Do you know the heart of anyone? We like to think we do. How often we are found mistaken though? Divorce courts are filled with men and women who have been betrayed by someone they never imagined would betray them. They are filled with people who thought they knew the heart of someone else only to be proven wrong, terribly, heartbreakingly wrong. Not only are divorce courts filled with the betrayed, many homes are filled with the betrayed who choose to remain with those that have betrayed them - and they do this for many reasons and it's not our place to judge.
Why am I asking about knowing the heart of others? To make it perfectly clear that we can't know another person's heart. Try as we might, we just are not capable of knowing. Too often through life we are proven wrong when time and time again a supposed good person turns out to be deplorable. The facades we see of one another are just that, people perceive us as they choose to do so. The opposite is quite often true as well, someone you believe is awful turns out to secretly have a heart of gold, but again, we just don't know the heart of a single person.
Psa 44:21 Shall not God search this out? for he knoweth the secrets of the heart.
1Co 4:5 Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God.
Heb 4:13 Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.
Job 34:21 For his eyes are upon the ways of man, and he seeth all his goings.
Psa 139:23 Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
Psa 139:24 And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Our God knows our hearts, He knows all of us and because He is the only one who can know us so completely ONLY HE CAN JUDGE US.
Why do we suppose we have the right to deem someone unworthy of heaven, or anyone worthy of heaven? We don't really KNOW them. We like to think we do. Our hearts ache when someone we love dies and we want to imagine only good for them, but it is NOT our place to give them eternal punishment or eternal glory. How arrogant we are to even assume we have that kind of power. Satan has worked his evil deception so that it appears to be good! Satan has convinced the world of the immortality of the soul and immediate judgment after death. Satan has wormed his way into the very fabric of our lives so that we believe and tell others quite often that so and so is in heaven having a heavenly birthday, Christmas, Easter, and oh how great when so and so can meet up with their loved ones when they die too. Satan wants us to believe that we will join our loved ones who have preceded us to heaven and as soon as we are caught in that deception we have ROBBED GOD of His right to judge each and every person's eternal status. Yes, ROBBED GOD! Something you wouldn't dream of doing or even think of doing and yet unknowingly you are doing just that and you scream out your innocence to such evil. You say you didn’t know, you didn't understand! And yet, right now, if you are reading this and believe in the immortality of the soul and life right after death, you are ROBBING GOD, and you are still refusing to let go of your cherished belief because to do so would make your whole world turn upside-down. You'd have to stand out as someone who is bucking the system, turning their backs on long held truths, going against the grain, upsetting the status quo and so on. You don’t want truth, you want the comfort of Satan's deceptions that he's made so perfectly they will deceive all but the very elect.
If you are thinking it just doesn't matter, then think again, because it matters- eternally.
God HELP us! God you know our hearts, search them and see if there is any evil in them, if there is any wicked way in us, please GOD lead us in the way everlasting, YOUR WAY not ours and most certainly not Satan's! It may be very hard, but You, oh God, you have the power, the glory and the honor! Save us from ourselves! Save us from Satan's deceptions- ALL OF THEM! Do for us all that we cannot do! Save us!
All through Your love and mercy, Your grace and beauty, Your wonder and majesty! All in You now and forever!!!!!!! In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, Your only begotten Son! Amen.
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(Excerpt) The Judgment.
(The Immortality of the Soul, Is it a Scriptural Doctrine?)
In short, if the doctrine of the immortality of the soul be the truth, the Bible doctrine of the judgment cannot be the truth.
And the time has now come when a choice must be made between them.
As for us, we choose the Bible, with all its doctrine, and with all that that choice involves.
That we do not misrepresent the popular doctrine of the immortality of the soul when we say that it puts men into heaven or hell at death, can be proved by anyone who will consult the hymn books, or the papers of the religious denominations that believe that doctrine, or listen to the average funeral discourse or revival sermon.
But that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is subversive of the Bible doctrine of the judgment is not all. By virtue of that doctrine, men have usurped the seat of the Judge of all, and have arrogated to themselves the prerogative of reading into heaven whomsoever they see fit. How often we read that such and such a person is in heaven! But what right has any man to say who is worthy of a place in that bright world? Who knows the heart?-None but God alone. He alone it is who pronounces upon the worthiness of men "to obtain that world and the resurrection from the dead," and when men take upon themselves to read into heaven this man or that man, they are simply usurping the awful prerogative of the Most High. And only for belief in the doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul, no man would ever think of it.
We repeat: It is God alone to whom belongs the right to pronounce that decision. He will pronounce it in every case, but it will be in the judgment; not at death, but at the resurrection of the dead, and before the assembled universe, and by the voice of the glorious Son of God, who hath loved us and hath washed us from our sins in his own blood; for he "hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man." John 5:27-29. Any doctrine that will lead men to thus usurp the prerogative of the Judge of all the earth, cannot be the truth. This is exactly what the doctrine of the immortality of the soul does, therefore it cannot be the truth; and as it is subversive of the Bible doctrine of the judgment, it is not only not the truth, but the belief of it is subversive of the truth.
God created man upon the earth, and gave him dominion over all upon it. He made him, not as the angels, but lower than they-inferior to the angels. Ps. 8:5; Heb. 2:7, margin. God made man upright, but through the deception of Satan he turned to crooked ways-he sinned. And although God had put all things in subjection under him, and "left nothing" that was not "put under him," yet now, says Paul, we see not all things put under him. Heb. 2:8. Through sin he has been deprived of his glory, and honor, and dominion, which God gave him, and which the Lord intended that he should forever enjoy. This sin was brought upon him by Satan, and, hard upon sin, death followed.
But when man had thus sold himself under sin, God gave by promise, and in the "fullness of time" he gave in fact, his only-begotten Son, "that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life." When man had so sold himself under sin, under the curse, God gave his dear Son to redeem him from sin, from the curse, and from all condemnation. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Rom. 8:1. "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree." Gal. 3:13. "He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." 2 Cor. 5:21. "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh; that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Rom. 8:3, 4.
To be continued… (End Excerpt)
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