a God without wrath saves a man without sin by mercy without judgment for a Heaven without a Hell through a Christ without a cross.

He turned His back upon His Son so that He would never have to turn His back on you.

Seventh-Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and a growing number of evangelical Christians are teaching a doctrine called conditional immortality, which jettisons the concept of hell. They assert that the wicked will be destroyed. This belief contradicts biblical teaching, which says that everyone who has ever lived will be resurrected and judged, and those who are condemned will suffer torment forever (Luke 16:19—31).

There is a God to love and there is a God to fear, and He is one and the same! Did He not judge His own Son as a demonstration of His love for the world? And did He not then show His love for the Son He judged by raising Him from the dead? How silly to think that if He is a loving God, He cannot also be a fearsome God. The two attributes complement each other.

If you know God through Jesus Christ, then you are experiencing eternal life right now even though you haven't physically died. And if you are experiencing eternal life right now, death is no more than a brief interruption to that which you are already experiencing—life that has no end.

There might even be the sound of the gospel, but it seemed to contain no glad tidings at all. It did not come from warm lips to startled ears as the message of eternal life — the glorious gospel of the blessed God (1 Timothy 1:11). Men lived, but their minister never asked them whether they were born again!

I had believed the Bible always, but reading it now had nothing to do with belief. It was simply a description of the way things were--of hell and heaven, of how men act and how God acts.

Love. How did one show it? How could God Himself show truth and love at the same time in a world like this? By dying. The answer stood out for me sharper and chillier than it ever had before that night: the shape of a Cross etched on the history of the world.

He is the God who loved you so much that His Son stripped Himself of all heavenly glory to live as an impoverished Jewish carpenter so He could shed His blood, suffer, and die for the forgiveness of our sins.

The challenge is that many believe heaven is the default destination when, in fact, the opposite is true.

At a very early age and continuing throughout my life, I have marveled at the beautiful story of the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Long before silver bells jingled, Christmas lights twinkled, and horse-drawn sleighs went dashing through the snow, God reached down from heaven with the best gift of all. Love, wrapped in swaddling clothes. Hope, nestled in a manger.