Someone has said there are many ‘professors’ but fewer ‘possessors’. What does that mean? Many people ‘profess’ to be Christians but in reality they are Christians in name only. Chris Brundage’s story below illustrates the point well. A person who is genuinely saved possesses eternal life through the Lord Jesus Christ. As you read this young man’s personal story ask yourself: do I possess eternal life? Is Christ mine? or am I a just a professor?
Chris Brundage, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada writes this:
This story is about how God saved me from going to hell and how I know that one day I will be in heaven.
I grew up in a family that went to church and read the Bible, God’s Word regularly. I knew whole chapters of the Bible by memory. I went to Sunday school every Sunday. I said I was a Christian but there was no reality of it in my life. By this I mean that for the other six days of the week, I could swear, fight, mouth off, you name it. When I was eighteen, I moved out of my parents house and went to live with a friend because I didn’t like the rules at home. I wanted to do things my way. I started smoking, quit school and began fooling with drugs.
For the next two years, I lived in three different houses with different people, working occasionally, living from one night to the next. I got myself into trouble with the law. After those two years, I decided to clean my life up. I moved into a clean apartment by myself, worked for my money, and looked into going back to school. I was pretty happy with myself and started going to church again.
Around this time, the church I was going to (The Gospel Hall) decided to have special meetings called Gospel Meetings. The point of these meetings was to tell people what God has to say to every man, woman, boy and girl. God’s message is this: That every one of us have sinned, and the penalty for sin is death. But God loves us and He sent his Son Jesus to die for our sin on the cross. Since Jesus has taken the punishment for sin, sinners can go free. I had heard this message thousands of times but I had never taken it personally.
The second Sunday night of the meetings, God woke me up. I was sitting at the meeting listening and the preacher said that one must have “real faith to get to a real heaven, not hypocrisy, not a sham.” I knew right away that God was speaking directly to me. For the next day, I thought about it and tried to convince myself that I was saved but I knew that I wasn’t.
The next Tuesday night, the preacher spoke on a verse in the Bible, Romans 5:6, that said that when “we were yet without strength…Christ died for the ungodly.” He pointed out that sinners can do nothing to help themselves. At home that night, looking around at my apartment and lifestyle, I realized that none of that makes God happy and that I was “without strength” not only to quit smoking, but to please God.
God then brought a verse from the Bible to my mind that goes like this: “The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, who can know it?” By now I was pretty concerned. I picked up my Bible and started reading, trying to understand. I couldn’t get it. Finally, I just gave up. Then God brought to mind a verse (Ephesians 2:8). It says: “For by grace are ye saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.” I read it and came to the part “not of yourselves.” That means that I can’t do anything and that I don’t have to do anything to be saved. Salvation is “the gift of God.”
I just rested on what God says. God says in the Bible that He laid on Jesus “the sin of us all.” (Isaiah 53:5,6) The word “all” includes me, so God must have put my sin on Jesus and Jesus said when he died “It is finished.” (John 19:30) My sin has been completely paid for. I will never be in hell because Jesus took my sin on Himself.