Will Christians Be the Only Ones in Heaven?
Question of the Week: In your opinion, will Christians be the only people in heaven and will Christianity be the only religious faith?
My Answer: The short answer to both questions is yes, with the important caveat that it is crucial to correctly define what the Bible means by Christian. According to the Bible, a Christian is a human being who has received God’s offer of redemption from all their sins—past, present, and future—and has made the Redeemer, Jesus Christ the Son of God, the master and director of their lives, and has invited the Holy Spirit to indwell them and transform their lives to become Christlike in their character.
I believe that humans who are depending on the Redeemer-Advocate-God to deliver them from their propensity to commit sin, and only such individuals, will be in heaven. Job did not know the name of the Redeemer-Advocate-God, but he was convinced such a Redeemer-Advocate-God must exist and he depended on that God to do for him what he could not do for himself (Job 19:25–27). In chapter 14 of my book Hidden Treasures in the Book of Job I explain in detail how Job and probably Elihu as well, before any Scripture existed, discerned from nature that the Advocate-Redeemer-God must exist and that salvation was possible only through him.