All Celebrities Go to Heaven

All celebrities go to heaven. If you don’t believe that then just ask their fan bases and they will confirm it. When a celebrity passes, you will hear people laud their music, performances, generosity, and other positive qualities. It seems that people who brought us joy in life are automatically qualified for the afterlife. We seem to want to extend that pleasant relationship into the afterlife. We imagine we will meet these people and enjoy their entertainment again. People overlook or dismiss the celebrity’s negative traits, such as greed, lust, pride, insobriety, and adultery. Likewise, they even overlook the celebrity’s stated religious beliefs. The problem with this approach is that it has nothing to do with what the Bible teaches about salvation.

Dolly Parton’s recent passing challenges the idea that kindness and charity prove true Christian faith. Her fans quickly invoke her charity and broad care for humanity. They overlook her questionable statements about Christianity. Additionally, they ignore her outright contradictions of it by her support of homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and transgenderism. She also dismissed church authority, hell, and God’s wrath. She held open the possibility of reincarnation although she didn’t embrace it. In short, she was very confused and even at odds about Christian doctrine but that doesn’t bother her fans. Her philanthropy, especially in the wake of Hurricane Helene, and her charm are enough for them.

Bill Cosby did a lot of philanthropy work as well. The Cosby Foundation helps underprivileged children and families. His support for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, community development initiatives, and promoting literacy are also notable. Both he and Dolly provided wholesome, popular entertainment. The visceral reaction to his name is worse because of the sex crimes for which he was imprisoned. He has lived a duplicitous life in violation of Christian moral standards but he was not promoting it openly to the world as an endorsed way of life. Dolly Parton used her platform to publicly endorse non-Christian doctrine on sexuality. The difference is significant. People are not as forgiving of Cosby as they are of Dolly and yet her sin of approving and promoting sexual perversion is arguably greater than his clandestine, personal failures.

Michael Jackson and Prince both belonged to a cult known as the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Jackson left it some years before his death to be “spiritual” but Prince never did. George Harrison and Jerry Garcia practiced Hinduism. Isaac Hayes practiced Scientology; Tina Turner practiced Nichiren Buddhism / Soka Gakkai for about 50 years. Sinéad O’Connor, Malcom X, Muhammad Ali, and Omar Sharif all converted to Islam. And yet, fans will still talk about seeing or hearing these people in heaven as if it were an ongoing theater smorgasbord.

Do We Believe The Bible?

Does the Bible mean nothing? Do we believe the Bible when God tells us that certain classes of people will not experience the joys of the afterlife? The Bible gives us lists of various categories of sinners that won’t make it.

• 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 states that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God, and names the sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, men who practice homosexuality, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, and swindlers.
• Galatians 5:19–21 lists “works of the flesh”: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, “and things like these.” It concludes that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
• Ephesians 5:5 says that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (equated with an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.
• Revelation 21:8 places the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars in the lake of fire (the second death), outside the new Jerusalem. Revelation 22:15 similarly places outside “the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.”
• Related shorter statements appear elsewhere (for example, 1 Corinthians 5:11 on not associating with someone who bears the name of brother but is sexually immoral, greedy, an idolater, a reviler, a drunkard, or a swindler; and Romans 1:18–32 on those who approve and practice various forms of unrighteousness). The repeated categories across these texts are sexual immorality (including adultery and same-sex practice), idolatry, greed/covetousness, drunkenness, theft/swindling, sorcery, murder, lying/falsehood, and certain forms of interpersonal strife and reviling.

The disturbing part of all this is that not only are those who do these sins condemned but also those who approve of them doing these sins. These are the concerns that caused a number of people to be worried about the fate of Dolly Parton because she approved of the LGBTQ sins. Several people (myself included) raised this question while she was still living because of her public statements and we received assault from her fan base just as we have since her passing. But the concern for the eternal salvation of others does not stop with Dolly. The selected list of celebrities above were not Christians at the time of their deaths. They had rejected Christianity in favor of non-Christian religions or cults that use much of the language of Christianity but are fully heretical. Scripture is not optimistic about their fate.

Who Does Make It?

According to the New Testament, those who enter the kingdom of God (heaven, or the age to come) are people who have been forgiven and changed through faith in Jesus Christ, not people who simply avoided the practices listed in the exclusion passages.

The same letters that name who will not inherit the kingdom also say the alternative is not moral perfection achieved on one’s own. In 1 Corinthians 6:11, right after the list of those who are excluded is a list of those who are included. Paul writes that some of the Corinthian believers “were” those things, “but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” Galatians 5 and Ephesians 5 make the same contrast: those who continue in the works of the flesh do not inherit the kingdom, while those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh and walk by the Spirit.

Entrance is tied to faith in Christ and the new birth that faith brings. John 3:3–5 says no one sees or enters the kingdom of God unless born again of water and the Spirit. John 3:16 and John 14:6 present belief in the Son as the way to eternal life, and Jesus as the only way to the Father. Acts 4:12 says there is salvation in no one else. Romans 10:9–13 says that confessing Jesus as Lord and believing God raised him from the dead leads to salvation, for “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord.” Ephesians 2:8–9 describes this as by grace through faith, not as a result of works.

Revelation 21:27 says nothing unclean will enter the new Jerusalem, “but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” Revelation 21:6–7 and 22:14 link this to those who conquer, who thirst for the water of life, and who wash their robes—language the book elsewhere ties to the blood of the Lamb and endurance in faith (Revelation 7:14; 12:11).

Other sayings stress that profession alone is not enough. Matthew 7:21 says not everyone who says “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of the Father. The surrounding context and the rest of the New Testament treat that will as including repentance and trust in Christ, not merely external religious activity (Matthew 7:22–23; cf. Luke 13:3, Acts 2:38, 1 John 1:9).

In short, the texts present heaven as for those who turn from the practices that exclude people and are forgiven, justified, and renewed through faith in Jesus—the ones written in the Lamb’s book of life—rather than for the unrepentant practitioners of those sins or for people relying on their own record.

Doctrinal Sufficiency

Unlike many people today want to believe, doctrine is important if not critical. The Bible does teach us that there are doctrines that we must hold to in order to be saved.

• Galatians 1:6-9 warns us about accepting a “different gospel” than the one Paul preached. This involved a different means of justification than Paul taught.
• 2 John 9-11 says that whoever “does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God,” while whoever abides in it “has both the Father and the Son,” and instructs believers not to receive or greet those who bring a different teaching about Christ.
• 1 John 2:22-23 and 4:2-3 likewise tie denial that Jesus is the Christ come in the flesh to not having the Father. These passages locate the boundary at the message of who Christ is and how sinners are put right with God, not at a full systematic theology.
• In the Pastoral Letters, Paul warns Timothy to “Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.” (1 Timothy 4:16). This implies that false doctrine can lead to catastrophic results.
• Titus 1:9 holds that sound doctrine is important and those who contradict it must be rebuked. Along with 2 Timothy 2:15-18; 4:3-4 both books describe rejecting false teaching and rightly handling the word as part of guarding the church; Hymenaeus and Philetus are said to have swerved from the truth and upset the faith of some by claiming the resurrection had already happened.
• Ephesians 4:14-15 contrasts being tossed by every wind of doctrine with speaking the truth in love and growing up into Christ.

So while the Bible does not give us a full, systematic theology to which we must subscribe, it is clear enough that there are points at which believers must not compromise lest we depart from the faith. We certainly cannot be unrepentant of the sins listed above or endorsing and approving of those who commit such sins. These things count against us and put us in jeopardy with God. As for unbelievers, rejecting Christianity altogether is viewed as fatal. In the end, God is the judge. We cannot speak with absolute authority on the fate of anyone who has died. However, we can urge people to live cautiously because of what God has revealed to us through Scripture. The unbelievers and the unrighteous do not enter in the kingdom of God.