Lauri4Him said:
Acts 16:25 ¶And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them.
26 And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one's bands were loosed.
27 And the keeper of the prison awaking out of his sleep, and seeing the prison doors open, he drew out his sword, and would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had been fled.
28 But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, Do thyself no harm: for we are all here.
29 Then he called for a light, and sprang in, and came trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas,
30 And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?
31 And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.
In this story is explained very simply what we must do to be saved - Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. We also know that true believing changes us. We become a new creature - one that no longer sins. But once again I will repeat, this is available to all who will accept it.
2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
When the topic of election or being choosen is discussed, would you have someone give up before even seeking the Lord?
How can it be that as Christians we would put a stumbling block in someone's way to finding Christ? God invites all who will, to come.
1 Timothy 2:4 Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.
Isaiah 55:1 ¶Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
I would appeal to all who are bugged by the attitude of so-called Christians to ignore them and look to JESUS, HE is able to save YOU!
Ephesians 3:20 Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,
21 Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.
Your sister in Christ
Lauri
Hello Lauri,
nice to hear from you
Consider perhaps these things which one must go through eventually in the belief in Jesus to be saved :-
-1. One is called by God to repent [note one is called BEFORE one repents, it is a gift of God, just saying one repents and saying one believes in God because some preacher threaten sone with terrible things if one doesn't do what he asks [and maybe give himsome money] just isn't what God is talking about!
Clearly once one is called one wants to start turning one's life around, to begin the long hard trek back to perfection, to righteousness, to stopping sinning for good ... thus the step one takes in declaring this intent is to get baptised in water... it is a simple ritual ,just a public decalartion f one's being called to change the direction one is facing, the TURNING point in one's life to stop going the wrong way, NOT the end of the journey by a long way!
-2. One has then to find out from scripture or prayer to God for His truth WHEN one will receive baptism of the spirit leading to all truth of God , as promised by Jesus to ALL his true followers [John 16:13]
This is the point where almost all who sprang up joyfully at being called fall at the first hurdle because ther is so much being taught in this world that is not true to scripture ... simply observe for YOURSELF that very few in this world get led into ALL truth of God before they die!
Christianity is DEEPLY divided into tens of thousands of CREEDS of men ... men following creeds instead of following ONE truth of God ... but ask YOURSELF how many of those creeds even COULD be the ONE truth of God when they all DISAGREE !!
So it is very obvious indeed that christinity has gone way astray... and when one reads scripture for ONESELF asking ONLY God what it means, one gets a very dIFFERENT picture of God's ONE truth than from ANY of these denominational and cultish creeds of tradition of men !!
That seems surprising at first maybe, but after a little more study one finds out that it was PROPHESIED even by Jesus that this is exactly what wil and MUST happen to christianity as the days of power of the antchrist over almost all the world approach [Rev 13:3-7]
Col 2:8 Beware
lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit,
after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and
not after Christ.
Thus we find philosophy [largely PAGAN Greek philosophy] dominating the religion of christianity in place of the scriptures and assigning new meanings into the scriptures [called 'exegesis', supposedly revealing the true meaning of scripture, but one cannot do that by philosophy,one has to ask God !! ]
Also the vanity expresses itself in denominationalism and cultism by the insistence that one tradition has all truth of God and no other tradition has any truth where it disagrees ... it is an unwillingness in men of religious traditions to accept reproof from the scriptures , but rather preferring to alter the menaings assigned to scriptures to suit their private interpretations of them :-
2Pe 1:20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
The way then to the truth of God is simply to ask Him ! ... but many run to ask men instead ... it seems easier than yearning to God for His truth, but ...
So eventually one will find out that God will baptise
ALL men into ALL His truth [Acts 2:17, John 16:13] ...
That sounds great, all men will eventually have ALL God's truthand so be able to resist Satan's wiles !
Then men can live righteously at last , not sin ... then men's love can be PERFECTED in trial of their faith in LOVE [God's law of loving God and loving all men] , their faith in Jesus ! ...
then as perfected saints , righteous at last, without sin, many men will be ready to be redeemed to immortal spirit ... awesome !!!
BUT WHEN willit happen, HOW will it happen ?
This unsurprisingly is explained in scripture... but also unsurprisingly [if you followed me so far] men have gotten it very wrong in their tradition... in their unreprovable creeds ... so much so that very many will not now accept reproof from scripture and even spend their time praying to god that He accept their tradition in place of what He has said in scripture ... that is the extent of the apostasy , and remember Jesus has said it MUST happen so , so here it is with us in modern deeply divided christianity that we know is not the united truth of god simply because God's truth is not divided, but ONE truth !
Thus it will be easy indeed for the antichrist to pull all christianity together into one creed soon ... but read in Rev 13:3-7 what
JESUS SAYS that one creed will be about... christianity will go from gross division today to an even worse state .. and it
MUST happen before Jesus returns to begin sorting things out ...
The reason I point to all these things is that it shows us inthe world what God inspired to be written in scripture , that only VERY FEW receive baptism of the spirit in THIS world [Rev7:3-8] to be saints NOW, but very MANY are redeemed AFTER this wordl [Rev 7:9-10] after God pours His spirit out ON ALL FLESH[ Acts 2:17, Joel
2:28] toward redeeming the MANY of all nations
The point then is that God will save His chosen PRIESTHOOD first s that they can minister in the righteous new earth in the redemption of billions...
It means that almost all christianity is already wrong in thinking that one can ONLY be saved in this world ...the scripture shows otherwise, that almost all are saved AFTER this world...
It thus makes a BIG difference whether one listens to men or to the scripture and God ...
although it makes no difference at all to WHETHER one is saved, it does make a BIG difference to one's knowledge of WHEN one will be saved