Authorized Personnel Only

Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. (Matthew 7:14 KJV)

After posting my ‘Authorized Personnel’ it dawned on me that is an excellent example of non-discrimination.

My last career required specific proficiencies. To protect code from unauthorized use, from possible corruption, safeguards were built in to allow access to capable employees. These employees accepted limitations. They could not “walk” around their work sharing with friends and family, no matter how close they were. No one felt it was discriminatory to do so.

The majority of people I know are kept out of operating rooms. The doctors and nurses we do know are allowed in as their expertise and patient needs require. A great deal of training is acquired before they are welcomed into that room. Few of us stand in line to enter the operating room as a patient, and we feel no discrimination that we are not invited.

Yet non-believers cry foul that God has defined requirements for eternal lodging that go against what they want.

Why?

The commandments are laid out in His word and even though mankind endeavors to change the commandments to fit current social acceptance, the rules haven’t changed.

Thou shalt have no other gods before me. (Exodus 20:3 KJV)

Christ summed up this one with the next three:

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. (Matthew 22:37-38 KJV)

The following six were summed, too.

And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:39-40 KJV)

To use those two in order to negate others is an attempt to circumvent God’s plans. The fullness of Christ’s message begins here, not ending with these commands.

Perhaps the most difficult are the ones that separate saved from unsaved. Christ said it Himself.

He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (John 3:18 KJV)

It is repeated elsewhere.

Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. (Acts 4:12 KJV)

These words are reinterpreted, denied or simply ignored by those who really wish there were no entry requirements for eternity. To do so creates peril, as heaven is open to Authorized Personnel Only.

(Graphic from Wikimedia Commons)