Salvation

For some interesting teaching on "backsliders" go to Ray Comfort's website www.livingwaters.com.

If we come to Christ so we can have a better life ( ie "God has a wonderfull plan for your life ) you will backslide or walk away from Christ when the ineveitable persecution comes. This is how modern evangelical evangelism present the Gospel and why there are so many backsliders and make-believers in the church today. It makes it look as thought it is easy to lose salvation.

However, if you come to Christ because you know you are a sinner, and you know that God will judge you on the day of judgement, it is unlikely that you will backslide when life gets rough because you didn't come to Christ to get an easy life. Thsi is the man who will "persevere" in the faith.

James 2:24, "You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone."

James 2:26, "For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead."

1 Ptr 1:17, "And if you invoke as Father Him Who judges each one impartially according to his deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile."

Phil 2:12, "...work out your own salvation with fear and trembling."

1 Ptr 3:10-11, "He that would love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking guile; let him turn away from evil and do right."

Romans 2:6-7, "For He will render to every man according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, He will give eternal life."

1 John 3:17, "...he who does the will of God abides for ever."

Matthew 7:21, "Not every one who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father Who is in heaven."

1 John 3:17, "If any one has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?"

James 2:15-17, "If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, be warmed and filled,' without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith, by itself, if it has no works, is dead."

1 Tim 5:8, "If any one does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own family, he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever."