Salvation, a word with so much meaning and so much promise but to so many of you, a concept that evokes bad memories from a time when you used to be a Christian. Being saved/born again is something you used to be, but then it all got so confusing you decided to walk away from the faith. What you saw in the church and heard preached about salvation was so different from what you expected it to be and from what the Bible says. I hope you will take the time to read this because salvation is and will always be the one thing we humans can’t live without. If you read this, you will see what the Bible really teaches about salvation and why it is essential to us humans, especially now when the world we know it has been turned upside down.
Romans 10:13 says, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” When Paul the Apostle wrote Romans, the New Testament did not exist. Pauls Bible was the Old Testament, so if we are to understand what Paul is saying here and what it means to “call on the name of the Lord,” we have to go back and see if there is any connection between Romans 10:13 and the Old Testament.
In Joel 2:32, we read, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Now we understand what Paul is doing in Romans 10:13; he is quoting Joel 2:32. In Joel 2:32, it does not say, “Everyone who calls on the name of Jesus will be saved.” It says, “Everyone who calls on the name of Yehovah will be saved.”
How do we know this for sure?
We know this because “the Lord” is not a name; it is a title just as Mr.President is not Donald Trump’s name; it is his job description. So why does it say “the Lord” in our Bible instead of Yehovah? Because the translators of the Bible are more concerned with human traditions than fact. But in Hebrew, the text in Joel 2:32 says Yehovah.
We know this because, in Ex 3:15, God says to Moses, “Yehovah, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob has sent me to you. This is My name forever, and this is how I am to be remembered in every generation.”
Did you catch what Ex 3:15 says? It says God’s name is Yehovah; it says God’s name will forever be Yehovah, and it says every generation shall call Him Yehovah. This is why we know for sure Joel 2:32 and Rom 10:13 is not referring to Jesus, it is referring to Yehovah.
What Rom 10:13, Joel 2:32 and Acts 2:21 is trying to tell is this: If you call upon Yehovah, He will save you.
Did you notice what these verses do not say? It does not say, “He will save you only from your sins.” It does not say, “He will save you only from the things troubling you and giving you problems in this life.” It says He will save you from everything in this life and give you eternal life.
Salvation in the Bible is best described in Deut 28:1-13 and John 3. Here we see salvation is deliverance in our time of need here in this life; it is healing, protection, guidance, but also eternal life when we die.
We see in Psalms 20:1, where it says, “May Yehovah answer you in the time of trouble, may the name of the God of Jacob protect you.” This tells us salvation is not the absence of trouble, but if we call upon Yehovah during trouble, He will save us from it.
What does it mean to call upon Yehovah? It means what it says, to shout Yehovah!
We see the same thing in Psalm 91:14-15, where it says, “Because He loves Me, I will deliver him. Because he knows my name, I will protect him. When he calls out to Me, I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him.”
This is the same thing as we see in Joel 2:32, Rom 10:13, and Acts 2:21: In the name of Yehovah, we find salvation, protection, deliverance. We do not find the absence of conflict, trouble, and hardship, but we see His presence in the midst of it and His help, deliverance, and salvation from it.
So what is salvation?
Salvation is calling upon the name of Yehovah. You dont need a Ph.D. in theology or know Greek to be saved. You dont need to be a member of a particular church or denomination to be saved. You dont need a preacher to pray for you, or to lead you in the sinner’s prayer to be saved. You dont even need to pray the sinner’s prayer; you only need to call upon the name of Yehovah for salvation. You only need to say the words “Yehovah save me!”
So what about Jesus, repentance, the cross, being born again and sin?
All of the above does not apply to you if you have never been reconciled to Yehovah. If you have never been reconciled to Yehovah, and you want His salvation from whatever is troubling you now, calling upon Him will not help you. If you have never been reconciled to Yehovah, calling upon His name will be very dangerous and something you should not do.
Why is it dangerous?
Because He is holy, and He hates sin.
The Bible says in 1. John 3, sin is disobedience to Yehovah’s law, the law of Moses. Perhaps you have already repented of your immorality, and now you are living a moral, righteous life? The Bible says if you have broken 1 of the 613 commandments applicable to you, you are guilty of breaking them all. So if you are living a moral, righteous life, but you are not keeping Shabbat, not eating Biblical kosher, you are still a sinner living in deliberate sin, and you need reconciliation to Yehovah.
If you called upon Yehovah right now while you are still living in sin, it would be hazardous. You will then see a side of Yehovah nobody wants to see, the Bible even says it is better to be cast into the ocean with a millstone around your neck then to fall into the hands of Yehovah when He is angry. Sin makes Yehovah angry; it is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of Yehovah when He is angry.
This is why you, first of all, need salvation from sin and be reconciled to Yehovah.
The Bible says, in John 3, Yehovah has given you His Son Yehoshua (Yeshua) on the cross as a sacrifice for all the times you disobeyed Him. Yeshua’s Blood and His death upon the cross is an acceptable sacrifice to Yehovah for your sins. If you repent back to obeying every commandment in the law of Moses applicable to you, believing in the cross, you will be reconciled to Yehovah.
This is what it means to be saved according to the Bible. First, we become reconciled to Him, then we call upon Yehovah (not call upon Jesus) for salvation from everything else troubling us.
If you at one time got so confused and decided to walk away from the faith, I am asking you to give it one more chance. Forget about what you heard back then, focus instead on what the Bible says about salvation. Become reconciled to Yehovah and call upon His name, and you will see He is real, and He will fulfill His promise to save you.
If we are reconciled to Yehovah, it is safe for us to call upon Him for salvation from whatever troubles we face today. We can even call upon Him to save us from the coronavirus and its effects, even if we have already gotten sick from it.
Do you need prayer? Prophecy? As long as the coronavirus crisis is ongoing, prophecy is free of charge (prayer is always free of charge.)
Even though there is a coronavirus crisis, the Bible does not change. The Bible says your needs come; first, you have to make sure you can feed yourself, pay your bills, and take care of your family. If you have extra money to spare, the Bible says you should give them as a sign of gratitude to the ministry that has helped you. If you choose to keep that money for yourself, you are sinning against Yehovah. I will never know, but Yehovah and yourself will know.
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