Will Backsliders Be Raptured?

00:00 - Speaker 1
Real Life presents the Jack Hibbs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture.

00:09 - Speaker 2
Hey you guys. Very important question that every single one of us are going to want to hear the answer to from the Bible. If a person is backslidden, will they go up in the rapture or are they left behind? Let's get into it right now.

00:23 - Speaker 1
You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibbs.com Today. If this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five star ratings. To us that's like saying amen or yes. Then that rating will encourage others to listen. Now open your hearts to what God's word has to say to you. Here is Jack Hibbs.

01:16 - Speaker 2
What I would love to have from you is encouragement, and for you to encourage us here would be for you to share, to like to leave us a review. That would be incredible. So listen, here's the deal. There was a question that was asked of me some time back and it is basically this. So I had mentioned about if the Lord came back momentarily in the rapture, and if somebody was like the prodigal son, if somebody was like the backslidden Christian, if somebody was like someone who is not paying attention, maybe listen, even backsliding and living in sin at this moment, and the rapture happens. Imagine the rapture happens in like five minutes and I made the comment that that person will go up If that person is born again.

02:15
Listen carefully, everybody. Number one if that person is born again, there's no scripture in the Bible that says you can be unborn again, in fact. Number two there's overwhelming amount of scriptures that declare to us that once we are truly, in fact born again, it means that we're sealed by the Holy Spirit unto the day of redemption. Read the book of Ephesians, chapter one and two, among other passages of scripture that correlate with that, meaning this that once the Holy Spirit 1 Corinthians 12, takes up residence within the believer. You're sealed, that is, you're marked unto the day of redemption. That is an agreement between Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit regarding your entrance into heaven. So make no dis—make no—what's the word? State—don't be in a state of confusion over this. Are you born again? If you're born again, you have a passion to live for God and even if you backslide, you are miserable. You can't even sin good anymore. You're in the world. You're sleeping around, shooting it up. I don't know what the thing is, but you're angry at God. He didn't answer your prayer. You didn't win the lotto, so you're taking that on him and you throw down your toys and you walk away like a brat and you're in the world and you know you shouldn't be there. You're miserable, but you're miserable also with God and you're really having a battle. You know what's right but you're not doing it and you can feel it's the brutal pressure and tension of God. The Holy Spirit and his displeasure grieved from the inside out of you that you shouldn't be in that bar or with that man or with that woman or in that situation. You know you shouldn't Listen. Most likely you are a backslidden Christian. It's an actual thing.

04:06
Paul talked about the Corinthians being backslidden. In fact, 1 Corinthians 5, this is crazy. 1 Corinthians 5, verses 4 through 6. Technically, just read 1 Corinthians 5, starting in verse 1. I'll just paraphrase Paul says there is somebody in the church there, corinth, a young man who is having sexual relationships with his stepmom and all you guys know about it.

04:37
And you've not judged and cast this guy out, excommunicated him, you've not thrown him out of the church. While I'm telling you something I may not be there, but my spirit's present and I'm telling you do this now. You take this young man, cast him out of the fellowship of the church, get him out. Can't come back on the property. We're gonna get a restraining order on you. You get out because you are like leaven, you're like poison, and you know better. Listen. Cast him away. And the Bible says, right there, put him out, so Satan will kill him. Destroy his body so that his soul will be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. Yeah, I can hear you right now saying wait a minute, where's that? 1 Corinthians, chapter five, verse one to verse six. That guy was so saved, but he was so backslidden he was thrown out of church. And Paul said that let's Satan destroy his body so that the guy can be saved. God and his mercy will actually rescue this guy and people like you. If that's what you're doing, he'll rescue you from your horrible witness by taking you home prematurely. Think of that one.

05:57
Okay, but here's the deal. Listen to this 1 John, chapter two, verse 28, and now little children. 1 John's written to believers it's important to know that, not nonbelievers. There's no evangelism in 1st, 2nd or 3rd John. It's all discipleship written to believers that when he appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before him at his coming. Do you want that? Verse means that means that we need to be living in such a way that when Jesus Christ appears notice, it's actually not a coming like the 1st and 2nd coming. This is not the 2nd coming of Christ. It's about the rapture when he appears John, chapter 14, verses one, two and three when he appears. 1 Thessalonians 4, 13 through 18.

06:47
Okay, when he appears, you want to be walking with God in obedience and be confident. If you're not, when he appears, you're going to be ashamed, you're going to be embarrassed what's the word? You're going to have yolk all over your face. You're going to look like a fool. Does it say there that you're going to lose your salvation? Does it say there that you're going to have to sorry, but now you got to go through the tribulation period to get your salvation back? No, no, listen.

07:16
If you're a believer and you can live in sin, if you think and there's a lot of people like this if you think that you are a Christian but you're living in sin and God forgives you and you have no hatred for your sin, your sin doesn't make you want to vomit your sin. You've just gotten used to it. You just kind of nuzzled on into it and this is the way that it is. I'm a Christian fornicator, and that's just the way it is. Or I'm a Christian adulterer, or I'm a Christian bank robber. I'm a Christian car thief. I'm a Christian drug addict, I'm a Christian drunk, and that's just the way it is.

08:02
Guess what? There's an incredibly high probability that you do not know God at all, because if you don't hate your sin, because the Holy Spirit hates your sin, if you don't hate your sin, there's good evidence that the Spirit of God doesn't dwell within you. So if you ask the question, do you mean I can be a backslidden Christian and just do whatever I want to do and get raptured when it's over, then that's just what I'll do. A true believer will never think that way. You have to think about that.

08:34
By the way, to think that way is a term we've used before in some of our broadcasts, and that is antinomianism. It means that I can not only sin, but if I sin, then I give God the opportunity to forgive me, and that makes God look great. So if I sin, big God's grace is big, so everybody wins. You know, paul the Apostle addresses that attitude in Romans, chapter 1, 2, and 3. Shall we sin, that grace may abound. What does he say? Absolutely not, because the Scripture makes it very clear that you and I are, as children of God, we are haters of sin. Listen, it's one thing to see the sins in other people and be disgusted by them, but when we see those same sins in us, it's actually worse. It's worse for us. And so, listen, it's very important.

09:37
Will backsliders be raptured? Yes, they will. Will they be ashamed when that happens? Yes, they will. Should a backslider, right now, repent and make it right with God right now? Really, right now, you need to stop what you're doing, repent of it. Repent means get away from it. Repent means turn away from it. It's a physical action, it's not just a confession. Well, I went to confession and I told my sins to the priests. So now that that's done, I can go rack up some more of the same.

10:12
You're an anti-nominist, you're not a Christian, you're lost. You can't do that. You can't go to confession, get washed. So you think? Book of Hebrews, by the way, tells you you're not washed. Read Hebrews, chapter 7, 8, and 9. You're not washed. When you confess to an earthly priest to seek forgiveness, the Bible says you're not forgiven. I can hear the hate meal. Now Go ahead.

10:38
You're going to write and say, oh, the holy church, the holy church. What holy church are you talking about? The church, no, the church is a bunch of sinners saved by the grace of God. There's no holy Roman empire. There's no pontifist maximus that can absolve you of your sin. Find that in the Bible. You'll find the exact opposite. There's no earthly priesthood that can have your sins forgiven, not a one. That goes for my Jewish friends also, which you don't even have a priesthood anymore. You don't have a temple.

11:25
Listen, this all comes down to relationship. Do you literally absolutely know for sure that God is living inside of your heart and life. You know it's amazing. He's infinite, right. He's everywhere. There is no place, both physical or spiritual, where God is not. He's God. And yet how is it that he has chosen to reside within his own children is a mystery we cannot explain.

11:57
If you want religion, do not let Jesus in. If you want religion, do not let the Holy Spirit take up residence in your life. If you want to go play games and send up a storm and have life your way and satisfy all your earthly pleasures and then slap a cross or something on you as being accepted, yeah, it's not going to happen. No, listen, if you are truly a living new creation in Christ Jesus, you're living for the life of the spirit and you're producing the fruit of the spirit. So you cannot be sleeping with that girl or with that guy or doing those things or stealing from the business and call yourself a Christian. If you backslide, thank God, that's for a season. You hate it. It could very well cost you your life or you'll come back like the prodigal son in the gospels.

13:02
I wanna end with this. So, in our college and career group at Calvary, costa Mesa, back in those days back in the late 70s and 80s, in our college and career group, which was man a thousand plus people, lisa and I were the only married couple in the entire group. In fact, when we would go on camps, I would sleep with the guys and she would sleep with the girls all the guys on one side of the camp and all the girls on one side of the camp and not sleep with the guys. And all the guys would always ask me how can you, how can you, stand being here with us when, knowing that your wife is over there, it cracked the sub. We'd laugh about that for years. It's so funny. But we were the only married couple.

13:51
We got married really young and all these college and career age people around us and one of our really good friends I'm not gonna say his name, I don't want to shame his family, it's actually not a shame, it's not a shaming, but it's to make the point. I'll just call him. I'll call him Don. So Don loved the Lord. We hung out together with our little posse. We had our guys. It was just, it was Lisa and it was Julie and all the rest of them were about seven guys. We're all friends and we did everything together we went camping together, we went witnessing together and everything together. It's awesome, awesome fellowship.

14:30 - Speaker 1
We just lived our lives like that.

14:32 - Speaker 2
Every Friday night. Every Friday night it was just written into the code Every Friday night, at seven o'clock automatically, they'd all show up at our apartment and they'd bring chips and dip and food and we would stay up as late as possible on Friday night Talking about Jesus, playing trivia, bible trivia games, having a great time going through the Bible. My gosh, those were great days. They're not as great as the days are today that's how God works but they were awesome. But I say that to tell you this. So Don Don came from a life of alcoholism. His dad was an alcoholic, his mom was an alcoholic, and so Don learned from an early age that when life gets tough, you drink. That's what you do. By the way, that's called learned response behavior. Growing up as a kid. When you see your parents or the authoritative figure in your life respond to life's challenges, you will do the same. You will do the exact same thing, unless something happens, unless Christ intervenes. So what happened with Don is that he was saved out of an alcoholic background and God saved him and Don was awesome, so incredibly funny, great guy. But Don also, because he had a rough upbringing, he was also a little bit not too much, but a little bit prone that when he got his eyes off of Jesus, like Peter, he would sink into depression, not catastrophic depression like we know about these days, but he'd get bummed and then he'd say things like I don't feel like it, I don't wanna. Come on, don, let's go. We're with the best of Chuck, there's gonna be a great softball game at the church picnic. Let's go, I don't feel like it.

16:29
And so Don started drinking again and we hadn't seen him for like a week. And then Friday night shows up and there's no Don. Has anybody seen Don? No, we called Don back in those days, got to dial the number no cell phones back in ancient history, ancient times, and we couldn't find them. And it wasn't until Sunday morning. I remember when Ralph came into church on Sunday morning and he said and he's crying. He said did you, did you have any Don? What's the matter with you? Why are you crying? And he said Don got into a head on collision with a telephone pole on PCH. He was killed instantly and the police said that he was absolutely intoxicated and the cab was just reeking of alcohol.

17:20
Every single one of us knew in the moment wow, god took him home. God took him home. He didn't lose his salvation. Listen, friend, if you can lose your salvation, you've already lost yours. If you can lose it, you've already lost it. The good news is, if you got it, you can't lose it. Remember that it's very important. What you want to do is you want to be walking with Jesus every day and so that when he comes back or when it's time for you to drop dead, you won't be ashamed. It's very simple. God does not commit any abortions in his family whatsoever. Hope that makes sense. By the way, I want to do this right now, father.

18:06
For anyone who's out there right now that is just struggling with life itself, they may be able to say right now I do believe, Pastor Jack, that Jesus died on the cross and he rose again from the dead. But I've been such a terrible witness, I've messed up left and right. I hate myself for it. I know I've offended Jesus, I've sinned against God and I just can't even stand to look at myself from the mirror. Lord, you would say Lord, depart from me, depart from me, I'm a sinful man. Listen, my friend, there's nobody in this podcast right now that would say to you you know, get out. But for every true Christian, we would say to you right now we know exactly how you feel. We've all been there, so I want to encourage you to come back home real quick.

18:54
It takes a nanosecond. I know it feels like the enemy is shouting at you. God won't have you. Look at you, you terrible person. God will not accept you back. Satan's a liar. Don't listen to him. Go back to Jesus. Come back to Jesus right now and get back on the course and keep your eyes set on the cross and God will restore you. He will restore what the moth and the rust, the alcohol, the money, the girls, the guys, the toys of this world have robbed from you, and He'll restore you, and he loves to do that. If you've prayed that prayer, man, drop us a note. We'd love to hear that from you. Alright, until next time. God bless you guys.