A Post From the Past - Eternal Security

Recently in our family Bible time, my husband taught us about the Bible doctrine of election.  If you are one of the "elect", as the word is widely (mis)understood, then you would never worry about losing your salvation.  Elect is elect, right?  But there are better reasons not to fear losing your salvation.  While I am thinking about writing a post on election, here is one about eternal security.

(The following is a re-post from back in the days when I had a brain)

The doctrine of eternal security, or "once saved, always saved", is one that comes under fire often.  Many people trust Christ for their salvation, only to be told later that it is possible to lose it.  When the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross of Calvary, the sinless blood he shed there was the payment for sins.  For all sins.  For everybody's sins.  For everybody's sins in the past, for all the sins that were committed on the day of Christ's death, and for all of the sins that would be committed in the future of humanity.  When Jesus died, your life was still many years in the future. And yet, his death paid the penalty for every one of your sins!  They were all covered at once. I can tell you that I KNOW I have been saved from ALL my sins (past, present, future), and I will give you some scripture that explains why.  But before I do that, think about these things:

~When Christ saved you, did he give you everlasting life or temporary life?

~Which one of your sins did Jesus NOT pay for when he was crucified for you?

~What kind of sin is bad enough to make you lose your salvation -- murder? Skipping church? Gossip? Unbelief? Adultery? Neglecting your Bible or prayer? And for how many times? One?  A hundred?

~Where is the "peace that passeth all understanding", if every day I wake up fearing I might have lost my salvation?

~Once you "lose" it, how ever do you get it back (IF you can get it back)???  No one in the Bible was ever saved twice!!

~No one who teaches eternal INsecurity ever believes that they have lost it, or that they could lose it.

~No one who asks the Lord Jesus Christ to save their soul ever does so believing He might forsake them in the future.  That is not faith.  You have to be taught that you can lose it, and that teaching does not come from the Bible.


One of the reasons this heresy, that one can lose his salvation, is now so prevalent is that the newer Bible versions have removed the good words "justification", "redemption", and "propitiation" from the text.  These words have been substituted with other words or other phrases that do not give us any assurance that salvation, the free gift of God, is for eternity.  I will be quoting here from the King James Bible.  If you are not reading the KJB, I suggest you open your version, whatever it is, to the following references to see what you are missing.

Read:
"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:
Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood,"
Romans 3:23-26

"Justified" is a judicial term that means one has been declared righteous. Although you were once guilty, the penalty for your has been paid in full.  You are no longer viewed by the Judge as guilty. Hooray!! Once a person has been justified, or declared righteous, he is never tried again for those crimes.

To be "redeemed" means to be bought back.  In the book of Romans, chapter 7, the apostle Paul says he was "alive without the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived, and [he] died." Later in the chapter he says he was now carnal, "sold under sin". No longer spiritually alive, Paul had an terrible new master --sin! (See chapter 6.)  In order to be saved, he must be REDEEMED.  Bought back.  And he was!  The blood of Jesus Christ was the payment, praise God. There is no scriptural example of one who was once redeemed by the blood of Christ, and then sold back to sin again!

A "propitiation" is a price paid to appease one whose wrath has been incurred.  John 3 says of those who are lost (have not been eternally saved), "the wrath of God abideth on them." God the Father ordained that his own precious, sinless Son would be that payment. Isaiah 53:11 says, "He [God the Father] shall see the travail of his [Jesus Christ's] soul and shall be satisfied." When I received the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior from sin, I was accepting him as the only offering that I could present to God the Father for the forgiveness of my sins.  No other offering coming from me was good enough to appease the wrath of God!  Remember when Cain was too proud to ask Abel for a LAMB? Cain gave his own offering, not the one God ordained. The offering God ordained was the blood of an innocent lamb. Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God!
"Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." 1 John 4:10
"The blood of Jesus Christ [God's] Son cleanseth us from ALL SIN." 1 John 1:7


There are two verses that people often use to teach that one can lose his salvation.  One of them is 2 Timothy 2:12, "If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us:"  But look at the context.  The Bible is speaking here of denying Christ reign in our hearts and lives. If we deny him first place in our hearts, he will deny us reign in his kingdom! The Bible goes on to say, "If we [We who? We Christians!] believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself."  It is God himself, and God alone, who does both the saving and the keeping.  You can read Galatians for more about that.  Whether or not we can do something to keep our salvation is the theme of that book!

The other verse people use to teach eternal insecurity is this one: "For if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries." Hebrew 10:26,27  That's true -- there is no more sacrifice for sins. The sacrifice for sins was made ONCE AND FOR ALL (Hebrews 10:10) at Calvary .  God does chasten us for sin after we have been saved.  That is not to say that he condemns saved sinners to hell for their sins.  That's impossible.  (What would those "saved" sinners then, have been "saved" FROM??)  "And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." 1 John 2:1,2

Although those two passages appear to be saying you could lose the salvation that God gave you for eternity, there are many MORE verses that very plainly say you can not.  Read and believe the following verses, which apply to all who have repented of their sins and received Christ Jesus:

John 10:28  We shall NEVER perish
John 10:29  No one is able to remove you from God's hand.
John 6: 37  God will in NO WISE cast out those that come to him.
John 6: 39  The responsibility for keeping us saved belongs to God, and Jesus Christ can lose nothing.
Johns 5:24 says the kind of life I now have is EVERLASTING.
Romans 8:38 says nothing can separate the saved from the love of God.
1 Peter 1:5 says we are kept by the power of God.
Jude 24  God is able to keep us from falling.
Philippians 1:6 says that the Lord will continue his good work in us until the day of Jesus Christ.
Ephesians 1:13 says my salvation was sealed by the Holy Spirit.
Ephesians 2:8 says our salvation is the GIFT of God, and Romans 11:29 says the gifts and calling of God are without repentance -- that means he doesn't take them back!
There are many more verses in God's Word which assure us of our eternal salvation.

While it IS possible for the Christian to lose his assurance of salvation, his rewards, his joy, or his fellowship with the Lord, he cannot lose his salvation!

"And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." 1 John 5:11,12  You either have the Son or you don't.  If you have the Son, you are saved. Forever. God has put this promise in writing for us, and that's the key.  If your final authority is the written word of God, you need never fear he will cast you away.  Believe the Book!

Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;) Hebrews 10:23 

Welcome to the New Diamonds in the Rough

With the disappearance of my cactus header, I hereby resolve to be done with my own prickliness.  But what part of my personality does the dragonfly represent?  They eat lots of mosquitoes, and hence I count them as one of God's wise gifts to us.  What a blessing he gave us something to keep the mosquito population down!  I don't plan on adding mosquitoes to my diet, but I do hope God will use me to bless others here in some way.

Do my new colors work on your monitor? Or are you squinting at the glare?  Falling asleep at the dull shades?  Do let me know if there is a problem for you.  My previous red was lovely here, but on my dad's computer it was quite bright.  I want you to be comfortable.  Minor adjustments to details may be made next week, and I might have to go back to my old avatar.  I kind of miss that cactus. :)

O LORD, how manifold are thy works!

In wisdom hast thou made them all.

The earth is full of thy riches.

Psalm 104:24

:-)

 

 

Button Soup

Ever hear of King Midas?  He was famous back when kids still read the classics and stuff.  Everything King Midas touched turned to gold, hence the expression "the Midas touch".  I have what is surely some sort of opposite kind of touch -- everything electronic that I touch keels over and dies.  My kind of touch might come in handy if your kids had iPods that were out of control, or if you needed someone to police your own computer activity.  Call Sally.  She can control it for you!  

Anyway, my computer died, as you know.  We have had a few other electronic problems around here, the latest being that I was just going to post some photos of our Button Soup, and my dear husband's monitor would not turn on (shhh, don't tell him).  But it's on now.  And then I learned that my camera card reader doesn't work on this computer anyway.  So after this I will just use the library's computer, K?  If I break that one, no one will know.

Back in the Great Depression, prudent, thrifty homemakers figured out how to satisfy their loved ones' appetites with stuff people probably didn't normally eat.  Like dandelion greens.  I am pretty sure this recipe, or rather, non-recipe, was developed before they had to resort to dandelions, probably when the potato bin was just about empty.  My great-grandmother made this for her family, Grandmommy made it for hers, and my mom made it for us.  Now I make it for my kids.  Sometimes.

I have not seen a real recipe anywhere, and I don't know if there are other variations.  If Button Soup is familiar to you, I'd love to know your version and its history in your family!

Button Soup (With No Photos)

APPROXIMATELY:

4 cups flour

1 1/2 cups milk

1 tsp salt

6 cups water

1 potato, peeled and diced

1/2 onion, chopped

2 T butter

3 eggs, lightly beaten

oil

Make a dough from the salt, flour, and milk, adjusting quantities as needed to  knead and make it smooth. Divide the lump into four smaller pieces and set aside.  

Saute the onion in the butter in a large pot.  Add the water plus some salt to the pot, and bring to a boil.  Add the potato pieces.  

Now either cut or pinch off small pieces of dough from the large lump and drop them into the boiling water. Cook the "buttons" for about 10 minutes, or until done in the centers.  

Turn off the heat, and strain out about half of the buttons. If your soup is now too brothy, pour out a cup or whatever. Drain the buttons well.  Heat some oil in a very hot skillet, and carefully slide the drained buttons in.  Let them fry until nice and golden, then stir to turn them over and brown on the other side.  Pour in the beaten eggs and stir until the eggs are scrambled.  These are the "fries".  

Serve the fries separately from the soup.  They can be eaten alone (that's how I like them), or put back into the broth.  

There you go.  Stuff a family of four on one potato, half an onion, and a couple eggs.  This is definitely a carbo-loaded food and should probably not be eaten if you are diabetic or if you are wishing to lose weight.  In my case, both are perpetually true.

So why did I make this tonight??

Because.  It's very cheap.  :)

*    *    *    *    *

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land,

not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water,

but of hearing the words of the LORD:

And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east,

they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD,

and shall not find it.

Amos 8:11

A New Home for Us DITR

Well, here we are in green, green, green Minnesota, complete with internet!  Yay!  One good thing is that now everyone (all three of you) will be expecting me to write a nice newsy post.  

The bad thing is that, alas, my computer died on the way here.  

The good thing is that my sweet hubby is letting me borrow his.  

The bad thing is that he needs it a lot.  His entire office is in this thing.  

The good thing is that he is thinking about buying me (or him) a laptop! 

Another good thing is that a laptop takes up much less space than a desk.  Space is at a premium here.  

Every cloud has a silver lining.  :)  And we have seen plenty of clouds around here.  Snow clouds, rain clouds, thunder clouds, no clouds.  It's a lovely day, way too nice to spend it indoors writing a new post.

Besides, now it's time to make supper.  I'll be back.