Rightly Dividing

We are in the age of Grace until the rapture.  Over and over again Paul flat out tells you he's your apostle, do you not believe him?   I do!
You don't seem to me to be a physical Jew that became a believer, which is the audience of the 4 Gospels, some of Acts, and Hebrews through Revelation.  
This isn't the tribulation period yet, so you can't lose your salvation as we see written in non-Pauline books. 
Taking the mark of the beast will get you damned to hell, no question of that.
You don't have to do works to be justified today as we see in James and Hebrews.  They were addressing Jews.
You are justified today by God's grace through your faith in Christ's work on the cross.  You become sealed by the Holy Spirit thru that faith.  That's it. 

Colossians 2:9-14 sealed the deal for me.  It's nailed to the cross brother.   
Edit: I remember years ago when I read this passage for the first time I got goose bumps ending verse 15 with a mic drop!

After the Rapture, all bets are off.   Better start reading the non-Pauline books from that point on.  You gotta lot of work to do, and stay alive,... or go for the easy way out.

I'm agreeing with Wiersbe's commentary on this. I am just going to put forth that we are going to have to disagree on this one. I'm done.

By inserting hell or loss of salvation into every consequence discussed and explained by the apostles, the gospel has been seriously marred and twisted. This leads to fear led belief and it is VERY WRONG! If God demands us to dance or face the consequences, sure we will dance, but not because we want to or enjoy it or because it makes us love Him more, but because our life depends on it and we are scared out of our minds if we don’t. That is not how God operates. He doesn’t place His salvation through Jesus in our hand and says take it or leave it or tries to convince us and accepts defeat when many do not believe and then out of anger from being defeated by our foolish human will sends us to eternal torment.

I’ll probably get some backlash for this, but so be it. I have come to the understanding the Lord did not make me bold to stay quiet. Because when I am quiet I get the quiet back...



Paul who repeatedly calls himself the WORST sinner of them all and not out of modesty or being overly humble, was knocked flat to the ground by a bright light and a voice. Jesus did not tell Paul who he was, he didn’t have to because just from the light and the voice of Jesus, Paul cried out Lord Lord! Paul couldn’t even lift his face! One day we are all going to meet Jesus in that way and not one of us will have the willpower to deny WHO HE IS or to lift our face!! And because God himself says this is His will and it will absolutely happen and everyone will believe.



“that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”



For it is written, "AS I LIVE, SAYS THE LORD, EVERY KNEE SHALL BOW TO ME, AND EVERY TONGUE SHALL GIVE PRAISE TO GOD."



23 I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.



Jesus means God is salvation and not God tries to convince us of His salvation. 



“For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe.”

---

I am going to give some testimony. I will try to keep it short and with what I have experienced in just these past 18 or so months I could probably write a book. But it is now apparently 2 am lol so I will do my best...



The Lord works with all of us in different ways and opens our eyes and hearts to understandings when He is ready for us to see and know. We don’t understand jack until he wants us to and I think a lot of that is sometimes based on the state of our heart and level of our pride and if we truly let ourselves be humbled.



I don’t believe in hell in any form and believe all will be made new again, in its proper time and order as deemed and planned by the Lord. Heretic? No. Crazy? Well maybe, but that's ok. 

A little over a year ago the Lord showed me a thing or two about His absolute and neverending forgiveness, love, grace and mercy. And not just for me, but for many others. At first this was done in a very hurtful way. So hurtful in fact I tried to take my life from the truth that I had been dealt. Depression was something I had dealt with for years and after my second was born, postpartum depression gripped me like the blackest icy cold water imaginable. It consumed every aspect of my life. Much of this depression stems from a tumultuous childhood and crumbled family relationships.



I was told a truth so bad and so evil about my father it confirmed to me that the majority of my childhood was a lie. Everything that I thought was safe and ok, was a horrible lie. What I learned on that day made me realize my father should be in prison and never allowed to be around children ever. It doesn’t take much imagination to understand what I am implying he did, to me and my two younger sisters. He had admitted this to my mother one night drunk apparently, and she immediately fled from her home and marriage with him and never looked back. They were married for over 25 years. My sisters and I were all grown and no longer at home at this point.



On the day this was explained to me, I cracked. My soul had had enough and my heart had been ripped out and thrown to ravenous demons. I responded by taking enough Norco to put down an elephant. Only by a miracle I somehow called 911 before completely fading. I don’t remember doing this and only remember waking up in an ambulance getting narcan injections and the paramedics shaking the crap out of me to get me breathing again and to wake up.



When you do this sort of thing you are involuntarily put into a mental hospital for a bit. The first few days were absolute hell. The hell I had caused myself by doing something very foolish. My wreckage and destruction if you will. The deeper level of hell, maybe one of the deepest. How much lower does one get than to try and take their life? To come to the understanding that I would and now have, I much later on realized this experience was all a bit of a necessity and of a larger picture. I will explain this further. I ate maybe three bites of food the first couple of days I was there and just stayed covered on the cot type bed that is bolted to the floor.



During my stay though, God showed me some of that light. It’s the only way I made it out of there. He showed me through many mentally ill, dangerous and even just flat out crazy people (yes I can say that because I witnessed many of them) and the number one thing that had driven almost every single soul in there was a lack of love being shown to them. In their pursuit of love and trying to be good enough to receive love, it resulted in very destructive behaviors and actions. These were either inflicted upon others or towards themselves.

A big part of the treatment program was group sessions. There were a lot of tears shed by everyone in these sessions, from those who confessed their pains and torments and from those listening. I commend those who work in this line of work, because I could not. This place held the degenerates of society, the cast offs, the absolute unloved, the foolish, the weak and timid, transgenders, muslims, anyone that is easy to hate and they unfortunately more times than not are. By day 5 or so I was eating, showering, and being responsive instead of a numb shell. My husband had also brought me my bible to read during down times. You are very limited on what you are able to do. Ironically however, I didn't read very much of my bible because everyone else wanted it. 

There was a 19-year-old transgender young man looking at it and skimming through some of my bible one day at the hospital, saying he had never looked through a bible before. This was during a break period and him and I were in a common area having some hot decaf coffee (no caffeine for crazy people apparently lol) He asked me, doesn't God hate people like me and want me to go to hell for the things I do and how I am as he slowly paged through the bible while never taking his eyes off it when he asked. I replied that no, God does not hate you and will not send you to hell for the things you do and who you are. God loves you no matter what and that people want these things because it elevates them as less of a sinner than you. It makes them feel better about themselves. But we are all sinners and God does not put different levels to our sin as worse than another and that is why Jesus died on the cross because no one is better than another and no one can do better than another. God never gives up on us. He looked up and said no one has ever said anything like that to me before, they just judge or mock me. Tears welled up in my eyes at the pain that was very apparent in his. This was not the time to tell him to repent! Turn from your sin and believe or else! Not the time to scare him into believing and trying to convince him like a cheap car salesman. No, he just needed to know that he is loved by our Father when the rest of the world has turned its back on him. Faith is trusting that God will take care of this young man and that it is not up to me to try to do that for God.


This young man looked like a linebacker, was over six feet tall, stocky build, sharp features on his face was trying to grow long brown hair, wore pink every chance he got and was going through hormone therapy to soften his features to look more feminine. He had confessed previously to a couple of us that he was in the hospital for cutting and harming himself terribly all over his body. He was miserable and alone. As a child his father forced him into many sports to play in and was cruel to him when he did not win or what his father considered didn’t try hard enough. He abused and broke him for not wanting to do something this young man was being forced to do. He was a product of his environment, the result of control, cruelty and abuse. He said becoming more feminine was a way for him to get out of being forced to sports only to win and being manlier. He was rebelling against his father who was making him dance and a dance that he did not want to participate in or was even invited to. Dance or else…. Do what I say or be destroyed and suffer. That was his “love” as a child. It came with conditions.


I cannot tell you all the horrific things I have read or even heard about what people say God thinks of people who are gay or transgender. Disgusting things such as “It must be so hard for God to love someone who does such gross and vile things” or that "it must be really hard for a person like this to receive salvation and they probably barely make it if they do….” And even worse we boldly to their faces refuse to service them or make them a cake for being a "worse" sinner than us or not complacent to our beliefs. From the mouths of those who confess to be Christians! Shame on us for believing in and portraying our Lord to be so helpless and weak! No wonder people run from and avoid churches and God.


Many in the hospital had very similar stories of similar context. A young single mother who was very erratic, explosive, wild and a nymphomaniac. She was terribly raped at a very young age and during her stay in the hospital had to be completely separated from the men because she became like their shadow if they showed any interest in her. This happened one day by her flipping out and being cornered by the staff, sedated, and drug to her room because she would not stop acting inappropriately with a certain young man. During our group sessions she would non-stop pace the rooms, sometimes stop to blurt out a comment or response to what was being discussed, but no more than that. If she became agitated or stressed, she would run out of the room and disappear for the rest of the day. One of these times she did this, I heard someone say to another that the girl acted so crazy that she must be possessed. What they did not see was at every meal, this young lady said a prayer for several minutes thanking God for the food was about to eat and that she hoped her son was doing well while she was away from him and how sorry she was that she was not there for him. I learned later that her sons name was the same as mine and they were about the same age on a day she sat down beside me out of the blue and started to talk to me about all kinds of things in erratic and messy sentences of her story. It was obvious that this was not easy for her to do, even talk about how much she loved her son. It was clear that whatever all had happened to her had completely broken her. Society however would refer to her has a whore or worse.


There were many more like this young woman as well. Woman who had went nuts on their husbands because they found out that they had been constantly cheating on them for years, a young man who had the mental capacity of a 10 year old and was illiterate, busted out the windows of his “best friends” car and then tried jumping into oncoming traffic because they shared a house with a few other “friends” and all the utilities were in this young mans name. No one would pay him their share and had taken advantage of him or constantly and lied to him. But like a child, he did whatever he could to try and gain their acceptance and attention. He never knew his father and his mother had passed when he was a teenager. He had no one and the world was failing him constantly. When it was time for him to be discharged, he cried silent tears as he left from terror. He was terrified to be taken to an empty house where he was more than likely getting evicted from and all his “friends” not being there because he no longer could pay their bills for them. In the hospital he got three meals a day, showers, a bed, and a roof over his head. He doubted he would have any of that once he was dropped off by a taxi service and had been homeless before. My heart broke so much for him.


There was a lot of down time during my stay there as well which lead to a lot of thinking and praying. One of the times that I did have my bible, I noticed someone had marked a verse with a pencil and the page with a torn paper tab from a piece of construction paper.


4Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.



I continued to read beyond what they had marked.


8Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! 9Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! 10But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless….

…13Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.


As I read these verses, God shined that blinding light on me. It is the light of truth and more times than not, the truth hurts and is hard to accept. Would He make these people suffer more after this life? Would he deny them, forsake them while they suffer so much already? Will he say you had your chance and blew it or made the wrong choice and there are no more chances? If the transgender man died the day of his release say in a car accident, would he be damned to hell from never seeing but more than a few pages of a bible? Did I wrong him by not convincing him to accept Jesus as his savoir right at that moment as he paged through my bible seeking any form of comfort he could possibly get?


God will never give up on us. Love wins and it keeps no record of being wronged. We humans cannot achieve that last part when we are wronged to completion. No matter how hard we try, we cannot erase being wronged. Only God can do that and only God has control of our salvation. Not us. There is no sin greater than God. Jesus conquered it all. He conquered what my father did to me and my sister as children, drugging us so we would not remember. He conquered my feeble attempt at trying to control my destiny, saving myself and avoiding a very bad situation. He conquered my depression, pain and misery. By a power more powerful than any power ever known and only one that God can fully display and give.



Love.


It was this understanding of the power of love that led me to forgive my father to the best of my ability. God has already conquered my father’s terrible actions by forgiving him through love. Yes, the pain and hurt is still there and I do not see him very often. I am uncomfortable with him being around my children. We do talk on the phone sometimes and our conversations are pleasant, not forced or awkward. In all honesty I do not think my father would do these things today. One because of his failing health, but secondly because back then he was a drunk and addicted to pain medication. He does neither of those things now. He is however suffering terribly from his actions. His family has nothing to do with him and he has lost practically everything. I saw him a few months ago and he looks terrible and has lost a lot of weight. He lives alone and is constantly haunted by his own destruction.


My father however had a horrid childhood. His father left him and his mother on his 11th birthday party. Showed up drunk and said he was leaving. My fathers mother jumped from man to man after getting a divorce. Many men who were cruel and evil to my father and his siblings. One of them sexually abused my father and his mother punished my father when he tried to tell her what had happened. He has never told anyone what happened or who did it, just that it was very bad.


Our sin and filth are a constant cycle of cause and effect. I am not saying this as an excuse anyone and God handles and judges us for our actions and decisions, but when we step back and look at the bigger picture, this is exactly what Jesus died on the cross for. The poor, the rejects of society, the transgenders, perverts, those who in His days on this earth were tied up in chains by themselves and left in a cave. Those who are unlovable and in our eyes deserve the worst of punishments. Salvation cannot be lost, it was never ours to obtain and decide to keep in the first place. God did the work, it IS finished. This is where God is glorified, when we realize and fully comprehend the full meaning of:


“The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” <<<< 2889 kósmos (literally, "something ordered") – properly, an "ordered system" (like the universe, creation); the world. the world, universe; worldly affairs; the inhabitants of the world; adornment.

…the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”


It was finished before it was even started. Amen.

I have never shared this in so much detail with anyone except for a very few close friends and the only people who know this about me in full is my husband and immediate family. I hope anyone who is fretting over their salvation or in bewilderment finds something in all of this. Seek Gods face, not mans boxed in theologies and teachings and requirements for salvation. 

cwood85
May the Lord bless you and yours.

As I've mentioned to mike previously, this day, today, this is the age of God's Grace. It ends at the rapture. Those who believe in what Christ did, 1 Cor 15:1-4, they are forgiven and sealed by the Holy Spirit until that day of redemption.

As for Peter...
Psalm 1:6 For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.
Proverbs 12:28 In the way of righteousness is life: and in the pathway thereof there is no death.

Kings David and Solomon fall in line with what Peter penned:
2 Peter 2:21 For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.

There is only 1 reason for Jesus Christ to have been mentioned in 2 Peter 2:20 in the context that it was for the entire chapter.
Just as we see with David and Solomon: No Jesus, no life. Know Jesus, know life.

Peter's letter was written to be read out loud to crowds. It was meant to be understood in a very short amount of words and to be understood as it was read. Not books and books of theory and conjecture. Peter's letter is short and to the point.
The point of the 2nd chapter is punishment, judgement, and destruction if one were to teach Christ and then "to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them". You can't turn from something you never had in the first place. You had to first have the commandment to be able to turn from it.

Now you don't believe in existence of hell, well, OK. I hold on to a strange belief that entire households will be saved by a believer parent of a household. There are not many people that I know of hold that same belief. Likely nobody here. It's just little things I pick up on reading His Word, like Korah and his entire household getting judged, or Noah and his household getting saved, or Rahab and her father's household being spared, and the Roman family in Acts. Strange I know. But it makes since to me. I just think God takes marriage VERY seriously, man and wife truly become one, just as Christ and the Church. I think many families are going to be very happily surprised after the Rapture.

But for complete non-believers...
The judgement that's coming after the rapture ... I believe the Joel 2 army (the Lord's Army on the Day of the Lord) is the same army in Isaiah 13. And Isaiah 13 worries me I think more than much of what I read in Revelation for unbelievers. The unforgiven unjust are headed for the day of the Lord and then judgement afterward.

This board here is just full of very loving people all with interesting ideas. Some I agree with, some I don't, and the same is true with others here with me.
But as you mentioned, Love.
I have nothing but the love in Christ for you all. :-)

cwood85
I want to attempt to clarify what you are saying as my understanding is not what I believe you have posted. Attempt to understand in is the point for me. I think I understand things but not always clearly and others take an object turn it around and show me the other facet of the gem they have and "WOW" I only saw one way, but there are other ways to view this and bring more of the picture into focus or complete the picture.
I think you are saying that in some examples it seems people had enough faith (confidence), and in others they did not have enough faith (Peter sinking). However if we dont have enough faith we are the ones who are trying to do the work or we end up trying to prove ourselves faithful, which is never God's intention, none of us can achieve enough of anything, its all Him.
I always understood this verse to mean that the gift was salvation through grace (not of ourselves) obtained by faith. We can't show enough effort to be able to boast about the faith we have being sufficient enough to obtain that grace. 

Rom 4:4 Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. 5 But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. 6 Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works,

Also I'm wondering if I am understanding that God gives us the faith and the faith is not ours how do I reconcile a verse like this with that thinking in mind? Am I confusing your point? Sorry if I mis-read this
Luke 18:8 Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?

I just finished a big one back on this topic!

www.unsealed.org/2019/07/rightly-dividing-wrongly.html