Is Suffering the Entrance to Heaven?

A well-known televangelist once said on a worldwide TV talk show, “I believe that every person who died in the Holocaust went to heaven.” He was very sincere, and if he was seeking the commendation of the world, he surely got it with that statement. Who wouldn’t consider what he said to be utterly compassionate? However, let’s look at the implications of his heartfelt beliefs. His statement seemed to limit salvation to the Jews who died in the Holocaust, because he added that “their blood laid a foundation for the nation of Israel.” If the slaughtered Jews made it to heaven, did the many Gypsies who died in the Holocaust also obtain eternal salvation? If his statement includes Gentiles, is the salvation he spoke of limit- ed to those who died at the hands of Nazis? Did the many Frenchmen who met their death at the hands of cruel Nazis go to heaven also?

Perhaps he was saying that the death of Jesus on the cross covered all of humanity, and that all will eventually be saved—something called “universalism.” This means that salvation will also come to Hitler and the Nazis who killed the Jews. However, I doubt if he was saying that. Such a statement would have brought the scorn of his Jewish host, and of the world whose compassion has definite limits.

If pressed, he probably didn’t mean that only the Jews in the camps went to heaven, because that smacks of racism. He was likely saying that those who died were saved because they died in such tragic circumstances. Then Jesus was lying when He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). There is another way to heaven: death in a Nazi concentration camp. Does that mean that the many Jews who died under communism went to heaven? Or is salvation limited to German concentration camps?

If their salvation came because of the grim circumstances surrounding their death, does a Jew therefore enter heaven after suffering for hours before dying in a car wreck...if he was killed by a drunk driver who happened to be German? Bear in mind that his suffering may have been much greater than someone who died within minutes in a Nazi gas chamber.

Many unsaved think we can merit entrance into heaven by our suffering. Their error was confirmed by this sincere, compassionate man of God. They may now disregard the truth, “Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). They can now save themselves by the means of their own death . . . if they suffer enough.

Imagine the damage done by saying that there is another means of salvation outside of Jesus Christ, on a program watched by untold millions around the world. Who on earth needs to repent and trust in Jesus, if millions entered the kingdom without being born again? No one.

“Hitler was a Christian!”

Despite the fact that Adolf Hitler had a Roman Catholic background, he became adamantly anti- Christian and believed in evolution. As other dictators have done, he took over the churches and used their organizational structure to influence the citizens—though the teachings allowed were anything but biblical. William Shirer, who chronicled the Nazi regime, stated that “the Nazi regime intended eventually to destroy Christianity in Germany” and substitute paganism.

Hitler’s vision for Germany was defined in a thirty-point program for the “National Reich Church,” which “categorically claims the exclusive right and the exclusive power to control all churches within the borders of the Reich.” Some of the points of the program include the following: The National Church is “determined to exterminate irrevocably the Christian faith”; churches have no pastors or chaplains but only National Reich orators may speak in them; publishing and dissemination of the Bible must immediate cease in Germany. The National Church declared that “the Fuehrer’s Mein Kampf is the greatest of all documents” and “embodies the purest and truest ethics for the present and future life of our nation.” Therefore, churches must remove all Bibles and crucifixes, only Mein Kampf may be on the altar, and all crosses must be replaced by “the only unconquerable symbol, the swastika” (W. L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 240).

The following quotes by Hitler reveal his true personal views (taken from Hitler’s Table Talk):

National Socialism and religion cannot exist together...The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity’s illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity...Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things. (pp. 6–7)

The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity. (p. 75)

Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery...Let’s be the only people who are immunized against the disease. (pp. 118–119)

There is something very unhealthy about Christianity. (p. 339)

I realize that man, in his imperfection, can commit innumerable errors—but to devote myself deliberately to errors, that is something I cannot do. I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie. Our epoch in the next 200 years will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity. . . My regret will have been that I couldn’t . . . behold [its demise]. (p. 278)


Photo: Public Domain. http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/File:ADOLF-HITLER.jpg