However our " Heavenly Father " and His Son " Jesus the Christ " can, and have, made changes in peoples lives over time that can sometimes boggle the mind !   Two that had remarkable changes that almost everyone knows about include :

    " King David "

A man who wrote most, or all, of the Psalms was a " murderer and adulterer " ..... but later in life after changes within David's life the Bible tells us :

Acts 13:22

^{[ 22 ]}  ..... He ( God ) raised up David to be their king, of whom He ( God ) testified and said, I have found in David the son of Jesse a man " After My Heart ", who will do all my will .....

    " The Apostle Paul "

Who wrote more books in the New Testament than anyone else ..... helped the local Jewish Leaders and the Romans persecute and kill " Christian Believers " until he had a meeting with, and was called to Christian Service, by Jesus Himself :

Acts 9:1-6

^{[ 1 ]}   Meanwhile, still spewing death threats against the Lord's disciples, Saul ( i.e. Paul ) went to the high priest.

^{[ 2 ]}   He asked him for letters to take with him to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any men or women belonging to the Way ( i.e. Christians ), he might bring them in chains to Jerusalem.

^{[ 3 ]}   As Saul traveled along and was approaching Damascus, a light from heaven suddenly flashed around him.

^{[ 4 ]}   He dropped to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, " Saul, Saul ! Why are you persecuting me ? "

^{[ 5 ]}   He asked, " Who are you, Lord ? " The voice said, " I'm Jesus, whom you are persecuting.

^{[ 6 ]}   Now get up, go into the city, and you will be told what you are to do. "

         Now ..... I'm not comparing myself in anyway to " King David or Paul " but merely using their stories to show that anyone, you or I, can have our lives changed so that we can serve " God our Heavenly Father " no matter what our lives were like in the past .....

         I first found out about salvation thru Jesus Christ in the mid-1970's and even though I learned a lot about the scriptures and even made a lot of changes in my life I had fallen in with the crowd that believed the theology of " Once Saved ..... Always Saved " and today I know that theology to be " Biblically a False Doctrine ! " .... Thinking you are " Always Saved and going to heaven " causes people to get careless about following a Christian Life and can also lead a person to think they can be sinful and still go to heaven .....

         During that time of my life I hurt " a lot " of people ..... and to this day if causes me pain when I think about those that I hurt ..... But praise be to my " Heavenly Father " because he wasn't through with me yet ..... Two decades later in the late 1990's my life took a turn as multiple things in my life started to cause me to be depressed ..... and as I had done during the mid-1970's I once again started to turn to the " Bible and prayer " for answers on how to make my life happier .....

    The first verse I found, or was lead to by the Holy Spirit, was ....

I Timothy 4:1

^{[ 1 ]}  Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times " some shall depart from the faith ", giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;

         And seeing the statement  " some shall depart from the faith " in that verse made me start to think about the idea of
" Once Saved ... Always Saved " and I found other verses in the Bible that basically said the same thing ....
 " some shall depart from the faith " ..... and I thought " How does someone fall from the faith since I'd been told that I was always saved once I accepted Jesus as my Saviour ..... Maybe I'm not saved and going to heaven after all ? "

    As I continued my studies in the Bible I then found this verse spoken by Jesus Himself ....

John 14:23

^{[ 23 ]}  Jesus answered and said unto him,  If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

         In my own way at that time I did indeed love Jesus ..... But no one had told me about having to " keep His words " to prove my love ..... I immediately went on a study to see what else was in the New Testament that might talk about the same thing ..... and that is when I came across the third verse ( shown below ) ..... written by the Apostle John ..... I knew what I had to do .....

    And the third verse ....

I John 1:6

^{[ 6 ]}  If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:

         That verse tied it all up for me ..... And seeing the statement about " If we say we have fellowship ( or love ) with him ..... but still walk in darkness ( sin ) ..... then we are " Liars " !

         So if we " think " we are saved but " Don't Keep His Commandments " ..... Then, according to the Apostle John, we are not saved but instead we are simply " Liar's " and therefore there is no salvation of the soul.

          

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Last modified: Sunday, June 27, 2021