Bookstore : Books: Free Shipping on orders $50 or more (continental US only)

"Saved, Yes. Heaven, Maybe."
     My father-in-law was a wonderful man. He did not come to know the Lord until late in his life, but he made up for lost time. Visits and phone calls were packed full of questions about the Bible. He and his wife attended church three or four times a week. Right up until the day he died, he was growing spiritually by leaps and bounds. In spite of all that, however, he never had any assurance about his salvation.
     I would ask him, "Mr. Johnson, are you sure you have trusted Christ as your Savior?"
     "Oh, yes," he would reply. "He is living in my heart today."
     I would continue, "So then you are sure if you were to die, you would go to heaven?"
     "Now, I don't know about that," he would say.
     Round and round we would go. But I could never convince him. His problem was not any particular passage of Scripture. He struggled with the question of how God could forgive him for the sins he committed before coming to faith. The idea of God's being that loving and forgiving was too much for him to comprehend. He was sure he was a Christian, but heaven was a different thing altogether.
     I often meet people like my father-in-law. People who believe Christ died for their sins. Men and women who love God with all their hearts. But somehow they cannot accept with any certainty that God has forgiven them. One day they are sure of their salvation; the next day they are not. Back and forth they go, hoping they will make it but having no assurance.

Looking Ahead
     What about you? What is the issue on your mind? Is it a passage of Scripture? Is it a personal experience that you just can't seem to erase from your memory? Have you been turned off by the way people use the concept of eternal security to excuse their sin? Were you raised to believe that the idea of "once saved, always saved" was something the Baptists or some other group just invented?