Zone1 Who has (does not have) eternal life?

[presonorek]

Who has been saved? Who hasn’t?

How does one go about verifying their own individual status as saved or unsaved?

 

[Arlette]

Who has been saved? Who hasn’t?

How does one go about verifying their own individual status as saved or unsaved?

There is no way of telling. The Bible is written in such a way that the believer is never free of salvation doubt.

 

[shockedcanadian]

Assume you are never saved. Be brave and righteous. Be a Mensch not a mouse. Many who present themselves.as the "good guys" are in fact, the devil. If you allow wolves.in seeps clothing to sedice you, your chances of being rewarded a heavenly afterlife are slim.

 

[JohnDB]

There is no way of telling. The Bible is written in such a way that the believer is never free of salvation doubt.

Paul knew he was gonna die soon when he wrote a letter to Timothy. He also knew he was headed to Heaven.

Judas, on the other hand, knew he screwed up so bad it was never going to be OK.

Most people who don't have eternal security or freedom from their fears have so little faith it's a wonder why they call themselves a Christian at all.

So many talk a good game...but few actually find the narrow path.

 

[Meriweather]

There is no way of telling. The Bible is written in such a way that the believer is never free of salvation doubt.

A long time ago a rabbi was asked to sum up the Bible in a sentence. He said, "Love God and love your neighbor--the rest is commentary."

Christians believe the world is redeemed and the way of salvation is open. We are to discern the will of God and follow it and to love our fellowman the way we love ourselves, or put another way, love one another in the way Christ loves us.

 

[BreezeWood]

to triumph over evil, a sinless spirit will be judged ... for admission to the everlasting.

 

[presonorek]

Anybody have any info on this mysterious “book of life”? Does anybody know what language the “book of life” is written in? Actually any information will be helpful. I’d like to check to see if my name is in there. According to some sects of Christianity my name is there. Some sects would say no. How do we get the scoop on this oh so important info?

 

[buttercup]

Who has been saved? Who hasn’t?

How does one go about verifying their own individual status as saved or unsaved?

Someone who is truly saved will have a transformed life. I am not the same person I was in the past, before I came to Christ. In fact, when I think about my old life, it truly feels like another lifetime.

Pretty much everything changes, your interests, goals, priorities.... you no longer want to do the things you used to do, the things everyone else does. And although it may not happen instantly, over time you don't like the things of this world (1 John 2:15.)...and begin to feel like a sojourner or alien in this world.

Also, when you get saved you have the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 8:16) And you can see genuine growth and sanctification over time, because the Spirit convicts us when we do wrong and leads us in the right direction. That's why it says we go from "glory to glory" (2 Corinthians 3:18)

Also, when you follow Jesus and allow God to use you for His purposes, you see amazing things happen... I've seen miraculous things.... amazing provision, answered prayers, spiritual gifts, things like that.

Those are just a few signs of being saved / born again.

 

[ninja007]

i guess the o.p. missed the book of Romans.

 

[Blues Man]

The fact is we all have eternal life.

What scares people is that the self as most people visualize it does not have eternal life.

You all want to believe that what you call yourself will live forever unchanged, that what makes you you will some how be immortal and that's comforting like a teddy bear that scares away the monsters under the bed is comforting to a child.

Everything that we are, the atoms and chemical, thermal and electrical energy will continue to exist and will fuel more creation in the universe and we will be part of something else that is as wonderous and awe inspiring as the universe we are part of.

 

[there4eyeM]

The fatal assumption people make concerning religion and "God" is that verbiage is other than symbolic and/or metaphoric. The divine would be so beyond human psychological capacities that our attempts to confine it with our definitions can only lead us into frustrating error.

 

[expat_panama]

The fact is we all have eternal life.

What scares people is that the self as most people visualize it does not have eternal life....

How can you know this for sure?

 

[Blues Man]

How can you know this for sure?

How can you know for sure that a god will provide you eternal life? That what you view as yourself, singular, a being that exists in the universe but is somehow not of the universe was placed here by some power that is not of this universe will live forever unchanged if you just do the right things and say the right words?

My concept of eternal life is based in the laws of conservation of matter and energy, the laws that define the universe itself. I rather liken myself to a wave in the ocean. When the wave crashes on shore does everything that makes it cease to exist?

 

[there4eyeM]

The very term, "Eternal life", sounds like familiar words yet contains a concept of "life" that is beyond our day-to-day reasoning. We have to be prepared to abandon our hopelessly insufficient mindsets and open up to profoundly altered states.

 

[BreezeWood]

The very term, "Eternal life", sounds like familiar words yet contains a concept of "life" that is beyond our day-to-day reasoning.

nothing is beyond reasoning give enough time and opportunity - whatever day to day may be.

physical, metaphysical physiology dissipates into the atmosphere when its unique spiritual content is removed ...

what is questionable is what happens to the spiritual content which seems inseparable when in combination with the physical body and may very well perish with it ... or is evolving for some and has a means to exist on its own when the appropriate time, physiological death occurs.

 

[presonorek]

Someone who is truly saved will have a transformed life. I am not the same person I was in the past, before I came to Christ. In fact, when I think about my old life, it truly feels like another lifetime.

Pretty much everything changes, your interests, goals, priorities.... you no longer want to do the things you used to do, the things everyone else does. And although it may not happen instantly, over time you don't like the things of this world (1 John 2:15.)...and begin to feel like a sojourner or alien in this world.

Also, when you get saved you have the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 8:16) And you can see genuine growth and sanctification over time, because the Spirit convicts us when we do wrong and leads us in the right direction. That's why it says we go from "glory to glory" (2 Corinthians 3:18)

Also, when you follow Jesus and allow God to use you for His purposes, you see amazing things happen... I've seen miraculous things.... amazing provision, answered prayers, spiritual gifts, things like that.

Those are just a few signs of being saved / born again.

Yes. That sounds like a changed life which is a very good thing. That wasn’t my question. My question was about eternal life versus eternal damnation.

The person in the example was yourself. How do you verify that you have eternal life supposing I say you don’t? What is the source for proving I am right and you are wrong or you are right and I am wrong?

Some will say you are not saved because you didn’t do x. Some will say others are saved because they did x. You may say they aren’t saved. Where does this truth get verified? Perhaps the one thing you have to do to get eternal life is extremely easy and you skipped that one extremely easy step but you still had all this other evidence you claim. Perhaps that isn’t enough. Wouldn’t you want to verify whether you will live eternity in bliss or eternity in abundant torture and suffering? This seems important.

 

[BreezeWood]

Where does this truth get verified?

purity ...

with clarity of vision and thought - those hearing voices, their god clearly have a ways to go ... servitude and denial is a dead end, the desert religions.

 

[expat_panama]

The very term, "Eternal life", sounds like familiar words yet contains a concept of "life" that is beyond our day-to-day reasoning. We have to be prepared to abandon our hopelessly insufficient mindsets and open up to profoundly altered states.

This is important.

There are some folks who insist that the faithful will dwell in resurrected bodies forever on an earth that will continues forever, and I can't imaging anything worse.

We're made up of a finite number of quarks that can interact in a finite number of directions. This means that there will be a finite amount of time until we done everything and interacted in every possible way with everything. After that we'll repeat everything. Forever. An infinite number of times. If that's not hell it'll do until real hell comes along.

The only way our existence can have meaning is for our lives on this plane to have a beginning and an end. That way our choices can matter. Any existence we get after this life has to be very very different.

 

[kjw47]

Who has been saved? Who hasn’t?

How does one go about verifying their own individual status as saved or unsaved?

Jesus told all how to be saved and get eternal life-John 17:3--This means eternal life, their knowing you( Father) THE ONLY TRUE GOD and the one whom you sent forth Jesus Christ.
See Jesus teaches the Father is the only true God and one must know him as that and know the one he sent Jesus.
And Jesus taught--Matthew 7:21--Only those living now to do his Fathers will( over self) get to enter his kingdom( get grace, be saved)--Jesus summed that will up-Man does not live by bread alone, but by EVERY utterance from God= these study-OT-NT it never stops. Living by every utterance means learning them and applying them by obeying them( Hebrews 5:9--salvation to those who OBEY.
And one must repent and turn around to get sin blotted out-Acts 3:19)

 

[Clyde 154]

Who has been saved? Who hasn’t?

How does one go about verifying their own individual status as saved or unsaved?

Its so simple that some can't see the forest because of the trees. 1. Everyone sins.........if we say we have no sin we lie to ourselves and make a God a liar (1 John 8-10)......Jesus stands between our sin and the Father as our advocate once we have entered the kingdom of God...i.e, the church given to Jesus via the Father (Matthew 16, 28:18-20).....Jesus has been given full authority by the Father to forgive sin, under the conditions mentioned, Repent and be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost (Matthew 28:18-20), there are no peoples on earth omitted from this promise of salvation as confirmed by Peter in Acts 2, Acts 10.........the promise was to the Jews first then to the gentiles. "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power unto salvation to everyone that believes, to the Jew first, and also the Greek/gentile." -- Romans 1:16-17

How do you know you are saved? What's your part in the promise of salvation or the covenant/contract you have entered with the God of Creation? 1. you must believe (Faith)....for without faith/belief its impossible to please God (Heb.11:6) you must trust the Holy Spirit when it declares, "I am the way, the truth, the life.......no one comes to the Father except through Me......." -- John 14:6, repeated, "there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." -- Acts 4:12

2. When you trust the Christ and enter His kingdom........you must attempt on a daily basis to overcome the power the flesh holds on every man/woman on earth.......you must struggle to fight the good fight every day via trusting in your Spirits' strength with the help of the truth revealed by the Holy Spirit, to keep your flesh under control. You must trust in the deity of Jesus Christ and confess with your mouth that Jesus is both Lord (ruler) and Christ (savior)

3. You must be baptized (an act of faith and trust) to remove the sin of the flesh......in representing the death and resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ (Romans 6:3-5, 17-18, Gal.3:26-27, Rev. 1:5). Baptism is not a man made tradition.....its a command from Jesus Christ, its where the sinner comes into contract with the cleansing sacrificial blood of the Christ (the Savior).......God's perfect sacrificial lamb, without spot nor blemish. When this blood is applied, it returns our spirit back to God. This is not a literal death but a symbolic death, burial and resurrection...its a work that demonstrates faith. Its the first death, when you arise, you arise as a newborn.......totally innocent and forgiven of your past sin (Rev. 1:5, Acts 22:16, 3:19). Faith without works is dead (James 2:24-26) If we confess our sin.....Jesus is faithful to forgive our sins (1 John 1:9)

What is God's part/promise in this contract/covenant? 1. Its God that remits sin. 2. Its God that promises Truth from heaven..........the Gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38).......not the Holy Spirit but the gift of the Spirit, whose duty is made clear.........to deliver truth from Heaven...........truth so powerful that it provides everything that is required for salvation, it makes the man of God perfect in seeking righteousness, the man is not perfect, its the law/scripture/truth that is perfect......its the truth that is the gift of the Spirit, and that truth is found only in one place today, the inspired Word of God -- 2 Tim. 3:16-17, the perfect law of liberty (James 1:25) (step 3 from God) fulfillment of the promise of eternal life


Only YOU and GOD can determine your status under the Perfect Law of Liberty. Its not for another man nor woman to judge your inner spirit. Its impossible to judge righteously without knowing with certainty ...........the facts. Salvation is not subjective, its objective truth that matters........that which is demonstrable, reproducible, with consistency. As James declared, "Show me your faith without works, and I will show you my faith by my works.........." -- James 2:18