GOD: THE BASIC PLAN
God has always enjoyed family. The first family was the Trinity: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit joined in perfect love of one another.
The Trinity extended their love for one another to a new creation, the angels. They were like God, blessed with great intelligence and the free will to love. They were very happy in God’s family in heaven until some of them decided that they could be happy without God and rejected his love. They could no longer remain with God in heaven because they would destroy the happiness of all the other angels, so God sent the angels who no longer loved him to a place of unhappiness and evil, hell.
About 13.7 billion years ago (at the time of the Big Bang) The Trinity again extended their love by creating the universe. Everything in the universe was created good and beautiful. About 300,000 years ago, God created the first man and woman, Adam and Eve. Like the angels, they were blessed with great intelligence and the free will to love. Unlike the angels, they were created with bodies into a material world. At first, they loved God and lived in a very special place on Earth where they were protected from hardships, disease, and death. But, like the angels, Adam and Eve had to decide if they would be happy in God’s family or reject his love. Satan, the leader of the fallen angels in hell, tempted Adam and Eve to reject God’s love. When they chose to reject his love, they had to leave their very special place for a different place not protected from hardships, disease and death. There they would also face temptation and the powers of evil in their daily lives. God could have simply sent them to hell or annihilated them, but he was merciful, still giving them a chance to join him in heaven.
God sent prophets and leaders with laws and guidelines to present Adam and Eve and their descendants many ways to join him after death in heaven. For many centuries humans rejected the laws and the prophets, so God the Father sent his Son, Jesus (the Way, the Truth, and the Life) to save humans from their sins so that after death they could join God in heaven. Jesus died and rose from the dead to save us from our sins. After he ascended into heaven, he left his apostles and his church to invite all humans to follow The Way that Jesus had shown them.
If we follow The Way, we can join God in heaven. The Way remains available until the end of life on Earth. Then Jesus will return to Earth to judge all those who have lived from the time of Adam and Even until the end of life on Earth. We can be among the billions of those who will join God in heaven or the others who will join Satan, the fallen angels, and all humans who have refused God’s love in hell.
God has always loved you immensely from the moment of your conception and has continuously wanted you to join that special group, the billions that will enjoy heaven with him, completely separated from all temptation and evil, dwelling with God, the angels, and all the humans who have chosen to love God, a place where goodness and perfect happiness are eternal. The choice is yours.
That choice is to love God or to reject his love (1 John 4:7-10):
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.
As sinners, we have rejected God’s love, so we must decide to repent or not to repent of our sins. Once we have repented, we must decide to accept or not to accept God’s son, Jesus, into our lives as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
The Way is His way, the way of self-sacrificing love. He showed his love for his Father by following his Father’s will, sacrificing himself on the cross to redeem us from our sins. We are called to show our love for Our Father by following His commandments (John 14:15) and loving our neighbor (everyone) just as Jesus did. The two greatest commandments are to love God and to love our neighbor.
The Truth is Jesus himself who preached only the truth as presented in the Gospel, the Good News. The Gospel presents the Way to the Father through Jesus.
The Life is the how Jesus lived, a life of perfect love. He was never false to his own words. As imperfect humans, we occasionally must say, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Jesus can always say, ‘Do as I say and follow me (my actions).’
When Jesus ascended into heaven, he promised to send the Holy Spirit to give us strength and to provide us special gifts to follow The Way.
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate* to be with you always, the Spirit of truth,* which the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows it. But you know it, because it remains with you, and will be in you.(John 14:16-17)
The Advocate, the holy Spirit that the Father will send in my name—he will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you. (John 14:26)
When our life on Earth is over, Jesus will decide if we will enter Heaven or Hell. The criteria for that judgment is clear in the Gospel (Matthew 25: 31-46):
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’ And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’
Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’ Then they will answer and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?’ He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’ And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
FAITH AND CATHOLICISM
The Trinity has always wanted all humans to join them as family in heaven. The scripture passage above does not mention a particular church, but the Catholic Church and all other Christian churches preach the Gospel and offer tremendous help in following The Way of Jesus. The Catholic Church in a document from Vatican II states, "Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience--those too may achieve eternal salvation" (Lumen Gentium 16).
Jesus is forever The Way, The Truth, and The Life. If we pray to Him in sincerity of heart, He will show us The Way to eternal life with the Trinity.