Barry Kolb is the pastor of the Church we attend on Sundays. He's a good man. He works in Angola Prison often. Once one of the toughest meanest prisons in the nation. Now nearly half the residents are Christians.
He just got back from Prison and shared a question an inmate pastor had asked him. Doc, are you secure in your salvation? Yep, said Doc. You're right because if you think about it for the devil to have to swim thru the Blood, break the seal of the Holy Ghost, and then pry open the hand of God to snatch you out that would be one saved devil.
I see things in pictures. Immediately I saw this strong vision of the security of the believer:
The Blood is flowing in torrents spiritually washing away our sin, such that to approach us, the Devil has to fight like he was at the foot of Niagara falls without a ladder. If he fights his way up the cliff (with the Blood flowing down) when he reaches the top he finds a walled castle fortress.. It is the very hand of God holding believers in his protection. No entrance, No secret passage. No anything. Even if thru persistence he should find able to worm his way in, he will find us engulfed by tongues of living fire, the fire of the Holy Ghost, burning as a seal upon our heart. This is an impenetrable fire for him. It's like the wall of fire that God placed around Zion in Zechariah 2:5.. We are Zion. He can never get there unless he was saved himself and that can never happen.
Lots of people have the false impression that at the tongues of fire at Pentecost were little flames on the tops of the 120's heads. No, the word says that tongues of living fire settled on each one of them. They were enveloped. Surrounded. Captivated. Protected. I have been in enough wild grass fires in Dakota to know what a tongue of fire looks like. It's fierce. That's the kind of fire we are surrounded with.
Some people believe that in the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve were not Naked until they sinned but were clothed by the same tongues of fire, the Glory of God. Not a burning fire, an enabling protecting fire.
And, in heaven, when we get to the other side, you won't be wearing clothes. You'll be clothed in the Glory of God, It will look like fire. It will be raceless, genderless, you'll know as you are known but you will be clothed in glory. We will appear as wearing white robes but they will be tongues of fire.
Once we are saved and filled with the fire of the Holy Ghost we have tongues of fire around us in this life. In fact, once we are saved it's very very hard to go to hell. It is possible, but you have to step out of the fire, you have to break the seal, you have to open the door and then you have to traverse the flood of the blood of Jesus. All the while the hounds of heaven will be chasing you down, putting up barriers, injecting difficulty, and hundreds of other things in your way to stop you. God will even take you out before he'll let you go too far. It's a fearful thing to walk in rebellion.
I haven't known many, maybe none, who were truly saved, born again, filled with the Holy Spirit who ever were able to claw their way to hell.
I have known of a few misled souls who destroyed their own lives but in the end were redeemed from the pit. I know it's controversial but I don't think David Koresh went to hell. I think Jim Jones did. But God Knows. I don't.
It's an important question, even if we don't feel like we are a Christian sometimes you will never be and you have never been more saved than you are right now, rignt now, right NOW!. The completeness of the security of the believer is a wonderful thing. I'm far from a "once saved always saved" Christian, but I am a believer that our security in salvation is a fact we can live in with confidence. I helps us get passed that issue and on to doing the "stuff".
So let's not get saved again next Sunday, that's settled, let's get on with what he has called each of us to do. It's different for you than me. I can't judge your call, You can't judge mine. I'm flawed and stupid and I sin sometimes. But I'm still in the fire, in His hand and under His blood, A very secure place.
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