.

None of us are “going to be able to make Heaven” based on our own “goodness.”  The Bible makes it abundantly clear: “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)

Trump isn’t the only one “at the bottom of the totem pole” – every single person is.  Our sin separates us from God, making us unworthy to enter His holy presence.  Our most righteous deeds, the Bible says, are like filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6) – tainted by our sinful nature.

Yet God made a way for our salvation by sending Jesus to Earth who lived a sinless life in our place, paid the penalty we deserve for our sins through His death on the cross, and by His resurrection defeated sin and death.  His righteousness becomes ours, for those who repent of their sin and put their trust in Him. As Romans 10:9 promises, “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”   That’s the only way to Heaven.

It’s as simple as that, but yet the hardest to accept for those who are unwilling to recognize their own sin and need of a Savior.

On Tuesday, as he posthumously awarded Charlie Kirk the Medal of Freedom, President Trump said with certainty that Charlie Kirk “now rests in Heaven.”  Pray that the Holy Spirit will remove President Trump’s spiritual blindness and that he will place his faith in Christ for salvation, not in his own fruitless efforts – and find that certainty of Heaven which he longs for.

To view this article in your browser, Click Here

For more information, articles and newsletters, please check out our website at https://americandecency.org/

You can support ADA financially by visiting: https://give.cornerstone.cc/americandecency

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

---