I was raised to believe that there is no more important issue than the answer to this question:

"On a scale of 1 to 100, with 100 meaning '100% confident' and 0 meaning '0% confident', how sure are you that if you died today, that you would go to heaven?"

This is exactly the way that I was taught to ask the question, word for word. It was the most important question for me to ask my friends, strangers, and most important, to ask myself.

In my early twenties, living as a missionary in the Balkans and the Middle East, my leaders exhorted me to look for any and every opportunity to pose this eternal and life-altering question.

My training went something like this:

"There are three Scripture passages that you have to remember. With them you will be able to give anyone the eternal gift of 'assurance of salvation.' First, Romans 8:38-39:

For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, neither height nor depth nor any other ...