As it appears, biblical repentance simply means a change of mind, an inner condition that may not even includes the condition of the heart at the time. All it takes is a mental decision. It doesn’t necessary include an immediate change of the heart condition, nor actions.

Make sense, because the condition of the heart always come after the decision of the will, but not at the same time. Feeling may not reflect decision of the mind immediately, but it always manifest later according to the path you choose. More importantly, when one decides to repent, something always happen to his or her spirit, giving him or her the peace of God, assurance, and joy. (Pslam 13:5; Isaiah 55:7; Isaiah 61:1-7; Act 3:19)

Repentance Is God-Inspired

Repentance is a spiritual process that has to involve God. If God doesn’t prompt us to repent, then there is no need to repent. (John 15:22; John 16:7-8) If repentance is self-generated, then it’s just false guilt.

The Bible says that there are two type of sorrows that come from sins, one is worldly sorrow, which is caused by self-condemnation, excessive guilt, and Satan’s accusation. The other is godly sorrow, which is caused by convictions of the Holy Spirit in our spirits.

Worldly sorrow can never bring one back to God, but it pulls one away from Him. There is no need to punish and condemn ourselves if we have sinned, because God doesn’t need us to help Him to do His work. Calling sinners to repent is His servants’ work. But convicting sinners in the spirit is His work alone. Sinners cannot make themselves more forgivable by self-condem. Condemnation only strengthen sins and addictions.

2 Corinthians 7:9-11

⁹yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us.

¹⁰Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.

¹¹See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done. At every point you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter.

True repentance produces new attitudes. But it leaves no regrets. Regret is painful, and it doesn’t help the sinners at all. See my post: Getting Over Regret.

Repentance Goes With A Broken Heart And Humility

Psalms 34:18

¹⁸The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.

Isaiah 57:15

¹⁵ For this is what the high and lofty One says— he who lives forever, whose name is holy: “I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.

Repentance Isn’t Just Mental Consent

Matthew 21:28-31

²⁸But what think ye? A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to day in my vineyard.

²⁹He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented, and went.

³⁰And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir: and went not.

³¹Whether of them twain did the will of his father? They say unto him, The first. Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.

Repentance has to be followed by obedience. In the above parable, the second son made a verbal consent, but he didn’t really take action upon it. Jesus says that if anyone doesn’t do the will of the Father, then he is not entering into the kingdom of God!

The first son refused to do the will of the father, but repented afterward and took action. Jesus compared him to publicans and harlots, who are stereotypical sinners in Jesus time. But even sinners can go to heaven if they repent and obey.

The main point of this parable is that if anyone repents, and do the will of God, then he is going into heaven. If anyone just believes and confesses Jesus as Lord, but refuses to obey, then he is not going into heaven. (Luke 6:46; Matthew 7:21)

Does the actions save the sinner? No. Forgiveness of God that comes after repentance saves the person.

Then what if someone repents but doesn’t follow up with actions? Then he must repents again and again, until he finally obeys. As long as he is still disobeying, he needs to repent, otherwise he risks going into hell if he dies in sin.

No one can really cheat his way into heaven by continuously repenting but refusing to obey. We need to sleep and rest, so it’s impossible to stay up 24/7 and keep repenting of disobedience to make sure we don’t suddenly die in sin.

How about postponing repentance and obedience all together until just before we die? It’s a dumb idea, because death can come at any moment.

True Repentance Is Always Followed By Spiritual Fruits And Actions

The changes following repentance aren’t part of the repentance process, but are natural consequences of it if it is a real repentance.

True repentance always produces good changes, because it’s spiritual. If something spiritual is taking place, it’s impossible to not having any eventual, outward manifestation in the physical realm:

Luke 3: 2-14

²… the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.³And he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins;

⁴As it is written in the book of the words of Esaias the prophet, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

⁵Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth;

⁶And all flesh shall see the salvation of God. [The call to repentance precedes salvation]

⁷Then said he to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of him, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

⁸Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, That God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. [Abraham is the biological ancestor of the Israel race, the chosen people of God. He is also the father of faith — the spiritual father to all Christian (Romans 4:16)]

⁹And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: every tree therefore which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

¹⁰And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then? [Please notice the word "do"]

¹¹He answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise. [The answer is specific good deed]

¹²Then came also publicans to be baptized, and said unto him, Master, what shall we do? [Take Actions]

¹³And he said unto them, Exact no more than that which is appointed you. [A straightforward and specific correction]

¹⁴And the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages. [Same]

Matthew 3:7-8

⁷But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

⁸Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance:

Some teachers teach that salvation in the Old Testament was based on good work, but that the salvation in the New Testament is “Once saved always saved”. They claim that before Jesus went to the Cross, it was still under the Old Testament rule, so he asked people to repent of their deeds while was still walking on earth.

If that was true, then why did the apostles still call people to repent and demonstrate good fruits after Jesus went to the Cross?

After John the baptist died and Jesus went back to heaven, the disciples continued His ministry on earth, and they were still calling people to repent and demonstrate fruits that mark genuine repentance. It shows that the Gospel was the same before and after the Cross. See below:

Acts 26:20

[Apostle Paul says:]

²⁰But shewed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judaea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance.

As a result of the preaching of Paul, many people believed in Jesus Christ, confessed their sins, and changed their deeds. People who believed in false gods and practiced occults brought their occult books to the public and burned them. The total value of those books is 50,000 pieces of silver, which is approximately 5 millions USD:

Acts 19:18-19

¹⁸And many that believed came, and confessed, and shewed their deeds.

¹⁹Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver.

Next, what if we truly repent, but fail to correct our sins afterward?

God Always Forgive No Matter How Many Time You Sin And Repent

Many Christians worry because they still struggle with some sins in their life. Although they sincerely repent and ask for forgiveness from God, they often fall back to the same sins.

The good new is, as long as the repentance is genuine, God will always rush in to forgive at the first sign of repentance.

1 John 1:9

⁹If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Luke 17:3-4

³Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him.

⁴And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.

If you sin 50 times in one day, but repent at each time, God will still forgive you. Although you might have repented for the first 49 times and failed again each time, you can still confess and repent for the 50th time. God will still forgive you no matter how many times you have repented of the same sin and yet still fell afterward.

If Jesus teaches us to forgive a brother who offends us 7 times a day as long as he repents, wouldn’t he do the same for us?

Although God will always forgive us if we repent, it’s still better aim for the best and try not to sin again, because…

True Repentance Always Intent To Sin No More

Repentance is not a license to sin. Rather, the purpose of repentance is to turn away from sin and back to God.

John 5:14

¹⁴Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.

John 8:11

¹¹She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

One time Jesus healed a man who had been sick for 38 years, and after that he told him not to sin anymore, otherwise something worse will happen.(John 5:14)

The Bible says if we intentionally sin again after we were set free from sin, then the end will be worst than before. (Matthew 12:43-45; 2 Peter 2:20)

Sin always comes with negative consequences. You can’t break God’s laws without leaving damages somewhere. God’s forgiveness pardons us from His wrath and judgement, but oftentime it doesn’t take away natural consequences of sins.

The reason why sin is sin is because it always hurts and damages someone or something. (See my other post, Why Does God Allows Suffering And Evil)

For example, after King David repented of adultery and murder, God’s discipline and natural consequences for his wrong actions were still in effect. At the end he had lost 4 sons, honor, and health. His daughter and concubines got raped. Many people died because of the civil war between him and his rebellious son, Absalom. All these major tragedies in David’s life were results that traced back to his one night stand with a married woman.

It is the principle of “what you sow is what you get”.

Galatians 6:7-10

⁷Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

⁸For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.

⁹And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.

The negative consequences of sin alone should be an enough incentive for us to really repent.

How To Stop Sinning?

In the next post, I will discuss the most natural question that may come up in your mind after reading this post: So how do I stop sinning?

Relevant read:

How To Overcome Sexual Temptation (Series)

Parable Of The Mustard Seed (Faith is the most powerful weapon against sin)

Spiritual Battles… The Cost Of Not Engaging It

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Many churches seldom teach about repentance. When I inquired about this, the answer I got from them was that repentance after conversion was a separate deal from the salvation package, that it is about Christian living, and that some “experts” (i.e. revivalist) can preach about that if they got a special calling. (There are but a few revivalists in the last hundred of years)

But the Bible clearly teaches that if we don’t repent, we are not saved. Repentance isn’t just a one time act. It is necessary to repent whenever one commits sins. Otherwise, one will live in sin and risk dying in it.

What happens if we die in sin? We won’t go to heaven. Let me explain.

Repentance Is One Of The Initial Conditions To Salvation

Matthew 4:17

¹⁷From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Luke 13:3

³I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.

Mark 1:14-15

¹⁴Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God,

¹⁵And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel. [Repent, and then believe. Not vice versa]

When Jesus began to preach, he didn’t ask people to confess and believe in the gospel and then repent, but he first asked people to repent. Repentance is the first thing that Jesus asks of us.

If we don’t repent, which is the first thing Jesus asked for, then how can we receive the rest of the “salvation package”?

Later, Jesus revealed other truth to his disciples, but the first step was to repent.

Acts 2:38

Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost

Acts 3:19

¹⁹Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord,

Acts 26:20

²⁰But shewed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judaea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance.

After Jesus ascended to heaven, the disciples received the Holy Spirit, and they too began to preach. The requirement to repent didn’t change. They still asked people to repent before anything else after the Cross and Ascension.

No repentance no forgiveness. And no forgiveness no salvation.

We Should Repent Of Our Past, Present, And Future Sin Whenever God Convicts Us

Repentance is as needed. Anytime the Holy Spirit convicts you of a particular sin (John 16:7-8), you have to repent and confess it right there and then, no matter how long ago you have committed it before. (1 John 1:8-9)

Refusal and negligence to do so would be quenching/grieving the Holy Spirit. (1 Thess 5:19; Eph 4:3)

This doesn’t have to be a passive process. If we want to maintain an intimate relationship with God, we have to seek God’s guidance on this actively. In time, we will become closer to God and sin much less.

Some teachers might tell you that God has forgiven us of our past, present, and future sin at the point of time when we become a Christian. That is very misleading— a big but subtle error.

The atonement of Jesus Christ is effective for the past, present, and future, but it is not automatic and once-and-for-all. We can still reject His atonement anytime if we choose to give up our belief in the pure Gospel, or to not repent of certain sins.

Some teachers also tell you that salvation of the Old Testament is different than the New Testament. In fact, in both Testaments, the saints receive salvation through faith, in Christ. Nothing that we do is good enough for us to earn our salvation, whether a believer is from the Old Testament era or the New Testament era.

See how King David from the Old Testament era deals with his sins from the psalms below:

Psalm 19:12-13

¹²Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults. [David confesses and asks for forgiveness even for hidden sins that he isn't aware of]

¹³Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins [willful and prolonged sins] ; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression.

David prays for divine interventions and protections to keep him from future sins, while he trust God to blot out his past, hidden sins that he couldn’t even remember and be aware of.

Psalm 139:23-24

²³Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:

²⁴And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

David is always careful. He is watchful and alert. He never stop asking God to convict him of any leftover sin or secret sin that are outside of his limited awareness so he can stay on the narrow path to heaven. (Matthew 7:14)

Sometime, David goes through heavy convictions. Maybe God is doing a major spiritual surgery to him — He is bringing many hidden sins to light:

Psalm 40:12-13

¹²For innumerable evils have compassed me about: mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of mine head: therefore my heart faileth me.

¹³Be pleased, O LORD, to deliver me: O LORD, make haste to help me.

The heavy conviction of sins is a spiritual crisis— if you refuse to repent, then it becomes deadly, but if you repent, it becomes an opportunity to a great spiritual breakthrough.

I have been there from time to time before. This is not condemnation from the enemy, but genuine convictions from the Lord. Sometime it’s both.

The solution to this spiritual crisis isn’t positive thinking or distraction, which leads to false peace but real spiritual danger, but to really humble ourselves like David and ask for help and forgiveness:

Psalm 51:2-5

²Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

³For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.

⁴Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.

⁵Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

In the scripture above, David is specifically confessing his adultery and homoicide before God. He goes very deep this time, even trace back to when he was still a fetus.

Then, he goes on to ask for restoration of the joy of salvation! It clearly indicates that David knows that salvation is not automatic, nor is it “once saved always saved”:

Psalm 51:12-14

¹²Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.

¹³Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee.

¹⁴Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.

On the other hand, David knows that God will forgive and deliver him from his sins if he sincerely asks for it. He didn’t just believe and confess some easy, general, and broad term sins in an one-size-fit-all, one-and-only-once-in-a-lifetime prayer, but he actively seeks forgiveness from God when God convicts him of specific transgressions.

Do I Still Need To Repent After I became A Christian?

The following passage will make it clear.

Ezekiel 18:23-28

²³Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord GOD: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?

²⁴But when the righteous turneth away from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, and doeth according to all the abominations that the wicked man doeth, shall he live? All his righteousness that he hath done shall not be mentioned: in his trespass that he hath trespassed, and in his sin that he hath sinned, in them shall he die.

²⁵Yet ye say, The way of the LORD is not equal. Hear now, O house of Israel; Is not my way equal? are not your ways unequal?

²⁶When a righteous man turneth away from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, and dieth in them; for his iniquity that he hath done shall he die.

²⁷Again, when the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive.

²⁸Because he considereth, and turneth away from all his transgressions that he hath committed, he shall surely live, he shall not die.

If the wicked turn away from his transgressions, he shall live. But if the righteous turn away from God’s grace and forgiveness, but sin deliberately and die in them, then he dies in sin!

In summary, if one has been living in sins for 10 years, then even though he was saved before, he would have ended up in hell if he died during that 10 years. If the period of unrepentant last only 10 minutes, it’s still a window of vulnerability when the sinner might die in sin during that 10 minutes and thus go to Hell.

Does it sound scary? Too scary to be possible? Read this verse.

Revelation 3:3

³Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.

This verse talks about how we should watch out for the Rapture. But the principle is the same for salvation. We don’t know when we will die, so it is wise to stay out of willful and prolonged sins lest we die in them.

How Do I Know That I Am Saved?

You can be sure that you are saved RIGHT NOW. As long as you are not refusing to repent of any known sin, as long as you have a good relationship with God, and as long as you believe that salvation can only be obtained by grace, through faith, in our lord and savor Jesus Christ, then you can be absolute certain that you are being saved. If you shall die at this moment, you are going to heaven. (not by suicide, of course)

How Do I Make Sure That I Am Not Going To Die In Sin?

We can all learn from David’s prayer, “Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression.” (Psalms 19:13)

This is a matter of faith. If we always worry about the future, what we worry about will tend to come true, but if we have faith in God, His power will manifest. Have faith in God and His words. Study God’s word and proclaim His promises frequently. The more you do it, the more truth will sanctify you, change you, and strengthen you. (John 17:17; James 1:21; 1 John 1:7)

Your willpower and best intention in the present can never guarantee the final condition of your heart, not even the present condition! Only the power of biblical faith, which can unleash the power of God, can accomplish that. That’s why we have to pray, praise, fellowship with other Christian, and study the Bible diligently. The more we do them, the more likely that we can endure to the end because these activities can increase our faith, cover our blind spots, keep us close to God, unleash the power of truth, and help us retain more truth.

And finally, “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thessalonians 5:23)

Related Post:

Can You Lose Your Salvation?

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They may quote a lot of Bible passages, and sound genuine, but they are false teachers. They may sincerely believe in what they teach, but one day they and their blind followers will be judged severely by God.

If, after you read this post, you realize that you have been under the influences of their teaching or is a member of such institutional church or organization, please get out ASAP. It is impossible to stay with them and not get harmed. (Proverbs 13:20)

It’s hard to detect because they have a form of godliness, so you think you are going to a good church

2 Timothy 3:1-5 ¹This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. ²For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, ³Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, ⁴Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; ⁵Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

The emperor has no clothes.

They may talk a lot of talk, but ultimately what they try to do is to deny prophecies, miracles, tongues, and other manifestation of God’s power in today’s churches.

The harms they have been doing to today’s churches are vast and multilevelled. I myself had been blind to a lot of these harms in the past ten years as a member of an institutional church due to familiarity blindness. Only after I prayed to God recently and asked Him to reveal the problems of the church to me did He reveal to me the problems of my local church and the entire denomination, and I was shocked by these revelations.

At the end, God asked me to leave the unbiblical church and go out to build a church according to the model of the early church in Acts, which I did.

Examples of harms that these “Having a…godliness…power” people do to our churches

• A lot of Christians no longer seek the gift of tongue, which the Bible says can edify oneself
• Many Christians now think that prophecies and miracles ceased after the Bible was completed
• Because of the lack of spiritual power, many Christians turn to self-help, personal growth, and new age teaching for help
  
• They persecute churches that follow the model of the early church
• They persecute modern apostles, prophets, evangelist, and faith healers, but only allow pastors and teachers to remain in the churches, which are the two “weakest” offices in God’s appointed leadership.
• While these blind teachers preach against miracles and power of God, many Christians suffer addictions, sickness, and attacks from Satan
• Words have power. Because of their repeated teaching and preaching of human invented doctrines and human traditions in their church buildings, the spiritual atmosphere of these churches are now being filled with the power of these false beliefs— beliefs that deny the power and manifestation of the truth. So there is now very little manifestation and prosperity in these churches and in the life of their church members
• Only one man do all the talk in the church, once every week, while the rest of the church congregation sit on pews and let their spiritual gifts go stale or stay buried.
• The church congregation become so weak spiritually that they don’t even want to meet with each other often, but only twice per week the maximum
• Christians have listened to too many human doctrines that these doctrines confused the truth of God’s word and they become too powerless and confused to read the Bible themselves

The lack of spiritual power and miracles is a sign of false doctrines

1 Corinthians 4:18-21

¹⁸Now some are puffed up, as though I would not come to you. ¹⁹But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will, and will know, not the speech of them which are puffed up, but the power. ²⁰For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.

Those men spend tons of hours to discredit other people’s ministries, reinterpret God’s word with complicated but flawed analysis, discourage people from seeking any form of miracles, emphasize human reasoning and human doctrine, undermine God’s provision, and promote human’s self-sufficiency (For example, “God isn’t your matchmaker”, “God help those who help themselves”, “God gives us wisdom to decide on our own”…)

God prove them wrong by not giving them any power. They will have all sort of educations, but they will not be able to perform any miracle or manifest any spiritual gift at all. They can only do the talk but fail to chop chop. All they can do is to argue with complicated and twisted reasoning, but they can’t perform miracles or experience the supernatural like the people they criticize.

This was what happened in Jesus’ days. The pharisees had witnessed Jesus’ miracles, but they refused to believe and wanted other to follow them. (Matthew 13:23) I believe there are many modern pharisees who have hijacked Christians churches and seminaries, but most Christians under their authorities are genuine Christians. However, as long as these Christians remain with these modern pharisees, it will remain very hard for them to experience the power of the full gospel that is mentioned in Mark 16:17-18, which says:

And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

If we can experience the power of the full gospel, which goes far beyond than just telling people how to get into heaven, then we don’t need to rely on schemes and gimmicks to attract people into the churches. We will be like the Christians of the early church in Acts, who simply go out and perform the power of the full gospel and follow the commands of Jesus Christ, and then God himself “add to their number who were being saved.” (Acts 2:47)

It’s easier to see the manifestation of God’s word than people think!

2 Corinthians 4: 1-2

¹Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not; ²But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.

We can believe in God’s mercy. Because of His mercy, He gives each of us a part of His ministry.

Manifestation of the truth is a crucial part of God’s ministry. If you don’t see the manifestation of the truth and God’s power in your local church or in the ministry you are part of, then get out, find a biblical church, and seek this power first, because if there is no manifestation there must be something wrong.

Yes, I know there is very few churches out there that follow the example of the early church in Acts, but that makes it even easier for you to eliminate other choices. No more hopping around from church to church!

If a church claims that they have spiritual power such as miracle healing, prophecy, or vision from God, but fail to heal you or give you words from the Lord accurately, then maybe they are still working on it, or they are fake. But the lack of manifestation is certainly a sign of a weak church.

People can appear godly. They can have an impressive degree in theology. They can have a nice church building and church statistic. They teach good things in the Bible every week, preaching sermons that will never bring up any controversy nor impact to daily practical living.

But at the end of the day, everyone can see that the emperor has no clothes. Just compare your church with the church of Acts!

It’s easy to manifest God’s word. Just believe in everything the Bible says, and proclaim your conviction boldly. Don’t water it down. Don’t mix it with complicated, human-invented doctrines.

See how men and women of faith experience the manifestation of God’s word through faith.

Because we have no power…

Many sincere and devoted Christians are beat to a pulp. Even though they remain faithful to God, as long as they are part of a “having a… godliness… but… power” church, they will remain powerless. (1 Corinthians 12:26)

You might think that you can remain strong and independent, but if your church tolerates false teachings and resist God’s power, then these false teachings and teachers will be like a little yeast in a batch of dough— the whole batch will get fermented. (1 Cor 5:6-7) You will not be exempted.

Other Christians have started looking into the self-help, secular psychiatry, New Age, occult, and witchcraft for help. (Matthew 24:24) The lack of spiritual power create a vacuum that has to be filled by something else, so it is very tempting for them to get spiritual power from somewhere else if they can’t experience God’s power.

Church going Christians slowly get turned into minimalists. They keep their attendance in the church to the minimal. Unlike the early church, which meet almost everyday around the clock. They trim their attendance down to the bare essential.

When they finally trimmed it down to only the bare essential: a fellowship gathering and a Sunday service per week, they proceed to turn them into social gatherings.

Of course they would become minimalists, because there is only a handful of people in the church who can exercise one or two spiritual gifts on each Sunday service, which is preaching or encouraging, but most people don’t get to exercise their spiritual gifts.

Years after years most Christians are only allowed to serve as pew warmers. (Don’t tell me your church is different just because your church congregation dance and stand a lot during the worship. It’s the same thing)

Being pew warmers for too long causes their spiritual muscles to shrink. (And mine)

False doctrines (Such as Calvinism, Once Saved Always Saved, Everyone gets Raptured...) and other human philosophies are being mixed with the truth, and are being served to Christians as spiritual food, and thus destroy most of its spiritual nutrition, and the Christians eat it. They have their stomach full of sermons and teachings, but always wonder why something is still missing.

They become too weak and lukewarm to read the Bible themselves, and the “full time ministers” condemn them for not reading the Bible, which they love doing because it serves their self-importance, otherwise, who needs a “full time minister” if they all know their Bible?

And many Christians fail to enjoy the prosperity that God promised us in the Bible. Some churches preach that Christians should be poor, and some other churches preach a false version of the prosperity gospel, which won’t work. So today only a small number of Christians actually enjoy the prosperity of God.

Last but not least, is complacency. When people think they have a good church, they no longer compare it with the real church and find out what they have missed.

In the next post, I am going to talk about the biblical church model of the New Testament, and offer it as the solution to most of our spiritual struggles and needs. The pilgrimage to heaven shouldn’t be a lonely path.

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This a period of time when evil will be abound and God’s divine judgments will be poured upon earth as prophesied in the Bible. Both evils and divine judgments will cause chaos and disasters in a scale so gigantic that the earth will be changed by the events forever.

Where in the Bible does it say that the Tribulation will last for 7 years?

Daniel 9:24-27

²⁴“Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy place.

²⁵“So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress.

²⁶“Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined.

²⁷“And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.”

According to the above passage, God has declared “seventy weeks” for the Jews. This period is given to “finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy place.” (v 24)

The entire “seventy weeks” will be followed by the Millennium kingdom as prophesied in the Bible, which will last for a 1000 years with the Messiah Jesus Christ literally reigning on earth.

However, the “seventy weeks” isn’t a continuous period – it is consisted of seven weeks, sixty-two weeks, and one week. Each week stands for 7 biblical years.

The seven weeks (49) and the sixty-two weeks (62) had already passed. It started from the degree of Persian Emperor Artaxerxes (Neh 2) to rebuild Jerusalem and ended at Jesus’ entering Jerusalem on a donkey (Palm Sunday).

Does that mean there were exactly 483 years (49+62= 483) between the decree to rebuild Jerusalem and Jesus’ entering Jerusalem as “Messiah the prince”? Sure, but it is prophetic year that we are talking about, not solar year that we use in our secular calendar, aka the Gregorian calender.

A prophetic year is 360 days and a solar year is 365.2422. That would make 483 × 360 = 173,880 days (24 hours) = 476 solar years + 25 days. The decree of Artaxerxes made the perfect starting point of the 483 prophetic years because, according to secular history, that decree was made in 445 BC and Jesus was crucified in 32 AD.

There were exactly 476 solar years + 25 days, which equal to 173,880 days, which also equal to 483 prophetic years, between the decree to rebuild Jerusalem and Palm Sunday.

How do we know that a prophetic year is 360 days?

We know there is one “seven” left that is waiting for its fulfillment in the near future. The Bible talks a lot about this last “seven”, and we can therefore soundly derive the number of days of an entire “seven” from the hints of the scripture that talks about this ’seven’.

First hints (the last half of the ’seven’ is 3.5 of times):

Daniel 7:25-26

²⁵ He will speak against the Most High and oppress his saints and try to change the set times and the laws. The saints will be handed over to him for a time, times and half a time.

²⁶ ” ‘But the court will sit, and his power will be taken away and completely destroyed forever.

Daniel 9:27

²⁷ He will confirm a covenant with many for one ’seven.’ In the middle of the ’seven’ he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on a wing of the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him. “

Daniel 12:7

⁷ The man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the river, lifted his right hand and his left hand toward heaven, and I heard him swear by him who lives forever, saying, “It will be for a time, times and half a time. When the power of the holy people has been finally broken, all these things will be completed.”

We can see from the above verses that the Antichrist will “confirm a covenant with many for one ’seven’”, but he will cause the sacrifice and offering of the Jewish temple to stop in the middle of the ’seven’.

We can see that during the first half of the ’seven’, this Antichrist has no power over the ’saints’, but God will hand the ’saints’ over to him after the middle of the ’seven’ for a ‘time, times, and half a time.’

Half of 7 is 3.5, which means that ‘a time, times, and half a time’ is 3.5 of times, but 3.5 of what time? 3.5 days? 3.5 month? or 3.5 years?

See the answer below:

Revelation 11:2

²But exclude the outer court; do not measure it, because it has been given to the Gentiles. They will trample on the holy city for 42 months.

Remember, the Antichrist has no power over the ’saints’ in the first half of the ’seven’, so he and his Gentiles army couldn’t possibly trample the holy city during that time, so this 42 months have to be the second half of the ’seven’.

So the second half of the ’seven’ = 42 months, and 42 months are 3.5 years, so half of the ’seven’ is 3.5 years!!!

To make it clear, we now find that ‘a time, times, and half a time’ = second half of the last ’seven’ = 42 months = 3.5 years

Next, how many days do we have for this 42 months?

Revelation 12:5-6

⁵She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. ⁶The woman fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.

The woman is the nation of Israel. Israel will enjoy peace and control of her holy temple for the first half of the ’seven’, but after that her holy city and temple will be trampled by the Gentile for 42 months, during which the Israelis have to flee.

She will flee for 1,260 days. So here we see that 1,260 days = 42 months.

Again, just to make it clear, so far we have: ‘a time, times, and half a time’ = second half of the last ’seven’ = 42 months = 3.5 years = 1,260 days

To be double sure, let’s check out one more verse that confirm the conclusion we have:

Revelation 12:14

¹⁴The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the desert, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent’s reach.

This verse talks about the same woman who will flee to the desert for 42 months. Again, this 42 months have to be the second half of the last ’seven’, because this woman, the Israel, will enjoy peace for the first half of the ’seven’ and therefore she has no reason to flee at that period of time. So here again we see that ‘a time, times and half a time’ equal 42 months!

Let check out this final one to seal up the conclusion:

Revelation 13:5-7

⁵The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise his authority for forty-two months. ⁶He opened his mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven. ⁷He was given power to make war against the saints and to conquer them. And he was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation.

Daniel 7:25-26 and the Revelation 13:5-7 above talk about the same period of time, which is the second half of the ’seven’, which confirm my conclusion that ‘a time, times and half a time’ = 42 months.

So, in conclusion, half of a ’seven’ = ‘a time, times and half a time’ = 3.5 prophetic years = 42 months = 1,260 days, and each prophetic year is therefore 360 days. (1,260 days ÷ 3.5 years = 360 days)

How do we know that the first half of the last ’seven’ is also 1,260 days?

What happens during the first half of the last ’seven’? How long would that be?

Revelation 11:3-10

³And I will give power to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.” ⁴These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. ⁵If anyone tries to harm them, fire comes from their mouths and devours their enemies. This is how anyone who wants to harm them must die. ⁶These men have power to shut up the sky so that it will not rain during the time they are prophesying; and they have power to turn the waters into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague as often as they want.

⁷Now when they have finished their testimony, the beast [the Antichrist] that comes up from the Abyss will attack them, and overpower and kill them. ⁸Their bodies will lie in the street of the great city, which is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified. ⁹For three and a half days men from every people, tribe, language and nation will gaze on their bodies and refuse them burial. ¹⁰The inhabitants of the earth will gloat over them and will celebrate by sending each other gifts, because these two prophets had tormented those who live on the earth.

The first half of the ’seven’ is also 1,260 days, during which two powerful witnesses from the Lord will vex the world. With the televisions, Internet, and the Satellites, the whole world will be able to watch them preach day in and night out for 1,260 days.

How do I know this is the first half of the last ’seven’?

The Antichrist will control Jerusalem the holy city and the temple during the second half of the ’seven’, but if the two powerful witnesses are there during that period of time, this is not possible. They can’t coexist in the same city for the same period of time. Either the Antichrist stays while the witnesses are gone, or the witnesses stay and the Antichrist stays away.

I believe that Jerusalem is the main base of the two witnesses, because the above passage says that they will die there. (Revelation 11:8) Even if they don’t stay in Jerusalem most of the time during their 1,260 days of ministry, I don’t think they will let the Antichrist and his minions touch that city and the temple.

They will have to die before the second half of the last ’seven’ years of Tribulation.

They will testify against the New World Order, the evil plan of Satan, and the identity and dark deeds of the Antichrist. Most importantly, they will preach the whole Gospel to the entire world, and explain every divine judgment that will fall upon earth during the Tribulation. They will explain that this is their last chance to receive salvation.

Because of their ministry, everyone who is willing believe in God and dies for Him will be able to choose to do so. By then everything will be plain and obvious— Life and death, light and darkness, heaven and hell, Christ and Antichrist, divine and evil.

Those who choose to remain evil in that period of time will know fully what their choice is about – to go against the biblical, trinity God who fully reveals Himself during the Tribulation and to face an eternity of Hell. Nevertheless, the evil people will think that they can overpower God by military force and they will listen to the Antichrist, the false prophet, and their fallen angels buddies.

There will be no middle ground. People have to choose either God or Satan.

Next, what will happen during the dreaded Tribulation?

Want to escape these horrible things that will come during the Tribulation? Make sure you are qualified for the secret Rapture! It’s a divine escape God planned for you

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Why? Because you and I are the sources of suffering and evil.

We create suffering and evil for this world whenever we conceive evil thoughts and/or act upon them. The world can only be perfect if everyone obeys one set of law perfectly, and only if that law itself is perfect.

I believe we have the perfect law, which is God’s Law (Psalm19:7), but no one is perfect enough to obey it (Romans 3:20).

²⁰Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight [God's sight] by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. Romans 3:20

The Law makes us aware of how sinful we are. Try to act good for one week by following the Ten Commandments, and you will discover that you cannot act good for very long.

Even if you are not Christians, you can still act good according to your conscience. Many people have tried this experiment when they were kids. One must be disillusioned to imagine that they are good if they can’t even stay good for a few days.

It took us many years of education and growing up to convince ourselves that we aren’t sinners. Most people were successful in believing that.

Can a boiled seed sprouts?

No, just as a boiled seed can never sprout, a fallen race can never be perfect either.

Have you ever wondered why we have tried for many thousands of years but we still failed at stopping murders, rapes, wars, greed, injustice, poverty, sickness, and other curses that are caused by human weaknesses?

The answer to the problems doesn’t lie in a perfect system or government. If the root of problems is human, you can never fix the problems through a perfected system or government.

People who thought they could change the world with their ideologies only created bigger suffering and evil for everyone. For example, communism and fascism. Communism alone had caused hundred of millions of death in the last half century.

When the first human couple sinned, they and their offspring were fallen and spiritually dead. It could never be undone.

Death had entered the world because of sin, and this was why we have had all kind of suffering and evil since.

The first transgression of Adam and Eve had contaminated our DNA and created a moral weakness, and since then transgressions in the world have only increased as the human race departed further and further from God.

Through generations, our moral weaknesses and hereditary diseases and disorders have been piling up. We have been degenerating, not evolving!

¹²Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned— Romans 5:12

With each new transgression, more damage is done to our race and the world we live in. As we invent new ways to sin and grieve God, we also bring more and more suffering and evil into our world (Romans 1:28-32).

God delayed our punishments because of mercy

If God didn’t delay punishments for anyone, there would not be one single Christian on earth, because all would have died the moment they sinned.

Those of us who asked, “Why does God allow suffering and evil?”, might possibly be pointing our fingers to the “evil men” who do “evil”, such as Hitler. And we might be also pointing fingers to God Himself, and imply that He is the ultimate author of suffering and evil.

If you call someone Hitler, it is considered to be one of the worst insults. No one wants to admit that his or her heart is just as capable of evil as Hitler. However, the truth is we just don’t have the power and guts to carry out the evils in our hearts like Hitler did.

Who voted Hitler into power? The average people! Who carried out his orders? The average people!

Have you ever voted anyone who was pro-choice (pro-abortion) into any public office? If you voted for that person because he or she promised government handouts, you are hiring murderer for bribe!! (Ezekiel 22:12)

In you men accept bribes to shed blood [abortion for example]; you take usury and excessive interest [Illegal central banks such as U.S.'s Federal Reserve] and make unjust gain from your neighbors by extortion [Governmental wealth redistribution program, stealing from the rich and give it to the poor]. And you have forgotten me, declares the Sovereign LORD.

At least half the population of every democratic country have voted for murderers because of welfare or other ungodly reasons. As for totalitarian governments, they were given power by the majority of their people at one time.

There are at least a hundred other ways in which we have been participating murder and extortion, voting for murderers and wealth re-distributors were just two of the many examples.

“Thou shall not murder” and “Thou shall not steal” are just two of the Ten Commandments, and we almost break the rest of the ten commandments on a daily basis.

¹You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. ²Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. ³So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? ⁴Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance? Romans 2:1-4

God allows suffering and evil for you and I!!!! He is tolerating us for just a little while.

This is not the time to fold our arms and judge God and others, but it is the time to repent!!! The day of God’s wrath and reckoning is quick approaching.

God’s solution to our fallen state

If the seed is boiled, then replace it with a new seed! This is God’s solution.

The old seed is useless. Whatever you do to it it will not sprout. Many people try to do something to their nature to become better, spiritually enlightened, or whatever they call it. However, no amount of good work can compensate our sins and transgression, nor can it bring about a lasting change to our fallen nature. (Romans 7:5)

⁵For when we were controlled by the sinful nature,^[a] the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. Romans 7:5

¹⁴We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. ¹⁵I do not undehttp://bible-verses-insights.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=609&message=10rstand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. ¹⁶And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. ¹⁸I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.^[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. ¹⁹For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. ²⁰Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. Romans 7:14-20

To believe we can change our nature, or evolve into a more enlightened being, is like watering a boiled seed and hope it would sprout.

God decided to give us a new nature. This new nature is the new life of Jesus Christ.

⁹No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. 1 John 3:9

³ Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” … ⁵ Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. ⁶ That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. ⁷ Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ John3:3,5

¹⁷Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 2 Corinthians 5:17

Those who accept Jesus Christ as their personal savor will receive the new nature, but he must also follow Jesus as Lord and live by faith in God every moment to grow and manifest that new nature everyday:

My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you. Galatians 4:19

Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 1 Timothy 6:12

For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last,^[c] just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.” Romans 1:17

Faith is superior than willpower. Faith come by the Spirit of God speaking into our spirit (Romans10:17). When God speaks His Word into our spirits, faith is formed, and we response to this initial faith by confessing His spoken Word with our mouths, and believing it in the hearts.

As we do that, the power and faith of God are being released from the Word of God and we will be able to accomplish or receive what the Word of God says it will accomplish.

Holiness is the nature and work of God. What was started by God cannot be completed by our willpower or old nature, but has to be completed by God Himself:

³Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? ⁴Have you suffered so much for nothing—if it really was for nothing? Galatians 3:3-4

What is our part then? Our part is to live by faith, speak words of faith, act upon faith, and hold our faith.

Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. Hebrews 4:14

By exercising faith persistently, we substantiate the life of Christ until He is formed in us!

If you haven’t accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savor, go here to learn how to do so.

OK, I have become a Christian now, so when will the suffering and evil stop?

Congratulation! No matter you have become a Christin just a minute ago, or years ago, you have signed up to become God’s lasting solution to the problem of suffering and evil.

Hear this again! You have become part of God’s final solution to the problem of suffering and evil!!!

¹⁸I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. ¹⁹The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. ²⁰For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹that^[i] the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.²²We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. Romans 8:22-23

After we have become children of God, it added new meaning to our suffering. Prior to knowing God, we suffer for the sake of suffering. After knowing God, we suffer for great purposes.

As we wait eagerly for the manifestation of our full inheritance as children of God (i.e. heaven, eternal life, and the whole nine yards), Christ is forming in us as we face our earthly challenges with godly faith each day (Galatians 4:19).

Suffering become purposeful tests that test our characters and faith. It actually help us grow if we respond to suffering properly:

³Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. Romans 5:3-5

You may want to know why does it have to take so long? Why can’t we just go back to the good old days of Adam and Eve as if nothing happened? No more suffering and evil as soon as we believe Jesus?

What were God waiting for? Why doesn’t He stop the suffering and evil as soon as we become Christian?

In the good old days of Adam and Eve, everything was good –no death, no sin, no sickness, no aging, no evil, and no suffering – but good wasn’t good enough to prevent them from sinning!! (Genesis 1:31)

Think about it, it hadn’t been too long since God created the earth, the Garden of Eden, and the human couples, before they sinned. Everything was good, nothing was forbidden from humans except just one thing: they can’t eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Of all the good and juicy fruits in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve chose to eat the only fruits that they were not supposed to eat. God told them, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” (Genesis 2: 16-17)

They still ate it.

By choosing knowledge of good and evil, they chose to decide for themselves and be their own god. God planted the tree there because He had to give them the option to decide to stay with Him or to depart from Him.

You can’t really physically depart from God, because He is everywhere, but you can depart from God if you separate your spirit from Him and develop a strong sense of self and self determination. This was what our ancestors essentially did.

God already told them they will die if they chose that option, but they didn’t really believe it.

To this day, He still offer us freewill. Without freewill, we can never be perfect. A perfect being is a conscious, sentimental being.

If God simply revert things to the days of Adam and Eve, and stop the suffering and evil right now, what make you think that you won’t decide to sin again?

An eternity with God is too long and too perfect for us… if we enter it without proper preparation

If you have become a Christian long enough, you might have pondered this question, “Eternity… how does God make sure I won’t sin for that long?”

Even some of the angels sinned! In fact, they sinned before humans did.

One third of the angels rebelled against God. Their leader is Satan. They knew mentally what they were doing. They had been living in heaven and seeing God everyday prior to their fall, but still decided to rebel against Him.

They knew what they were doing mentally, but they couldn’t really understand the gravity and the eternal consequences of their choice because they were pure and innocent just before they sinned.

Even the angels, who can see God and dwell in heaven, have the need to learn and gain knowledge (1 Peter 1:12).

If you and I were born in a good state like the angels and Adam and Eve, we wouldn’t understand suffering and evil either. We could never understand the Word of God deeply by just listening to God preaching in heaven, for it is written:

A servant cannot be corrected by mere words; though he understands, he will not respond. Proverbs 29:19

Imagine talking to a healthy kid about death, crime, handicap, cancer, or evil, she won’t really understand if she had never experienced it. She knows no real pain. You can’t talk her out of harm’s way if she feels itchy and wants to entertain her “what if I do this?” kind of curiosity.

In order for a kid to learn to hate evil and love good, she must experience some real pains such as being lied to, get some small cuts, or volunteer for unfortunate people as she grows up in order to understand these things deeper.

God is omnipotent, but I wonder if even He is able to tell a “good” man what sin, death, sickness, murder, and other evil is like. What I meant by “good” was the Adam and Eve kind of good before they sinned for the first time.

God is a wise teacher, so He allows us to learn by experiences if we ask for it. His plan A was for Adam and Eve to never have sinned in the first place, but since that plan was forever gone, now His plan B was to replace our fallen nature and forgive our sin through His Son Jesus Christ.

That’s not all, God is able to bring good out of evil, so He makes use of evil instead of simply eliminating it all together. Therefore, part of His current plan was to raise His Church through present suffering and evil, instead of without.

³Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. Romans 5:3-5

¹Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin. ²As a result, he does not live the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. 1 Peter 4:1-2

By going through tribulations and temptations in this world, we learn God’s Word deeper than we would if things were good and perfect. (Psalm 119:71)

Nothing in our life is pointless, even the bad and evil. Everything is going to be useful even after we enter the other side of eternity, because…

Our life is an epistle! The Church is the perfect teaching material!

³ clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart. 2 Corinthians 3:3

The reason God let us live the rest of our earthly days after conversion is because He wants to write on us with His Spirit. We are His living letters, books, and tablets. Nothing is more touching than a real life story. God wants to co-author our life as much as we let Him to.

For those who are obedient, they enjoy more blessings and rewards in this life and in eternity, and maybe endure some persecutions for God on earth. For those who are goofing around and are disobedient, they suffer consequences and disciplines, and may become some of the “poorest” folks in the kingdom of heaven, if they make it there.

The suffering and evil that we endure through our earthly life will become part of the eternal teaching materials for the entire heaven and the rest of human race. Everyone will know how good good is, how bad bad is, and how evil evil is, by reading us.

The ripples of every good choice or bad choice made by us in this life will be revealed fully to all intelligent creatures, who are humans and angels, for eternity. God doesn’t need to teach us with “Thou shall not!” anymore. He will have plenty of living epistles to teach everyone.

⁹For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men. 1 Corinthians 4:9

It would be like a multi-dimensional slide show (at least 3-D if not 4, 5, 6 D). The audiences will be able to know exactly what you have been through, feel what you felt, and know exactly how each person felt who had ever interacted with you.

We will be able to study each living epistle from all points of view and depths, gaining experiential knowledge from each epistle quickly and easily. We will be able to understand the Bible much deeper by watching epistle movies in relation to the Word of God.

Remember I established earlier that one of the main reasons why Adam and Eve and the fallen angels chose to sin was because they lacked experiential knowledge? Problem solved!

And that’s not all…

Without the Church, eternity is too big, too long for everyone

God doesn’t want a quick fix for suffering and evil. He wants a solution that guarantees to last!

Part of the lasting solution is to form Christ in each one of us, because only the very nature of God can guarantee to live for eternity without sinning. Good and innocent aren’t enough to ensure a 100%, eternal guarantee, but with the nature and life of Christ intertwined with the very fabric of our soul and spirit, we can have confidences for eternity.

That’s not all, every “Christ container” interconnect with one another as the Church! The Church is the greatest invention ever! Only God could conceive such an ingenious idea (Ephesians 1:8-10, 18-23).

God is huge. He is deep. He is intense. He is absolute and holy. And to think that anyone would live with Him forever, can you imagine that?

Remember, even angels sinned!

But now things have changed: we have the Church!

We learned that in eternity there will be living epistles to gain experiential knowledge from: Not a hundred, not a thousands, but possibly hundreds of millions of living epistles.

The Church is like a gigantic library of epistles.

The Church, which we are part of, will maintain intimate fellowship with God and with each saint for eternity.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. Hebrews 12:1-3

In eternity we will fellowship with every saint who once lived on earth and fought a good fight. They had gone through many suffering, evil, and temptations, but they have overcome with their faith, the word of their testimony, and the blood of the Lamb. (Hebrews 11; Revelation 12:11)

There will be no communication barrier like we have on earth. We can communicate with instant thoughts. The richness and speed we receive and share knowledge and understanding with in eternity will be far beyond our present earthly mind can comprehend. (1 Corinthians 13:9-12)

If temptation to rebel God exist in eternity at all, we have the entire Church behind each one of us. The moment a temptation fly by anyone, the rest of the Church, with all her heroes of faith and saints with different spiritual gifts, will come to our aid in the speed of light, literally.

If there is a Bible lesson to be learned, millions of “movies clips” from epistles that are relevant to that lesson, along with relevant Bible verses, will flash through the mind. There will not be any boring “thou shall not” or “one day you will understand” anymore.

Conclusion: There are more suffering and evil to come, but you can escape it!

The earth will soon go through the most horrible time in history. There was nothing like it before, nor will there ever be. That period is the Great Tribulation.

The Bible has long prophesied that final 7 years of the present world. The anti-Christ will rise. He will persecute those who follow the biblical God, and wage gigantic wars with factions, subdue them and cause mass scale destruction on many parts of the world.

There will be global disasters. People will will be extremely paranoid and frightful because of what happen during that period. It will not be pleasant to have to live with people at that time, because the Bible says the people grow cold because of wickedness, and they betray and hate each other. (Luke 21:25-26; Luke 24:10,12)

The worst thing is, the godly men and women will be snatched away by Jesus Christ into heaven: Christians who are counted worthy will escape the Great Tribulation. (Luke 21:34-36) With all the godly and mighty men and women gone, the world lose its only true light.

And Satan will be given greater freedom to do his evil deed, for only worldly people will be left on earth and they have always been following Satan anyway. Satan will overcome the saints during the Tribulation, and those saints are Christian who are left behind and new converts.

The Escape event is called the Rapture. You can participate in it too if you are a true Christian and you meet the requirement for the Rapture.

I will see you in the Rapture! Let’s look forward to our glorious hope of heaven!

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The English word “rapture” was derived from the Latin word, rapio, which means “caught up”.

In the Latin Bible, the related word “Rapiemur” was used in a Bible verse that talks about this “caught up” phenomenon, which is the “Rapture” we talk about today. It was in the 5th-century Latin Bible Vulgate, in 1 Thessalonians 4:17:

After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up [Rapiemur in Latin] together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.

The same word has appeared in the following verse as well, which described the supernatural transportation of apostle Philip.

And when they were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more: and he went on his way rejoicing. Acts 8:39

The biblical Greek word for “Rapture” is harpazo, which means “snatch away”, “carry off”. In the context of its usage in the Bible, it usually involves an object being physically or figuratively transported from earth to heaven, or from one place to another, by external forces.

So what is “Rapture”?

Rapture is a supernatural event in which God snatches up part of His Church to heaven in “the twinkling of an eye” (1 Corinthians 15:52), before the 7 years Tribulation that is prophesied in the Bible begins.

The Tribulation is the final seven years of earth as we know it now, but after that, everything on earth will be changed forever. Christ and His followers will reign for a thousand years on earth, follow by another conflict with Satan and his followers, and then a new heaven and a new earth will replace the old ones after the last evil is dealt with.

Some believe that Rapture will happen in the middle of the Tribulation (mid-trib), some believe that Rapture happen after the sixth seal (pre-wrath), and some others believe that it will happen right before Jesus’ second coming (post-trib), when He and His heavenly army will eliminate every wicked men on earth and bring in the end of the Tribulation.

Some even believe there are multiple raptures that begins with a pre-tribulational, secret, conditional, and sudden Rapture, and after the Tribulation begins other raptures will follow. I think this theory is more plausible than other rapture theories that deny a pre-trib rapture all together.

I will further analyze the possibility of a second and even a third rapture in the next post.

Scriptural Support For The Rapture Phenomenon/Phenomena (Regardless of its timing)

“¹⁵According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. ¹⁶For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. ¹⁷After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever..” (1 Thessalonians 4:15–17)

“²⁰But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, ²¹who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.” (Philippians 3:20-21)

“⁴⁹And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we^[a] bear the likeness of the man from heaven.⁵⁰I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. ⁵¹Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— ⁵²in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. ⁵³For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. ⁵⁴When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”^[b]55“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”^[c]” (1 Corinthians 15:49–55)

“No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.” (Matthew 24:36-41) (Post-trib proponents think this verse isn’t about Rapture, we will discuss that in future post)

When is the Rapture?

I have every scriptural reason to believe that the (first?) Rapture will happen before the 7 years Tribulation, which will be the most horrible period of the entire history of earth.

As for the exact date of the Rapture, no one is supposed to know (Matt 24:36). The Bible says not even the angels and Jesus Christ Himself know when it’s going to happen.

The post-tribulational Rapture theory doesn’t make sense (if there is only one rapture), because once the Tribulation starts, the timing of Jesus’ second coming to end the Tribulation will be measurable, which is 7 years from its start.

So Matt 24:36-41 can’t be talking about Jesus’ second coming. Jesus’ second coming will be a timed, calender marked, and public event once the Great Tribulation starts.

By calculating the obvious timeline and major events of the Tribulation that are clearly prophesied in the Bible, the Bible reading believers who remain on earth for any reason will know when their own version of Rapture will come if the event is to take place at mid-trib, prewarth, or post trib.

But the Bible says that “no one knows about that day or hour” (Matt 24:36) when the Rapture will take place, and therefore we have to “keep watch!” (Matt 24:42)

Therefore, the only logical timing for the Rapture, if we read the Bible carefully and if there is only one Rapture, is pre-tribulation.

If the above scripture passages I just quoted on the secrecy of the Rapture don’t convince you, let me add some more passages here:

³⁴“Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap. ³⁵For it will come upon all those who live on the face of the whole earth. ³⁶Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.” Luke 21:34-36

¹Now, brothers, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, ²for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. ³While people are saying, “Peace and safety,” destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. 1 Thessalonians 5:1-3

The above passages should put an end to any argument about the timing of the Rapture– it has to be before the Tribulation.

Otherwise, how can that day close on people unexpectedly like a trap, while people still have the luxury and wealth to be “weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness…”? How can people say “peace and safety”? During the 7 year Tribulation, there are famines, disasters, gigantic wars, mass slaughters, and divine wafts from heaven, and people will not be merry their way like that and no one with a sane mind can say “peace and safety”!

To make the big picture a little bit more clear, let me add one more passage to seal the deal:

¹⁹ But your dead will live; their bodies will rise.
You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy.
Your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead.

²⁰ Go, my people, enter your rooms and shut the doors behind you;
hide yourselves for a little while until his wrath has passed by.

²¹ See, the LORD is coming out of his dwelling to punish the people of the earth for their sins.
The earth will disclose the blood shed upon her; she will conceal her slain no longer.  Isaiah 26:19-21

Now I guess it can’t be more obvious. The above passage says that there will be resurrection, that God’s people will hide themselves in rooms while His divine wrath pass by, and that God will come out of heaven to punish evil people on earth.

What does that sounds like? It sounds like the Rapture with it’s resurrection (1 Thess 4:15-16), the escape from divine wrath in secret chambers/rooms (i.e. heaven), and God leave His heaven to punish evil people on earth. (The Battle of Armageddon, see Revelation 16:16 and 19:11-21)

In fact, there are more parallels to the Rapture in this passage than what I just listed above. I will develop this point further in future posts if I have a chance.

An Inclusive Rapture For Every Christian?

No, I believe the Rapture is conditional and secret. Most pre-tribulation Rapture believers believe that every Christian will be included in the Rapture, but the Bible says very clearly that there are conditions for Rapture. Here are some obvious Bible verses that talk about the conditions:

“Since you have kept my command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come upon the whole world to test those who live on the earth.” Revelation 3:10

Not every Christian has keep Christ’s command to endure patiently, and the above verse only speaks to one of the seven Churches in the Book of Revelation, but for the other Churches, the Holy Spirit usually has something to rebuke them about.

If anyone fulfills the command to endure patiently, God will keep him from “the hour of trail that is going to come upon the whole world to test those who live on the earth.” The only way God can keep us from the time of the worldwide Great Tribulation is to keep us away from earth.

^“Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.” Luke 21:36

“that you may be counted worthy” – it’s not unconditional gift. Anyone who participates in the Rapture has to be counted worthy.

If you want more scriptural proofs that the Rapture is secret, and conditional, please click into my article: Rapture Of The Saints: Will Some Christians Be Left Behind?

After The Rapture, People May Deny That It Happened, Or They Call It Aliens Mass Abduction

The population that will be caught up during the Rapture might be so little that the world will deny it ever really happened. They might even blame it on the ET Aliens abduction.

The Church that has been left behind might be disillusioned and therefore many will give up on their faith (Matt 24:24; 1 Tim 4:1), and join Satan’s side in the final struggle during the Great Tribulation. Other Christians will wake up to the fact that they will have to face the Antichrist, Satan, and a hostile world, and that they have been left behind.

Some of them will be very angry with their pastors, who teach them an all inclusive pre-trib Rapture, which do a major disservice to them because it fails to teach them to be alert,  nor does it prepare them for the conditional Rapture.

Many will realize they have been sinning and refused to repent before the Rapture, and that they have no one to blame but themselves for being left behind, and this time they will be willing to die for Christ when the Antichrist and his one world government force them to worship him instead of the biblical God. They will go through a great deal of temptations and persecutions, but they will overcome (Revelation 12:17; Revelation 20:4-5).

Those left behind Christians who believe in Mid-Trib and Post-Trib might realize that they have mistaken, and therefore some of them will be disillusioned and join the enemy like the other, and some of them will repent and remain faithful till the end.

Many of them might actually believe that the Rapture is yet to come since they don’t believe in the pre-trib Rapture to begin with.

The genuine Rapture is a conditional, secret one that happens before the Tribulation, so believers of Mid-Trib and Post-Trib Rapture might not even realize that the Rapture has already taken place until mid way through the Great Tribulation, or even till the very day when Jesus descends from heaven to end the Tribulation.

I am not saying that believers of Mid-Trib and Post-Trib will be left behind because of their doctrines on the Rapture. Everyone will have to meet the same conditions to be qualified to the Rapture in order to “be counted worthy” for it (Luke 21:36).

Conclusion: There Is A Pre-Tribulation, Secret Rapture For Those Who Are Counted Worthy!

Whether there is a second Rapture or not, we know one thing for sure, that is, there will be a pre-Trib, secret Rapture for those who are worthy. I will show you in the next post why a second Rapture, though plausible, is not clearly guaranteed by the scripture.

And there are hints that may suggest that a second Rapture doesn’t even exist, let alone a third one.

So if we want to escape the Great Tribulation, and enjoy the honor for being a VIP in heaven for 7 years, we better get on the first train.

Relevant Article:

An excellent article that defends the Pre-Trib Rapture theory. (But they believe the Rapture is for every Christian, I disagree)

Go to the next post of What Is The Rapture: Is there a post-tribulation Rapture?

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However, there are many less obvious bible verses that might give hints that a rapture event might actually happens after the Tribulation begins.

I find the pre-tribulation, secret, and conditional Rapture very easy and obvious to defend, so I just settle on that, and from there, I am going to investigate other possibilities – what if other rapture theories can be right at the same time? Maybe there are multiple raptures?

The more I research the arguments from every school of rapture theory, the more I am convinced that the majority of them must be wrong!

Am I being proud to say that? No, if interpretations of scriptures from every school of thoughts contradicted with one another and sometime even themselves, then at least half of them must be wrong.

Some arguments are based on sound logic, but many more are based on assumptions and poorly supported scriptures. Occasionally, I would find some gems from their arguments, but many times I just couldn’t accept the quality of the exegeses that were done by many.

It became more and more confusing and hard to organize the information. Thank God, I found a solution to do this! Reasoning by elimination seems to be the best way to handle this mud pit.

By eliminating arguments that are stretchy and preserving the gems, we will find a clearer picture. If we don’t know what’s certain, then at least we need to know what’s not.

Is There A Second Rapture? The Last Trumpet? Would It Be The Post-tribulation Rapture?

Post tribulation theorists believe that the Rapture will happen after the Tribulation. Partial rapture theorists believe in a secret pre-trib rapture, but they also think the post-tribulation can be right too, because of the “last trump”, see the following verses.

“For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.” (1 Thessalonians 4:15–17)

“⁴⁹And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we^[a] bear the likeness of the man from heaven.⁵⁰I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. ⁵¹Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— ⁵²in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. ⁵³For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. ⁵⁴When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”^[b]55“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”^[c]” (1 Corinthians 15:49–55)

Some say that the “last trumpet” is the last of the seven angelic trumpets in the Revelation. The seventh trumpet is sounded at the last half of the Great Tribulation (Rev 11:15-18), and so believers of post-trib Rapture believe that the Rapture should happen after the seventh trumpet is sounded or even later at the day of Jesus’ second coming.

Those who believe in partial Rapture, aka the two raptures or even multiple raptures, believe that both the conditional, secret pre-trib Rapture theory, the pre-wrath Rapture theory, and post-trib Rapture theory can be right at the same time.

Under this belief system, the Rapture Bible verses that mention the “the trumpet” would be the “trumpet Rapture”, and the verses that only talk about an escape for the worthy when Jesus will come to snatch them like a theft would be the “pre Trib escape Rapture” (Luke 21:36).

There Were Many “Trumpets” In The Bible, Not Just the Seven Trumpets in the Great Tribulation

The problem with the “trumpet Rapture” is that the “last trumpet” could also mean the last trumpet of the Church age. There is also hint that indicates that Paul wasn’t talking about the trumpet in the book of Revelation.

At least there is one thing I am sure, which is the seventh trumpet isn’t the “last” trumpet in any sense, because on the very last day of the Great Tribulation when the Lord will come down from heaven with His saints and heavenly army there is yet another sound of the trumpet! See below:

²⁹ “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. ³⁰ Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. ³¹ And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. Matthew 24:29-31

Beside, apostle Paul wrote to the first century churches about the “last trumpet” as if everyone in the church understood what he meant, but the 7 trumpets in the Revelation were unheard of by any Christian at the time, because the book of Revelation hadn’t been written yet at the time.

The author of Revelation hadn’t received the visions of the end time as of the writing of Paul regarding the “last trumpet” and the Rapture, so Paul was very likely to mean something else when he wrote “last trumpet”, and that he was expecting the readers to understand it without the knowledge of the book of Revelation.

Therefore, there are only two remaining possibilities for the true meaning of the “last trumpet”: either it is the last trumpet of the Church age (symbolic with the Feast of the trumpets), or it is the last trumpet at the second glorious global appearance of Christ.

Possibility 1: “Last Trumpet” could be the last trumpet of “the feast of the Trumpets”, which symbolizes the things to come (Col 2:16-17), and the Christians at the time were familiar with the concepts and symbolism of the feast.

For more analysis on the “last trumpet” from the pre-tribulation camp, you may want to read this forum post. Although I don’t agree with everything in the post, such as an all-inclusive pre-Trib Rapture, I think her analysis on the “feast of the Trumpets” is excellent.

Possibility 2: “Last Trumpet” could also be the sound of trumpet on the day of Jesus’ second coming (Matthew 24:31).

I think this possibility is less likely, because if the Rapture happens that day, the bodies of believers will be changed into immortal bodies forever (1 Corinthians 15:49–55). It means they will never reproduce (Matthew 22:30).

However, during the Millennium that follow after the Great Tribulation (Revelation 20:1-10), there are mortal people (Isaiah 65:25; Rev 20:8-9), but where do these mortal come from if everyone who survive the Great Tribulation is transformed into immortal at the “post-trib” Rapture, and the wicked are slaughtered and eliminated entirely from earth (Isaiah 34:1-3; Matt 13:40-43; Matt 13:49-50)?

Since the mortal men on earth during the Millennium are most likely the offsprings of the Tribulation saints, it implies that those saints who survive the Tribulation will remain mortals. Their mortality implies that the Rapture does not happen at the end of the Tribulation, since the “last trumpet”Rapture will transform the bodies of believers into immortal bodies.

Conclusion

Either a second post-tribulation rapture, or a one time post-tribulation Rapture, is implausible. The “last trumpet” probably isn’t the seventh trumpet in the Revelation, nor is it the trumpet on Christ’s second coming.

There is yet another point for post-trib rapture that is worth tackling, which is the “first resurrection” argument:

If Revelation 20:1-6 mentions the “first resurrection” after the Tribulation has ended, doesn’t it imply that the Rapture can’t happen before the Tribulation? (Remember the “Trumpet Rapture” comes with a simultaneous resurrection)

Find your answer here: The First Resurrection

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1. How exactly does a Christian receive healing
2. How exactly does a spiritual giant bear fruits of the Holy Spirit while most Christians still struggle
3. How exactly does one resists Satan, scripturally
4. How the principles identified in this post can be applied on every area of your life such as finance, relationship, ministry, accomplishment, and anything that pertain to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3)

Before you proceed onward with this post, you may want to know what faith can do and how to act upon whatever faith you have, and then you too, can start experiencing miracle in all areas of your life. Go to Parable Of The Mustard Seed: Scriptural Analysis of Faith if you want to do that.

Then, you can come back to this post, which contains several quote about faith (Actually, they are testimonies and excerpts, but I call them “quote about faith” so people can find this post by typing that phrase in the search engine)

Where does faith come from? How come some Christians experience God’s supernatural power but I don’t?

Faith comes by hearing (Romans 10:17). In the testimonies that I copied and pasted below you will find that all the testimonies involved hearing of God’s word. Upon hearing the Word of God, the believers accepted them with his whole heart and confess the Word with believing lips (Romans 10:10-11), and then God does what He said (Isaiah 5:11).

Every Christian receives revelation from the Holy Spirit. The job of the Holy Spirit is to guide us into all truth (John 16:13-15) He does it all day long. You can trust this fact. Satan and the circumstance will try to deceive you and make you think that the Holy Spirit isn’t interested in talking to you or the truth isn’t what it seems to mean, and thus steal the Word from your heart and mind (John 10:10).

However, we have the authority from God to resist the Devil (James 4:7) and rebuke our circumstances (Matthew 8:26). If we persevere, we will bear much fruits eventually (Luke 8:15).

Truth will set us free (John 8:32), but only truth that we understand and believe will set us free (Matthew 13:23; James 1:21). The entire Bible is useless to us if we don’t understand the words (2 Corinthians 3:6).

One of the best strategies to substantiate the truth into personal experience is to follow the prompting of the Holy Spirit like this: let Him reveals a verse or a passage to you one at a time, and jot them down on a piece of paper or card, verbally proclaiming it, mixing it with your own words if you want, for as long as and as frequent as you want until the truth manifests in reality. When you sense the Spirit impressing upon you another verse or passage, add them to your next card and do the same. Memorize them too.

Testimony #1 The Fruit of the Holy Spirit

Have you wondered how to bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit? The following excerpt is one of the clearest explanations I have read.

Excerpt from The Normal Christian Life, by Watchman Nee Pg 78

Some of you have no doubt had an experience something like the following. You have been asked to go and see a friend, and you knew the friend was not very friendly, but you trusted the Lord to see you through. You told Him before you set out that in yourself you could not but fail, and you asked Him for all that was needed. Then, to your surprise, you did not feel at all irritated, though your friend was far from gracious. On your return you thought over the experience and marveled that you kept so calm, and you wondered if you would be just as calm next time. You were amazed at yourself and sought an explanation. This is the explanation: the Holy Spirit carried you through.

Unfortunately we only have this kind of experience once in while, but it should be a constant experience. When the Holy Spirit takes things in hand there is no need for strain on our part. It is not a case of clenching our teeth and thinking that thus we have controlled ourselves beautifully and have had a glorious victory. No, where there is a real victory there is no fleshly effort. We are gloriously carried through by the Lord…

We have spoken of trying and trusting, and the difference between the two. Believe me, it is the difference between Heaven and hell. It is not something just to be talked over as a good thought; it is stark reality. `Lord, I cannot do it, therefore I will no longer try to do it.’ This is the point where most of us fail. `Lord, I cannot; therefore I will take my hands off; from now on I trust Thee for that.’ I refuse to act; I depend on Him to act and then I enter fully and joyfully into the action He initiates. It is not passivity; it is a most active life, trusting the Lord like that; drawing life from Him, taking Him to be my very life, letting Him out His life in
me.

A lot of Christians, including you and I, have also experienced something similar once in a while, but the experience never lasted. How come? What is the formula that will deliver all the time? The first step is to trust! We have to trust the Lord to see us through every situation in life. What come after trust? Let’s continue The Normal Christian Life Pg 79

God will not give me humility or patience or holiness or love as separate gifts of His grace. He is not a retailer dispensing grace to us in doses, measuring out some patience to the impatient, some love to the unloving, some meekness to the proud, in quantities that we take and work on as kind of capital. He has given only one gift to meet all our need — His Son Christ Jesus, and as I look to Him to live out His life in me, He will be humble and patient and loving and everything else I need — in my stead. Remember the word in the first Epistle of John: “God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath the life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life” (1 John 5:11,12). The life of God is not given us as a separate item; the life of God is given us in the Son. It is “eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 6:23). Our relationship to the Son is our relationship to the life.

The key ingredient is “Christ my life”. If you have the life Christ, you have to let this life live out in you. Only trust can activate His life. You trust the Lord to see you through and He will live out His life in you when you trust Him. This is the general idea, but can it be more specific? Let’s get to the specific, read on: The Normal Christian Life Pg 80

That is why Paul speaks of “the fruit of the Spirit” as one (Gal. 5:22) and not of `fruits’ as separate items. God has given us His Holy Spirit, and
when love is needed the fruit of the Spirit is love; when joy is needed the fruit of the Spirit is joy. It is always true. It does not matter what your personal deficiency, or whether it is a hundred and one different things, God has one sufficient answer — His Son Jesus Christ, and He is the answer to every human need. How can we know more of Christ in this way? Only by way of an increasing awareness of need. Some are afraid to discover deficiency in themselves and so they never grow. Growth in grace is the only sense in which we can grow, and grace, we have said, is God doing something for us. We all have the same Christ dwelling within, but revelation of some new need will lead us spontaneously to trust Him to live out His life in us in that particular. Greater capacity means greater enjoyment of God’s supply. Another letting go, a fresh trusting in Christ, and another stretch of land is conquered. `Christ my life’ is the secret of enlargement.

As God reveals our deficiency and the need to grow, we are to stop right there. Don’t rush in to apply your willpower and common sense to try to improve yourself, because it will only prolong the struggle. When God gives us awareness of a need, we are to trust Him to live out His life in us in that particular!

As you read more excerpts and testimonies, you will find a similar pattern of how it works: The believer becomes aware of a need, such as financial need, spiritual need, or health need, and God speaks to him through His word, and the believer acts upon the revealed truth by boldly declaring the revealed truth, and believe the word from his heart.

Testimony #2 When you should stop praying and start declaring victory that was already won

God has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3).

Once His Spirit reveals to us a specific truth or promise, we don’t need to pray anymore. Instead, we should keep proclaiming that piece of truth or promise until it manifests – the Bible tells us to calls things that are not as though they were (Romans 4:17). The more we hear our own proclamation, the more our faith will increase (Romans 10:17).

What if we meet severe resistance before we see the fulfillment of God’s Word? We rebuke it!

The Normal Christian Life Pg 33-34

I once had an experience which illustrates this principle. Some years ago I was ill. For six nights I had high fever and could find no sleep. Then at length God gave me from the Scripture a personal word of healing, and because of this I expected all symptoms of sickness to vanish at once. Instead of that, not a wink of sleep could I get, and I was not only sleepless but more restless than ever. My temperature rose higher, my pulse beat faster and my head ached more severely than before. The enemy asked, `Where is God’s promise? Where is your faith? What about all your prayers?’ So I was tempted to thrash the whole
matter out in prayer again, but was rebuked, and this Scripture came to mind: “Thy word is truth” (John 17:17). If God’ Word is truth, I thought, then what are these symptoms? They must all be lies! So I declared to the enemy, `This sleeplessness is a lie, this headache is a lie, this fever is a lie, this high pulse is a lie. In view of what God has said to me, all these symptoms of sickness are just your lies, and God’s Word to me is truth.‘ In five minutes I was asleep, and I awoke the following morning perfectly well.

The circumstance is not going to change the second you choose to believe, rather it can be just as bad or even worst than ever. Satan will work very hard to deceive you so that you will never stick it out until God’s truth manifest.

A skillful liar lies not only in word but in gesture and deed; he can as easily pass a bad coin as tell an untruth. The Devil is a skillful liar, and we cannot expect him to stop at words in his lying. He will resort to lying signs and feelings and experiences in his attempts to shake us from our faith in God’s Word.

Satan is a thief. He comes to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). Since Satan cannot do it in the open, he has to lie to achieve these purposes. As Christian, we have real authority over Satan and his army, but if we are deceived by him and fail to exercise our authorities in Christ, we will live like a poor kid who has inherited billions of dollars but live as though he is still poor.

The key is to call things that are not as though they were, until they are. No one can stop that formerly poor but presently rich kid to go to the bank and withdraw some cash from his bank account that has billions of dollars, but he has to go through some paper work and stand in the line the first time he goes to the bank. He has to show his identity to the teller and exercise his legal right as a billionaire.

Testimony #3 Rebuke Satan, temptation, and evil thought. Call it a lie!

Satan and his demons can manipulate your emotion and thinking. Sinful thoughts inside your head might actually originated from unclean spirits from within or without, and they can disguise their implanted thoughts as your own thoughts. If you doubt whether a Christian can be manipulated by demons like that, go here.

Here is an excerpt of a testimony from Grantley Morris’ website: Calling temptation, accusation, and evil thought a lie

I resisted the devil by not believing his lies. But I also hit him with the truth. That makes me feel real good. I only use short statements of truth. The devil wants me to have a debate with him but that would be giving him the upper hand. I’ve found it’s important not to get too involved with the Tempter. Jesus didn’t strike up a conversation or debate with the devil. He boldly and emphatically declared Bible verses and told him to get lost – nothing more! (Matthew 4:1-10) I’ve discovered that’s all any of us have to do. So I don’t bother arguing with the devil; I know the truth and I’m holding on to it, no matter what.

The devil might throw a bad feeling at me but I remember he’s hurting ten times worse. Every time Satan hears me saying, “That’s a lie!” it hurts him bad. The feelings he puts on me are just his desperate attempt to get me to stop because he’s scared. He knows he’s losing.

If demons want to put awful thoughts into my head, they are going to hate being near me because I’m committed to worshipping Jesus until the day I die. For the first time in my life I’m winning and I’m not going to let some thought or feeling rob me and drag me back to the black hole in which I used to live.

I used the same tactics when fighting urges to look at porn or women other than my wife. If the thought wasn’t good, I called it a lie. If the Bible doesn’t say it is true, I called it a lie. When I feel unforgiven, I call it a lie. It worked. The devil has little power over me now.

The demons can actually give you bad feelings! Likewise, they can make you feel like you have sinful desires while the fact is that the desires are coming from them.

What we can do is to expose the scheme of the enemy and call it a lie. A bad feeling can be a lie. An evil thought can be a lie. A physical pain can be a lie. We have to pay attention to the Holy Spirit and rely on Him to discern what’s going on behind the scene. Once we identify that something actually came from the enemy, we call it a lie and rebuke it with the truth!

Testimony #4 How to substantiate the promises of God that were already done deals in the spiritual realm

Most of the time the promise of God is considered done when the Lord had said it, and many other times, our prayers are answered the first time we prayed or even before that (Matthew 6:32)!

However, in the physical realm, God’s Word hasn’t manifested yet, but I am telling you, the answer to your prayer and the substance of your hopes already exist (Hebrews 11:1)! They are just warped presents sitting somewhere in the unseen realm, waiting for you to substantiate them with your faith, action, and patience.

The following testimony is one of the best examples on how to substantiate the truth that already existed.

Joel Osteen Your Best Life Now Pg 129

In 1981, my mother was diagnosed with cancer and given just a few weeks to live…

And my mother never gave up. She refused to speak words of defeat. She didn’t complain about how sick or weak she felt, or how awful her life was, or how hopeless her situation looked. She chose to put God’s words in her mind and in her mouth.

She started speaking faith-filled words. She started calling in health and calling in healing. All during the day, we’d hear her going through the house speaking aloud, “I will live and not die, and I will declare the works of the Lord.” She was like a walking Bible!

I’d say, “Mother, how are you doing?”

She’d say, “Joel, I’m strong in the Lord and the power of His might.” She pored over her Bible and found about thirty or forty favorite passages of Scripture concerning healing. She wrote them down, and every day, she’d read over them and boldly declare them aloud. We’d see her walking up and down the driveway, saying, “With long life, He satisfies me and shows me His salvation.”

Mother mixed her words with God’s Words, and something powerful began to happen. Her circumstances began to change. Not overnight, but little by little, she began to feel better. She got her appetite back and started gaining weight. Slowly but surely, her strength returned.

What was happening? God was watching over His Word to perform it. God was restoring health to her and healing her of her wounds. A few weeks went by and Mother got a little better. A few months went by, and she was even better. A few years went by, and she just kept on confessing God’s Word. Today, it has been more than twenty years since we received the report that Mother had just a few weeks to live, and as I write these words, Mother is totally free from that cancer, healed by the power of God’s Word!

And she is still confessing God’s Word. She gets up every morning and reviews those same Scriptures on the subject of healing. She still speaks those words of faith, victory, and health over her life. She won’t leave the house until she does it. Beyond that, she lives to remind “Mr Death” that he has no hold on her life.

The Bible contains a lot more promises than just those that talks about health! Ask the Lord to help you be more creative and ask for more things!

Testimony #5 Rebuke the lies and substantiate God’s truth!

What happened in this testimony is a very real and typical situation, and everybody will face something similar, sooner or later, if he or she is to live on earth (1 Peter 5:9). In the previous testimonies, we discussed the importance of trust, rebuking lies, and substantiating truth. This testimony is a typical case which demands all these skills.

Watchman Nee’s testimony of his terminal illness

When I first became aware of my illness in 1924, I was feeling feeble, there was pain in my chest, and I had a slight fever…

Dr. Wong told me that I was afflicted with tuberculosis and that my condition was so serious…

Day after day passed without my tuberculosis being cured. Though I exerted myself to write and to study the Bible, I found it exceedingly strenuous. I had a slight fever each afternoon, I could not sleep at night, and I frequently experienced night sweats…

After praying for over a month, I felt that I should write a book concerning what I had learned before God…

At that time my disease became so aggravated that I could not even lie down. While writing I sat on a chair with a high back and pressed my chest against the desk to alleviate the pain. Satan said to me, “Since you will soon be dying, why not die in comparative comfort rather than in pain?” I retorted, “The Lord wants me just like this; get out of here!” It took four months to complete the three volumes of The Spiritual Man. The writing of this book was a real labor of blood, sweat, and tears. I despaired of life, yet God’s grace brought me through. After completing each time of writing, I would say to myself, “This is my last testimony to the church.” [Sai Kit: Now, I highlighted this sentence because it is not biblical. Don't ever curse yourself like that. I believe Watchman Nee's generation had very little teaching on the power of the tongue so he didn't know better at the time. However, if he was born in this generation I am sure he won't speak any self-imposed curse like this. And I also believe that the reason why his illness was getting so serious and prolonged was because of his own negative words.]

…Following the publication of the book, I prayed, “Now let Your servant depart in peace.” At the same time my disease worsened. [See!? Self-imposed curse was working against him! The moment he prayed for death his disease got worst] I could not sleep peacefully at night, and when I awoke I turned incessantly from side to side. Physically, I was a bag of bones. I had night sweats, and my voice became hoarse. People had trouble hearing me speak, even when they placed their ear to my mouth. Several sisters took turns waiting upon me, one of whom was a veteran nurse. Whenever she saw me, she would weep. She testified, “I have seen many patients, but I have never seen one whose condition was as pitiful as his. I am afraid that he can live only three or four more days.” When someone told me of this, I said, “Let this be my end. I realize I am going to die soon.” [He did it again!] One brother telegraphed the churches in various places, telling them there was no more hope for me and that they need pray for me no more [Even Christians can bring curses upon you, if you receive their words that are speaking against you without rebuking these curses with the name of Christ and His blood you will live under these curses].

One day I asked God, “Why are You calling me away so soon?” I confessed my trespasses before God, fearing that I might have been unfaithful concerning some matter. At the same time I told God that I had no faith. On that same day I devoted myself to fasting and praying and presented myself to Him once more. I told Him that I would do nothing but what He assigned me. From morning until three o’clock in the afternoon I fasted. At the same time the co-workers earnestly prayed together for me in Sister Ruth Lee’s home. As I prayed to God to grant me faith, He spoke His words to me, words which I could never forget. [Please note, when he asked for more faith, the Lord gave him his words instead. Faith comes by hearing! (Romans 10:17)] The first sentence was, “The just shall live by faith” (Rom. 1:17). The second sentence was, “By faith you stand” (2 Cor. 1:24). The third sentence was, “We walk by faith” (2 Cor. 5:7). These words filled me with great joy, for the Bible says, “All things are possible to him who believes” (Mark 9:23). I immediately thanked and praised God because He had given me His words. I believed that God had cured me. [When the Lord has spoken, consider it done. Stop praying but start thanks giving and praising.]

The test came immediately. The Bible says, “By faith you stand,” but I was still lying in bed. A conflict arose in my mind: Should I get up and stand or remain lying down? We all know that human beings love themselves and consider it more comfortable to die in bed than to die standing. Then the word of God manifested its power, and ignoring all else, I put on my clothing, clothing which I had not worn for a hundred and seventy-six days. As I left the bed to stand, I perspired so profusely that it was as though I had been soaked through with rain. Satan said to me, “Are you trying to stand when you can’t even sit up?” I retorted, “God told me to stand,” and I rose to my feet. Being again in a cold sweat, I nearly fell down. I kept repeating, “Stand by faith, stand by faith!” [Our hero of faith started confessing God's Word!!] I then walked a few steps to get my trousers and socks. After putting on my trousers, I sat down. No sooner was I seated than the word of God came to me that I should not only stand by faith but also walk by faith. I felt that the ability to rise and walk a few steps to get my trousers and socks was already something marvelous. How could I expect to walk further? “Where do You want me to go?” I asked God. He answered, “Go downstairs to Sister Lee’s home at number 215.” A number of brothers and sisters had been fasting and praying for me there for two or three days.

Walking within the room might be all right, I thought, but how could I walk downstairs? I prayed to God, “Oh God, I can stand by faith, and by faith I am also able to walk downstairs!” Immediately, I went to the door leading to the staircase and opened it. I tell you honestly that when I stood at the top of the staircase it seemed to me to be the tallest staircase I had ever seen in my life. I said to God, “If You tell me to walk I will do so, even if I die as a result of the effort.” But I continued, “Lord, I cannot walk. I pray that You will support me with Your hand while I am walking.” With one hand holding onto the rail, I descended step by step. Again I was in a cold sweat. As I walked down the stairs, I continued to cry out, “Walk by faith, walk by faith!” With each step down, I prayed, “O Lord, it is You who enable me to walk.” While descending those twenty-five steps, it seemed I was walking hand in hand with the Lord in faith.

Upon reaching the bottom of the stairway, I felt very strong and went quickly to the rear door. I opened the door and headed straight for Sister Lee’s home. I said to the Lord, “From now on, I will live by faith and will no longer be an invalid.” I knocked at the door just as Peter did in Acts 12:12-17, but without Rhoda to open the door. When the door was opened and I entered the house, seven or eight brothers and sisters gazed at me. They were speechless and motionless. For about an hour everyone sat quietly as if God had appeared among men. I also sat there full of thanksgiving and praise.

The above testimony revealed the key principles of faith. I am going to summarize them in the conclusion of this post.

Conclusion

The key principle is: confession, proclamation, thanksgiving, and praise. (That’s why you see a similar pattern in the book of Psalms and the Old Testament all the time)

In each and every test and trial that we encounter daily, we have to do this one thing correctly– speak exactly what the Bible says about it. We have to “hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering” (Hebrews 10:23)

On our own, the Bible will always seem too thick to find a relevant verse to confess with, but with help from the Holy Spirit we will know what to say at the right time.

Anything that doesn’t fall in line with the truth– be it feeling, appearance, symptoms, evil thought, desire, or anything that people say– we are to call it a lie. Rebuke them the way Jesus did! (Matthew 4:1-10; Matthew 8:26; Matthew 16:23)

Lastly, I want to share with you the last quote of faith.

I am the sum total of what I have been confessing through the years. Joel Osteen

Same for me! 99.9% of the negative words that I have confessed in the last 10+years have manifested! And so were the positive confessions that were inspired by God.

The positive confessions were done naturally when I eagerly shared with my friends some of the most recent revelations I had received a the time. I did it because I thought it could help others, but little did I know that this action alone had turned out to be the key to manifesting those revelations.

Negative confessions came very easily. They came through while we participated in gossips, or simply trying to vent our frustration or confusion about certain things with others.

Praying about or analyzing the negatives in a situation also is a form of negative confession. We will get caught by our words (Proverbs 6:2) and see our self-fulfilling prophesies fulfilled (Numbers 14:28)! I was there and got the T-shirt! Don’t repeat my mistakes!

Let’s hold fast the confession of our hope with out wavering!!

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Now I wouldn’t dare giving you the above grand promises if I hadn’t received some major revelations from the Lord recently, which I believed would change my own life dramatically from now on.

I want to share this blessing with you, and the blessing of these revelations are meant for every Christian, and to a certain extent, even for the non-Christians. Everyone can receive the benefits of God’s promises. It makes me think of Psalms 119:130, “The unfolding of your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple.”

Mysteries of the kingdom of God revealed!

Jesus told the disciples that he had explained to them the mysteries of the kingdom of God (Luke 8:10). In other words, the mysteries that had been hidden since time of  Genesis were revealed in his teaching.

What mysteries?

Items 1 to 12 from the top of this post, and even more!

The kingdom of God is as close as you want it to be. From now on, stop acting or speaking like you don’t know how to live victoriously. Stop thinking that you shouldn’t be held accountable for things you don’t know.

Why do I say that?

Just days ago I was like most people. I was not above complaining about what I didn’t know, and what I didn’t have. I would say things like, “how do I stop sinning?”; “I am confused!”; “I don’t know why I am like this!”

The Kingdom of God is as close as you want it to be

Right after Jesus talked about this mysteries, he explained why the multitude didn’t understand his parables.

Luke 8:10 And He said, “To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is given in parables, that ‘ Seeing they may not see, And hearing they may not understand.

People who don’t really want to receive more from God will not receive. They see but they don’t see. They hear but they don’t understand.

In the kingdom of God, the more we have the more we will be given. It’s like capitalism.

For example, have you tried to repeat a refreshing conversation you had with a dear friend to another person?

If that person is a bad listener, or if he doesn’t have the intimate knowledge or experience your dear friend has, you would feel like your words get caught up in your throat. That person might think that he understands you,  but your message is oversimplified and desensitized into something that is far less than the conversation you had with your dear friend.

It’s similar to when God is trying to reveal His mysteries to us. The more we have, the more He will be able to tell us things. The less we have, the less He will be able to explain deeper things to us.

An insincere, passive way of listening is not going to bring us far.

But you are not like that. You obviously want to know more. So don’t worry. You are going to understand the mysteries of God. God Himself guaranteed that. Seek and you will find! (Matt 7:7)

A perfect answer to the question “how?”

Sincere and God-loving Christians often ask “How?”, which is a good question. The fact that you are interested in finding out the answers to items 1 to 12 on top of this post indicates that you like How-to articles, right?

Great, I am a How-to kind of guy. I like clear step by step formula for spiritual matter.

God said, “sin no more!” (John 8:11) And I asked”How?”

God said, “Be joyful always” (1 Thess 5:16) I asked “How?”

God said, “Be perfect, because I am perfect” (Matt 5:48) “How?”

“Have faith in me!” “How?”

“Meditate in my words day and night, and you will be prosperous and have good success!” “How?”

“How do I stop this depressive thought?” “How do I get rid of this bitterness?” “How do I stop sinning?” “How can I become more diligent?” “How can I stop being lazy?” …

God always reveal the answer, although many times I didn’t get the answers quickly. It sometimes took years. God doesn’t answer my questions in essays. The answer often requires God using my own experience and adding bit and piece of enlightenment along the way, which eventually form a 3-D testimony of my own that finally give me the answer.

It’s like putting puzzles together into a picture.

Regarding the question of “how?”.

The perfect answer to the Hows is…

You don’t know how!!!

Yup, that’s the answer. That’s right, you don’t know how. I am not kidding.

Mark 4:26-27 And He said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how.

If you ask God how this happen, how that happen, and how to do this or that, God might actually answer you, but usually the ultimate solution is “just be”.

The words of God change what you are. The Bible is not written to give us a list of How-to, but to give us life.

How often do you see the Bible give you a list of how-to and formulas? You can find them in a cook book, but probably not the Bible.

How does it related to the Parable Of The Mustard Seed?

The key is hidden in the seed.

You might never understand the hows, but if you plant the seeds, and wait patiently, they will give you a harvest. The seeds will change you from within, and release the power of God in everything God called you to do. Problems solved. No need for the hows anymore.

You don’t need to worry about the hows anymore. They are irrelevant.

You have everything you need already. The Bible says God has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. (2 Peter 1:3)

What is life? Productivity certainly is. Joy, peace, health, and success are also important parts of life. Life isn’t just merely surviving and putting up with sins, defeats, and pains.

And there is godliness. Godliness is perfection and holiness. It’s living above sins!

Life and godliness are the solutions to items 1 to 12!!

Before I go on about actually planting the seeds and getting a good harvest of life and godliness, let me develop my case a little bit better.

How come some Christians are more Christian than the others?

This is the question I had for years. I often heard that some spiritual giants had a major revelation and suddenly they no longer sin. (such as Watchman Nee, Hudson Taylor)

I had been seeking this elusive, mysterious revelation for years, but I didn’t really understand. I read their testimonies but I didn’t see through the surface. I heard but I didn’t understand. (Luke 8:10)

If you have the same experience, welcome to the club! Congratulation because my years of struggles may serve you well!

I often asked Christians whom I admired questions such as “How do you keep yourself from sinning?”, “How come you are so self-disciplined?” “How do you manage to achieve so much within so short a time?”

I’d even asked pastors about this, but they didn’t really answer my questions.

For the victorious Christians, often time they really don’t know how they came to be victorious. They simply are what they are.

I know it’s not about self. It’s about relying on God. I rely on God, too! But how come I fall short while some people always do better than me? And they don’t even know how it happened!

Look into the seeds!!!

The mustard seed has faith, power, and transformational properties within it

Just scatter the seeds (The word of God) on the ground (Your soul: your heart and mind), preserve them with a good heart, and you will reap a harvest. (Luke 8:15)

The mustard seeds are the word of God.

Your faith will increase simply by listening to the word. (Romans 10:17)

Every word of God contains power. (Hebrews 4:12)

The word of God can be implanted into your soul, and save your soul through its living, growing, and transforming power. (James 1:21)

The word of God will accomplish everything it says it will accomplish. (Isaiah 5:11)

How come I don’t experience the word of God that way?

If God’s word has the aforementioned properties, then why do I go to the church so often, read the Bible a lot, and hear the sermons so many times, but still get stuck with certain struggles in my life?

The main reasons can be found in the parable of the sower (Mark 4:1-20, Matthew 13:1-23, and Luke 8:1-15) You and I know that only good seed (not to be confused with the mustard seeds) who persevere, who refuse distractions, who suffer persecutions, and who listen to word of God with a “good heart” will produce a great harvest in the end.

What else? The rest of this post will focus exactly on that.

For the sincere Christians who seem to belong to the category of good seeds : they go to the church, they study the Bible, and they do this, this and that, but they still had problems with lust, depression, laziness, sickness, fears, and etc.

What’s wrong?

You have to unlock the powers within the mustard seeds!!!

God has done His parts, and the only part left is ours.

The Bible says, “His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue” (2 Peter 1:3)

God has already given us everything, absolutely everything that pertain to life and godliness. He doesn’t need to give us more. We have enough. We should.

So how do you unlock the power of God’s word? How do you get the seeds working?

Simple. So simple that it’s almost hard to understand.

#1, speak the word of God in faith and speak it often. (Joshua 1:8)

I don’t mean intellectual conversation or discussion. We can study God’s word intellectually, but that’s another subject. Here I want to let you know that even simple, verbal declaration of God’s word can trigger the power of God.

God said, “Let there be light!” and there was light. The physical world didn’t ask “how?”. It simply obeyed. There was nothing too intellectual or too complicated about it.

Jesus rebuked the sea and the wind, and they listened to him. (Matt 8:26)

The principle of faith is that if you confess with your mouth and agree in your heart the things you want, they shall be given you. (Romans 10:10; Mark 11:22-24)

Jesus taught us this,

Mark 11:22-24 So Jesus answered and said to them, “Have faith in God. For assuredly, I say to you, whoever SAYS to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he SAYS. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.

Matthew 17:20-21 So Jesus said to them, “Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.

You can speak God’s word. You can pray God’s word. One thing is necessary here, faith. If you say it and believe it in your heart, God’s word will manifest.

Don’t pray in a way as if God’s promise isn’t there. For example, don’t pray for victory over sin, or strength over sin, because the Bible say that you and I already connected with Jesus Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection, and therefore we also shared His victory over sins. (Romans 6; Galatians 5:24)

Miraculously, whenever I speak Christ’s victory with all my heart, temptations and the power of sins would collapse and victory would manifest. It isn’t about my willpower. The victory has already been won so don’t attempt to win it again.

If you believe that God’s promise isn’t what it says it is, and pray or speak in a way as if His promise is powerless, then the reality will come out that way.

If you say, “I really don’t know…” or “I am just confused…”, then you will indeed become “don’t know” and confused. You put faith in the words of doubt, so your faith in the negative and your negative words work against you.

Word of faith works in both negative and positive. The negative side of faith is doubt. Doubt means negative faith. It’s one kind of faith. It works.

“I am tired” So you get tired. “I think I am sick” So you get sick. “I don’t know why things get so bad lately” So things get bad and you don’t know why.

In the past many years, I often talked about my sins, my bad habits, and my confusions. I had tried many formula, listen to many godly men and their teachings, but the perfect formula still eluded me. So I kept talking about my sins, my bad habits, and my confusions, and they remained with me faithfully for as long as I talked about them and put my faith in those words.

Countless Christians speak in words of defeats, of their bad experiences, and of their feelings, than they speak in the word of God in faith. No wonder their situations never change. (Me included)

It doesn’t matter how godly you are, how sincere you are, or how much you love God, if you apply this spiritual principle of spoken faith, this principle will work.

You can apply this spiritual principle in ignorant, but this principle doesn’t filter the results base on what you really want. Like electricity, it can hurt you or serve you.

When you speak the word of God often, you hear it often. When you hear it often, your faith increases often. Faith comes by hearing. (Romans 10:17)

I learned to stop trying to find faith from within. I learned that I was only given faith that was the size of a mustard seed. I need to speak it and exercise it to release the faith of God within it.

#2, Deal with the tongue

People often want to know how to have better self-control, productivity, and all that. They also wonder why they don’t have the full life that Jesus promised. (John 10:10)

Some Christians even struggled with bondage such as suicidal thoughts, depressions, angers, bitterness, and all sort of things.

Christians who are willing to obey everything God ask of them might still live a powerless and unfulfilled life, and most often the source of problems trace back to their tongues.

James 3:2-6 For we all stumble in many things. If anyone does not stumble in word, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body. Indeed, we put bits in horses’ mouths that they may obey us, and we turn their whole body. Look also at ships: although they are so large and are driven by fierce winds, they are turned by a very small rudder wherever the pilot desires. Even so the tongue is a little member and boasts great things. See how great a forest a little fire kindles! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell.

Psalm 34:12-16 Who is the man who desires life, And loves many days, that he may see good? Keep your tongue from evil, And your lips from speaking deceit.

Proverbs 15:4 A wholesome tongue is a tree of life, But perverseness in it breaks the spirit.

Proverbs 18:21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue, And those who love it will eat its fruit.

The Bible says that evil words of the tongue came from hell!(James 3:2-6) Hell is the home of demons, and there they torture the damned souls whom they had successfully deceived till the end of their earthly life.

For example, people who had self-hatred, suicidal thoughts, and depression were actually victim of demons. They planted these thoughts and deceptions in their victims’ minds.

The purposes of the demons are to steal, kill, and destroy. (John 10:10) The Devil can only achieve that by planting evil thoughts and deceptions in people’s minds. The demons will move on to the next victim after they have done their planting, and they will come back to check their work from time to time. (Job 1:7; 1 Peter 5:8)

If these victims died in sins, or died without Christ, the demons that tortured them on earth will continue their torments in hell.

The tongue is a battle field of the Holy Spirit, the flesh, and the demons. ( Gal 5:17) The demons want to use our tongues to curse, to defile our whole body, and set things on fire!!

Sounds crazy? One time Jesus rebuked Peter with these words, “Get thee behind me Satan!” (Matt 16:23) Peter was just trying to talk Jesus out of the Crucifixion, but Jesus identified the true author of this plead as Satan himself.

The heaven and hell know that if they can control your tongues, they control your whole body.(James 3:2) Which side do you prefer to yield your control over?

When Christians speak evil of any kind, even if they think it’s just harmless venting or teasing, they are actually giving power to the enemy. Words of self-pity, doubts, complains, condemnation, and idle words make the Devil powerful.

The Devil has no power over us unless we give it to him. The Devil cannot order the mountains to move, but we can. The Devil knows it. Therefore, he works very hard to get us to say things that he wants us to say.

Through self-inspection and revelation from God, I learned that I had a pattern of self-fulfilling prophesies. I used to talk about my fears a lot. I was taught to tell things as it is. I was taught to vent it out. For every 1-2 years, some of my worst fear would come to pass, exactly the way I didn’t want it to happen!!

For example, I predicted that since I was so bad in self-discipline (A result of self-fulfilling prophesy in its own right), I would probably suffer lack of achievements. And I predicted that if my dream girl came along, I would be so inadequate and unproductive that I won’t deserve her.

Since immigrated into Canada, I had always worried about my broken English and the fact that I was too lazy to improve it, and when I did meet a dream girl (Second one, see below), she did loath at my accent!

The snobbish attitude that girl had toward me was part of my self-fulfilling prophesy as well. Prior to meeting her in reality, and after I met her, I had been talking about my inadequacy, broken English, and lack of social grace for so many times. I also kept saying and thinking that if I met a dream girl she would probably see through my inadequacies.

A couple of dream girls did come along(Respectively, each for 2.5 years, with 1 year of break in between, so my torments lasted for 5+years), and it did happen the way I predicted. “Better guys” beat me to it, except that the guys weren’t even Christians. They weren’t really superior than I was, but I prophesied my own defeats and contributed to it by the words of my mouth.

It didn’t help when I had been complaining about the snobbish attitude the second dream girl had occasionally expressed toward me, what was I thinking? You can’t get something you really want by complaining about it!!

Side note: Don’t complain about people. Don’t gossip. The more you condemn, the nastier those people would become. Your verbal curses can make people worst than they already are.

Side note#2: I know a lot of failures can be attributed to others, but talking about their incompetence, problems, and attitudes will not make things work. It will actually deliver your worst predictions- “Oh! because so and so … [have done something or failed to do something], it’s going to be … [thousands words description of how bad consequences are going to be]…”

You have faith on the negatives, and you speak it often, so it shall be done for you.

[Back to topic.]

And I did suffer financially and academically because my lack of discipline. I had talked about my lack of self-discipline so many times for so many years, but I had rarely talked about the fruits of the Spirit, which include self-control.

For the 3 years that followed, I cut back on negative words and thinking by listening to God and believing in His perspective on things, rather than in my own perspective– my perspective always lean on the worst angle.

The cut back helped a lot. My depression stopped.

Recently, when I finally had a better understanding of the principle of speaking faith and used it to serve me, bad habits and laziness lose their grips on me!! It’s magical.

Control your tongue, and speak the word of God, and you will get the power of God’s word to work for you. God’s word always deliver when you speak it in faith.

An article I find helpful:

Idle words leak life

#3, Have Faith

Have you ever asked God to increase your faith? When the disciples did this this was Jesus ’s reply.

Luke 17:5-6 And the apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.” So the Lord said, “If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.

John 14:12-14 “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do,

Everybody has faith. If someone believe in doubts, rather than in truth, that person is putting his faith in doubts.

If we believe in our feelings, circumstances, and ourselves, more than we believe in the words of God, then we are putting our faith on these things rather than on God.

Jesus didn’t grant his disciples the request for more faith, but he told them how they can exercise the faith they already had by speaking it.

Faith is like a mustard seed. It’s alive. It can grow.

It grows by hearing the word of God. Faith comes by hearing. (Romans 10:17)

The more we speak our faith, the more powerful our faith become as we listen to our voice of faith.

As we experience the power of God, victories will begin to manifest, and the more we experience victories, the more our faith would be strengthen. It’s a positive circle.

We can duplicate what Jesus did, and even more, if we exercise our faith properly.

# 4, Persevere

Luke 8:11-15 ¹¹“This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the word of God. ¹²Those along the path are the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. ¹³Those on the rock are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away. ¹⁴The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature. ¹⁵But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.

Perseverance is perhaps the most important key to get the word of God to work in your life. People who just try and see what happen will not last.

The Bible says life’s distraction and time of testing will come. It will look confusing. There will be unpleasant feeling.

After we plant the word of God into our souls and into our circumstances, things probably aren’t going to look very different immediately. It might actually seem worst than before.

The longer you have been a Christian, the more boring things will look like in the short-run. The honeymoon with God has long passed, but if you persevere, God will deliver His promises.

God doesn’t want whiners who whine at the first hint of hardship. God want us to speak the word of faith regardless of our circumstances.

Hebrews 11 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

2 Corinthians 4:13 And since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, “I believed and therefore I spoke,”we also believe and therefore speak,

When situations look bad, and when you feel negative from within, keep speaking the word of God.

You might feel sick, but if you know in your heart that God has promised you healing, then keep speaking your healing out loud. If you are unemployed, but know in your heart that God is giving you a good job, or income of any kind, keep speaking abundance.

When I feel like procrastinating or being lazy, I speak out what I am going to do and why I am able to accomplish the tasks. Although I still feel lazy, my body and mind would find new energy that push me onward, and go ahead to do the tasks that I used to procrastinate under similar situations.

Romans 4:17 As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.”He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.

The proper way to do it is to calls those things that are not as though they were. You don’t call things that are as though they are. You call thing that are not as though they were.

Man of faith call things that are not as though they were, until they are!!

Man of Doubts call things that are as though they are, until they are.

# 5 , Walk with the Holy Spirit

To be filled with God’s word is to be filled with the Spirit. You can’t have one without the other. Only the Holy Spirit can help you control the tongue.

Go to How to Live A Spirit Filled Life for deeper discussion on the Spirit.

Without the Holy Spirit, we are only as good as non-Christians who practice positive thinking and affirmation. This is why there has been a lot of buzz with The Law Of Attraction and all sort of new age techniques that have to do with verbal affirmation.

You see, many non-Christians can also create abundance and influence others by speaking positively about their situations. They have observed that there was this phenomenon, but they didn’t know why. It was like the discovery of the law of gravity.

The Bible says,

Matthew 7:21-23 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’

1 Corinthians 13:2 and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

It is possible to have the faith of God without obedience!! It is also possible to have perfect faith without the love of God.

The principle of spoken faith can work for you in this life, but without obedience to the Holy Spirit and the love of God, one will lose his heavenly reward, and it might even be possible to lose his salvation.

Therefore, even a non-Christian can be blessed in this life by the principle of spoken faith. No wonder there are so many successful non-Christians out there who rely on their own strength and their idols.

We as Children of God have much more powerful allies– God’s word and His Spirit– and if we work with them to our full capacity, we will indeed overcome this world and be on top of things. (Deu 28:13)

God does not show favoritism, whoever obeys His law of spoken faith will receive its benefits, but whoever violates this principle will suffer loss. In terms of this principle, it is not how much you love God or how sincere you are that counts, it’s whether you work with this principle that determines whether this principle serves you or hurts you.

Other resources that I find useful

The Power Of the Tongue

Charles Capps Ministry of Faith

Coming Next: Testimonies Of Faith

The best way to learn a spiritual lesson is combining both scriptural teaching and practical experiences. In the next post I am going to show you the testimonies of faith in actions– How people recover from terminal illness, handicaps, sins, demonic influences, and financial hardship.

Go from Parable Of The Mustard Seed to the Next Post

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However, you can be certain that you can keep your salvation NOW and find out how you can make sure you keep it – just read on!

Anyone can fall from any height. As long as we are on earth, we have to be careful lest we are disqualified. (1 Cor 9:27)

If you find this webpage because you are afraid of losing your salvation, do not fear! You must believe in God’s infinite power to forgive!

It doesn’t matter how addicted you are to certain sins, or how many times you have repented of these sins already, but you keep sinning again – as long as you repent sincerely and genuinely want to stop sinning, the Lord will forgive you at your first sign of repentance. (Luke 17:3)

If you think you have committed the unforgivable sin, then you didn’t. But, if you insist that God won’t forgive you for whatever blaspheme thoughts or words that you think you have committed against the Holy Trinity, you are in grave danger of hell simply because of unbelief.

Although we have become born again Christians, we must continue to believe in God’s forgiveness through faith in Christ to stand firm. (Gal 5:4; 1 Cor 15:1)

In other words, if you stop believing in God’s forgiveness through faith in Christ, you lose your salvation until you can believe again. So please stick with your faith.

Many Christians are suffering because they worried they might have committed the unforgivable sin. Some have gone so far that they became convinced that Christ had given up on them, so they rejected Christ and joined the dark side! This is exactly a self-fulfilling prophecy!

These renegade Christians believe their feelings of fears, and outward signs that seem to convince them that they have passed the “point of no return”, instead of believing in God’s promises of salvation and Christ’s forgiveness. If one believes in outward signs and feeling more than he or she believes in Christ’s infinite grace and forgiveness, he or she has officially fallen from grace. (Galatians 5:4-6)

Unless they repent of the sin of unbelief, and once again place their trust on God’s promise of salvation, forgiveness, and grace, they will not regain their salvation.

But any time they go back to God and seek forgiveness through faith in Christ, God is able to forgive them of any sin.

I learned that people who are fearful of the unpardonable sin often need as many proof as they can find to ascertain themselves that they can indeed be forgiven, here is an extremely useful article for those who are extremely worried about the unpardonable sin:

Unforgiveable? The Unpardonable sin of Blasphemy Against the Holy Ghost

If you are still worried about the unpardonable sin after you have read my post and the link I gave you above, go to Testimonies of Christians who found forgiveness after being sure they had blasphemed the Holy Spirit and committed the unpardonable sin for many more articles of real Christians who have gone so far from God because they thought they have blasphemed the Holy Spirit, but found forgiveness after.

This worry can escalate to the point of mental illness. If you find intrusive thoughts of blasphemy raging in your mind, it is possible that you have developed a clinical disorder known as the Religious Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Fortunately, once you know the cause of ROCD by reading the articles through the above links, you will see recovery very quickly.

Now let’s see what kind of traps can get Christians into hell so we can all avoid them.

Two Types Of Christians Who Ended Up In Hell After They Crossed Over

1. Christians who deliberately sinned till the end of their life after they have become born again, because they thought God would look at the other way when they sinned since they thought they were “once saved, always saved”. They refused to repent from certain “pet sins”. They had grieved the Holy Spirit and quenched Him (1 Thess 5:19) Their conscience were seared by sins by the time they died. (1 Tim 4:2)
2. Christians who thought God won’t forgive them, so they stopped believing in Christ through faith. Forgiveness is not automatic. We must receive it by faith. Anytime we add anything extra to the gospel we risk falling from grace (Gal 5:4; Gal 1:6-9). For example, Christians who were once saved, and later added extra requirement to salvation such as performance of good deeds would end up in hell when they crossed over, because they believed in “a different gospel”. (Gal 1:6-9) Anytime we disbelieve in forgiveness in Christ through faith, we lose our salvation unless we believe again. (Gal 5:4; 1 Cor 15:1)

In fewer words: Christians will end up in hell if, by the time they die, they still refuse to repent from their pet sins, OR they still believe their sins can’t be forgiven.

We don’t need to experience a 100% sinless life before we are allowed into heaven, but we have to be sincerely wanting to be free and genuinely repenting from all sin – at least before we die and cross over.

However, if someone plans to repent on death bed, that leads to two major problems – first, he doesn’t know when he is going to die, and second, his repentance is probably insincere, after many years of active sinning it would be hard for him to genuinely want to stop sinning. We can’t mock God. (Gal 6:7)

666 – The Mark Of The Beast: A Biblical Example Of How Christians Lose Salvation

Christians who get left behind will face the anti-Christ after the Rapture, and they will have to endure the great Tribulation – which is the final seven years of earth, with all the intense suffering that the world has never seen before. At some point during the Tribulation, the anti-Christ and his false prophet will force everyone to take a mark of the beast on his forehead, or on his right hand. (Rev 13:15-17) Anyone who takes the mark of the beast is going to hell.

Rev 14:9-13

⁹A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: “If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, ¹⁰he, too, will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. ¹¹And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name.” ¹²This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints who obey God’s commandments and remain faithful to Jesus. ¹³Then I heard a voice from heaven say, “Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Yes,” says the Spirit, “they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.” 

When God says anyone who worships the beast is going to Hell, He means anyone – including Christians.

During the Tribulation, Christians who happen to remain on earth will face intense persecutions.

For those who refuse to take the mark of the beast, chances are the anti-Christ government will have torture programs instated for them. The demonic government is not going to let their enemies die so easily. Remember, during the Tribulation the demonic army of Satan will be on earth without major restraint from God (2 Thess 2:7; Rev 12:9; Rev 12:12).

The Tribulation will be terrible! But there is an escape; the only way out is the Rapture. In the Rapture, the Lord will harvest selected Christians from around the world and take them up to heaven (1 Thess 4:15-18), and shortly after the Rapture the Tribulation will commence.

Be prepared for the Rapture because it can happen anytime soon. Being a born again Christian doesn’t guarantee we can join the Rapture, but only those of us who keep the words of Christ will qualify. (Rev 3:10)

If Jesus thinks you are ready for the Rapture, you can be certain that you are also ready for Heaven anytime should you die and cross over. But if by any chance you find yourself getting left behind, repent completely, so you can at least go to heaven if you die during the Tribulation.

If you do get left behind for whatever reason, remember don’t take the mark of the beast 666 no matter what! Some Christians will say “God will understand. God will forgive”, but they are putting greater trust on their assumptions than on God’s explicit warning. Their chance of getting away with eternal punishment is zero.

Christians, listen to what God said! Love truth, not make true of what we love.

*Caution* The following section is for those who might be tempted to “beat the system” – by trying to sin, and yet still try to get into heaven by being a born again Christian. I know a lot of people, including myself, who sometime entertain the idea that a little unconfessed and unrepented sin here and there is OK. This is an extremely dangerous way of thinking. See the Bible verses and explanation below.

If you are not in this category, but are among those who fear you might have become unforgivable, then go straight to the links at the bottom for more articles that tell you that you are forgivable.

Other Scripture Passages That Say A Christian Can Lose His Salvation:

1. Unforgiveness

But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses. Mark 11:26

If you die at the time when you harbor bitterness toward someone, which means you withhold forgiveness from that person, the Father will not forgive you as well. If you refuse to forgive even after you die, it means you  die in unforgiveness, i.e. You die in sin! Will you still go to heaven if the Father doesn’t forgive you?

2. Believing in good work rather than salvation through faith in Christ only

You have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace. Galatians 5:4

Some new Christians were indeed saved by grace, but later they got deceived by cult such as the Mormon and Jehovah Witness. These cults preach a “different gospel” (Gal 1:6-9), and the result for anyone who believe in a “different gospel” is “fallen from grace”.

What is a “different gospel”? It is a gospel that preaches anything other than believing through faith in Christ, an example of a “different gospel” would be salvation by faith plus good deeds, or something other than faith.

We are saved by grace, through faith in Christ. If we are fallen from grace, that means we lose our salvation, unless we repent and go back to the pure gospel and hold on to it. ( 1 Cor 15:1)

3. Disobey God’s will

Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’ Matthew 7:21-23

We all fail to obey God many times. That’s inevitable because of our ignorance, weakness, and foolishness. But if God sends us explicit warnings and rebukes us through His faithful servants, but we insist on disobedience and keep it that way until we die, we are in grave danger of hell when we cross over.

It doesn’t matter how many souls we have saved, how much we have served God, or how many good works we have done: If we don’t do God’s will, all our good works are just filthy rags. (Isaiah 64:6)

4. Deliberately keep on sinning

²⁶If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, ²⁷but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. ²⁸Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. ²⁹How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? ³⁰For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,”^[d] and again, “The Lord will judge his people.”^{[e] 31}It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Hebrews 10:26-31

One can only lose his salvation by unrepentance or false repentance on deathbed. If a Christian plans to use Christ’s sacrifice to sin willfully and get away with hell, his repentance is false, and God is not mocked (Gal 6:7).

God isn’t a computer program which has bugs you can take advantage of. You can’t beat the system by taking advantage of His provision.

In addition, sin can blind and deceive its slave (Ephesians 4:17-18; Hebrews 3:13). It can also harden the transgressor’s heart. (Hebrews 3:13)

I believe that’s why the Scripture said “no sacrifice for sins is left” for those who deliberately keeps on sinning, because the sinner has already seared his conscience by deliberately sinning and he can no longer truly repent. (Hebrews 10:26; 1 Timothy 4:2)

What if you have deliberately sinned?

You have to be very deliberate to be able to “deliberate sinning” to the point where you can no longer truly repent.

Every time we consciously sin such as ignoring the speed limit when we drive, or lust after someone and decide to satisfy our lust with more dark deeds in private, we are “deliberately sinning”.

No Christians on earth has never deliberately sinned before. Most sins began with conscious decisions, albeit under heavy pressures of temptations.

Don’t worry if you are addicted to certain sins. If you are struggling with sins but sincerely repent every time, then it’s not deliberately sinning. Sometimes God allows us to be tortured by sins for reasons such as training our faith, humbling us, or reminding us to rely on Him.

As long as we have “today”, we are to ask God to deliver us from traps of sins and ask for His grace to experience total freedom. (Hebrews 3:7-15) Don’t ever compromise and let your addictions reign – no matter how much pains the addictions have caused you.

5. Returning to the Pre-Saved days

“For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse than the beginning. For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them. But it has happened to them according to the true proverb: “A dog returns to his own vomit,” and, “a sow, having washed, to her wallowing in the mire.” 2 Peter 2:20

If a Christian re-commits himself once again to the old lifestyle he had before his conversion, the Scripture says his condition is worse than before.

The consequences of sins for him will be heavier than prior while on earth, and if he dies in that condition without returning to God, he will suffer much more than unbelievers and more than he would have had had he not become a Christian in the first place. (Hebrews 11:24)

If You Worried You Might Have Committed The Unforgivable Sin

Go To:

Extremely comforting words that explain why you and I are forgivable as long as we repent NOW

Good Precautions You Can Take To Minimize The Chance For you To Die In Sins

Anyone can fall from any height. No matter how many souls we have brought to Christ, or how spiritual we have become, if we die in sin, big sin or small sin, we can jeopardize our eternal rewards and even our salvation.

No amount of precautions can bring you to heaven, only forgiveness through faith in Christ can. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

But here I like to give you some articles and suggestions of precautions you can take to prevent hardening of heart and searing of conscience by sin, to keep you qualified for the Rapture, and to prevent a prolonged window of time when you could die in sins.

First, practice the way of love, for he who has the love of God has no reasons to fear anything or stumble in darkness. (1 John 2:10; 1 John 4:17-18) Ultimately, the commandments to love God and love others will make you bullet proof!

Second, practice the presence of God daily and walk in the Spirit!

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