Blessed Assurance

BLESSED ASSURANCE

My wife and I have a number of friends who have debated us that we cannot know if we are going to heaven or not.  I remember one I cornered in our kitchen and took her down Roman's road, and all she could answer was that I should be a preacher.  Well, yeah, I was preaching, all right...to HER!  Sometimes trying to get people in an unsaved status to understand God's plan of salvation for them is so hard, because as we know, the devil is trying to keep his thumbs plugging up their eyes, so that they won't see.  "But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake." (2 Cor. 4:3 - 5)  So let's see where all we can find blessed assurance that Jesus is our Savior, and that by our belief in Him, we are definitely going to heaven.  I find these assurances in 5 different books of the bible!

1. Matt. 24:29 - 35; "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.  And He shall send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.  Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.  Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.  Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away."  Does anyone doubt the words of Jesus Christ Himself?  His angels will gather us who believe in Him from all over the earth, and we have His promise of that!  Okay, let's visit the next reference...

2a. John 5:24; "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life."  Here is a second instance where Jesus Himself has said it, that believing on Him is promised everlasting life.  But wait!  The Gospel of John has more...

2b. John 6:37; "All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me; and him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out."  Here is the guarantee from Jesus that if you come to Him, believing on Him, He will guaranteed not cast you out of heaven.  Three times He has guaranteed us believers security, and there's yet more!

2c. John 10:27 - 30; "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand.  My Father, which gave them Me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of My Father's hand.  I and my Father are one."  Now this statement is loaded!  There is some meaning with meat here!  Not only are we believers guaranteed eternal life, but we are also guaranteed that the devil, nor any false teacher, nor any power is able to take us out of His hand.  After all, since God is the creator, who is stronger than He, that they might be able to take us out of His hand?  Additionally, He is saying that He and His Father are one God.  This shoots a big hole in the false doctrine out there that claims there are three Gods, and that the Trinity are separate entities.  Here Jesus asserts that they are not!

2d. John 14:1-3; "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me.  In My Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you.  I go to prepare a place for you.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also."  What a beautiful statement this is for the believer!  He will give us a mansion in heaven, and we will be with Him there!

2e. John 20:30 - 31; "And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book: But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through His name."  John had selected only 7 of the many miracles Jesus did that he felt were so outstanding, that whosoever read of them which he had written would believe in Him, and thus be saved.  See now how I have 6 selections from Scripture assuring salvation, and I still have 3 more books to witness more of biblical assurance!

3. Rom. 8:16, 31 - 33, 35 - 39; "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:"  "If God be for us, who can be against us?  He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?  Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth."  "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?  As it is written, 'For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.'  Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.  For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."  These things Paul said to give assurance to his Roman audience that Christ's believers are indeed children of God, that God has justified His elect to wit that nobody can lay any charge against us, because Jesus paid it all at the cross.  The last piece of this Scripture from Romans is Paul's affirmation that absolutely nothing in existence can separate Jesus' sheep from God's love, and really, it simply is a reaffirmation of what Christ said in 2c. in the paragraph above!  And Paul isn't done yet, I have one more selection of Scripture that he wrote that I would like to put to all...

4. Heb. 13:5; "Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for He hath said, 'I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.'"  Cause your human logic to reason this, that if Jesus will not leave us, nor forsake us, and He reigns eternally in heaven, then as He is with us, so we are with Him, and there in heaven, as is promised?  I have one last piece of Scripture for our assurance, the fifth book of the New Testament that I said I would submit.

5. 1 John 5:11 - 13; "And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.  He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.  These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God."  This last Scripture from the apostle Jesus loved affirms that all who believe on the name of the Son of God are saved and have eternal life.  This is the last I will put forth in this study, but by no means are these the only parts of Scripture wherein we can find blessed assurance!  If ever anyone wants to debate you about how sure you are in going to heaven just because you believe in Christ Jesus, you have all this Scripture I have put forth with which to base your argument.  After all, who is going to call Jesus a liar, except an unbeliever?