Our children reject us over our religious beliefs

Dear Pastor,

My husband and I have been married for 20 years and we were together three years before we got married. We have four children but only two of them care about us. They think that we are crazy. They don't tell us so, but we refuse to follow these two by getting baptised in their church. We are Pentecostals and they attend a church that does not believe that Jesus is God and that He should be worshipped.

Our children who show us much love are not Pentecostals but they are always calling and stopping by to see how we are doing. My husband has an outside child and she is very loving and caring. Her husband is very kind. He is a chef at a very popular restaurant. Sometimes she tells us not to cook and he brings food for us.

I would like to know how these religious people can condemn or abandon parents who don't go to their church. One of our daughters told us that we are following antichrist. Every time they talk to us, they tell us that we are listening to the Pope and the Pope is antichrist.

We do not worship the Pope. We are Pentecostal and we pray for our children. They go out every week selling books. They feel sorry for us and we feel sorry for them. Our church teaches there is a hell, so we preach that, if a person rejects Christ, he will die and go to hell. My children told me that it is not true to believe that people would be burn in hell-fire, because God is not a wicked God to have people burning in hell every day. When we hear these things from our own children, we know that they have been deceived.

Pastor, do you believe in the born-again message? Do you think that my husband and I are following the Pope because we believe in hell?

D.M.

Dear D.M.,

I am not here to condemn anybody's church, or anybody's religion for that matter. But the Bible is clear. Jesus says that He is the way, the truth and the life and no man can go to the father except that one goes through him. The Book of John says that a man went to see Jesus by night because he wanted to know the truth. Jesus said to the man, whose name was Nicodemus, that "he must be born again". The Gospel is about the new birth. The new birth is a born-again message. The Bible teaches that anybody who is not born again will be condemned. He cannot enter into God's kingdom. So, that message is not just a Pentecostal message or a message from the Baptist church, or a Methodist church. It is a message straight from the mouth of our Lord Jesus Christ. If a man or a woman is to be saved, he or she must embrace Christ as saviour and Lord and experience the new birth. It has nothing to do with following the Pope, so your children are talking nonsense.

Your husband and yourself and your other children are endeavouring to serve the Lord; continue to do so. The Bible says that people who do not repent and embrace Christ as saviour and Lord would be cast into hell. I have to accept what the Bible says. So I would urge everyone to turn to Christ.

Pastor