The Exceptional Path

July 20

The notion of ‘American Exceptionalism’ is debatable. There are some who feel that the United States is just a country like any other—no better, no worse—and it doesn’t have, and has never had, a unique place in history. There are others who are just as firmly convinced that God has had His hand on this nation from its inception and that He has used it to further His purposes.

In the ultimate scheme of things it is perhaps irrelevant which position one espouses, for the only important thing of time or eternity—receiving Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord—must be done on an individual, not a national, basis. Everyone who ever lives and breathes must make the choice to serve or to deny Jesus, and that choice will determine his eternity.

Some people may debate this point as well. There are those who believe there are many paths to God and that He is the Rewarder of those who diligently pursue the tenets of whatever belief system they espouse. Whether they blow themselves up, killing everyone around them as those committed to a one-world-caliphate might do or whether they surrender their lives to Jesus, they are heaven-bound for they are sincere. With this mindset, no belief system is above any other.

But there is One whose exceptionalism will ultimately be proven to both those who attain hell by their sin and those who attain Heaven by His grace, and that One is Jesus who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me,” John 14:6. Jesus is the only way to Heaven. To deny Him is to relegate oneself to the eternal pit of separation from God. To embrace Him is to be washed clean of sin and set on the exceptional path that leads to Heaven.