Hi Carlos31,
How about you have to be Called, Repented, Washed and Purified in Christ Jesus.
That is the short answer, here is Ray's teaching on this i pulled out an excerpt of
three different but the same subject. Reading each in full will do a world of good
for anyone who has questions:george.
http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,3849.msg29181.html#msg29181How Hard is Getting Saved?
by L. Ray Smith
Bible Truths Conference
Nashville TN 2005
Who gave me this newspaper…The Tennesian—the article is called “The Scripture has the Last Say on Who is and Who isn’t a Christian.” By Betty Joe King.
She says, “There’s an awful lot of talk around media, politicians, and anybody else who can draw a public audience, about what a Christian is, what a Christian believes, and what a Christian does.”
I’m just going to hit a couple of the high points. I’m not going to read the whole thing.
“A Christian is a person who believes and accepts the authority of the bible.” (King)
True or False. There are all kinds of “bibles”. Bible is a translation of scriptures that could be a fairly good translation or a very bad one.
“God wrote the Bible…” (King)
See, these are misconceptions…God didn’t “write” the bible. God INSPIRED the writing of the Holy Scriptures. (which were not written in archaic English, Japanese, Chinese, or Mongolian) Any foreign language that the Scriptures are translated in are BIBLES: God did not write the Bible….this is total heresy.
“Just for the record, let me lay out for you just what a true Christian is or believes: 1)Man was created in the image of God” (King)
If you believe how it’s worded in the King James, that God created man (past tense), in the image of God, you will NEVER EVER understand the scriptures. If you don’t understand Genesis 1:26, you will never understand the scriptures because that verse tells us why God made humanity; and if you don’t know why He created humanity, how will you ever know what this is all about? And here’s a typical Christian. Now, you know we’re not talking just disparagingly about Christians who believe these things, I believed them! We’ve all been deceived. And we know they are deceived. We love them. But this is heresy. I’ll talk a little bit about that.
and:
http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,3709.msg27923.html#msg27923Transcript of a talk by L. Ray Smith about Repentance
The reason that I want to talk about repentance is because repentance is a major door to understanding. I tried to understand many things before I truly repented.
Now, we repent in increments. You know, as children you repent. Your parents spank you, you repent! And you learn to do things, and you mature. If you want a good definition of maturity:
Maturity is a way to act that is more beneficial to yourself and others than a child would act.
So when you are old enough to know about repentance as a teaching of the Church, most of us have gone through some kind of a repentance. I went through a repentance and a baptism when I was about 24 I think. And I thought I had repented. I was baptized (immersed in water). From that day on I tried to do better because I knew I had done this public thing and I knew I hadn’t done it just for the heck of it. And I probably made some progress in doing better and living better. You stop doing some bad things, you start doing some good things. And I thought, this is what the Christian life is all about. I’m on my way, I’m doing it.
Until one day, I didn’t know when it happened, but looking back, I left my first love. And that does not necessarily mean your “first love” as in chronological order like first, second, third etc. It means your “paramount” love, your main love, the FIRST. What should be first in your life: Christ. I left that love, went back into the world, BIG TIME, and then just floundered around.
I never forgot there was a God. I never stopped praying. But I was carnal. You’d think that baptism and repentance was nothing! I mean, that wasn’t doing anything for me. I was now in TOTAL carnality. Wine, women and song. And I tried to study the bible off and on throughout those years. I never put it away completely. It was always there and I was reading it and so on. But NOTHING…I mean, maybe I could learn some verses, maybe I learned a little about historical settings, some facts and so on, but spiritually I wasn’t going ANYWHERE. I wasn’t going anywhere…I made a concerted effort to have a good time. (As best I knew how with what little money I had and so on.) And there were a few times God even let me make a few dollars. I got into something once where I was making 40-50 thousand dollars a month and I thought, oh now I’m there! No…He took that away.
Anyway, I thought that was about the best you could do. Boy, I was so thankful for one thing though: GRACE. Boy was I glad that this bible talked about Grace because there was nobody who needed grace more than me! And I thought that I sort of understood it. I was pretty convinced that there are no spiritually converted people because number one, I made a “jolly good” try at it. I made a good stab at it. I gave it the good college try. And I wasn’t converted. And you know what, I didn’t know of anybody else who was converted either. I didn’t know of one human being on this earth that I could say, “that person is spiritually converted”. I didn’t know of any, and I knew I wasn’t, so I thought it didn’t exist. I thought true spiritual conversion did not even exist. And that what Grace did: you did the best you could, and where you didn’t do very good, it just filled in the gaps. And that was about as spiritual as my mind would go for a long time.
and:
http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,5417.msg43144.html#msg43144June ‘07 Bible Study
Saved By Grace Thru Faith
[By Divine influence upon our HEARTS]
This is a part of my on going attempt to show you how everything is interrelated in the scriptures. Everything comes down to one main objective - one main purpose - one thing, remember I’ve said that so often, it’s all ONE. You study out any subject in the scripture and it all comes down to one thing…. it’s all ONE.
Jesus Christ was an individual and He did all these many many things and He has a Father and He has done all these wonderful things. Yet He says, “I and My Father are ONE.” (John 10:30) And I have said everything is ONE.
Eph 4:1 I therefore the prisoner in the Lord, beseech you to walk worthily of the vocation wherewith you were called,
v. 2 with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love;
v. 3 Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
You know what unity means - unity means it’s all together, that’s what unity is, all together in one. One purpose - one cause - one whatever, it’s unified.
These churches of the world are out to create a unity between them. I mean they would even try to create a unity between the Moslems and the Christians. Give me a break, what fellowship has light with darkness, or what fellowship has darkness with darkness, how about that. The unity already exist, we don’t create a new unity. “Keep the unity of the Spirit,” there already is that unity. We are encouraged to keep it, not create it, it’s already there.
Eph 4:4 There is one body, and one Spirit, even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling;
v. 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
v. 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in you all.
It’s all ONE!
So today I’m going to talk especially about - saved by grace thru faith.