A Proper Orientation — Robert B. Thompson

It is with great thanksgiving and praise, Lord. Great thanksgiving and praise. We feel the power of your word. We know you're working in the earth mightily. We thank you for the good reports we've heard.

And I pray tonight, Lord, you keep your hand on our families while we're away. Keep them safe and healthy. Bring our loved ones into your kingdom, we pray. And help us, Lord, as we're here tonight. Keep us safe on the highway going home.

But Lord, open our hearts and minds and grant that we will cover just the ground the Holy Spirit would have covered and that he will give the insight to us, Lord, so that we'll understand. Help us to understand your word as it is unfolding in Jesus' name.

And everyone said amen. I guess Angelique will have to, can you do our overheads? I don't know when Bill Ott will be back. He's on a trip. I think we're on page 6. Sister, I don't know your name. You've come a couple of times, three times before.

Do you have a background in the scriptures at all? Okay, well, if anything comes up you don't understand, don't worry about asking it. Just ask. Because I never know, and sometimes a simple explanation, you may hear things here you've never heard before, possibly, and if a thing strikes you as strange, there's nothing wrong with saying, what are you talking about?

That's what this class is all about. So don't be backward about going forward. Ruth, that's a good name. So we're off to a good start with Ruth. No, we're on 5. I'm sorry, Angelique, we're on page 5. That's where we stopped last time.

The Fullness of God as the Goal of Salvation

The third dimension may be thought of as the fullness of God. To know the love of Christ which passes knowledge that you might be filled with all the fullness of God. And where's that expression, all the fullness of God?

Ephesians 3 .19. Because we are kind of pioneering, it's very important to know where it is in the scripture. An awful lot of evangelical preaching is on scriptural, and an awful lot of it is on scriptural.

And when you begin to search the scriptures to see what the Bible says, it's quite a shock. Now this third symbol, this booth, is the peculiar message of this church, where some are preaching that the altar of salvation, some at Pentecost, and we preach those things too.

But this is, you don't hear about the fullness of God too often. The fullness of God is the goal, the atoning blood of the Lord Jesus gives us the authority to press toward the goal. The Holy Spirit of God gives us the ability, the ability to press toward the goal.

The goal is not a change in location, but a change in personality. Now that's very important to understand. The current teaching, and it's almost total, is that we are saved from hell to go to heaven.

Now, I'm not going to really get rough on that. An awful lot of people have got saved and have met the Lord from that preaching. So we're not running down what anyone has done or is doing or will do when we're talking.

So please understand, we're not taking a shot at anybody's preaching. That's not our purpose. Our purpose is this. God is giving to his church today. He's doing a lot of stuff. But one thing that he is doing is he's giving us a mid-course correction in doctrine.

And the way that you verify your faith is by the word. Tradition will not stand in our day because evil is coming to such proportions that the doctrine must become closer to the scripture than it ever has been.

So I've been part of, you know, I've talked to you for years that the goal of salvation is not to go to heaven. That's not the goal. And although there certainly is a heaven, I'm sure it's very desirable, but if you make it the goal, it feeds back and it alters the way you approach Christ.

It's really not very helpful. If you see the goal as being transformed into the image of Jesus and coming to know God, then that's something that you do every day. You don't have to wait until you die.

It's something that is happening now. And of course there is no New Testament scripture for the idea, either in the Gospels or anyplace else, that we're saved to go to heaven. It simply is not present.

And I'm sure that must come as a shock to people, but you will look in vain because that's not, Jesus didn't point toward heaven as the home of the saints. We've heard it so much, we think surely it's got to be in there somewhere.

But it isn't. And there's a reason. Because that's not the goal. That's not what it's about. Actually, our goal is to come to the Father. We're made in the image of Jesus and to come to the Father, to please the Father.

That's our goal. Not to go to a place, but to be changed. The Christian salvation is change in us. Change in us, so that we can please God. The Christian salvation is change in us, so that we can please God.

Salvation, Hell, and Daily Spiritual Life

Alright, now of late, the other end of the spectrum has been brought to my attention, and again I have been absolutely flabbergasted to find that it is not scriptural. Now listen to this. You want to hear a shocking statement?

Get ready. Fasten your seatbelts. There isn't one single verse in the New Testament that associates the salvation that's in Christ with salvation from hell. Not one. Okay, let me go through that again.

Ordinarily we say that you accept Jesus to be saved from hell. We're associating the salvation that's in Jesus with escape from hell. Or however you want to put it, our pass out of hell, so we won't go to hell when we die.

Okay? Are you ready for this? There isn't one single New Testament reference for that belief. Not one. You'll look in vain. I tell you, I did a computer search. The expression saved from hell, you know, the devil's hell and all this is not scriptural.

Is hell mentioned? Yes. Sometimes the Greek term is Hades. Sometimes it's Gehenna. Gehenna is the lake of fire. Yes, Ruth has her hand up. But the wrath of God? Yes, exactly. See, the issue is always life and death.

See, and the issue there is life. But we translate it into hell. But you see, there's a difference between death and hell. There's a difference between death and hell. Death is a place of, a death is separation from God.

Hell is a place of torment. The rich man was in hell. He wasn't in death. He was in hell. There's a difference between hell and death. And there's a reason, and I'll get to the reason in a minute, but first of all I want you to see that wherever the New Testament talks about hell, like the rich man in hell, or in Hades, or have your eye plucked out, it's better than to be cast into hell, into Gehenna, is never associated with receiving Christ.

It's always associated with your conduct. Now that's very important because we have come in evangelical teaching to use accepting Christ as an alternative to righteous conduct. See, that's how we present grace, as an alternative to righteous conduct.

We ought to try to do good, but basically we're saved by grace. That is, it's a salvation that is an alternative to righteous conduct. The general evangelical thinking is that under the law of Moses you had to live right, okay?

But under the New Testament that's not the important thing because we're saved by grace through faith and not works. Works we translate as righteous behavior. So then grace becomes an alternative to righteous behavior.

So then, if you present hell, you're going to have to think, is everybody thinking? If you present hell as the thing to be feared, then grace appears then as salvation from hell. But it's never presented that way.

Grace is never presented as salvation from hell. Always as salvation from death. Now there's a reason for that. There's a very great reason for that, and it's this. Hell is something you will not experience until you die.

But life and death are daily matters. You see the enormous difference? So if you see the impact that the teaching that we're saved from hell has on us, it has to do in the same way with the preaching that heaven is the goal has on us, it doesn't really matter about this life.

See how skillful Satan is? It sounds so godly, but what it does is it destroys your day of the necessity for meeting Christ today. Because what it is, is a pledge on what happens after you die. But the issue of your Christian life and mine today is not hell.

It's are we pressing into life or are we letting death overcome us? See that's a decision that you made today. You and I made today. We were tempted, every one of us, we were challenged today with the forces of death.

And we were challenged today with the forces of life. And we chose life or we chose death, but not hell. That's why the New Testament does not mention salvation from hell in connection with Jesus. Only having to do with behavior.

See the Old Testament, you have to go to the Old Testament to find out about hell because the New Testament says so little about it. But see the Old Testament says the wicked shall be turned into hell and all the nations that forget God.

The wicked, the wicked. And in the New Testament if your I offend you, see if your behavior is wrong, it's better to correct your behavior even if you hurt yourself than to be cast into hell. See it's not talking about accepting Christ, it's talking about behavior.

And because evangelical teaching doesn't stress behavior but stresses forgiveness through grace, this becomes a terrifically important question. You can't insert accepting Christ in there. See it's better to pluck out your eye than to be cast into hell.

It's not the same as saying it's better to accept Christ than to be cast into hell. So you can't convert that because it's not what it's saying. This may take you a while to puzzle about it, but I wouldn't deal with it if it were mere academics.

This is vital because the teaching of making a decision for Christ. By the way, I've been searching these words that are commonly used. The word decision is not used in the New Testament. Much less decision for Christ.

The word decision itself is not used. I'll tell you another one that Mark Ormiston pointed out to me. The word unsaved does not appear in the New Testament. So much of our vocabulary, and you know these seem innocuous, like well it's synonymous with other things, it just doesn't say that.

You can't pass it off that simply. Like you can't make hell, you can't insert hell when the Bible says death. You can't change the words of the scripture. See the words in the Greek and in the Hebrew for hell are one thing and for death are another.

You can't play around without problems. And so there's nothing wrong, and I know you'll agree with this, with going back to the Bible and making sure your expressions are biblical. I'm sure we would all want to do that.

And sometimes it wouldn't make any difference. I'm sure in the case of unsaved, though it doesn't appear there, I think by inference we would say a person who is not saved is unsaved. So there's no problem there.

But the problem with inserting hell when you mean death creates a terrific problem because death and life are the issues today, whereas hell is an issue in the future. And so since you can't jump into the future of what you're dealing with today, then it has a very practical effect on you.

For example, for example, one of our favorite verses is Romans 6 .23, the wages of sin is death. Well, in our mind we convert that, pass out a tract, and the tract says, sinner, the wages of sin is hell.

And there may be a picture of flames on the cover. But two things are wrong there. One, Romans 6 .23 is not talking to the unsaved, but to the saved. And secondly, the context of Romans 6 .23 shows you that it's talking about Christians who in their daily life chose sin and therefore died spiritually.

So if you make it hell, you bring up a really, if you'll accept this, a mythological salvation. And I think, and I'm not disparaging the Catholic Church, whatever I am, and he was the finest Christian I've ever met, devout Catholic, so please, I'm not shooting at the Catholic Church.

But I think the doctrine of salvation was changed back in the second or third century by the Catholic Church. And it changed from salvation being a change in the person to being hell, purgatory, and heaven.

I think that's where that originated. But God has never found it necessary to correct the hell and heaven concept of salvation in evangelical thinking, because it wasn't necessary to this point. But it's necessary now, or God wouldn't be doing it.

So this is back to the Bible hour. Now, let me show you another thing. This is very important. This is new to me, because I've always assumed, yeah, there's people out there saving souls from hell. But I never realized that expression is not found in the Scripture.

You better watch what you're talking about. If you don't find a synonym that's pretty close, maybe you better give it some thought. So as I've been thinking about this, I sensed that there was something profound here that I was missing, and it was on the back of my mind, but I couldn't bring it up.

And I was talking to Eddie Ryder last night after the council meeting, and it hit me. And I didn't intend to bring this out tonight, but I will be including it. Mark just gave me back a galley proof of my book, Salvation from Hell to Heaven or from Death to Life.

But now I've got two pages to add to it. I woke up at 5 .30 this morning. We were up late last night. 5 .30, I got wide awake, and this was in my mind that I've been talking about with Eddie Ryder, and I had to get out of bed.

I mean, I suffered for it all day. I've been groggy all day. But I had to get out of bed. Listen to this. This is the thing that's troubling me. If you preach salvation to people as making a decision for Christ to escape hell, do you know what you do?

Proper Orientation to the Christian Life

You give them an incorrect orientation to the Christian life. You're not correctly oriented. And that incorrect orientation will follow you all your days unless you happen to hit on a church that explains what salvation is about.

Now, let me tell you the proper orientation for the Christian life, how you become a Christian, and you'll see the difference immediately. You become a Christian by receiving Jesus as Savior and Lord.

You say, I cannot save myself. I'm a sinner. I was born in sin. No matter how hard I try to be righteous, it isn't going to wash. I need the blood of God's Son. Okay? On the basis of that, God gives you eternal life in the form of His Holy Spirit, and Christ is born in you.

Check so far? Okay. The next thing God says, and of course I'm not giving you a sequence here, but merely the isolated facts. Put them together how you want to. Then God says, repent, which means what?

Away from what? From your life in the world, or sin, or whatever. It's mainly what we repent from is our life in the world. We really haven't been awakened to sin. Let me point that out. We take it by faith that we're a sinner, but we're not awakened to sin until quite a bit later when the Holy Spirit begins to bring it up.

And let me show you that in Israel. When Israel kept the Passover blood, they didn't even have the law. They had no consciousness of sin. The Passover was not given in terms of sin. Do you see that? They didn't even know sin until they came to Sinai.

The Passover doesn't have to do with saving Israel from sin. It has to do with covering them so that when God judged the sin in the world, He would not destroy them. And so it is when we are first saved.

We have a general idea that we're in Egypt and in bondage, but we don't become aware of the jealousy and the pride and the hatred and the anger and the backbiting and the lying and the stealing and the arrogance and all the rest of it until we're well along because it's the Holy Spirit that brings us to these.

Just like Israel didn't enter the land of promise. In fact, you know, until quite a while after they had the law and the tabernacle. But you see, Israel did no fighting when they come out of Egypt. But you fight to get into the land of promise.

So when you come to God, God doesn't ask you to fight against your sins. He isn't even dealing with sin. He's telling you to come out of the world. He does all the fighting on Calvary. But for you to enter into your land and begin to get rid of the enemy in your land, the arrogance, the pride and all this, you've got to fight.

He didn't do that on the cross. You have to do that through the Spirit of God. If you through the Spirit do put to death the deeds of the body, you shall live. So that's what Wayne and Diane, if they come with their ministry, that's what they're doing.

They have a ministry to help us identify the enemies in our land. That's what their ministry is. It's not psychology. The fact that she's a psychologist is incidental. This is a ministry that is helping us to identify the enemy in our land.

I mean, there's things in us, in our family relations, for example, that have to get straightened out. Our attitude toward our kids, our response toward people. And all these are enemies in our land. They're not like Christ.

Christ is courteous, kind, gentle, patient, loving, joyous. We're not that way all the time. We want to be, but there's enemies in the land. And just when we decide to be patient, out he comes. Or long-suffering, or pure in our actions, or whatever.

See, the enemy's there. He hasn't been dealt with yet. But as far as the judgment of the world is concerned, that was taken care of on Calvary. And so we come out clean, covered with the blood, even though that sin is still in us, it's forgiven.

But what God says, and now we're coming to the clincher. Now we're coming to why the improper orientation. Okay, God says repent. That is, turn away from the world. Then he says, reckon that you have died with Christ on the cross, and that you have risen with him to the right hand of God.

Where's that from? Romans 6. Okay, now that's what the old-time holiness teachers used to say, that's your position. Your position is, you are dead. You reckon yourself dead. I am dead with Christ, and my life is hidden with Christ and God.

Check. Okay, you have a position, but then you have an experience of what you actually, how alive you actually are in the flesh. And so your Christian life becomes a closing of a gap between your position and your experience.

See, I know by faith that I have, I count myself now, right now, as crucified with Christ. Do you? You're better. That's the meaning of water baptism. Yes, Belinda? That's the experience. The daily basis is the experience.

I'm talking now about the position. There's a position. God sees you in a certain position. When you're baptized in water, you are baptized into the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. That's why it says count yourself dead.

Okay? It's very important. This is the correct orientation to the Christian life. If you don't have it, your Christian life will be a series of seemingly unrelated and random ups and downs. So God has given you a vision.

He's called something as though it were, which is not as yet an experience. And he says, you are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ and God. Now that's true in God's vision, and probably is true in the sense of a firstfruits.

But we know that our Adamic man many times manifests life. So he hasn't been crucified yet. He's in the process of being crucified. He's in the process. So, but the important thing is that you establish your position.

If you don't establish your position, which is your orientation to the Christian life, you'll be all over the ballpark. That's why every time a person is baptized in water, it should be explained to them then, or soon after, this is what you did.

And read to them from the sixth chapter of Romans. Know ye not that so many of us were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into his death. And Paul then goes on to show that to reckon ourselves dead, therefore to live in sin, is not appropriate.

The word is appropriate. It's still possible, but it's not appropriate. See, why are you sinning? If you counted yourself dead, why are you sinning? It's not appropriate. That's the meaning of Romans 6.

It doesn't mean you can't sin. It doesn't mean that God doesn't know it. If you do, it means that it's not commensurate with your position. If you are crucified with Christ, why then are you continuing in your Adamic life?

So do you see how important the position is? So every day when you get out of bed, you should say to yourself, I was baptized, I am part of the crucifixion of Christ. I have been raised. See, in Colossians 3, this is a past tense.

If you then be raised with Christ, past tense. Set your affection on things above. It's also in Ephesians, the second chapter, he raises up above every name. Okay, now, that is past tense. In fact, that happened for us before the foundation of the world.

That's our calling. Our calling is to be part of Christ's crucifixion and part of Christ's resurrection. Well, I'm glad I got out of that. See, some of you never heard that. If you don't have that firmly fixed vision in your mind, you have not, you have never been oriented properly to the Christian salvation.

Yes. What is it in Romans 6 that you might walk in news of life? You are an integral part of his crucifixion. You are an integral part of his resurrection, and that's why you can't be overcome. Because in order to overcome you, Satan would have to overcome the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

You are of as the power and everything else. You are raised with him to the right hand of God. That has happened in the vision of God. Yes. But the spirit of him who raised her who dwells in you. That's teaching.

That's talking about the experience, not about the position. The position is found in Romans 6. And if you go back about to Romans 6 verse 4, you'll be in business. You've got to see this, people. All right, now, here's the next question.

Are you ready? Boy, we're covering some ground. It'll be on the tape. You can get it. All right, now, are you there? The question then comes. It's not as yet true. You can fulfill the vision in many incorrect ways, but there's only one correct way to fulfill the vision of God.

Let me give you an example of some incorrect ways. It's not possible while we're in this world. It was true in the first century, but it's not true now. I already have it because the Bible says so. The Bible says I'm healed, so I'm already healed.

So I ignore my symptoms. See, that's not the way you fulfill the vision. When God calls something as being true, like he says, by his stripes you were healed, past tense, then how you respond to that determines whether or not you make a success of a Christian life.

How you respond to the vision of God determines your success in the Christian life, and there's only one correct way to respond to the vision of God. You must, through faith and patience, inherit the promise.

So first, you've got to know the promise, and then secondly, you have to persevere in patience and faith. Those two things, they're not identical. Faith and patience, until you get it, and that's the only correct way to respond to the vision of God.

Now, you want to read Romans 6? This is a place of life. United together in the likeness of his death. You got it? United with him in the likeness of his death. Crucifixion. I am crucified with Christ.

Read on. And that's future. But it's a daily, see, I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, and you live in newness of life, and that life is his resurrection. You'll find that in 2 Corinthians 4.

We studied that last week. You remember that, though my natural man is experienced in crucifixion, the life of Christ is raising me up and spilling out to others, and that's true ministry. Go ahead,.

John. The implication there is that if you're not united with him in his death,.

Then possibly you will not be reunited in the resurrection. Yes, and I'd like to bind it down to the present. We are, we have been. Colossians 3 .1. Sophia, I hope you're getting this. Where's Angelique?

I've never spotted Angelique. Okay, she's here. And then you have been raised up with Christ. Alright, that's tense. It's a lection, but about ascension. Ephesians 2 .7. You don't know 7 or 10. I'll tell you.

You know how, you know where that is? You go back to the first chapter and read, read about the second to last verse in the first chapter. Yeah, 129 or something like that. And then see, then chapter 2 verse 6 tells you that you already are there.

That's your position. Get yourself to that position. Your life will be up and down and sideways and backwards and forwards until you realize what God has done for you. He has crucified you with Christ on the cross.

I am crucified with Christ, not by myself. Your resurrection doesn't matter and your crucifixion doesn't matter. It's Christ's crucifixion that matters. A lot of people crucified in the Roman Empire. That was their favorite way of dealing with criminals.

That didn't mean that did them any good. It's the crucifixion with Christ that's important. And it isn't just to be resurrected. It's to be resurrected with Christ. Now, you will never address your Christian life properly until you take that position and claim it by faith, recognizing that your experience isn't there yet, but that it shall be if through faith and patience you follow God.

Now, that's the Christian life in a nutshell. Now, you see, in our generation, the Christian life has become getting a better life at home, better job, better school. Christ has become some kind of a help so you can live a better life.

That's an improper orientation to the Christian life. And when you're brought low and your daughter runs away from home and becomes a prostitute and your son's in jail for drugs and you go to the lump and all this, this idea doesn't have the iron that will cause it to stand.

This life is not a happy scene for Christian or non-Christian. Everyone's crucified. Christ was crucified on the hill. God was crucified. The thief that went into paradise was crucified. The other thief was crucified.

God's crucified. The saved are crucified. The unsaved are crucified. Everybody's crucified. That's why Paul said, God forbid that I should glory save in the cross. And if the cross isn't the center of the orientation of your life to the gospel, you're on the wrong basis.

Earthly good, this particular fleshly gospel that appeals to the flesh has one of its roots in Gnosticism, ancient Gnosticism, preaching comfort and a fleshly kind of salvation. Ancient Gnosticism is strongly related to the idea that Jesus did it all and just by identifying with him you're automatically an overcomer.

The word Gnostic means knowledge and the idea is that salvation is all in your knowledge. It's like Jesus Christ did not come in the flesh. See, that's what John was talking about was Gnosticism. It's not in the flesh.

It's all ethereal. Well, our modern doctrine that it's all by grace and not related to your works is a form of antinomian Gnosticism, which means that there's no law binding on the Christian because Christ has done it all.

All you do is say, I believe, and that's it. We have a lot of that. But now, Tony, I wish you had heard the first part because this next part won't mean as much to you when you get on tape. Now, remember I said what the Lord showed me last night talking to Eddie was that preaching that when we make a decision for Christ we're saved from hell orients you improperly to the Christian life.

Can you see now why? Boy, if you can't see that. What is that you're crucified with Christ and that you have risen with Christ? Now, that's your position. Your experience isn't there yet, but every day you should be closing the gap between your position and your experience.

See, isn't that what Paul said? That I'm pressing to attain the resurrection that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings. See, so each day you are establishing the fact that you have been crucified with Christ and you have been raised with Christ in the right hand of God.

And that's the only correct orientation to the Christian life. Now, each day by faith and patience you establish and you close that gap because God will send things that if you take them correctly will crucify your Adamic nature and press you into the crucifixion really.

You know, so it's not just a doctrine but becomes an actual fact. This natural man of mine is being crucified here and if you take it correctly at the same time the life of God is raising you up so you're closing the gap between what God has said is true that you're crucified with Christ and risen with him and your actual experience which when you begin is you're still very much alive in the flesh and your resurrection life is minimal.

Now, how many can see that simple model? Do we need to go through that again? Yes? Huh? Okay. All right. I'd be glad to go over it again if it would help. Brian, you got the phone? Okay. I will. I'll do it for Pat because she's got a sore back.

Let's just say it's my sore back. I have to keep alert to phone calls. Sometimes there are emergencies. All right. Let's go through it again. And this is found, Pat, in the sixth chapter of Romans. Okay.

Have you been baptized in water? Okay. This is what happened. When you went down into the water what you were saying was I now am part of Christ's crucifixion. That's what you're saying when you go down.

You went down into the death of the cross. Okay. You make it too difficult. Look, I'm telling you, I don't care what you thought of at that time or what you experienced. I'm talking about this is how, this is the proper way of seeing it whether you did at that time or not.

When you went down in the water you went into Christ's death. Okay. Does that make sense? When you came up out of the water that was a sign that you had risen with Christ and then ascended with him to God.

You went down into his death and then you ascended with him up to God. Okay. Now that hasn't actually happened to you. You're not, you haven't died yet and you're not with God in heaven. Okay. So we say that is your position that you take by faith.

In other words, you kind of hold it out as a goal and say this is what is true of me even though I don't see it yet. This is what I am saying is true because God says it's true. Okay. I died with Christ and I've been raised with Christ and I worked that out in water baptism.

I mined that out like Karen did. I mined that out in water baptism. I showed the devil and God and everybody else I'm going into Christ's death and I'm ascending with him. Okay. Now you have something else to deal with.

That's what you take by faith but you have an actual life and you get up in the morning and there's this problem and that problem and Mimi has problems and the kids have problems and everybody has problems.

Okay. Well, if you're actually crucified with Christ you don't have any problems. I mean if you're crucified you're crucified so there's no problem. And if you're raised up with Christ there's no problem.

So your position remains unchanged but your experience now is in an uproar. But because you have said that is true you know how to face it now. You don't get angry at Mimi. You don't get angry at the kid.

You don't get all upset and say God hates me and the world's coming to an end and everything else. You say I'm crucified with Christ. I've been raised with Christ over all the enemies of God so therefore I'm going to pray that God will fix this and this anger that I feel and this upset will die because God has already called it dead.

Now I'm going to let it die and I'm going to walk in Jesus strength today. And you've probably done this many times and you found out that he solved the problem. That's the experience. The position is what God says is true.

The experience is when you take the things of daily life and make them you work them out in terms of that position. Is that a picture? You're saying I'm crucified with Christ. I'm part of his death. I'm part of his resurrection.

The devil can't hurt me. I'm over him in the spirit. Now father how do I work through this in terms of what you have said of me? Then God's strength comes to you and that day you pass from death unto life.

Not totally. See there'll be a new tomorrow. There'll be a new challenge tomorrow. But you held steady because you've got a right orientation. That really means that you you pitch yourself in a correct way.

This is what the Christian life is. I expect tribulation. I expect to be crucified because that's what what it's all about. And I expect that God's life will come into me and lift me up above all my enemies because that's what it's all about.

Now if you don't have that if you picture the Christian. Now here's what here's what God showed me last night talking to Eddie. If you preach that you make a decision for Christ which first of all is not a scriptural expression.

The scripture doesn't say you make a decision for Christ. The scripture says no man can come unto me except the father who sent me draw him. So that's why the word decision does not appear in the New Testament because the work is of God.