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Are you ready for the Lord's return? If he were to appear in the heavens today for His Church, would you be taken out of this world, or would you be left behind to face the horrors of the Tribulation and the terror of the Antichrist?
 
 

Maybe you are thinking, "I probably would go because I was born into a Christian family." Or maybe your felling is, "I'm almost positive I would go because I was baptized as a kid, and I've attended church at least once a year since then." Or perhaps you are one of the majority of people who respond to this question by saying, "Well I've never been vary religious, and I don't go to church, but I'm not a bad person, and I am certainly a lot better than most of the people I know - I mean, I'm not caught up in any serious sins."
 
 

If any of these thoughts are yours, then you need to face up to some grim realities:

• You cannot be saved by being born into a Christian family.
• You cannot be saved by performing certain religious rituals.
• You cannot be saved by performing good works.
• You cannot be saved by avoiding certain major sins.
• You cannot be saved by living better than your neighbor.
• You cannot be saved by joining a church.

Jesus said the only way anyone can be saved is for them to be “born again” (John 3:3). What does thee mean? It refers to spiritual rebirth.

The Consequence of Our Sins

Our sins have resulted in our spiritual death. The Bible puts it this way, “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). We must be spiritually reborn in order to be reconciled to God and have the hope of everlasting life with Him.

How can you experience that spiritual rebirth? By placing your faith in Jesus as your Lord and Savior. That's the only way. Jesus himself denied salvation as a personal relationship with him when He said, “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent (John 17:3)

This vital point makes true Christianity a matter of a relationship, rather than a religion. Religion does not save. Only Jesus saves. Jesus made this crystal clear when He declared, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to Father but through Me” (John 14:6).

A Forgotten Verse

Everyone seems to know John 3:16, but few seem to be aware of John 3:36. John 3:16 says that “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” John 3:36 says, “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him”

This statement in John 3:36, taken from a sermon by John the Baptist, means that everyone alive this moment is under the grace of God or the wrath of God - one of the two. God must deal with sin if He is truly a loving and just God, and He deals with sin in one of two ways - either grace or wrath.

Again, every person on planet earth is under wither the grace or the wrath of God. It is a glorious thing to be under God's grace. It is a terrible and tragic thing to be subject to God's wrath.

When Jesus was hanging on the cross, every sin you and I have ever committed and ever will commit was placed upon Him, and He received the wrath of God which you and I deserve. When you accept Jesus as you Lord and Savior, you step into the area where the wrath of God has already fallen, and you become immune to that wrath

There is a contemporary Christian song that powerfully expresses this truth:

He paid a debt He did not owe;

I owed a debt I could not pay;

I needed someone to wash my sins away.

And, now, I sing a brand new song,

"Amazing Grace."

Christ Jesus paid a debt that I could never pay.

Despite the clear teaching of the Bible that we are saved by grace as a free gift of God, and not by the works, there is much confusion in the Christion world about salvation. It would seem that Christendom could give a unified answer to the most important question in the world, "what must I do to be saved?" But unfortunately, that is not the case. You are likely to get as many different answers as the number of Christians you ask.

Salvation by selection