I think it’s supposed to be 6pm New York time or for those of us here in California, 3pm today. You know what’s sad about all this? I just read an article about one guy who spent his entire life savings $140,000 on subway ads about this.
Contrary to the Bible, he thinks you can know the exact time and day but you cannot know whether you’re saved because that’s supposedly up to God to decide. The Bible tells us no one knows the time or day.
More importantly the Bible says, “These things are written so that you may know you have eternal life.” The Bible tells us to make sure of our salvation. So God has not left us with any reason to question.
The Bible says if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Confess does not mean to rattle off a list to a priest in a booth. It means to come into agreement with God regarding that sin.
If we ignore the sin, we don’t agree with God. If we rationalize sin, we don’t agree with God. If we would rather keep the sin than keep Jesus Christ, we don’t agree with God. If we consider it a small thing to thwart the love and authority of God, then we don’t agree with God. If we pretend it was an accident and a result of being too weak to stop or that it’s just the way we’re made, then we don’t agree with God.
Agreement comes when we take responsibility for it and confess that our sin was a choice we made, that we were willing to betray God, that we were unfaithful to God. And then we have to agree to let that sin go, to take hold of the grace of God through faith and give that sin up for the love of Christ.
It is by grace we are saved through faith. And faith is not rattling off an empty prayer to get our ticket to live for the devil. But, if we have confessed and surrendered our sin and no longer live in them, we can know for sure whether we are or are not saved.
Are there sins we cling to? Are there sins we continue to live in? Then know we’re not saved. Salvation is not a play toy. It’s not where we use God as a rabbit’s foot. It’s where we come and die.
Salvation is death. Death to oneself. Don’t think I’m being mean and judgmental. This is something we all struggle with and I find it as hard as anyone to grasp and apply to my life. But sin fights tooth and nail to stay alive. It will cloak itself in every beautiful garment, defend itself with every weapon, and hide itself in every fortress it can find.
And if you surrender to Jesus Christ, these sins, these gates of hell cannot prevail against you if you live for God and die to self.
Revival is both a rising up from the dead and it is death itself. And God has not left us in the lurch without any possibility of knowing whether we are saved or not. We all sinned, and He gave us a second chance to be saved dying on the cross and paying for our sins.
So we can know whether we are saved, but we cannot know the day or hour of his return.
Are you and your loved ones and friends saved? Are you afraid to pray for them or share with them if it means the difference between eternal life and death for them? Would you risk being rejected or considered a fanatic if their salvation were at stake?
Do you love your friends and family that much? Do you love God that much? Would you or I let Jesus suffer in vain for them and for the cross to go for nothing? Or would you give your life to make sure that doesn’t happen?
Can we handle searching questions like this? Or will we cling to the notion that there are so many alternative religions and beliefs vying for the same commitment and crying for it with the same intensity? If there be a million competing religions all of which display some goodness and wisdom but none of which deal with our sin and separation from God, can we be satisfied being eternally separated from God clinging to another form of wisdom and religion?
If we side with the atheist and demand a proof for God, will we be satisfied with eternal hell if God finds we have been given all the evidence God intended for us to have watching to see whether we will admit to what we have seen with integrity or whether we will stand back and mock those who believe?
If we join the agnostic pointing at hypocrisy and stupidity of those who have followed after the Robert Tiltons and Peter Popovs who have put on the most stupid of fake revivals, and if we throw Christianity into the big soup of world superstitions just because it makes for a good excuse to live in sin, will any of those excuses matter when we stand before God and give an account for our lives?
Can we come into agreement with God? Can I come into agreement with God? Can I strip myself of my own lies and excuses and live what I preach? Or will I live out my life in hypocrisy and find myself in the lake of fire in the end together with all the friends and loved ones I betrayed with false comforts and defense of sin? Or will I love faithfully both God and my family and friends? Will I pray?
We cannot know the time or day of His return, and we don’t know when we will die. Will we lose our chance to lead family and friends to salvation forever? Will we lose our own souls forever? We can make sure, but will we?
But, then we may wonder how a loving God can send anyone to hell. In a way He does and in a way He doesn’t. He lays out the plan of salvation for us–the plan He had predestined for us before the creation of the world. He predestined that some would go to heaven and some would go to hell and He made the way to each place perfectly righteous and just so that if we perish, it will be right that we do, and if we are saved, it will be for the glory of God and His love and His mercy. He calls us to choose. But, we all choose sin. Then He suffers dying on the cross to make it possible to save us without being unjust and dishonest about the guilt of our sin. Then He calls to us and asks, “Will you surrender your sin and follow Me?” Then we have a choice. We can repent, surrender our sin and go to heaven. Or we can tell Him, “No–you can love me, die for me, and I would still rather go to hell forever than to love you and live with you for eternity.”
By giving us the choice of heaven or hell, God has given us the choice whether to love Him with an infinite love or to hate Him with an infinite hate. And by sinning, we chose infinite hate. That is the choice we already made, and we might just perish into hell without a second chance, and this would be totally just and right. But, God paid a horrible price to give us a second chance.
The question remains, will you and I take it?
