Would God Ever Take Away Our Salvation?

Romans 1:28-32 And even as they did not like to retain God in [their] knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The above verse causes some Christians to wonder whether there might ever come a time when God could give them up and take away their salvation. But if that’s true, then how can we talk about the believer’s eternal security and the preservation of the saints? That’s the topic for today’s Spreading God’s Word posting.

 

Romans 1:28-32 does indeed shows us that there is a time when God gives a person up due to their continued sinful desires. But the $64,000 question is: does this apply to true believers?

 

 

 

Let’s think about this. True believers should know what it is that they’re saved from – we’re saved from our sins and from the guilt that comes against us because of our sins. Jesus Christ became sin for us; He paid for all of our sins; He stood guilty before God on our behalf, and God poured out His wrath upon Him. The result of this is that, for believers, the penalty for sin has been completely paid.

 

 

 

Consequently, there’s absolutely no way that a true believer could ever be given up by God. A born again believer is safe in the arms of God forever because the penalty for all His sins has been paid. There is no sin that he could ever commit that would ever estrange him from God. The Bible emphasizes that we have eternal life. We cannot come into judgment and nothing can separate us from the love of God. No one can snatch us out of His hand.

 

The reality in the world is that many, many people call themselves Christian who never have became born again. They believe that just because they’ve been baptized or “accepted” Christ that they therefore have a relationship with God through Christ.

 

But in John Chapter 3 Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Ye must be born again.” You have to become a new creature. When we look at ourselves honestly, we’ve got to admit that we’re a sinner hopelessly lost and under God’s wrath. We’ve got to sincerely recognize that there’s nothing we can do about our sins. It is at this point when we’ll begin to cry out to God for mercy and ask Him to enable us to trust in Christ as our Savior with a true saving faith. According to the Bible, this is the path to salvation.

 

 

 

However, there are many other people who have a different idea of salvation. They’re convinced that they are saved. They use words like “blood of Christ” and “the virgin birth,” “the resurrection” and “salvation” but to them salvation only means accepting Christ. It means they’re trying to live like a Christian would — trying to study the Bible and do what a Christian does, desperately trying to live the good life so they’ll always stand approved before God. In a previous post, we termed this “getting on the bandwagon for Christ.”

 

 

 

Without realizing it, these dear people are effectively trying to get to God by their own merit, by their good works, by their own personal worthiness. This type of path is not the salvation outlined in the Bible’s Gospel. That’s a salvation path conjured up in the mind of man; that’s a path of works and not the salvation of the Bible. Apart from the grace and mercy of God, the horrible result is that these persons will end up in hell.

 

 

 

There are likely going to be many, many people on Judgment Day who will say, “I accepted Jesus as my Savior…what am I doing here?” The reason is they have never become born from above.

 

 

 

According to Scripture, the first step toward becoming reborn is to have a broken and contrite heart recognizing the ugly truth about ourselves that we’re a sinner, and in terrible trouble with God. We must see that only in Christ is there a way of escape.

 

 

 

If you’ve come to that point in your life, then you’ll never have to fret about Romans 1:28-32.

 

 

To God Be The Glory!

Birth Control and the Christian

Today’s topic came up following our recent posting on abortion.  It’s a very practical subject because we’re living in a world where mankind has nearly forgotten there’s a God upholding this universe by His power.  Rather than looking to the Bible to find guidance and direction concerning the size of his family, man in his sinful reasoning develops his own answers…according to his own pleasures. 

But sin always breeds sin and the world is now mired in a terrible cycle. 

Effectively, man has said God cannot be trusted.  Look at what’s happening — the population continues to grow; increasing droughts; frequent famines, etc.  Man says, “We’ve got to take matters into our own hands.” 

 

The world decided it was going to control the conception of children. After that sin matured a bit, man moved on to a more grievous sin.  In cases where conception wasn’t denied, they decided to abort the child.  For more than a generation, tens of millions of children have been murdered around the globe.  Then a third sin developed: controlling conception now meant that sexual relationships could know no barriers. Men and women now live together without the benefit of marriage; they go from partner to partner.  Sex is magnified.  God’s rules concerning adultery and fornication are openly flaunted everywhere.

The world seems to have forgotten WHO it is that makes the grass grow and the crops to bring forth abundant harvests.  Is it man?  Certainly not!   We can apply fertilizers and cultivate the ground, but God can send a drought causing the crops to turn to dust at anytime.  Man can’t do anything about that.  Conversely, God can send quenching rains at just the right time and He can bless the crops so that they bring forth a record harvest.

 

It is God who’s set up the balances within this world. He sets up the right kind of atmospheric conditions so that we can enjoy life, breathing just the right amount of oxygen.   

Let’s narrow our focus now to the Christian family.  How are we to live in an alien world?  Are we to be guided by the philosophies of the societies around us?  One of the larger problems plaguing many Christian families is that they’ve set unbiblical standards for themselves.   The most important thing insofar as our relationship to God is that we obey Him and that we rear our children to obey Him — when we walk by the way, when we lie down, and when we rise up we tell our children about these things as outlined in Deuteronomy 6.  We are to rear our children in the fear and the nurture of the Lord.

 

Christian families should be abandoning themselves to God.  You may ask, how does this apply to the topic of birth control?  Well let’s consider the following verse:

 

I Corinthians 7:2-3   Nevertheless, [to avoid] fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband. 

 

 

 

 

Here God declares the husband’s body belongs to the wife, and the wife’s to the husband.  We are to live together as one flesh.  If we’d live that way — trusting that God in His wonderful blessings and sovereignty would create a child in the womb of the wife according to His good pleasure — then we would always be in the will of God.  We would be trusting in God to give us the perfect family rather than in ourselves.  We would no longer have to rely on contraception prescriptions or devices because our trust would be more properly placed in God.  For some, God’s perfect family may not include any children; for some, it may include only one child; for others, it may be five or thirteen children.  It’s that simple.

 

Regardless of our Christian family’s size, we won’t have to fear that we’re getting out of the will of God.  We will know every child that comes along is an evidence of the blessing of God. 

 

In summary, it all really boils down to trust.  In whom are we placing our trust?  Maybe we’re willing to trust God for many things in this life…but when it comes to the size of our family…maybe we’re not quite willing yet to let go of our own selfish desires or expectations.

 

What are your thoughts on this important matter?  Please let us know. 

 

To God Be The Glory!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Very Little Regard For Human Life

 

 

Recently many people in my neighborhood expressed outrage over an anti-abortion protest in which demonstrators had graphic posters depicting the results of taking the life of an unborn child.  While I do not fully condone the means used by these protesters, I do support the protection of human life – and that includes the lives of our unborn children.  In an editorial published in the newspaper one citizen complained that after witnessing this protest she was forced to sit her three children down to explain the meaning of abortion. She further wrote that her children would now likely grow to be abortion-rights supporters. I would like to have heard her definition of abortion.

One doesn’t grow up supporting terrorist organizations because he or she happens to view the graphic fruits of their labors on the news.  Before someone flames me, I’m not equating abortion-rights supporters with terrorist organizations.  My example highlights that our children adopt pro-abortion views not because of some gruesome posters seen on the way home from soccer practice. Our children advocate pro-abortion views because their parents show little regard for the sanctity of human life.

The incoming Administration in Washington is on-the-record as having little regard for human life – when that human life in an unborn child. 

They would have us tell our children it’s perfectly acceptable to stop a beating heart as long as it’s still within its mother’s womb – this is a mother’s choice after all, a privacy matter.

They would have us tell our children the life growing inside its mother’s womb isn’t really a child.  They call it a fetus, not because they’re interested in the use of precise terminology, but because they don’t want this unborn child to have the same rights as a human being.

After January 20, 2009 this nation will have even less regard for life.  From the President on down, the majority political position in America would tell our children it’s acceptable to stop the unborn’s beating hearts.

Maybe it’s not politically correct to call abortion murder. Maybe most newspaper editors wouldn’t even permit the linking of these two terms. Frankly, I don’t care much for political correctness. I’m more concerned about being biblically correct than I am politically correct.  

America is slaughtering unborn babies at the rate of one million per year!  We have put to death over seven times as many human beings as the Nazis slaughtered in the death camps of World War II.

Is there any hope for our children’s future given the sad state of affairs today and given the fact that our new President fully supports abortion rights?  Some might see the advances of abortion, pornography and the increasing acceptance of homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle and say it’s impossible for us to get off this wide path leading to destruction.

Thankfully, what is impossible for us is not impossible for God.  Only He can change our hearts and move us onto the narrow path that leads to life – a life eternal with no possibility of being aborted.

To God Be The Glory!

The Timing of the Rapture

 

After quite a long hiatus, we’re back with another topic posting.  This one is sure to evoke some good discussions and we pray that the comments will be rooted in Scripture rather than in individual opinions or denominational teachings.  Let’s look to the Bible alone – Sola Scriptura – for answers.  The topic for this posting is: when will the Rapture take place?   

 

By “rapture” I’m referring to the bringing of believers into the presence of Christ in Heaven.  Many teach that the church will be raptured before the final tribulation period.  I can’t tell you where this line of teaching originated, but I know it didn’t come from the pages of Scripture.  I find no evidence of any kind in the Bible that teaches the Rapture occurs before the final tribulation period.

 

I believe the totality of Scripture consistently teaches that the Rapture will occur on the last day. It will be at the end of time.

1 Corinthians 15:51-52: “Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”

 

The LORD is talking about the Rapture. We’ll not all die, but all true believers are going to receive their resurrected bodies.  Notice that God also gives us information about the timing — at the sound of the last trumpet.

 

Revelation Chapter 11 tells us about the last trumpet.  This is where the seventh trumpet sounds – and there’s no eighth trumpet; the 7^th is the last.  The context of Rev 11:15 (when the seventh trumpet sounds) is that of Judgment Day.  It’s the end of time.

 

 [Please, no comments here about WHEN the last day will be – let’s leave that to others]

 

Let’s look also at John 6.  In four different places in the one chapter Jesus declares that all believers will be resurrected the last day – in verses 39, 40, 44 and 54.  It’s as if Christ wanted to be certain we understood this biblical fact that all believers will be resurrected on the last day.  

 

Now let’s consider 1 Thessalonians Chapter 4. 

1 Thess 4:16-17 – “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive [and] remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”

 

From what God tells us here, there’s no question that the rapture of the believers will be a simultaneous event with the resurrection of believers.  Logically it follows then: if the resurrection of believers is the last day, then  the rapture of believers is also the last day.

 

In John 12:48 Christ declared that this Word will judge the unbelievers on the last day. 

John 12:48 — “He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.”

 

This means that the last day is Judgment Day – and Judgment Day is at the end of time. Therefore, if the believers are resurrected on the last day, they are raptured on the last day. And therefore the rapture is at the end of time.

 

I readily admit I’m no Einstein and some may argue that it wasn’t very long ago that I fell off the turnip truck, but it seems to me that the Bible is quite clear about the timing of the rapture. Scripture consistently and coherently leads us to the fact that the Rapture will be on the last day — at the end of time.

 

Too often these days, people are so quick to trust extra-biblical sources rather than using the Bible as its own interpreter.  People will read books peppered with many biblical quotations and because they trust the author of that book, they then trust every statement the author is making.  The only Author we can trust enough to do that with is the LORD Himself.

 

We welcome anyone to comment on this topic, showing us chapter and verse from the Bible where the Rapture is at some other point than the end of time.

 

To God Be The Glory,

Jeff & Cindy