Predestination?

Please read the following verse carefully:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

(John 3:16)

            This is perhaps the most well-known verse in the Bible; yet, many “Christians” deny it. How, by saying that “whosoever believes’ is not true -- they say only the predestined are saved. Of course, the folks that say that are so arrogant that they always place themselves among the predestined!

            The conditions for salvation are predestined - not who will love God enough to meet those conditions. God is loving and merciful but He is also just. He will destroy a third of the angels along with Satan because they will not submit their will to their Creator. You and I are required to make that same choice - His will or our own. You can follow your will to death or follow His will to eternal life. That my friend is predestined. What did Jesus say?

It is not who is predestined - it is whose love for God endures:

And you shall be hated of all for my name's sake: but he that endures to the end shall be saved.

(Matthew 10:22)

But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

(Matthew 24:13)

And you shall be hated of all for my name's sake: but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

(Mark 13:13)

Christian Soldiers?

Are you a soldier in God’s Army? Have you ever heard of an army where the soldiers did not have to follow the orders of the supreme commander? At the Battle of Armageddon there will be two opposing forces - those that follow God’s orders and those that do not. Whose side are you on?

Jesus paid for us to have a commission in God’s Army. If you accept you must follow orders. If you don’t follow orders then whose side are you really on?

Jesus chose only 12 Apostles.

Jesus chose 12 Apostles.

And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach, (Mark 3:14)

After Judas died the remaining 11 Apostles chose Judas’s replacement:

And they gave forth their lots; and the lot fell upon Matthias; and he was numbered with the eleven apostles. (Act 1:26)

There are only 12 Apostles of Jesus recognized in Heaven:

And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. (Revelation 21:14)

            Jesus commended the Church at Ephesus for not listening to people who said they were Apostles but weren’t:

I know your works, and your labour, and your patience, and how you cannot bear them which are evil: and you have tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and have found them liars: (Revelation 2:2)

            Who claimed to the Ephesians to be an Apostle but was not:

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus: (Ephesians 1:1)

            Paul did not even qualify as a potential apostle:

Wherefore of these men which have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John, unto that same day that he was taken up from us, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection. (Act 1:21-22)