Rightly dividing the Word of God is crucial in every generation. There’s significant warning to all teachers to carefully handle God’s carefully crafted gospel kingdom message in both covenants.
James 3:1 Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment.
Only in this way can we fully please God, our Creator, Savior, and Master. And ultimately preserve our standing with Him. If other words, if a heretic teaches homosexually is now morally acceptable to a ‘loving’ God and people believe and practice this sin, this wrong hermeneutic has just caused both the teacher and his audience in all likelihood to end up in the lake of fire with the devil and his angels.
The Holy Spirit inspired Scriptures say it this way for us in the English language:
2 Timothy 3:16-17 All Scripture (including the Old Covenant) is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
Biblical interpretation is called hermeneutics, and basically includes two parts. Exegesis, part one, is understanding the then-and-there meaning to the original ancient mid-east audience. Hermeneutics, part two, is making proper and complete application to the here-and-now, our modern era where we live today. But both these parts, exegesis and hermeneutics, are tucked up under the term “Hermeneutics.”
Faulty exegesis can quickly become heretical exegesis. And in accepting this heresy, the hermeneutical application for modern life is doomed to failure. More often than not, this leads God’s people to walk in the flesh of the world’s ways all the while thinking they’re somehow in His kingdom gospel. We beg and beseech the Holy Spirit to give us all Light in every like endeavor.
Would You Change Any Wrong Teaching About God?
Now…a brief but vital aside.
If I say to you this word of warning, would you say it’s true?
If you do not carefully avoid the very edge of the One World Trade Center building in New York, then you will fall to your death.
Yes. True we all say.
But…
What if I insist the inverse, or opposite, is not true?
If you carefully avoid the very edge of the One World Trade Center building in New York, then you will not fall to your death.
What would you say to me then? Would you declare my opinion here preposterous? Would I be considered a nut case by you? Unreasonable too?
In this teaching prophesy, first I’ll attempt to briefly recap being blotted out, or erased, from God’s book of life as the Bible describes it…and the events causing such a frightening reality.
Next, I’ll then turn to the common but illogical and faulty exegesis that claims being erased (blotted out) of the book of life in Revelation 3 can never happen.
This is a doctrine that is almost universally avoided, and thus omitted from the gospel. It’s not popular in the least. And since the church today has been primarily hijacked by marketers and the emergent (as author David Wells has so courageously pointed out), the “customer” must be sold what they demand…or else they will trot off somewhere else with their money. To a different cafeteria with more palatable and tasty spiritual food. As we say here at Walk Worthy, the “AT’s,” or accumulated teachers, are everywhere.
2 Timothy 4:1-4 I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.
You must be the judge. Eternal life and death hangs in the balance. This is that serious.
Being blotted out, or erased, from God’s book is a chillingly and familiar theme from Genesis to Revelation in you have seriously attempted to spend time with the Almighty in His Word.
Even to the casual but carefully truthful observer, God is determined to communicate to His creatures the required devotion to Him and His ways for entrance into the kingdom of heaven. It was a well known event in human history to have one’s name written in a book of citizenship…and blotted out of it when certain crimes were committed.
Tracing Being Blotted Out In The Old Testament
Let’s trace this theme in the Scripture now.
Right off the bat in Genesis, God tells Moses to record the goings on with Noah, the corrupted earth, and the coming worldwide flood.
A quick side note on Genesis 6.4 and the Nephilim…
We here will not enter here into a fuller discussion of the 200 angel ‘watchers’ who left the angelic domain and sexually mated with human women and created the Nephilim race that Moses records: part human, part angelic, demonic in character. But Enoch talks extensively of this perversion in his book 1 Enoch, and Jude describes briefly the consequences of this rebellion against God:
Genesis 6:4 The Nephilim (giants) were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to (and had sexual intercourse with) the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.
Jude 1:6-7 And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.
Note that although the flood will wipe out the existing Nephalim, they return as Moses records that fact as “also afterward.”
(See Chuck Misler’s thoughtful, compelling, and engaging video recap here of this event and it’s catastrophic consequences right up to this very day, and the end game of Satan and his anti-christ through the occultic elite of the New World Order.)
But the flood was the result in God’s Word of His consequence. Obviously, other than Noah and his family, all human creatures and all living things were destroyed in the flood:
Genesis 6:7, 7:4 The LORD said, “I will blot out (destroy) man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them…For after seven more days, I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights; and I will blot out (destroy) from the face of the land every living thing that I have made.”
And Almighty God did precisely that:
Genesis 7:23 Thus He blotted out (destroyed) every living thing that was upon the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky, and they were blotted out from the earth; and only Noah was left, together with those that were with him in the ark.
God goes on to use this imagery for those He eventually forsakes due to sustained sin, or those real physical removals – these are scary words to say the least:
Exodus 17:14 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Write this in a book as a memorial and recite it to Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek (part of the Nephalim after the flood) from under heaven.”
Exodus 32:32 “But now, if You will, forgive their sin—and if not, please blot me out from Your book which You have written (says Moses)!”
Exodus 32:33 The LORD said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against Me, I will blot him out of My book.
Deuteronomy 9:14 ‘Let Me alone, that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven; and I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.’
Deuteronomy 25:6 “It shall be that the firstborn whom she bears shall assume the name of his dead brother, so that his name will not be blotted out (in a real physical sense) from Israel.
Deuteronomy 25:19 “Therefore it shall come about when the LORD your God has given you rest from all your surrounding enemies, in the land which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek (part of the Nephalim after the flood) from under heaven; you must not forget.
Deuteronomy 29:20 “The LORD shall never be willing to forgive him, but rather the anger of the LORD and His jealousy will burn against that man, and every curse which is written in this book will rest on him, and the LORD will blot out his name from under heaven.
Judges 21:17 They said, “There must be an inheritance for the survivors of Benjamin, so that a tribe will not be blotted out (in a real physical sense) from Israel.
1 Kings 13:34 This event became sin to the house of Jeroboam, even to blot it out and destroy it from off the face of the earth.
2 Kings 14:27 The LORD did not say that He would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, but He saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash.
Nehemiah 4:5 Do not forgive their iniquity and let not their sin be blotted out before You, for they have demoralized the builders. (this is known as imprecatory anger, or calling down from God revengeful curses on one’s enemy – the same as the perfected and martyred great tribulation saints under the throne in Revelation 6)
Nehemiah 13:14 Remember me for this, O my God, and do not blot out my loyal deeds which I have performed for the house of my God and its services.
Psalm 9:5 You have rebuked the nations, You have destroyed the wicked; You have blotted out their name forever and ever.
Psalm 51:1 Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; according to the greatness of Your compassion blot out my transgressions.
Psalm 51:9 Hide Your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities.
Psalm 69:28 May they be blotted out of the book of life and may they not be recorded with the righteous.
Psalm 109:13 Let his posterity be cut off; in a following generation let their name be blotted out.
Psalm 109:14 Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the LORD, and do not let the sin of his mother be blotted out. (Imprecatory anger-curse again)
Proverbs 6:33 Wounds and disgrace he will find, and his reproach will not be blotted out. (Imprecatory anger-curse again)
Jeremiah 18:23 Yet You, O LORD, know All their deadly designs against me; do not forgive their iniquity or blot out their sin from Your sight. But may they be overthrown before You; deal with them in the time of Your anger! (an imprecatory anger-curse)
Ezekiel 6:6 In all your dwellings, cities will become waste and the high places will be desolate, that your altars may become waste and desolate, your idols may be broken and brought to an end, your incense altars may be cut down, and your works may be blotted out.
See? Our God is indeed serious about blotting out (erasing) various things from life on His earth.
Let’s take another review of that direct threat from God the Father:
Exodus 32:33 The LORD said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against Me, I will blot him out of My book.
Now, Being Erased From The Book Of Life?
Next, then, we turn to the much debated passage in Revelation 3.5.
Revelation 3:5-6 He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
Adding in the conditional ‘if-then’ to the verse’s statement, and personalizing to make more clear, we read:
Revelation 3:5-6 (If) you deliberately overcome, you will be clothed in the white garments of heaven; and (then) I, Jesus Christ the Lord, will not erase your name from the book of life, and (then) also I will confess your name before My Father and before His angels. (If) you have an ear, (then) let yourself hear what the Spirit says to the body of Christ in the individual assemblies of believers.
The word erase in this passage has an interesting history and biblical meaning. It’s the Greek word exaleiphô (ex-al-i-fo), meaning to wipe out, erase, obliterate: in the New Testament, it renders these English words with their usage – canceled (1), erase (1), wipe (1), wipe away (1), wiped away (1).
These are the uses:
Sins are ‘wiped away’ or erased, obliterated.
Acts 3:19 Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord;
The decrees against us are erased, obliterated.
Colossians 2:14 having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.
If we overcome, saints will not be erased, obliterated from the book of life.
Revelation 3:5 He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.
God wipes away, erases, obliterates, every tear! Hallelujah…
Revelation 7:17 for the Lamb in the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and will guide them to springs of the water of life; and God will wipe every tear from their eyes.”
Revelation 21:4 and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”
The word history is rich in the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament translation, and is used around 35 times. It means there to wipe off, wipe out, destroy, to exterminate and render useless.
In these two cases below, God is involved positively as He blots out, wipes away, exterminates, obliterates our sin, or negatively as He is called upon to carry out this gracious and loving act as a request in an imprecatory anger-curse:
Isaiah 43:25 “I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake, and I will not remember your sins.
Jeremiah 18:23 Yet You, O LORD, know all their deadly designs against me; do not forgive their iniquity or blot out their sin from Your sight. But may they be overthrown before You; deal with them in the time of Your anger!
All five uses in the New Testament reflect the same usages as the Septuagint.
Brothers Who Are God’s Expert Teachers Show Us The Way
What follows now, as we move forward to the end, are several excellent and exegetically honest commentators.
Craig Keener (popular commentator, i.e. IVP Bible Background Commentary, over 500,000 copies) on Revelation 3.5, from the NIV Application Commentary on Revelation:
The promise that the overcomers in Sardis will not be blotted out “from the book of life” (3.5) implies the obverse, namely, that much of the church in Sardis is close to spiritual death (3.2) and will not see the kingdom. The image of blotting out stems from Exodus 32.32-33, which came to be applied to a heavenly book of life (Ps. 69.28; Dan. 12.1; Luke 10.20; Phil. 4.3).
An ancient audience in Asia may have heard this image against the citizen registers know throughout Asia Minor, in an earlier period Sardis was known for its royal archives.
In some places (best documented from Athens), names of errant citizens were deleted from the register immediately prior to their execution. The promise that Jesus will confess the faithful remnant before his Father echoes what he told his disciples (Matt. 10.32; Like 12.8)….
It is important to hear the blunt warning of the text and not reduce it on the basis of our more comfortable theological presuppositions. Our faith in the Bible as God’s Word requires us to revise our thinking to fit the text, not the reverse…for example, the implication of lostness for those who fail to overcome….
The implicit warning of 3.5 (that those who do not overcome will be blotted from the book of life) challenges some of the popular ideas in traditional North American religion…
But many (especially in my own Baptist tradition) have wrongly reinterpreted the Calvinist teaching so as to allow into heaven anyone who once professed salvation, and idea refuted both here and regularly throughout the New Testament. (Mark 4.16-19, John 8.30-32, 15.6, Rom. 11-20-22; Gal. 4.19; 5.4; 2 Peter 2.20-22)
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William Ramsay, Letters to the Seven Churches, page 385
The “Book of Life” is here evidentially understood as an official list (so to say) of the citizens of the heavenly city, the true Jerusalem, the Elect City, peopled by the true Christians of all cities and provinces and nations.
As in all Greek and Roman cities of that time there was kept a list of citizens, according to their class or tribe or deme (geographic region), in which new citizens were entered and from which degraded citizens were expunged, so the writer of this letter figuratively mentions the Book of Life.
There is a remnant in Sardis whose names shall never be deleted from the Book, from which most Sardians have been expunged already.
That is undoubtedly is the meaning which would be taken from the words of the Asian readers…
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David Aune, Revelation, page 223-227…
“The one who conquers thus will be clothed with a white garment…” The term “garment” was used as a metaphor for the physical body (2 Cor.5.2-4…) often implied with the use of “put off” and “put on” language (2 Cor. 2.11; 2 Pet. 1.14; 4; Ezra 2.25)…
The motif (a theme, reoccurring subject) of a Book of Life in which the names of the saved are written and the motif of the erasure of a person’s name from such a Book are extremely widespread in the OT and early Judaism, sometimes used together and sometimes separately. The possibility of having one’s name erased from the Book of Life suggests that fidelity to God rather than any type of predestination system is the reason for having one’s name inscribed in the Book of Life in the first place. (see Rev. 17.8)…
In Judaism and early Christianity, the primary setting of the Book of Life motif was the judgment scene in which God is seated upon His throne surrounded by heavenly courtiers (Dan. 7.9-10; Rev. 20.12-15…). The origin of this metaphor certainly that of the ancient Near Eastern royal court, whose records were made available to the king for dispensing justice (Ezra 4.15; Esther 6.1)…
The Books of Deeds and Book of Life are distinguished in Rev. 20.12…The motif of having one’s name erased from, or blotted out of, the Book of Life is a metaphor for judgment…based on the notion of expulsion or disenfranchisement from the record of citizenship…
The Book of Life can be used in an entirely negative way…(in a particular historical religious book we read this): “Let them be effaced from the book of living, and let them not be written with the righteous.”
This negative usage is also found in rabbinic literature…(for example):
“For the apostates let there be no hope, and uproot the kingdom of arrogance, speedily and in our days. May the Nazarenes and the sectarians perish as in a moment. Let them be blotted out of the book of life, and not be written with the righteous. You are praised, O Lord, who subdues the arrogant.”
In Athens, whenever any citizen was sentenced to be executed for a crime, his name was first erased..from the roll of citizens…The frequency with which the term…occurs in precisely this context indicates that it is a technical term for erasing the names of citizens from the registry…
This church (Sardis) receives primarily censure; only a minority of Christians “have not soiled their garments” (v. 3.4). Christ knows the real state of their works: though they may appear hale and hearty to others, they are in reality on the point of spiritual death…
They are encouraged to wake up and change their ways before it is too late (v. 3.2). In the NT, watchfulness is an indispensable characteristic of the people of God in view of the end (Mark 13.33-37; Matt. 25.25.13)…
Those who conquer will be rewarded with white garments, probably not so much an allusion to the flourishing garment industry as a metaphor of ritual, moral, and spiritual purity….
Further, their names will not be blotted out of the Book of Life, another metaphor for eternal life. Ancient Israel had some kind of roll of citizens (Ps. 69.28; Isa. 4.3) and Athens and some other Greek cities had the custom of erasing from the rolls the names of citizens executed by the state…
Having one’s name written in the Book of Life thus suggests heavenly citizenship (Heb. 12.23; 1 Peter 1.17). The idea of a “book of life”…from which one’s name could be erased is common in Judaism…
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Complete Biblical Library – Rev 3.5
According to commentator Adam Clarke, (clothed in white) this may refer to an ancient Hebrew custom in regard to the priests, who were dressed in white. If it was thought a priest had sinned or was not of the seed of Aaron, he was brought before the great council if Israel to be tried. If they found he was guilty, he would be stripped of his white garment and instead given a black garment to wear and sent away….
…Overcomers names will remain (in the Book of Life.)
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The Church At Sardis Was Not Fooling God
All ancient cities in the known Greek world kept names of their citizens in registers. Sardis was the western capital of the earlier and well known Persian and Seleucid empires. As such, the official there would have kept the royal archives for a wide geographic area. And, to boot, Sardis had at that time a “reputation” but had now fallen into relative obscurity in comparison.
Commentators in the know have put it like this.
Says G.R. Beasley-Murray: “The appearance [of the Sardis church] is that of a beautifully adorned corpse in a funeral parlour, and the Lord is not deceived” (Revelation, p. 95).
G.B. Caird calls Sardis “the perfect model of inoffensive Christianity” (A Commentary on the Revelation of St. John the Divine, p. 48). That might explain its calm and sedated outward appearance.
George Eldon Ladd defined the Sardis church as “a picture of nominal Christianity, outwardly prosperous, busy with the externals of religious activity, but devoid of spiritual life and power” (A Commentary on the Revelation of John, p. 56).
The Laodicean Christians had their water delivered over a Roman aqueduct and arrived lukewarm, so our Lord uses that fact to illustrate their faith. In the same way, the Revelation of Jesus Christ uses extremely familiar word pictures with the Sardians to warn the few remaining believers to overcome and not succumb to being erased…and become lost again.
Lest you are still unpersuaded about the long history of how a person is “erased” from the memory of a culture, read here how it was done. Notice how Stalin had a close associate ‘erased’ in the picture after the associates execution.
Now…
A vital point here.
Many Christians I know personally, including popular teachers like John MacArthur, state that Jesus Christ only stated He would not erase the saint’s name. So the opposite…the inverse…would never apply they claim.
Remember our opening question, and the inverse?
This was true:
If you carefully avoid the very edge of the One World Trade Center building in New York, then you will not fall to your death.
But I insisted this was not true as the opposite, or inverse, only for the sake of argument:
If you do not carefully avoid the very edge of the One World Trade Center building in New York, then you will fall to your death.
Let’s look closely at the logic of that position that the opposite, or inverse, is not true. For the eternal stake of many is at risk if we just happen to treat this in a cavalier fashion.
If you want to be careful here in a full understanding of this doctrine, you want to look at these links for a true definitions of logic regarding Transposition and Rule of Inference.
And an excellent 5 minute video on this vital subject of logic:
They Walked Away From The Faith…And Jesus Christ
I personally have known and ministered with three very close brothers in the Lord that slowly fell into and then pursued deliberate sin, eventually renounced the faith, the Lord Himself, by their unrepentant actions of sexual immorality, or gross embezzlement…and just walked away. Two divorced their original Christian wives for sexy girlfriends. And one committed suicide after stealing a million dollars from Christians as a “financial planner.” Many, many children of these men were also affected. As I write this, a fear and sadness grips my heart over these memories.
Now, some good Christian men say they were never saved. But this is simply not true. I knew these men. I served with them for years. I cried with them, prayed with them, and watched them apostate. They were saved…at first.
It indeed may be the most scariest thing ever to witness in my Christian walk. They were approved…then disapproved. Read about approval and disapproval here.
And what about Demas, Paul’s fellow church planting apostle, who was earlier mentioned before the last chilling update on his life in 2 Timothy? He ended up loving the world of Satan…the king and kingdom of the evil one.
Philemon 1:23-24 Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, greets you, as do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, Luke, my fellow workers.
2 Timothy 4:9-10 Make every effort to come to me soon; for Demas, having loved this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica; Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia.
Wait, you protest. What about the guarantee of the Holy Spirit?
Let’s take a careful look at that verse and the Greek word used to translate the versions that use the English word “guarantee”…
Ephesians 1:13-14 In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge (arrabon) of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.
It’s not a “guarantee” but a pledge as correctly translated above by the NASB Bible. The NIV mistaking renders the Greek as “guaranteeing” the inheritance.
Not so.
The Greek word originates from a real estate term meaning an earnest deposit. But the deal, the covenant, must be kept by both parties. The only Biblical covenant that is unilateral, one way, and could never be broken is that made between God and Himself: the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis.
All others can be dissolved by the offending party: always human beings. Marriage too is a contract, a covenant, and that is why God, the perfect husband, divorced Israel for her repeated adultery toward Him.
Again, you protest, but aren’t the elect of God secure forever?
In His Word, there’s nothing that declares we can’t remove ourselves from His hand willingly like the three men above and become “unelected.” Proper Biblical hermeneutics demands we understand and preach the more clear with that light than beginning with the less clear…the reoccurring doctrine and that light rather than something less known.
The Picture That Is Worth A 1000 Words
We must all be careful with an argument from silence. But in this case the theme is crystal clear as illustrated by this picture depicting how God’s calling and chosen works out in our Holy Spirit inspired understanding. You may hover over the image or click it in order to enlarge the view.
So, let’s complete this by again looking at the verse in the Revelation:
Revelation 3:5-6 He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
Adding in the conditional ‘if-then’ to the statement, and personalizing, we read:
Revelation 3:5-6 (If) you deliberately overcome, you will be clothed in the white garments of heaven; and (then) I, Jesus Christ the Lord, will not erase your name from the book of life, and (then) also I will confess your name before My Father and before His angels. (If) you have an ear, (then) let yourself hear what the Spirit says to the body of Christ in the individual assemblies of believers.
And the inverse is true here as well.
The key verse can be stated in this fashion as an individual:
If I overcome the world’s temptations and live in obedient holiness, then I will not be erased from the Book of Life.
And the inverse here is just as clear and true:
If I do not overcome the world’s temptations and live in obedient holiness, then I will be erased from the Book of Life.
The People At Sardis Knew Exactly What God Meant
These people in Sardis, most of who had already been erased from the book of life, would have known exactly what the Lord meant. Remember, like Laodicea with the tepid water in the aqueduct, the Sardians knew the history of the royal records and the formal ceremony that “erased” and “blotted out” the citizens that were condemned criminals against the state.
As terrifying as this truth is for us, this is the beauty of correct modern day exegesis, understanding the then-and-there of Sardis. Only then may we understand the here-and-now, the correct hermeneutic, as it applies to us.
Even the Old Testament prophets agree that the book of life and remembrance was the key for final entrance into the King’s kingdom.
Daniel 12:1-2 Now at that time Michael, the great prince who stands guard over the sons of your people, will arise. And there will be a time of distress such as never occurred since there was a nation until that time; and at that time your people, everyone who is found written in the book, will be rescued. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt.
Malachi 3:16-18 Then those who feared the LORD spoke to one another, and the LORD gave attention and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the LORD and who esteem His name. “They will be Mine,” says the LORD of hosts, “on the day that I prepare My own possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him.” So you will again distinguish between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve Him.
Some pondering this are serious about what it might be like to face Jesus Christ at the judgment and be erased from the book of life due to persistent disobedience. Listen to the short audio regarding the sobering fate of Faint Heart from the story of Affabel by John Bevere by clicking here. To listen to the rest of the audio from this judgment before King Jalyn (Jesus), click here.
May we all have ears to hear.
Please comment on this post right below. Feel free to write and proclaim your leadings in the Spirit in an honorable fashion.
Your friend and brother in fighting the good fight,
Marc
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Please comment on this post right below. Feel free to write and proclaim your leadings in the Spirit in an honorable fashion.
Marc White, Director, Walk Worthy Ministries, www.WalkWorthy.org
Brother W says
This is right on. Why do the churches refuse to see what God has clearly taught us in His Word? Keep up the good work!
jesusislord says
Brother – we suppose that the courage needed to preach the whole counsel of God these days is missing by and large. Doing that may very well get us all killed someday soon as the evil one seeks to suppress the Lord’s truth!
Brother Marc
Tom says
It’s always interested me that no one is ever written INTO the Book of Life. They are only “blotted out.” (The implication, obviously, is that everyone starts out “living”, or IN the Book. What are we to make of that?
jesusislord says
Tom — there’s several passages that refer to being “written” into the Book of Life…
Exodus 32:31-32 Then Moses returned to the LORD, and said, “Alas, this people has committed a great sin, and they have made a god of gold for themselves. But now, if You will, forgive their sin—and if not, please blot me out from Your book which You have written!”
Daniel 12:1 “Now at that time Michael, the great prince who stands guard over the sons of your people, will arise. And there will be a time of distress such as never occurred since there was a nation until that time; and at that time your people, everyone who is found written in the book, will be rescued.
Revelation 13:8-9 All who dwell on the earth will worship him, everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slain. If anyone has an ear, let him hear.
Revelation 17:8 “The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss and go to destruction. And those who dwell on the earth, whose name has not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, will wonder when they see the beast, that he was and is not and will come.
Revelation 20:12 And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.
Revelation 20:15 And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
Revelation 21:27 and nothing unclean, and no one who practices abomination and lying, shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
Brother Marc
Kathy says
Excellent! This sums up the situation perfectly:
QUOTE: The key verse can be stated in this fashion as an individual:
If I overcome the world’s temptations and live in obedient holiness, then I will not be erased from the Book of Life.
And the inverse here is just as clear and true:
If I do not overcome the world’s temptations and live in obedient holiness, then I will be erased from the Book of Life.
I’ve gone around and around with people who believe that the moment they accept Jesus that they are forever “home free,” regardless of how they live the rest of their lives.
jesusislord says
Thanks sister Kathy! as you can well imagine, we take quite a few hits over a doctrine such as this…but few if any will go to the word and really search together like a Berean…being a stonewaller, unfortunately for the kingdom and King, is there style.
see http://www.walkworthy.org/stonewall
Brother Marc