Featured The Saved Backslider

There was a story told in the long ago about a boy on a horse carriage. While his parents were in the mercantile someone untied the horses and sent them on the run. A hero on a fast horse run the carriage down, got a hold of the reins, and brought the carriage to a stop.

Years later the boy would get in trouble and stand before a judge. When it came time for the judge to make a ruling, asking if the man understood the charges against him the young man interrupted, "Hey! I remember you! Your the man that saved me on the carriage!" In which the judge replied, "In the long ago I appeared unto you your savior, today I appear before to you as your judge.... Guilty as charged!"

If we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins. - Hebrews 10:26

 

Not if you wilfully go wrong.

 

I don't think someone with the fruit of the spirit born within him or her is going to willfully sin. As it says earlier in the chapter...

Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that he had said before, This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them. And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. - Hebrews 10:15-16

 

And...

My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you. - Galatians 4:19

If Christ is formed on the inside there will be no wilful sin.

 

I believe that sanctification needs to be experienced after the salvation, that the believers especially, in the words of Paul, would abstain from fornication. In the old mountain beliefs your salvation was as easy as believing on the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 16:31). Sanctification came with the Spirit of Christ being born on the inside of the saved soul. If the Spirit of Christ was not in the experience, as they were often in revival and conference, they would tell you to come back tomorrow night, and smile a little as they said it. When the Christ was born within the spirit everyone would, in the words of the Apostle Paul, glorify God in you (Galatians 1:24).

 

I am no fan of legalism. To illustrate the old way I refer to George Clark Rankin, who received it Methodist in the 1800s. There were holiness groups to follow that would regretfully become legalistic. The Methodist had the opposite problem, and that was to backslide all together, prompting the old mountain adage, "The main difference between the Baptist and the Methodist is that the Baptist don't believe in backsliding but the Methodist practice it!"

Salvation in the old Arminian Way

 

That was legalism! Saint Augustine once said, “Mans extremity is Gods opportunity.” In studying history as far as I am concerned mans extremity is God’s big headache!

 

For all our falseness getting a touch by the actual Holy Spirit was a blessed experience. Our old pastor, pictured below, would have many revivals in a year....



I used to be a party guy as a teenager. Pictured below is farmer I would work for in the hay field... Dallas would shout at work, shout in the hay field, and shout in church. He would also speak in tongues and run the aisles. He and his wife would operate a dairy farm and he would also work at the local ammunition plant. A very large soul his shouting would ring through the building. In the altar services he would kneel behind me in prayer and tears would roll off his cheek and onto my shoulders. A wonderfully large soul. Along with Dallas there were many others like him who would let the praises roll during church service. During the altar service old Evans Linkous used to weep like a baby. And if he were to look back to catch the amazed look in my eye he would weep, "The Holy Ghost! The Holy Ghost!" And point to all the souls being blessed around the altar. After I experienced these things for myself the people would make a fuss, or in the words of the Apostle Paul, glorify God in me. One day, after a beautiful autumnal week of beautiful Virginia fall and revival I lay on my bed with open door, listening to the Katydids sing their praises to God, reading Run Baby Run, with fireflies lighting up the mountain as they would fly, and heard the Spirit ask... "Put the book down" and then continue, "Where is all that hatred, strife, and bad feeling?" In which examining my eternal man there was nothing there but sheer beauty. I thought to myself... Oh my! I got exactly what those folks got!



And in the words of George Clark Rankin, "It was the third Sunday in September, 1866 (in my case much later), and those Church vows became a living principle in my heart and life. During these forty-five long years, with their alternations of sunshine and shadow, daylight and darkness, success and failure, rejoicing and weeping, fears within and fightings without, I have never ceased to thank God for that autumnal day in the long ago when my name was registered in the Lamb's Book of Life." - The Life of George Clark Rankin

 

When I was a teenager Dallas would encourage me to stay in revival. His last words to me was that there were no more revivals anymore. When our pictured pastor left the church 20 years ago he took the revival with him. The pastors to succeed him do not have revival or encourage Christian conference.

 

I had around a dozen family members over for Easter dinner in which I grilled steak and everyone contributed a dish. Before praying over the meal I told this story (quickly as everyone was hungry), reminding everyone that Christ came first as a sacrifice and will come next as a judge. And if anyone was not saved it is not a hard thing to embrace.