What needless anxiety Christians suffer. You didn’t have to earn the beginning of your salvation, and there is no way you can earn its end, except through submissive faith in Christ. Galatians 3:2-3 says: Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh? (which speaks of works of self-effort). Christ is the author (beginner) and the finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2). Jesus was a carpenter. “Author and finisher" were carpentry terms, which meant to begin work on a piece (authoring) and finishing it. Christ is able to save us TO THE UTTERMOST (Hebrews 7:25). I’m sure Jesus wouldn’t start making a plow, but leave it half-finished. I believe that the only way a Christian could ever risk losing his or her own salvation is if they decide they don’t want Jesus anymore and take themselves out of His workshop for repairing broken souls. No one else can take you or me out of Jesus’ Hand. Jesus says in John 10:28 that no one can pluck His sheep out of His Hand. However, there are lots of Scriptures which warn against falling away from the faith, such as Hebrews 6:4-8 and II Peter 2:20-22. Christ will never force anyone to remain in His love.
In I Thessalonians 4: 16-18 Paul says: 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. Wherefore comfort one another with these words. Paul did not say: "We who outshine all the rest spiritually will rise to meet the Lord in the air, so warn one another with these words.” What comfort would that have been to persecuted Christians? Worrying about being less spiritual than someone else would have created fear of facing the Antichrist, not joy in anticipating Christ’s Appearing. Jesus said that the Tribulation Period will be so bad that it will be the worst period in all history (Matt.24:21). If the Antichrist’s oppression is going to be the most monstrous regime in history, you can be sure he’ll invent unprecedented, terrible tortures to ensure believers don’t die a quick and easy death. It wouldn’t be a breeze to resist the Mark if you watched someone else being torn apart. Even Peter denied Jesus in a moment of fear.
It’s okay to want to escape this terrible time of unprecedented trial. Jesus told us to pray that we’re counted worthy to ESCAPE all these things (Luke 21:36). We find favor with God through Christ alone. We began by grace, and we must run our race by grace. When we got converted nobody stood over us and told us we had to go out and do a long list of do’s and don’ts before the Holy Spirit had permission to breathe life into our innermost being. If our ultimate translation into immortality is the end product of our salvation process, then why should that part be withheld from us anymore than the first part of our salvation was? Is the Blessed Holy Spirit any less of a Gift than the Rapture will be? God breathed His Holy Spirit into our hearts by faith, not as wages for good works. Paul asks in Galatians 3:2: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by the hearing of faith? Ephesians 1:13-14 tells us that the Holy Spirit is the earnest (guarantee) of the future redemption of God’s purchased possession, which we are. Ephesians 4:30 says we are sealed by the Spirit of God until the day of our redemption.
What? Aren’t we already redeemed? From the penalty of sin, certainly. Also we are being delivered daily from the power of sin. And when we are translated to heaven we will finally be delivered from the presence of sin. Romans 8:23 assures us of the future redemption of our body. Romans 13:11 tells us that our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. I take this also to mean our salvation (redemption) from this sinful earth. The same usage of this term "redemption" occurs in Revelation 14:3, where a special task force of Jewish evangelists has just been redeemed from the earth. In Luke 21:28 Jesus tells His disciples to look up, for their redemption will draw near when signs of His appearing begin to occur in the world. If that imminent redemption from the earth is only for part of His Body, then Christ’s Body is about to be split apart. Suppose you went to the airport and tried to get into the plane, only to have the door shut on that half of your body that wasn’t "good enough" to get in. Half of you would be left in Houston while the other part flew to New York! Jesus prayed in John 17: 11 for the unity of His Body, that we would all be one, even as He and His Father are one. If we continue to walk with Jesus in submissive faith and hold fast to salvation by grace through faith in His finished work on Calvary, we are part of Christ’s Body on earth and can expect to participate in the Rapture of the Church. We began by faith, and we finish by faith.
As for this crazy notion that the Great Tribulation will "purify" backsliders caught in the cathouse, I very much doubt it. If earth is bad now, it gets much worse. Gross darkness will fill the earth during the Tribulation (Isaiah 60:2). If a backslider visits the Red Light District now, chances are he’ll stay there during the Tribulation, just like Lot pitched his tent toward Sodom and ended up living there. I get the feeling that backsliders will have a harder time repenting during the Tribulation than sinners who come to Christ for the very first time. The Apostle Peter gives a grim warning about backsliders in II Peter 2:20-22: For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ; they are again entangled therein and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. For it had been better for them not to have known the way to righteousness, than, after they had known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them. But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire. Notice, Peter doesn’t hold out much hope for backsliders who go back to the pigpen. I doubt Peter is talking about believers going to baseball games or wrestling matches. He’s talking about the proverbial sow jumping back into the muck and mire of sin because she no longer wants to keep clean in the Blood of Jesus.
Many self-righteous people in Jesus’ day criticized Him for enjoying food and drink and socializing with tax collectors (Matt. 11:16-19). Those same people also criticized John the Baptist for doing without the finer things of life altogether. Some might have even thought John to be more virtuous than Jesus because John did not mix in sinful society, but lived in the desert. John fasted most of the time and even when he did eat, he ate grasshoppers. But John himself said of Jesus in Matthew 3:11: I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and fire. In verses 13 and 14 Jesus comes to John to be baptized. But John says: I have need to be baptized by thee, and comest thou to me? So much for religious stereotyping to judge someone else as being unworthy of being raptured!
We are purified by the Blood of Christ alone. We deny His power to save us to the uttermost through His grace when we deny this key truth. The Tribulation is going to be the darkest, dirtiest, and most deadly dangerous period in all history. Sinners are going to take off their gloves during the Tribulation, and cool dude satan is going to be exposed in all his awful ugliness. It’s plum scary. What a foul hole this world will be! Being left behind to be in the Tribulation would no more cleanse a backslider of his sins than taking a bath in a sewer! If professing believers are too chicken to live for Christ before men now, then how would living in a hell on earth Tribulation Period make them more holy and courageous?
Some think it seems too good to be true that all of Christ’s true believers would be taken up to heaven in the same load. That brings the spiritually proud down a peg or two, so there is no room for boasting (Eph. 2:8-9). Also, the completion of our salvation (getting our resurrection body in the Rapture) is the one part of being a Christian that is all pleasure and no pain. No more trials, no more hassle from unbelievers. But if you’re going to exclude some believers from the final part of their redemption, where do you draw the line to decide who’s worthy and who’s not? And what religious official on earth is divinely invested with the authority to set the bare minimum of good conduct which pays your fare to go up in the Rapture? What qualifies you to be the cream of the crop when Christ harvests His believers from the earth? All I know is, if abiding in Christ the Living Vine isn’t enough to qualify me to go up in the Rapture, I doubt anything else will.
(continued in Part 3)
Author Resource:-
Patricia Backora has been filled with the Holy Spirit since 1970. She believes in the nine Gifts of the Spirit, and the imminent return of Christ. Patricia’s articles address problems and spiritual needs in the Christian church. She believes that the rightly divided Word of God (2 Tim.2:15) must be the final authority.
http://banpreachergreed.tripod.comhttp://kingdomage.tripod.com
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