There is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.
–Acts 4:12
Several years ago, I was in Seattle, Washington, finishing up a book tour. I had been in four cities in three days and was very anxious to get back home. Having finished the interviews early, I called the airline to see if I could get out on an earlier flight. They said, “There’s one leaving in the morning at 7. It’s wide open. You’ll have no problem.” So I got up at 5 o’clock that morning and raced to the airport. The person at the ticket counter said, “We’re sorry, Dr. Jeffress. Another flight cancelled, so those passengers have taken up all the seats on this flight. But if you’ll wait around until 9, there’s another possibility.” So at 9, I went back to the ticket counter. It was the same story–the flight was full, but there was great hope for the 11 o’clock flight. Like a lemming, I went down to the gate for the 11 o’clock flight. It was sold out. After seven hours of waiting in the Seattle airport, I finally found an empty seat on a flight–the flight I was originally booked on. I plopped down in my seat, exhausted.
As soon as I pulled out the in-flight magazine, the guy next to me said, “What do you do for a living?” I was not in the mood for a conversation. But as I thought about what had happened that day and how I had not been able to get on another flight, I thought, “Maybe God has me on this specific plane, seated next to this specific person, for a reason.” So I told him, “I write Christian books.” That certainly was partially true. He said, “That’s very interesting, because I used to be a Christian.” For the next four hours as we winged our way from Seattle to Dallas, my new friend shared with me the reasons that he had abandoned Christianity–unanswered prayer in his life, problems he had believing in the truthfulness of the Scripture, and a broken marriage. But finally we got to the heart of his objection to Christianity. He said, “Pastor, I just cannot believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to God. Because if that claim is true, then it means the majority of people in the world are going to hell, and I cannot believe in a God who is that intolerant.”
In just a couple of sentences, my seatmate voiced the mother of all politically incorrect statements that Christians hold in today’s world: the belief that Jesus Himself is the only way to be saved, and therefore every other religion is wrong. The exclusivity of Christ may be an outrageous truth, but it is centered in the Word of God. What is it about this claim that Christ is the only way to heaven that causes people to reject Christianity? This week we are going to look at four objections to the idea that Christ is the only way to be saved.
Today’s devotion is excerpted from “Why Every Other Religion Is Wrong” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2008.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.