Eternal Security

I was a long way from the stage, seated on the left-hand side, but I got a good view of the walkway behind the stage, so I was able to see all the stars coming on as well as the stage itself. Still, I spent most of the time watching the big screens 😀. Maybe not everyone would consider that an adventure, but I found it all quite exciting.

I didn’t think that we’d still be talking about it 40 years on, but it was a wonderful day. And it was amazing to see the world coming together for such a cause. I particularly remember the Soviet Union introducing their artists (via satellite) “And now top of the pops!”… 😀 I might watch it all on DVD today. I think BBC are showing it too.

John 10:28
“I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.”

But that doesn’t mean that we won’t have adventure in this life. Perhaps, not as much as the Apostle Paul had:

2 Corinthians 11:24-28
Five times I received forty stripes minus one from the Jews. ²⁵ Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I suffered shipwreck. I have been a night and a day in the deep. ²⁶ I have been in travels often, perils of rivers, perils of robbers, perils from my countrymen, perils from the Gentiles, perils in the city, perils in the wilderness, perils in the sea, perils among false brothers; ²⁷ in labor and travail, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, and in cold and nakedness. ²⁸ Besides those things that are outside, there is that which presses on me daily: anxiety for all the assemblies.

I liked the fact that he was honest about his trials. He wasn’t marketing the Christian message as something that’ll solve all your earthly problems. But it does secure your eternal destiny:

Rom 8:31-19
³¹ What then shall we say about these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? ³² He who didn’t spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how would he not also with him freely give us all things? ³³ Who could bring a charge against God’s chosen ones? It is God who justifies. ³⁴ Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, yes rather, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. ³⁵ Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Could oppression, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ³⁶ Even as it is written, “For your sake we are killed all day long. We were accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” ³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from God’s love which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Here is an old hymn and a new hymn on the theme of eternal security: