Walk With Me

Can Last-Minute Faith Save You

• JJ

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Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Walk With Me. I am your host, JJ. It is good to have all of you here. And if you're listening, this is a what we call a bonus episode. Woohoo! A bonus episode. So, um, and I'm I'm saying that now, but I actually did not want to do this episode. But because I said, Hey, you ask any questions, then I'm I'm kind of bound by the things that I say. So um this is a a very touchy subject. Before we get into that, um quick shout out to our sponsors, two bars lyricists with the intro and the outro. Uh, he's on SoundCloud and Spotify, and spite anywhere you can download the his download music. Um, some people have gotten to me saying, Hey, this is listen, everybody takes their journey, everybody takes their journey the way they take their journey. And he is right now in the process of looking for God, he is searching out God. So, y'all gotta let him search out God with the Bible. And the Bible says, Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Let him do that. You know, I I love him to death. His wife, him and his wife were good people, um, and they're on their journey to God. But he did make the uh intro and outro for us, and this is a sponsor. So I love him, and I I wish I actually praying that um healing and spiritual growth that all that occurred, just like I do that for each one of you who listen, right? Um, big shout out to the exquisite creations. She's also like we mentioned earlier today, are in a situation where she's coming and she's revamping her product line, and we are going to be a proud, proud part of that product line. So I am excited about this whenever that happens. Um, other than that, big shout out, big thank you to iHeartRadio and YouTube, and pretty coming soon to Rumble as soon as I can get the conversion right. But this is a one-man show, and this is what we got. Well, I say one-man show, it's not really a one-man show because God is the one who's in control, it's a one God show. So this is where we are today. Thank you all so much. Now, remember in the very, very, very beginning, uh, or in every episode, I say, hey, listen, if you have questions, send them to walk with me bible study at gmail. Walk with me bible study at gmail. Um, and I also understand that people generally tend to be a little bit private when it comes to their biblical questions. This question was actually asked openly, and I then watched a bunch of people give incorrect answers. So, because God kind of shut me up then, I and and said, you know what, go ahead and make a special episode of it, kind of like a special edition of Walk with Me, you can do it then. I said, Okay. However, this is the question that was asked. And the question that was asked is, Can a person be saved on their deathbed? And then they asked, Hey, if if a person accepts the Lord as their personal savior right before they die, are they saved? That was the follow-up question to the first question, and so just to kind of encapsulate what these two questions were talking about is there such a thing as a deathbed salvation or a deathbed Christian experience, or a deathbed confession that will get you into heaven? Now, the standard answer, the popular answer, the feel-good answer, no, is that no matter how a person lives their lives, no matter all the dirt that they do, as long as they say a sinner's prayer two seconds before they breathe the last, they can go to heaven. That's the that is the standard answer that people are given. That is how people are told they can still be saved at the last minute, and they can somehow just get forgiveness right before the end, they can make it. And there are a series of scriptures that people will use in order to push this um this idea, this doctrine. Yes, they are not making it up. What is happening is that when you uh when you are using scripture for a thing, even if you're not using it in a malicious manner or even trying to deceive people, you have to make sure that everything is done in context. This is why we have that one rule on this podcast read a verse or two above, verse or two below the scripture, but preferably the whole chapter. Why? Because context is key, and that's gonna uh explain the situation that we all face in some point, and we end up facing it. But let's get into it. Does a deathbed confession of faith get a person to heaven? And as a bonus question, can someone accept the Lord at the very last second to get into heaven? So let's look at Luke 23, 43. Now, this is where everybody runs to when they talk about that last minute deathbed confession. They say, What Jesus said to the thief on the cross, this day you will be with me in heaven. And and Jesus said to him, Verily I say unto thee, today thou shalt be with me in paradise. Yes, yes, that verse is in the Bible. Yes, Jesus said it, absolutely, but I can take a scripture out of context and make Jesus say whatever I want him to say. We I tell people this all the time. Judas went and hanged themselves, and Jesus said, Go do ye likewise. If I took those two scriptures that are totally out of context and put them together, you all of a sudden now have a suicide code. But this is not the context of what either one of those verses were talking about, and this is the same problem here. So the problem is what was the context that Jesus was talking about? Jesus, while he was in his ministry, um, and while he was hanging here, being the sacrifice, being the lamb slain, he was is when he said this. Why is that important? Because you have to look at the when Jesus said that on the cross while he was being slain. Why is that important? Because Jesus was the Lamb that took away the sins of the world, John 1:29, which means the process was already underway of having all the sins of the world wrapped up and rolled away. The Holy Ghost had not yet been given, and the body of Jesus had not yet been glorified, so the slave, the slang of the lamb had not yet been completed. So we have to ask, then what is the rule of salvation at that time? The rule of salvation at that time was repentance. If you had your sins rolled for one year before Jesus gave us the ghost, you were still under the dispensation of repentance. So, Isaiah 55, 6 and 9. We're gonna talk about repentance, and it says, Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him. This is where they are, this is when they are. Let him return to the Lord, he will have mercy on him, and to our God, he will abundantly pardon. This is Jesus fulfilling that verse while on the cross. The Lord will abundantly pardon. The the first thing that has to happen, and I don't want to get ahead of myself. Let's continue reading. Um, for my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. And as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. Here is what Jesus is fulfilling at that moment. I will abundantly pardon you because just a moment ago, this thief had was telling this other guy to shut up, stop trying to make fun of this man. He's done nothing wrong. That was about as much as a revelation as Jesus saying, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God. That was a revelation, and then he said, Remember me when you come into paradise, when you come into the uh paradise, you come into your kingdom. And Jesus said, Today you're gonna be with me in paradise because you have just fulfilled, you have just fulfilled repentance, and now you've fulfilled seeking the Lord. But remember now, the Holy Ghost had not yet been given, Jesus had not yet been glorified, but we are still in the dispensation of repentance. Now, here's the thing: we can't fit the definition of repentance into our own parameters. Why is that important? Because it's if we start using um our own parameters, we end up messing it all up. And what does that mean? Okay, because now we're applying our parameters, our feelings, our um judgment, and we're not supposed to be doing that, right? Not only that, we end up lowering God to our standards, elevating ourselves to God's standard, and then taking it out of context and actually destroying the reason why repentance and forgiveness is a necessary thing, and but and that's not even the worst part. The worst part is we end up applying our biases, and we end up applying our biases to people that we don't like. How many people would have looked at a thief hanging on the cross and said you can make it to heaven? Not one of us, not uh, not you either, you either. I you would have said, Oh, you no mm-mm, you wouldn't have done it either. So, this is where um under the law of repentance, the thief was on the cross under the time, the mere act of repentance, which is acknowledging the wrongdoing, expressed it especially in the very presence of Jesus, and that passed the muster. This is why Jesus could actually allow the thief into paradise because he said, If you seek the Lord, he will abundantly pardon. And he sought the Lord, and Jesus abundantly pardoned. But the difference between that moment and this moment right here today is that now the lamb has been slain, the Holy Ghost has been given. So everything Jesus was talking about in John 3 and 3, John 3 and 5 coming into play. And Jesus was very, very specific when he said, Except a man be born of the water and of the spirit, you cannot enter, you cannot see the kingdom of God. And while he was yet saying that, he was fully aware that he was going to be going to the cross to be the sacrificial lamb and be sinless blood. He knew all of that while saying that. John 7, 32, and then 34 and 39. And the Pharisees heard that the people of murder such things are concerning him, the Pharisees and the chief priests went officers to take him. And he said, Now listen to what we just talked about. And then Jesus said in verse 34, You shall seek me and not find me. Where I am, you cannot come. We just saw where he said, Whoever shall seek the Lord shall find him. Jesus is now saying, You're going to seek me, but not find me, because their hearts are not going to be in it. Let's keep going. And the Jews said among themselves, Whither will he go that we should not find him? Will he go and to dispersed among the Gentiles and teach the Gentiles? That was prophecy, because that's exactly what happened. What manner of saying is this that he said, You shall seek me and not find me? They forgot all about what Isaiah said. And where I am, did it can you not come? In the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus couldn't cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believes on me, as the scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. Now, at this time, while the thief is hanging on the frost, the thief is now believing in Jesus exactly as the scripture is saying at that time. Why is that why is that so important? Because the very next verse explains it all. But this spake he of the Spirit, which that which believe on him should receive, in other words, not yet, should receive, for the Holy Ghost was what not yet given. Why? Because Jesus was not yet glorified. I know. We're going way down in the wallberry bush to explain why the thief was able to make it, but we can't. So even if even if we just have the continuation of the verse of Isaiah or the fulfillment of the verse of Isaiah, Jesus is explaining what that even means. He's speaking of the spirit that had to be poured out, which hadn't yet, because he had not been slain yet, and so um he had not been glorified yet. But we here today from the book of Acts on are in a completely different dispensation. Different dispensation, different rule. So, and and basically, as long as we can uh repent and get baptized in Jesus' name, it's a completely different set of rules, right? Completely different set of rules. So not only do we have what's the continuation of and the fulfillment of Isaiah in what Jesus is saying there, he's literally fulfilling it. We also are in a position where he's telling us what is to come and what will be required to make it happen. So you will, and don't come to me saying, oh, that's a contradiction. It is not. Dispensationalism is a thing. God has always been into dispensationalism. And remember, the whole idea of dispensation is um a period of time in which God defines how he interacts with people, his creation. So, and you if you have any other questions on that, um, I'm probably gonna redo it at some point, but you can go back to our ever our previous episodes where we talked about dispensationalism. Now, though that since we are in a different dispensation of where um where the the thief was, understand that we are in the church age, the thief did not die in the church age, the thief died in the in the mercy age, not the grace age. Okay, grace dispensation. So then the book of Acts is where it starts the church and it goes all the way through Revelation. And like I said, if you if you do have any questions about that, go ahead and follow that other uh Bible study where we talk more in um more detail on that. Now, let's go to what I isn't I would now call the payday theology. What is the payday theology? Matthew 20, 12, and 13. Someone literally said this um in answering this this poor lady. Oh, and by the way, the lady was really great. I we love her to death. We love everyone who stood up and asked and answered the question. And this is not any kind of uh hmm, this isn't not kind of any disparaging remark to the people who are doing it because they were legitimately trying to answer a question, but they were using incorrect theology to do it. Please understand that though. So now we have what's called the payday theory, the payday theology, and that comes from Matthew chapter 20, verse 12 and 13, and saying, These have lot were brought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden of the heat of the day. But he answered one of them and said, friend, I do thee no wrong. Didst thou not agree with me for a pain? Now, here's the problem. Here's the problem with using that uh that verse of scripture. Why is it, and this is why if you ever you ever hear me say, read the whole chapter, why is it that we think that getting into heaven is free? And because when you read this parable, the entire parable is about Jesus going out and finding labor. Laborers to do what? To work for the kingdom. So it wasn't like that, he wasn't like he went and he found the guy that was laying by the pool that was sick. He went out and found labor, and everybody came in and worked, and everybody got the same reward. So you can't use this set of scripture because it doesn't fit. And as as hard as it may seem, confessing on the on a deathbed doesn't actually mean you're working, so it doesn't it doesn't really apply. Now, another um, and this is where this is where we started off. People were using this scripture, this next set of scripture, um, to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ scripture, and as a deathbed experience. Now, this is also tragically what people use in um salvation. All you have to do is repeat the scripture and you're going to heaven. This is Romans 10 and 9, and then I'm going to read verse 13 again. Read the entire chapter. Romans 10 and 9. If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and shall believe in thine heart that God has raised her from the dead, thou shalt be saved. Or whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Now, believe it or not, unfortunately, this is sort of a catch all. That's commonly used. Like I said before, either in salvation or in deathbed uh confessions in particular. But remember, context is key. And what context are we in? We are talking about the book of Romans. This is not saying that we wrote it to the German Gentiles or the Roman secular citizens. We're talking about the Christian church that was formed in Rome. Now, I did not say the Roman church, I said the Christian church that started in Rome. Because the other thing didn't happen until 300 AD. And we're gonna we actually talked about that during our um Bible study episode today. What does this mean? Remember, we're in the church age, began in the book of Acts, and each church began the exact same way. People repented, got baptized in Jesus' name, got the Holy Ghost ever speaking in other tongues as Spirit gave the utterance. Read the entire second chapter of Acts. The entire one. Okay. And if you go down and read the entire book of Acts, you will see there was a repentance, there was a baptism, and there was a Holy Ghost. Each church had that experience. So with that being said, there was no church created in any other book of the Bible. So therefore, there was no salvation doctrine um listed in any other book of the Bible. Well, what is the scripture that you just wrote off, uh read off, Romans 10 and 9? This was to people who were already quote unquote saved. So not only does this fail that test of um of deathbed confession or deathbed conversion, it also um fails the new convert test because you also have to do all that, and then you have to come back and say in your you have to believe it in your heart that Jesus was God manifest in the flesh and and God raised the body up from the dead, and and that and this is how you are saved, this is how you continually say over and over and over. Now, here's the caveat, and and this is where I'm gonna get to the part where I don't know. Okay, I cannot answer this because I I'm not gonna claim to know everything. Here's here's the here's my caveat. Here's my the the part I don't know about. Now, the Bible, I'm gonna tell you what the Bible says, but I don't know. Okay, what if what if, for example, you you went through the Acts chapter 2 experience, you repented of your sins, you got baptized in Jesus' name, you got the Holy Ghost, you spake in tongues for a long time, and then you got mad at God, and then you walked away from God, and then for some reason, you know, you realized the error of your ways, and you started coming back to God, and then something happened, right? You were you're in an accident or something, and um, and on your deathbed, you said, God, I I'm sorry, I walked away from you, or you repent, and you know, you know, and and you you you you tell God, I'm sorry, I I I want to come back. God, please accept me back. Does does that make sense? Does is does that uh does that mean that you're going to be saved? I mean, I could use the prodigal son parable um in that, but to me it's a very dangerous game to play. Honestly, JJ saying this, I don't know. The book of JJ, I don't know. The Bible does say that people can can go off and have riotous living and and and you know destroy everything he has and still come back to God. So if that's the case, as long as the the previous situations, because you don't really have to get baptized again if you backslide. Um and but you will, I mean, I've seen people pray back through, and it's sometimes it's hard and sometimes it's easy, depending on the on each individual situation and whatever's going on between them and God. However, however, however, I still maintain that this is a very dangerous game that you are playing, and I'm gonna say you're playing a game of chicken with God. Um, just and to kind of back that up, think about the parables where um that you had the people who were virgins. You had ten wise, sorry, you had the ten virgins, and they were they were five wise and five foolish. And in this parable, it is clear that these virgins are all looking to go to heaven, they're all looking to be united with the bridegroom. So some of these some of these um virgins didn't even know that they were backflip. So, and but they didn't have any oil. They thought they had enough oil, but when it the time came, they didn't have enough, they didn't have enough prayer life, they didn't have enough uh fasting, they didn't have enough um spirituality, they didn't have enough. But when the bridegroom came, they tried to leech off the other five versions who had enough. And the five wise versions said, Hey man, if we give you some of ours, none of us are gonna make it. And then the five wives, the five foolish versions went out and tried to get some oil and came back, and it was too late. And Jesus said in in the parable, the bridegroom said, I never knew you. Why are you knocking at my door now? And for that, for that parable is uh Matthew 25, 1 through 13. I can read it, but we're we're we're over time. So, in conclusion, the Bible itself does not actually support deathbed confession. And I get it. Before you get into your feelings, and come at me in the comment section, I I get it. It's a hard thing to hear. It's a hard thing to hear because of the implications that that means to people we truly love that have gone on to a just God, you know, and it's hard to kind of think about what that really means, you know, and what kind of implications that means for you. Um, and so I I get it, I get it. It's a very hard saying, but we aren't God because we put all the people we like in heaven and all the people we don't like in hell. So, yeah, in conclusion, deathbed confessions, deathbed conversions, the Bible doesn't really support it. But here's the thing it's the thing, and here's what we have to kind of think about too. How many times did that person have an opportunity? How many times did that guy reach out for that person knowing that moment was coming? And that person rejected God. I mean, we we talk about people who backslide and what a dangerous game that is. I mean, who knows? Who knows? Alright, we are out of time, folks. I love each and every one of you. Hope you're having a great time, a great day, great time, and God blesses you. Uh, if you have any comments or anything like that, uh either leave them if you're on YouTube, leave them in the comment section uh or send a comment or another follow-up question to walk with me Bible study at gmail. Walk with me Bible study at gmail. God bless you all. Bye-bye.