Salvation is always today. You cannot be saved yesterday or tomorrow. There is no tomorrow. When you get to tomorrow it will be today. What you were yesterday you were. You may have been in a state of salvation at that time.

Today you are faced with the challenge of abiding in Christ. If you are abiding in Christ today you are without condemnation and you are moving from grace to grace and from glory to glory. You are being changed into the moral image of Christ.

If you are not abiding in Jesus today you are on the path toward condemnation and spiritual death. No change is taking place in you. Your salvation is being aborted.

Right now ask the Lord Jesus if I am correct in this.

The Hebrew Christians had all the experiences that we Pentecostal Christians have, and probably some additional ones. But the writer reprimands them severely in several verses, warning them that if they draw back it will be to destruction.

These people had had their possessions confiscated. Now they were busily establishing new households. The pressure was off for a season. And so, holding their ticket to Heaven (as they thought) they were neglecting to assemble together. They were not encouraging one another to press into the rest of God.

But what in the world is the rest of God? Let's see if we can find out.

Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. (Hebrews 4:1—NIV)

Go back in your mind to the description we just gave of the spiritual background of the Jewish believers. Now think! The writer is concerned that they are not being careful about entering and remaining in the rest of God.

What is this "rest of God" that these veterans of the cross appeared to be neglecting? Are we of today neglecting to press into the rest of God?

For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith. (Hebrews 4:2—NIV)

Now here is a remarkable thing! The "gospel" was preached to the Jews who had left Egypt. Dispensational thinking has had an undesirable effect. It has left us with the impression the new covenant is entirely different from the old—new Divine goals; new Divine ways. In fact we imagine that Jesus is different from the "God of the Old Testament."

Nothing could be further from the truth. The work of God, the Kingdom that operates through faith, is one from Abel to the present hour. We notice this fact by observing the heroes of faith of the eleventh chapter of the Book of Hebrews.

The Gospel of the Kingdom was preached to them as it is being preached to us. There are not two religions, Judaism and Christianity, except in the minds of people. There is only the one Divine intervention of God. God who spoke through the Prophets is speaking today. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

To be continued.