We Christians have been saved through the blood of the cross. This means our sins of the past have been forgiven and we have received the right to be the children of God, to enter the Kingdom of God.

A smaller number of us, taken from the whole number of believers, have been filled with God's Spirit. This means we have received the wisdom and power to live a righteous, holy, obedient life and also to bear witness to the world of the atoning death and triumphant resurrection of the Lord Jesus.

Today the call is to those who are saved and filled with the Spirit of God. Will we or will we not cease from our own works and look to the Lord Jesus?

If we insist on living our spiritual life according to our own understanding, our own desires and ambitions, we most certainly will be deceived by the spiritual forces of the last days.

Look how Pentecostal people have been deceived by the faith and prosperity messages! After all Paul said about the deceitfulness of riches the believers have gone right ahead, following those who are teaching them they are to be rich and prosperous in the present world. We can be deceived easily if we are not denying ourselves and carrying our cross behind the Lord Jesus.

Let us be like the Apostle Paul. Paul counted all that had been gain to him as loss for Christ. He regarded the whole world as garbage that he might gain Christ. And this toward the end of his life!

How many sermons have you heard that exhorted you to count the world as garbage, to live by the body and blood of Christ (the only true food and drink), to lay aside all else in order to gain Christ? Yet Paul instructed all who are perfect to have the same mind as he.

The "four steps of salvation" may serve as a good orientation to the program of salvation provided we do not tell the person this is all there is to salvation and the next step is a mansion in Heaven.

There are four million steps of salvation. We always, every day of our life, are taking a step of salvation. We take a step of salvation every time we turn away from our own thinking and desires and seek the face of the Lord Jesus.

How about you? Are you waiting to go to Heaven when you die or are you entering the Kingdom of God today? Are you trusting in a sterile profession of faith to insure your reception in Paradise or are you pressing forward to attain the resurrection from the dead? Are you busily defending the accuracy of your understanding of the Bible, the gardening manual, or are you growing a garden?

Is your "salvation" actually an empty head knowledge or are you listening every moment for the voice of the Lord Jesus?

Are you really a Christian soldier, preparing for the conflict of the ages, or are you a spiritually dead religionist, slumbering in your pew, listening to "grace, grace, grace, rapture, rapture, rapture, Heaven, Heaven, Heaven"? This is the sawdust currently being fed to the saints. Notice how totally self-centered the grace-rapture-Heaven doctrine is. There is no concern for the bringing of justice to the nations, which according to the Prophets is the purpose for the return of Christ. Neither is there any interest whatever in the needs God has for fellowship or for establishing His Kingdom on the earth.

You will never stand in the days to come. You are not in the army. You already are deceived.

I think our generation has failed God. Let us do all we can to prepare the young people and children for the marvelous Divine Glory and the deadly self-will of the future.

"Blow the trumpet in Zion. Sound the alarm in My holy mountain. The Day of the Lord has come!" (from The Antichrist, The False Prophet, and the Image)