Salvation

The Bible, which was completed about the year 100 A.D., is a Book like no other. It’s God’s Law Book to mankind. It reveals facts of historical events, including God creating this universe from nothing with just His voice, the worldwide flood in Noah’s day, the rise and fall of the nation of Israel, the birth, ministry, and death of the Lord Jesus Christ, the rise and fall of the Church Age from the ashes of national Israel to the start of Judgement upon the churches for their apostasy that started the 23 year Great Tribulation that began on May 21, 1988, as well as the Gospel message of forgiveness and redemption for a small remnant of mankind who would become God’s children and be gifted eternal life, and lastly, difficult to understand prophecy concerning the end of this world.

Every Word in the Bible was God-breathed, and therefore, trustworthy. God intentionally hid Biblical truth to force its readers to pray for understanding, and to make us ‘work’ to find these precious hidden gems of truth. God considers Biblical truth as a treasure that must be searched after and dug up.

On the surface, is the historical account of people, places, and events. However, upon closer examination of the individual verses, and how the translators translated various words, and comparing those translations in other Bible verses, often opens a deeper meaning than just the historical details. Often that deeper meaning is referencing the Gospel message of Salvation, using historical events as ‘props’. Numbers also have a deeper meaning than just the surface level count of objects. For example, the number five is a reference to ‘Atonement’. How do we know this? By looking at other places in the Bible where the number five is used. Also, experience as you become more familiar with the Bible.

Jesus spoke in parables to hide Biblical truth. Unless God Himself gives us spiritual ears to hear, and spiritual eyes to see, we will be unable to understand many hidden Biblical truths.

Deuteronomy 29:4
“Yet the LORD has not given you a heart to perceive and eyes to see and ears to hear, to this very day.”

Romans 11:8
“God has given them a spirit of stupor, Eyes that they should not see And ears that they should not hear, To this very day.”

The casual Bible reader or those who grew up on church doctrine will often have trouble understanding the Bible. To arrive at Biblical truth about a particular topic in the Bible, ALL the verses in the Bible on that subject must be looked at closely and weighed against each other. We know that every verse in the Bible is true. We only have Biblical truth when ALL the verses in the Bible on that subject are weighed against each other, and our conclusion isn’t in conflict with any of the other verses.

For example, concerning our topic of Salvation, if you just cite John 3:16:

John 3:16
““For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

and conclude that Salvation is available to anyone who ‘believes’ (mentally agrees), then what do you do with ALL the other verses that speak to the same subject of Salvation, but from the angle of Election and predestination? If you are truly interested in the truth, then you would be obligated to search out those verses as well. Put them all in one pot so to speak, mix them up, and then arrive at a conclusion that is NOT in conflict with any other verses in the Bible. Only then will you have truth! Many casual readers of the Bible, church denominations, and Christian ministries, have failed to aggressively search for Biblical truth. They will pick and choose Bible verses like an ala-carte menu to get to a conclusion that they favor, and disregard the rest. This is one of the reasons that the New Testament churches fell out of favor with God, and entered a period of Judgement when the 1,955 years of the Church Age (33 A.D.-May 21, 1988) ended on May 21, 1988 when the 23 year Great Tribulation (May 21, 1988-May 21, 2011) began. .

Summary of Salvation

1. God, in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, paid the sin debt of a hand-picked remnant of all mankind, from all generations, and from all nations, FROM the foundation of the world. In other words, Christ paid for a specific number of sins, for a specific number of individuals that He personally selected, BEFORE man was even created. In this way, Salvation was available on the Old Testament side of the cross, and man had ZERO ability to impact his eternal destination during his lifetime.
2. God controlled 100% of the Salvation process. Nothing was left to chance. An individual who had their sin debt paid from the foundation of the world would have no clue that this was the case. This individual would eventually be born in time, and go about his everyday life. God had obligated Himself to FIND each of these ‘pardoned’ sinners throughout human history, and at some point in that individual’s life, God would GIVE that individual a new ‘heart’, a resurrected spirit that would live forever. The same spirit that Adam and Eve had BEFORE they lost it when they disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden.
3. With rare exceptions, like John the Baptist, who was given a new resurrected spirit in the womb, we are ALL born spiritually DEAD. We are as Lazarus in the tomb, a stinking corpse. There is absolutely nothing we can spiritually do as a stinking corpse. Like Lazarus, we would have to WAIT to see IF Jesus Himself would call us out of the tomb.The ONLY thing we could do during our lifetime was to be under the hearing of God’s Word, such as reading the Bible. God would only do His spiritual work in the presence of His Word. Being under the hearing of God’s Word often would have given God additional opportunities to do a work within you, if you were indeed one of God’s Elect.
4. All the false works-grace gospels that the apostate churches, seminaries, and Christian ministries promote, center around some type of WORK that the individual must do to ‘get right’ with God to ‘earn’ Salvation. You must ‘believe’. You must have ‘faith’. You have to join a church. You have to get baptized. You have to participate in the Lord’s Supper. You have to only eat certain foods. You can’t work on Sundays, etc. These are ALL works, and in reality, contribute absolutely NOTHING to being GIFTED a new resurrected spirit. Who would be gifted Salvation during human history was decided BEFORE man was even created.
5. The possibility of Salvation ENDED on May 21, 2011. The exact day of the 7,000th anniversary of the start of the Noachian flood in 4,990 B.C. This was the exact day, 7,000 years earlier, that God Himself SHUT THE DOOR to the ark, and to Heaven in our day. ALL of God’s predestined Elect had now been found, accounted for, and were secure under God’s power forever. While we may not like the fact that the Salvation era is over, this is what the Bible teaches.
6. Another erroneous church teaching is that ‘Hell’ is a place of ETERNAL TORMENT for all those who didn’t ‘accept’ Christ as their Lord and Savior during their lifetime. Hurry up and accept Christ before you die, or it will be too late! You will be tortured FOREVER if you fail to do this work! This is bizarre on face value when you think about it, especially when we now understand that man has ZERO ability to enter the safety of God’s Kingdom under his own power. For Hell to be a place of eternal torment, would mean that God created a majority of mankind, just so He could punish them forever, since we know that God only gifted Salvation to a small remnant of mankind. That is bizarre, since we know that God was merciful to the just and unjust alike. God’s sunshine and rain fell upon everyone. We also know that there was a limit to how severely someone could be punished. An offender could only be given 39 lashings maximum, NOT 40! Being punished forever would not square with this limit of punishment. By God’s mercy, all those who were NOT gifted Salvation (the majority of mankind), will eventually die, lose consciousness, and return to the dust. They cease to exist or experience pain or joy.
7. Most of those who were members of local congregations were NOT saved. The Bible calls them Tares or weeds. They ‘looked’ like they might be saved, but God never paid their sin debt from the foundation of the world, and thus, they were never given a new resurrected spirit. By God’s mercy, the Tares will never know they didn’t make it to Heaven. They will eventually die, lose consciousness, and return to the dust.
8. Even though our eternal destination was out of our control, we can still enjoy blessings from God in this life by treating others the way we want to be treated. Respect, kindness, compassion, empathy, a warm smile. Small acts of kindness, like holding a door open for someone, or saying good morning to someone passing by. etc. NONE of us deserved the free GIFT of eternal life. No one was cheated. The wages of sin is death.

I pray this discussion of Salvation was helpful and clear in that it removed the clutter of the enemy who confused the REAL Salvation process. God did 100% of the work. God gets 100% of the glory! We are living at a time in history when most of Biblical prophesy is behind us. We have a much clearer vision today where are are along the Biblical timeline of history

Mankind has already lived through the Old Testament era, the New Testament Church Age, and the Great Tribulation-which included the Latter Rain-a great in-gathering of God’s hand picked elect. We have been in a prolonged period of God’s End Time Judgement since May 21, 2011. Our eternal destination is locked in.

I praise God to be alive during this time to witness these events.

We were all blessed to experience this precious gift of human life. Thank you Lord for this opportunity!