Can we lose our salvation?

Posted: February 26, 2022 in Bible, Christ, Christian, GOD, religion, Salvation, Sin
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I’m not sure.

I was raised in a church that taught (but denied that they taught) you had to basically work your way to Heaven. I haven’t been involved in that congregation for almost three decades, but my siblings still are. As a teen I walked away from God and the Christian religion and practiced paganism for over two decades. I never was fully satisfied with my search for spiritual truth and ultimate peace by alternate means and about ten years ago, after some hardships, I was convinced to give the Christian God another try and as soon as I did, he saved me from the burdens and issues I had drug along with me. So after I gave myself to Him, I realized that I had arrived back full circle to the place I had basically started as a child. Subsequently, I decided that I was going to prove the teachings within the scriptures to myself through prayer and an expositional journey through My Lord’s word.

When I started this process a decade ago, I didn’t believe in the rapture, I didn’t believe in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and I had no idea what religious affiliation my mentor, Chuck Missler was…I went in blind, but open to learning. I quickly found out that Chuck Missler believed in the things I mentioned but he also encouraged disbelief so we would figure it out for ourselves (Acts 17:11) and I appreciated that. I had not encountered a teacher with that attitude before (the church of my youth, if you didn’t walk lockstep with their teaching they would virtually break your bible over their knee and drum you out of the doors, locking them behind you). In the last ten years I have grown to understand more about the scriptures than I ever imagined I would and it is a very enjoyable journey. I now am down with the concept of the rapture as well as the separate destinies of the nation of Israel and the church. I find the scriptures are plain and open for all to see about the teaching of the continued presence of the Holy Spirit within our lives and the existence of spiritual gifts (unlike the legalistic, work based, replacement theology that the church of my youth taught). A few months ago, I really started to grasp and understand the difference between tongues…IE, the tongues of interpretation and the tongues of fire, or prayer language. I have my mind solidly wrapped around the predestination-free will argument that seems to bumfuzzle so many. The rapture of the bride of Christ is there in black and white and in some ways, and buried in the word by patterns and example in many locations of the bible. The book of Revelation can be a little scary, but not in an intimidating way, it is a very forceful and straight blueprint of the past, present and future condition of the church and the nation of Israel laid out in a surprisingly plain way, once we get rid of all the cobwebs of allegorization and fallacy swept out from within our minds. I have also found a home at a small, but swiftly growing, full-gospel congregation near my home and I feel I am on the road to salvation.

What about salvation? Chuck Missler makes it plain that he believes that once you accept Christ and achieve salvation that you are locked into a seat on the glory train…but I’m not so sure…I still think there are some situations, noted in the scriptures, which make it seem you can lose your salvation.

The church of my youth had a roulette wheel, sort of view of salvation…you are saved until you sin, then as soon as you commit a sin, you are condemned to the lake of fire, until you repent, then you are OK…of course until you commit the next sin, then you are destined for hell again…and on, and on, and on. I don’t believe that point of view in the least. I do believe in the assurance of salvation through the mercy and grace that Our Lord assures us of…but the scriptures do indicate that it is not a free ride. The bible definitely teaches we have a personal responsibility of obedience and to produce fruit for the Lord. But what if we don’t? Is it the gallows? I don’t think so, especially if we understand the grace and mercy aspect of the scriptures. No one (except for Christ Jesus Himself) has been, is or will ever be good enough to earn salvation. God and also Christ the Son, in a couple of different places in the scriptures say that no man can snatch Their flock (us) out of Their hands. That is a couple of pretty powerful statements about our security in our salvation. However there are a couple of other places that alludes to the fact that maybe if we really try hard enough, we can slip out of Their grasps.

At this point in my journey I haven’t digested the New Covenant enough to have come to a firm conclusion. I tend to concentrate on sections and themes of the bible related to those sections that are pertinent to the book, or books of the bible I am currently working on in my journey and at the present I am in the minor prophets of the Old Covenent. I feel The Lord is providing me information as I need it and since I was compelled to answer this discussion question, even thought I wanted to stay away and not have anything to do with it, tells me it is His will that I start paying attention to it.

Let’s look at the word salvation. In the Old Testament the word salvation is normally taken from a feminine noun derivative of the base yasha which means to save, be saved, be delivered. In the New Testament, the word seems to consistently be the Greek word; soteria which means he who brings salvation, the hope of future salvation, a deliverer and is apparently the Greek equivalent to the Hebrew yeshuw’ah which means basically the same thing.

OK, let us start with some verses that I believe can cause confusion.

Romans 10:13 says: For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. (KJV) I know of some denominations that base their gospel upon this verse. I have to say, in my life I have grown very gun-shy about well-intentioned folks creating doctrine from single sources within the scriptures. I had a close relative that was a prime example of the danger of this for they believed if you are not an active member of the Church of Christ, you are hell-bound and they build this doctrine upon a single source that comes from Romans 16:16 (they handily ignore the name The Way from Acts and the Church of God which is all through I Corinthians…)

What about those that hear the gospel and are drawn to profess and call upon the name of The Lord and feel the Holy Spirit…but then they never turn from their sinful ways…they exhibit no change within their lives. If an ax murderer fell down on his knees and called on the name of The Lord…but he remained an ax murderer…if he only gave credence to the word but never submitted to the Lordship and therefore never started to grow and mature, he never yielded to The Lord…has he still achieved salvation? Also, then what about the apparent ‘unpardonable sin’ of blaspheming the Holy Spirit that we find in Luke?

Christ is pretty clear about what He expects and He says in Matthew 7:21-24 that not all that cry Lord, Lord will receive a ticket on the glory train but those that submit and yield to the Lord’s will.

Matthew 7:21-24 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: (KJV)

I believe the answer is not as simple as calling upon the name of The Lord, but apparently salvation is dependent on those other conditions that Christ outlines. I personally lean (I’m not sure why) toward Chuck Missler’s view and I feel that it is possibly conditional on The Lord’s knowledge of our heart and our giving up of our pride (which in Isaiah is considered the base of all sin) and yielding to the will of Our Lord to achieve salvation…but I am going to have to absorb and digest more of His precious word before it ‘clicks’ with me.

What about Hebrews 6:4-6 For [it is] impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put [him] to an open shame. (KJV)? To take it out of context and to look at it by itself (which unfortunately some churches do) it would seem to create a conundrum. Unless this same viewpoint is clearly covered somewhere else in the scriptures, in my thinking it doesn’t mean what a lot of denominational leaders think it does. So, what does it mean? Was this passage a special judgment reserved for the apostolic Jews? Possibly. We know that God had harsh rules design just for His people that weren’t levied on the Gentiles, such as death penalty for not observing the Sabbath properly, among others. Does it mean something else? I just don’t know…the jury is still out…but now that the ramifications about salvation on my radar I will come to a solid, teachable conclusion within a short time, The Lord willing.

God Bless, Jim

The Birthday of the Church

Posted: February 26, 2022 in Bible, Christ, Christian, Church, Pentecost, religion
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We, as Christians, all know that the church was established on the Day of Pentecost as we are told in Acts chapter 2. The Day of Pentecost (also known as the Feast of Weeks) is one of seven major feasts of Israel that the Jews celebrate every year and it occurs fifty days after the Sunday that follows the Feast of Passover.

I have often wondered why the birthday of the church on Pentecost (betrothal day of the bride of Christ) is never mentioned, much less celebrated amongst the Christian community? I think it may have to do with the Christian traditions carried down through the centuries from biased roots grown from the early church fathers. Some of Chuck Missler’s recordings touch on this matter in a round about way when his, and other scholars research have shown that the early church did it’s dead level best to separate themselves from anything relating to Israel because of their anti-Semitic view point, blaming the Nation of Israel for the crucifixion of Christ as was evident by the rulings made by the Council of Nice in 325AD1 when they created their own “Passover Day‘, that is calculated as the first Sunday following the first full moon following a pagan holiday in the spring of the year called the Spring Equinox2

When you read about the church’s development in the book of Acts starting with the preachings and teachings of Peter and other disciples and then continuing with the miraculous ministry of Paul and his fabulous interpretations of the gospel of Christ for us through the inspired letters that he wrote, you don’t see any anti-Semitic tendencies coming through. Somehow, though, in the decades that followed, despite the warnings to watch for false apostles, teachers and preachers by Peter, James, John and Paul, Satan was successful in embedding enough false teachers within the church to create small misdirections that grew into the beginning of the allegorization and misinterpretations of God’s word. The apparent influence of Satan, coupled with a sanctioned hatred toward the Jews, caused the early church to eventually chose to distance itself from anything relating to Jewish practices and one of the results was the creation of a resurrection day who’s place on the calendar is determined by counting from the base of a pagan holiday even though, at this point in time, they still called the celebration Passover. We also find that after the papacy firmly established itself politically, as well as religiously, they renamed the day of celebrating the resurrection of Our Lord as Easter, a name that has it’s roots in Babylonian pagan religious fertility festivals celebrating Ishtar (that is where the crazy tradition of an egg laying rabbit came from).

Wow! So even if you searched the internet for the calendar day of Pentecost, the betrothal day of the Bride of Christ, most likely you would find a false day, for Pentecost is a Greek word that means count fifty. We need to know what day they are counting their fifty days from, from a pagan fertility feast called Easter, or are they counting from a full moon, or is it from the Feast of First Fruits, which is the Sunday that follows the Sabbath that follows Passover and is the day that Our Lord, Our Savior met Mary at the tomb after He had arisen.

So why isn’t Pentecost on list of special days of recognition? The other days of recognition, Easter (even though the origins and the name of the holiday is Babylonian), the meaning behind the day still allows us to reflect on the greatest miracle ever performed since the creation of the universe) and Christmas (another one that has scary Babylonian roots) are about Christ our Savior. The day the church was created and Christ’s bride was betrothed is a known traceable day. Why isn’t it recognized? I suspect the reasons have their roots buried in the anti-Semitism of the early church and the fact that we, as the body of Christ hold traditions almost as dear to our hearts as facts. There may be some churches tucked away somewhere that recognize the Day of Pentecost, but I don’t know of any and those Christians I mention it to kind of look at me like “What?…what’s up with this guy?”. I personally try to find when the actual Day of Pentecost is and sing a little happy birthday song to recognize the birth of the vehicle that allows us as Gentile, but more so as sinful humans to prepare and meet Our Lord.

God Bless, Jim

*1 http://www.debate.org.uk/topics/theo/council_nicaea.html

*2 https://www.learnreligions.com/all-about-ostara-the-spring-equinox-2562471

http://antipas.net/pentecost.htm

The Church, Men in heaven and the 4 horsemen

Posted: February 26, 2022 in anti-christ, Bible, Christ, Christian, religion, revelation, Satan
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I love the book of Revelation with all its teachings, prophecies and insights into the mind of The Lord, but I also love that it is full of mystery and intrigue. In Revelation chapter four we read in verse four about twenty-four elders sitting round the throne of The Lord. Every time I read this I pause and wonder who the 24 elders are. So to get a hint of who these elders may be, we want to find another reference to the number twenty-four in the bible. In the Old Testament we find references of twenty-four concerning time periods, but when the number relates to people, it is in relation to David dividing the priestly duties by separating and sectioning the time periods of their duties into twenty-four courses.

So now we can ascertain that these elders may have something to do with the priesthood. If this was the only reference to them in Revelation, that would be a very weak link indeed, but the next chapter gives us more insights on who these elders represent. In Revelation chapter five verses nine and ten we find them falling down before the lamb and singing a new song. In this song, they specifically sing to the one that is worthy to open the book, someone who was slain and was resurrected and redeemed them by His blood. By now, the evidence shows us they are singing to Christ. If we look further, in the next verse we see that they sing something specific to Him, they sing their appreciation to Christ for making them kings and priests (ah hah, a clue!). We have already learned that there are only three times in the bible that people are referred to as being a king and a priest in the scriptures; Melchizedek in Genesis, Christ our savior and the body of Christ, the church. Therefore it seems pretty plain to me that the twenty-four elders represent the church in heaven at this time.

Let’s take it a little further, though.

Still looking in Revelation chapter five, we see in the first few verses, that John was shown a scroll written on both sides and sealed and he wept because we read this in Revelation 5:3-4 And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon. And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon. (KJV)

Notice what it said? “and no man in heaven, nor in earth, nor under the earth…” This indicates there are people populating heaven at this time…not just one person, who is Christ, but many people…I find that interesting. Of course Christ is the only man worthy of opening the sealed scroll. OK, who could these people be? I think we are shown additional clues who they may be in the following chapter, for we find as Christ opens each one of the seals, something happens. Let’s look at what happens when he opens the first seal.

Revelation 6:1-2 And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see. And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer. (KJV)

Many commentators as well as many casual readers of Revelation seem to think this appearance of a rider on a white horse is an appearance of Christ and they base it upon the fact the rider is riding a white horse and because he has a crown and a bow. One thing I noticed immediately that they appear to ignore is Christ is the one opening the seal. Could He be opening the seal and also be the rider shown when the seal is opened? Yes, it could be possible, but let’s look at the rider in context. The rider is going forth conquering…that in itself is OK, but let’s look at his buddies. When Christ opens the other seals, the riders that we are shown each have different purposes for the inhabitants of the earth, none of them too pleasant for we have war, destruction, famine and pestilence…which one of these horsemen is Christ suppose to be again?

If it’s not Christ, then who is this first rider? The first thing we find is the rider is riding a white horse, which normally signifies purity. I guess that’s where the mistake comes in misidentifying this horseman. He also has a bow that is an indication of a covenant; similar to the bow (rainbow) that God gave to Noah as a covenant to never destroy the earth again through a flood. We read also that our horseman is wearing a crown, demonstrating prominence and power. So, standing back and looking at the evidence, we find a horseman that initially appears Christ-like with a covenant and a position of power, but a horseman that is part of a quartet of death and destruction. With these identifiers spread before us, I believe that this horseman is most likely the Anti-Christ (Greek meanings include deceiver or ‘in place of’).

OK, if this is the Anti-Christ, then we know that one of the prerequisites of the appearance of the Anti-Christ is the rapture of the church. Therefore, I believe the men mentioned inhabiting heaven by John in Revelation chapter five are saint of the raptured church. This is a Revelation to me (pardon the pun…I couldn’t help it), and I hope you find this link to the raptured church followed by the Anti-Christ wreaking havoc on the earth interesting, also.

Christ does show up in Revelation 19 triumphantly riding a white horse, but when you compare the horses and the riders from Revelation 6 and Revelation 19, the differences between the two are night and day!

Jim Bussell 3-28-21

Refuting Evolution: Living in a Universe of Irreducible Complexity

Posted: February 26, 2022 in Bible, Creation, GOD, science
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The concept of “irreducible complexity” is having something the least complex it can be and still work.

Take a mousetrap; there are five basic components, if it is missing any one of these five parts, it simply doesn’t work…it was designed and engineered around these five parts. You can go up in complexity, for instance, you could add paint for color, add a sensor that would notify you when the little rodent came to its end and even a camera that would record it’s grizzly execution…but unless you’re a sadist, these additional parts are not necessary. However, if you remove any of the basic five pieces of the trap and attempt to use it, you will find it simply will not work.

OK, the mousetrap is a basic example of human design, but let’s climb up a few more rungs of the complexity ladder. Another example of irreducible complexity would be the mammalian eye. Once again, we have five basic components1, a cornea, pupil, iris, lens and retina. If any one of these components is missing it doesn’t work. This means that the eye couldn’t have progressed along an ‘evolutionary’ assembly line where you see a little, then a little better, then a little better, until it progressed to our eye…if any one of these components is missing, it simply doesn’t work…you would be blind and there is no evolutionary advantage that could be gained by being blind for eons until the eye developed sight…evolution makes no sense here…that means the eye was developed and engineered from the beginning as a unit around these five major parts, just as the mousetrap is manufactured as a working unit.

Let’s then look down at the micro level at a single cell bacterium. This single cell organism has a flagellum2 tail that propels it by turning in a corkscrew manner, operated by a motor comprised of forty different components. If any one of these forty parts of this motor are missing, it simply doesn’t work. This one example is simply mind-boggling to me. We have a single celled organism, specializing as a bacterium, with its propulsion being provided by a variable speed electrical motor powered by sub-atomic protons and it sounds more science-fiction than fact.

Why is that? We humans are barely at the level where we can begin to look at and understand the micro world, much less replicate it…that’s why to most of us it reads as science fiction. Everywhere we look from the macro to the micro, from the large to the small, we see design everywhere and it drives some in the scientific community bonkers to see their theories of Darwinism lying in tatters. Evolutionary progression cannot explain how this can be…only design…who was, and is, the designer? The Creator of everything, The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Our Lord, Jehovah Jireh.

This is only a couple of examples from a pool of tens of thousands that could be looked at and they all explode the theory of evolution to pieces and prove that everything that exists is digital and by design.

1 http://www.tedmontgomery.com/the_eye/

2 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v325/n6105/abs/325637a0.html

What do we know of Christ’s resurrection body?

Posted: February 26, 2022 in Christian
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This may be a given to most, but I believe we can draw some fairly decent basic conclusions of Christ’s resurrection body from the scriptures in both the Old and New Testaments. To attempt to keep this post short enough to not bore you to tears, I’m only going to cover a couple of examples to highlight the conclusions we can draw.

Right off the bat when I started researching from the first appearance to Mary Magdalene, I realized it isn’t as clear cut and straight forward as I assumed it would when I thought up this brief excursion. Why? Let’s look at this first appearance we find in Mark’s account in Mark 16:9 Now when [Jesus] was risen early the first [day] of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils. (KJV) This seems simple enough, but we need to develop the context so when we read on a couple of more verses, we find this in Mark 16:12 After that he appeared in another form unto two of them, as they walked, and went into the country. (KJV) What? What in the world does the word form in this sentence mean? In the Greek it means what we expect it to mean, the external appearance of something. So we can conclude that he appeared looking one way to Mary Magdalene and looking quite different to the others. John sheds some light on this in his gospel account that we read in John 20:16-17 Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master. Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and [to] my God, and your God. (KJV) So it seems that when she first saw him he had just arisen and was still in the same human form as he was when he was laid in the sepulcher. Apparently between this visage and subsequent ones, he ascended and then returned in the form that he was seen afterward. Also on this first encounter by Mary Magdalene, a couple of verses earlier, in John 20:15 we are told she didn’t recognize him and thought he was the gardener. Why?

Let us look at beards. In I Chronicles chapter 19, as in many other places in the Old Testament, we find it was shameful for a Jewish male to be shaved. In Isaiah 50:6 we get a glimpse of one of the ways that Our Lord was tortured, because apparently they ripped out his beard. So, perhaps when she saw this beardless man her automatic and natural assumption would have been that this guy wasn’t a Jewish male, but rather a gentile, and likely a slave, instead of Our Savior.

Later on we find that He challenged Thomas to touch Him in John chapter 20 and also we read in Luke 24 that Christ walked and talked for seven miles and afterward dined with a couple of the disciple before he pulled a disappearing trick and vanished. I believe if he had been some floating, spectral being that we refer to as ghost, gliding along with them on on the road, they would have figured out something was very strangely wrong about this man (“Hey, why can we see through this guy, why isn’t his feet touching the ground as he moves?”). This one instance by itself is fairly definitive of the fact that He was flesh and blood…only he was flesh and blood that could vanish and move through walls which is a super indication that Christ had definitely changed form as we read in Mark 16:12.

Which segways my thoughts to a very cool verse that speaks volumes in I John 3:2 Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. (KJV)

Wow. We have seen in the gospels where Christ appeared before hundreds of people after His crucifixion. We have read where He taught, where He walked and talked, where He dined and met with followers and where He disappeared into thin air and materialized into a locked room to meet with His disciples. We already know he was the I AM of the burning bush and was The Angel of The Lord in several encounters in the Old Testament. Scientific discoveries, coupled with an expansion of understanding of mathematical principles, of the last two centuries have increased our knowledge of our physical universe. Part of that scientific discovery was the expansion of the understanding of dimensionality and the development of new theories, such as the string theory*1. So what?

The more we as humans, in our endeavors to elevate our understanding of our universe, the more we find that these expansions of knowledge assist in demonstrating the hidden gems of the scriptures. Our expansion of understanding that we live in a multidimensional universe helps to explain how Our Lord could just seem to appear and disappear at will all through the bible. This multidimensional was hinted at by Paul in his letter to the Ephesians*2 when he wrote that we live in a four dimensional universe a few hundred years before Euclid ‘discovered’ the fact. John also tells us that they weren’t seeing the full representation of Christ after He had changed form, but only what our two dimensional eyes*3 could perceive of Him. John was explaining to them that was the reason Christ could seem to disappear and appear at will…because he existed in a higher dimension than we can view or really understand. Some don’t care about this, but I find it fascinating when we are able to peer a little deeper behind the curtain and discover more gems of information that do nothing but solidify more and more the proof that the scriptures are divine in nature and infinite in scope.

God Bless, Jim

*1 http://www.examiner.com/christian-worldview-in-national/quantum-mechanics-string-theories-black-holes-and-the-bible

*2 Ephesians 3:18 May be able to comprehend with all saints what [is] the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; (KJV)

*3 Each of our eyes only resolves objects in two dimensions, width and height, and the stereoscopic effect of both of our eyes working in conjunction make it appear we see in three dimensions, but we actually don’t…sorry.

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