From the Family Radio School of the Bible 

DOES GOD LOVE YOU?

Q. What kind of a question is that?  Anyone who can read sees signs, tracts,
   booklets and bumper stickers saying, "God Loves You." Isn't that true?

A. It's true that God offers His love to the whole world, as we read in one
   of the most quoted verses in the Bible: 

      "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,
      that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have ever
      lasting life."  John 3:16

  However, God's love is qualified, as we read in the Bible:

      "The way of the wicked is an abomination unto the Lord; but He
       loveth himn that followeth after righteousness."  Proverb 15:9

      "For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous, but the way of the 
       ungodly  shall perish."     Psalms 1:6

Q. But I am not wicked.  I am a decent moral person.  Surely the good I have 
   done in my life far outweighs whatever bad I have done.  How can these 
   verses apply to me?

A. By God's standards of righteousness even the most moral person is looked 
   upon by God as a desperate sinner on his way to Hell.  The Bible teaches 
   that no one good enough in himself to go to Heaven.  On the  contrary we 
   are all sinners and are guilty before God.

      "As it is written, There is non righteous, no, not one; There is none 
       that understand, there is none that seeketh after God."
       Romans 3:10,11.
    "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who 
     can know it?"  Jeremiah 17:9

Q. If I am such a wicked person in God's sight what will God do to me?

A. The Bible teaches that at the end of the world all the wickewd will come 
under eternal punishment in a place called Hell.

     "For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest 
     hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire 
     the foundation of the mountain.  I will heap mischiefs upon them; I 
     will spend mine arrows upon them.  They shall be burnt with hunger and 
     devoured with burning heat and with bitter destruction."
     Deuteronomy 32:22-24

Q. Oh, come on now! Hell isn't real, is it? Surely things aren't that bad.

A. Indeed, Hell is very real, and "things are that bad" for the individual 
   who does not know the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour. The Bible makes many 
   references to Hell, indicating it is both eternal, and consists of 
   perpetual suffering.

     "And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into 
   the lake of fire." Revelation 20:15

     "So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth 
   and sever the wicked from among the just and shall cast them into the 
   furnace of fire.  Matthew 13:49-50

     "... when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty 
   angels in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and 
   that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall be punished 
   with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the 
   glory of His power."  II Thessalonians 1:7-9

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