âWait for the Lord. Behave yourself manfully, and be of good courage. Do not be faithless, but stay in your place and do not turn back.â – Thomas a Kempis
âTo learn strong faith is to endure great trials. I have learned my faith by standing firm amid severe testings.â – George MuellerÂ
We live in a very pressurized time. There are so many things pushing us to conform. Conform to the ânew sexualityâ. Conform to new standards of marriage. Conform to the newest theory about God. We are facing trials of faith and we must stand strong. Jesus saw a time coming like the one we live in:Â
And Jesus answered and said to them: âTake heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, âI am the Christ,â and will deceive many. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.Â
âThen they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My nameâs sake. And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.Â
âTherefore when you see the âabomination of desolation,â spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy placeâ (whoever reads, let him understand), âthen let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let him who is on the housetop not go down to take anything out of his house. And let him who is in the field not go back to get his clothes. But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days! And pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath. For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the electâs sake those days will be shortened.Â
âThen if anyone says to you, âLook, here is the Christ!â or âThere!â do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand.Â
âTherefore if they say to you, âLook, He is in the desert!â do not go out; or âLook, He is in the inner rooms!â do not believe it. For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For wherever the carcass is, there the eagles will be gathered together.â (Matthew 24:4-26)Â
Why is this all so important? Because in the Bible we have two doctrines that create tension. One doctrine, pushed by Calvinism, is that once you are saved, you will always be saved and God knows who is going to be saved. This had led some Calvinists to stop doing altar calls. They reason that whoever is going to get saved will get saved. There are other denominations that believe you can lose your salvation. This is seen in the extreme beliefs of the Armeniansâwe are moments from slipping into hell.Â
If you read the Bible with a clear eye, you will see that the Bible suggests both things. You can be saved forever, yet you can lose it. So, letâs not spend our time arguing which one is rightâthey are both right. I say, letâs not lose it. Letâs work on living a life that is marked by what Thomas a Kempis says: âWait for the Lord. Behave yourself manfully, and be of good courage. Do not be faithless, but stay in your place and do not turn back.âÂ
Your salvation is gift and this is through the grace of Christ in the heavenlies. The Holy Ghost power that I am walking is the power that will rule eternity well past this present age. We get glimpses of the glory we are going to live for eternity in the next world. âIf we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.â (C. S. Lewis) The closer we come to the end of time, the more frequent and the more intense the expressions are. You have the same Holy Ghost in you that created the universe, that raised Christ from the dead, you have the same Holy Ghost in you.Â
I believe that backsliders can come back to Christ. I also believe that people can become so indifferent or so deceived or so indifferent to their need that they canât come back, that their faith dwindles to nothing.Â