With hundreds of years of diverse religious traditions our culture has assumed certain Christian sounding sayings which are plain wrong.
Have you ever heard the sound of angel’s wings? Nope, no one has. Angels don’t have wings. Although they fly, you do not find one verse in the Bible describing angels having wings.
While we’re on it, don’t ever tell your daughter she “looks like an angel”, because all angels in the Bible look like men.
Have you ever heard someone talk about the “man upstairs” or “getting religion”? You do know that God is not a man that he should lie (Num 23:19), right? And no saved person climbs their way to heaven.
Religion will not save you; faith in Christ’s finished work will. Why don’t we speak of the God in heaven, and getting grace through faith?
Don’t ge me started on meeting Peter in heaven at the pearly gates when you die. That statement could not be more dispensationally wrong if it tried.
Peter was not given the keys of who gets into the body of Christ in Matthew 16:19. He was given the keys of the kingdom of heaven. He is not our Pope, our mediator, or our apostle today.
The pearly gates are found on the city new Jerusalem when it descends out of heaven in Revelation 21:21 after Israel’s millennial kingdom. Twelve angels are standing at the twelve gates, not Peter (Rev 21:12), and the city belongs to the twelve tribes of Israel, not Gentiles or the church.
Furthermore, our heavenly hope is not in entering a city to come, but in being members of Christ’s body – a truth not articulated by meeting anyone at the pearly gates in Israel’s promised Jerusalem.
We are not judged by Peter nor any apostle before our promotion to glory. We have received grace through the Lord Jesus Christ!
If you are going to clearly communicate Bible truth clean up your language from cultural filth. No, I don’t mean the four letter kind, but the traditional religious sayings that teach wrong doctrine.
Our speech should be alway with grace (Col 4:6), not with cultural sayings that teach religion, law, and a failure to rightly divide.
For God’s grace,
Justin “say what you mean” Johnson