Reblogged from Terry James Prophecy Line
One of the most false and cutting
accusations launched at the belief that the Bible teaches that a person
cannot lose his or her salvation when truly born again (John 3:3) is:
“If you believe once saved, always saved, you are saying that people can
live any way they want without fear of punishment.” Or so the line of
condemning criticism goes.
The absolute assurance of eternal
security, of course, engenders no such thought within the mind truly
regenerated by the saving power of Jesus Christ. The Bible teaches that
the Lord convicts His children in their spirits, and that habitual,
unrepented-of sin will result in severe penalties—even physical death,
in some cases. The Heavenly Father’s patience is longsuffering, but it
is not infinite.
A person who is a child of God cannot sin
without severe repercussions, if repentance isn’t forthcoming. But,
that person will never be kicked out of God’s family. Never.
A kindred sort of accusation is thrown at
those who believe in the Pre-Trib view of Bible prophecy. The
Pre-Tribulation view, of course, is the one we believe God’s Word
teaches. It is the view that Jesus Christ will call all who are born
again to Himself before the Tribulation, which is the last seven years
of history leading to the Second Advent (Rev. 19: 11).
The angry diatribe against the Pre-Trib
Rapture view—by even genuine Christians, in many cases—usually goes
something like this: “People like you, who believe that the Lord is
going to rapture them before the Tribulation, think you can live however
you want, because you think and teach falsely that you are going to be
rescued before God’s judgment and wrath fall, no matter what.”
The non-Christian accusers who castigate
those of us who hold the Pre-Trib rapture view have their own version.
It goes something like: “Christians who believe like that don’t care
anything about making the world better. You even hope for things to get
worse and worse. You wish for earthquakes, famines, pestilence, war in
the Middle East, and for Armageddon to hurry up and get here so you will
go to your pie in the sky, and watch the rest of us get ours.”
Although the first criticism is
absolutely not true, I have to admit that, regarding the second, too
often I’ve sensed—even heard—such sentiments from some of those who
believe in the Pre-Trib rapture. And, it is entirely the wrong attitude
for the Christian to hold. There are no excuses for wanting the
Christ-rejecting world of non-believers to be the recipients of God’s
judgment and wrath. It is only by God’s unfathomable grace that every
one of us isn’t headed into that time of unprecedented horror.
No matter how—to use Lot’s King James
Version word—”vexed” we becomes by the debauched, debased actions of the
lost world around us, our job as Christ’s children—His representatives
here on earth—is of a completely different nature than wanting to see
them “get what’s coming” to them. The changed nature produced by being
born again into God’s eternal family should make you and me do just the
opposite of wanting them, in our vexation, to get what we see as coming
to them.
The Christian whose spirit is attuned to
the Holy Spirit’s desire for the lost doesn’t want to see them “get
what’s coming to them” either during the Tribulation or upon death.
Rather, we want to do all within our power to keep them from having to
go through the coming time of God’s judgment and wrath. That’s what
Christ’s Great Commission to His disciples before He ascended to sit at
the Father’s right hand is all about, you see. That is what God’s
love—love that those who have Christ indwelling them possess—is all
about. (Read Matthew 28:18-20.)
In the same vein, that’s what Bible
prophecy is all about. Prophecy given in God’s Word has purpose—profound
purpose. Bible prophecy has at its center the commission from the Lord
to forewarn of God’s judgment and wrath to come upon all who oppose
Him—the Lord of Heaven and Creator of all things. It is not the hatred
of God for the lost people of this fallen planet that drives prophecy.
It is the love of God that powers His prophetic Word. It must be the
Christian’s desire, therefore, to study Bible prophecy and put forth
those forewarnings out of a spirit of God’s love, not through an
anger-filled abhorrence of those who are lost.
Christians who do study prophecy—and they
seem to be few these days, I’m sad to have to say—are often heard
wondering about when Christ will call the church (born-again believers)
in the rapture. Everything seems so ripe for His plucking His people
from this sin-darkened sphere.
Nothing and no one can change God’s
timing for His next catastrophic intervention into earth’s history. It
will happen exactly on time, as He has determined since before the
foundation of this world. However, we might as believers look to
ourselves for the Lord’s—often in our view—delay in calling us as
outlined in 1 Corinthians 15:51-55 and 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18.
The apostle Peter gave the heart of the
reason Christ hasn’t raptured His church: “The Lord is not slack
concerning His promise, as some men count slackness; but is
longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that
all should come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9).
The purpose of Bible prophecy is to show
the love of God to a lost and otherwise doomed world. God is not willing
that anyone should perish (die in his or her sins), but that all should
come to repentance (accept Jesus Christ as the one and only sacrifice
for sin that God will accept).
The Lord is “longsuffering.” The reason,
I’m convinced, that the Lord seems so “slack” to many in His coming is
because those same people have neglected their duty to share the love of
God with the lost—the lost whom God loves so very much that He sent His
only begotten Son in order that they not perish.
It is well past the time for God’s people
to begin investing in getting the message of the love of God to those
who will otherwise not hear the warning of deadly things soon to befall
this Christ-rejecting planet. Considering these times that so
dramatically are signaling the coming Tribulation, Bible prophecy can
and must be used as a productive tool for evangelism.
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