If you ARE a Christian, you need not have that fear, or any of those fears. You will be snatched away, possibly in your very sleep, before it even begins. But you have to be a true Christian, not just someone who says he is. And it won't be your opinion that matters - it'll be His.
I pray for our President, who was elected on the backs of the evangelical vote as much as anyone's. But despite his comments to the contrary, he presents no evidence of being saved himself. His un-Christian behavior was well-documented during the campaign; he has yet to be spotted in church since his election, even at Christmas or Easter; he exhibits a deplorable lack of Biblical knowledge (the "Two Corinthians" speech at Liberty University comes to mind), and is the very opposite of the humble, charitable man Christ demands His followers to be.
For him to be saved, he will have to start changing himself from the inside out - and the only way for him, or anyone else reading this blog, to truly BECOME a Christian is by taking BABY STEPS. Baby steps, small steps forward like an infant does learning how to walk. We also must learn how to walk - to walk in Christ's footsteps, and do as He does.
In this series of posts, I hope to help guide the uncertain reader from being either a non-Christian or a lapsed Christian, or perhaps someone who was raised Christian but no longer practices their faith, into someone who will be confident that when the Lord comes for His Church in less than two years, he or she will be on that train heading to safety before (literally) "all Hell breaks loose".
Peter writes in 1st Peter 2:2, "Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation". The author of Hebrews tells us that as new Christians, "you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil." in Hebrews 5:12-14.
As we begin our Christian walk, and for so many Christians who have never truly committed their lives to Christ before this, we need the very basic level of instruction and guidance, just as a newborn child would. We are not ready for the heavy meat of the Scripture until we have learned to follow the most basic instructions.
In the Gospel of Luke, chapter 16, verses 10-12, the Lord Jesus tells us that “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own?"
We are not to be entrusted with God's riches, or with God's great duties, until we have shown that we are not like the many who profess to be Christians but who merely use the name to gain access to His grace. They usually find, to their infinite regret, that being a CINO, a Christian-In-Name-Only, is not being a Christian at all, and the Lord knew that about you all along.
When Jesus' authority was being challenged by the Pharisees, His response applied not only to them but to the vast numbers of CINOs in the world - hopefully NOT including you! Here is Matthew 21:28-32 ⇒
28“What do you think? A man had two sons. And he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ 29And he answered, ‘I will not,’ but afterward he changed his mind and went. 30And he went to the other son and said the same. And he answered, ‘I go, sir,’ but did not go. 31Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you. 32For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him."
Saying you're a Christian and not obeying His commands will NOT get you into Heaven, just as it failed to get the Pharisees in two millennia ago.
So, what ARE Christ's commands? What rules do we have to FOLLOW to be allowed into Heaven when we die?
This is where we have to start with the spiritual milk. I mean, there are sixty-six books of information to wade through! I could narrow it down for you a little - you can probably just skim the texts of Obadiah and Nahum, for example - but there's still a ton that you'll be sifting through when Christ Returns to take us home within the next two years. (That's much of what I've written about the last two weeks - go take a look if you missed it.)
Let's start with the six most basic parts of being a Christian: three "one-time"-ish things, and three daily things for you to do.
The three things we are commanded by the Lord to do to become a Christian are...
1. Admit we are sinners and accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior (many do the second without committing to the first part, but that's the most important part!). My preference in doing this has been Romans 10, verse 9, written by the apostle Paul -
"If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.10For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved."
The first half may be more obvious than the second. Confessing that Jesus is Lord means that you not only acknowledge His role in your original salvation, but also acknowledge that He IS your Lord, We take that word, "Lord", so lightly so often, but think what a Lord means:
If you were living in feudal times, maybe even Christ's day, a peasant (that would've been US) would be living under a lord of the region we lived in - perhaps one with a title, perhaps not, but most likely he owned the land we worked, probably the equipment we used, and very likely provided the necessities we didn't produce ourselves. We owe this man our lives. Don't you think we'd obey every little rule He put out? Darn right we would! He could undoubtedly have us killed were we to disobey - at the very least, we'd be thrown off his land!
That's what we need to be thinking of Jesus Christ as: our Lord. Just because He's benevolent doesn't mean he won't throw us off His land - specifically, the "land" of Heaven, once we die. Don't be a CINO! Follow the rules!
2. In the Great Commission, best laid out in Matthew 28:19-20, Christ commands us to make disciples of all the world, and that includes baptizing new Christians in the Name of Jesus Christ. That, of course, includes ourselves at some point.
Many babies are baptized as part of their family's faith, but my reading of Scripture is pretty clear that you have to be a Believer yourself to be baptized in the Name of Jesus Christ. You cannot believe in Jesus (and thus be baptized in His Name) until you're old enough and cognizant enough to know what that MEANS! My own step-son, Melissa's child Isaiah, chose to be baptized again in his late teens because he felt like he'd really kinda been scamming the system by being baptized before he understood what it meant. There isn't a rush or a deadline, and were you to accept Jesus on your deathbed, I don't think St. Peter would reject you at the pearly gates because you hadn't been baptized before death occurred.
But baptism is meant to represent our new birth - our RE-birth as a child of God rather than a child of the world and its culture. Specifically, re-emerging from the water is the part that symbolizes birth. Here is John 3:3-5, one of the more familiar passages of Jesus' teaching:
Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 4Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” 5Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God."
3. The other component Christ teaches us to be critical to our entrance into Heaven when we die (or are Raptured!) is that of taking communion - the eating of the body and drinking of the blood of Christ. This is commanded at the Last Supper, in Matthew 26, Mark 14, and here in Luke 22; I am quoting verses 19-20 →
And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 20And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood."
In the Catholic church, the concept of transubstantiation insists that when you take the bread (unleavened bread is more like a cracker; think of dry pita bread) in your mouth, it literally becomes His body, and when you take the cup ("fruit of the vine" - tradition says it was wine but fruit of the vine" can also be grape juice, and in a chapel with underage children, it usually is), the liquid literally becomes His blood. I find nothing in Scripture to defend that notion. But regardless, that is indeed what the ceremony is meant to represent: taking Christ within you, inside of you so that He (and more accurately the Holy Spirit) can reside within you and be your guide as you face the sin-cursed world in an attempt to live something closer to a sin-free life.
Communion is a serious affair in the life of a Christian. It need not take place every week; some churches only hold communion a few times each year. But when it does take place, it must be done correctly. Read what Paul said about the service to his new Believers in the city of Corinth (this is 1st Corinthians 11:27-30) →
27Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.28Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. 30That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.
I'll confess to you that I have never witnessed someone falling deathly ill after communion. But I know what guilt can do, and I also know what God can do, and I wouldn't risk it if I were you. Or me, for that matter. Communion, therefore, is a time for reflection, a time for self-evaluating whether you are "on the right track", so to speak, and if you find that there are things within yourself that you can't stand to shine a light upon, those need to be dealt with.
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Those are the three "one-time" or infrequent things every Christian must do. It's very difficult to call yourself an obedient Christian if you haven't done these three things yet, and in the case of #3 on a regular basis of some sort (whatever your church practices is probably satisfactory). The next three will be discussed in Part Two of this series tomorrow, and so will several other practices that will help you become an obedient Newborn Christian, no matter what your age or tenure in the Lord is!
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