Great. My question is this. How do you answer those like Ray Comfort who say you have to repent from your sins when you refer to scriptures such as in 1 Kings in chapter 8 there's three times where it tells you that you need to turn and save your soul or Ezekiel 18. It mentions it three different times that you should turn from your wicked ways and save your soul. How would you answer that? Thanks for the answer.
Yes. So these verses from the Old Testament are just simply being taken out of context. You know the way to receive eternal life is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. The Gospel of John is expressly written to tell us how to be saved. These are written that you might believe on the name of the Son of God and that believing you might have life through his name and yet the word repent is never even mentioned in the book of John. It just tells you over 90 times in the book of John believe.
So pulling out a verse in 1 Kings telling you to turn from your sins. Well, we should all turn for our sins. But is that how we receive eternal life? Is that how we're saved? Absolutely not. We're saved by faith alone not of works.
When it comes to Ezekiel, when you look at these scriptures in Ezekiel chapter 3, Ezekiel chapter 18, Ezekiel chapter 33, which are the ones that are coming to my mind that I believe you're referring to, you know, those verses are talking about not being physically judged on this earth. You know, he's talking about how people are going to be killed and judged because we do get judged in this life based on our works.
You know, if we do bad things, bad things are going to happen to us. But when it comes to our eternal salvation, it's based on faith and they're having to grasp at straws going to these Old Testament scriptures because they don't have any clear scripture in the New Testament saying repent of your sins to be saved because it's a lie.
I agree with you 100%. It's just my question was, because I agree with you 100%, but then I can see some people saying, well, you know, it does say repent. And I believe that repentance means that you need to turn from the lie of Satan and believe the truth of, you know, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. However, people will turn to the Old Testament and say, well, it says here, you know, turning from your wicked way or repent and save your soul.
It doesn't say it doesn't say that, though, like that if you bring up if you bring up the exact example and we actually turn to it, it's not going to say it that way. You know what I mean? It's what happens is they'll quote it a little different.
But if you actually look up these verses, there's no verse saying, hey, you're going to be saved and go to heaven if you repent of your sins and turn from your wicked ways, then you'll have eternal life.
That's not what the Bible teaches anyway. But thanks for the great question, because I know that there are a lot of deceivers out there who try to take verses that are not about being saved and going to heaven and having eternal life.
And they try to twist them and make about that. We have clear verses. We have John 3 16 for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
We also have Jonah 3 10, which says God saw their works that they turned from their evil way. And God repented of the evil that he had said that he would do unto them and he did it not.
So repenting of your evil way is works. Okay. And, you know, the Bible, he's right. Also, when the Bible says repent and believe the gospel, repent there is talking about changing what you believe.
You know, turning to God from idols, that's changing what you believe. It's not about works or turning from your sands, quitting drinking, quitting smoking.