Loved to the End

By Greg Laurie, Op-ed contributor Monday, January 02, 2012

For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
- 1 Timothy 2:3-4

People sometimes ask, "Do you think God would hear the prayer of some wicked person who called upon Him even in the very last moments of his life-if that person had done horrible things? Would God pardon a person like that?" Absolutely He would.

Sometimes we have loved ones who died and never made a profession of faith. And we may conclude they did not go to heaven. But we don't know that. Were you with these loved ones in the last moments of their lives? Were you there when they took their last breath? How do you know that he or she did not call on Jesus?

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Here is what you do know. God loved them and wanted them to be saved. As 1 Timothy 2:4 says, God "desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth."

When Judas arrived in the Garden of Gethsemane to betray Jesus, Jesus said to him, "Friend, why have you come?" (Matthew 26:50). Jesus was giving Judas one last chance to repent. And I believe that if Judas had stopped right there and said, "Lord, I messed up. I don't know what I was thinking. Forgive me," then Jesus would have pardoned him. Why? Because God says, "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways!" (Ezekiel 33:11). Jesus loved Judas to the very end. He was His friend. But His friend betrayed Him, and this broke His heart.

I don't want to give false assurance and suggest that everyone is in heaven, because they are not. But I am saying that if they called on the Lord in the last moments of their lives, He pardoned and forgave them.