False Statement number one: "If you have doubts about your salvation is a good indication that you are saved since the devil does not want you to have assurance that you have been saved."
This statement is nowhere found in the Bible but only in churches that view doubt as normal. Believers will suffer doubt at times and that only proves that they are still human and nothing more but it is never to be considered normal. Pastors and teachers assume that since the devil does not want people to know that they are saved then doubts must prove that the devil is attacking you. They honestly believe that if you were truly lost then the devil would want your conscience lulled to sleep so that you will never see your need of Christ.
There might be a degree of truth to what they are teaching but since my Bible doesn't teach that then neither do I. What if doubts are from the Holy Spirit prompting someone's need of Christ? Telling them that doubts proves their salvation is dangerous and unscriptural. It is our job to point doubters to Christ ONLY and never to focus on anything in themselves or what they experience. If doubts proved my salvation then I would do all I can to maintain my doubts and that certainly is not Scriptural.
Years ago, I struggled with chronic doubts of my salvation. I used to be a Pentecostal that believed that one could lose his/her salvation but now was a Baptist. I remember two pastors that told me, "Your doubts are a good indication that you are saved since the devil doesn't want you to know that." I told these pastors that the exact same words were stated to me when I was a Pentecostal when it came to speaking in tongues. I was told as a Pentecostal, "If you have doubts when you speak in tongues then it is a good sign that you have the gift of the Holy Spirit because the devil doesn't want you speaking in tongues." I told this to the pastors and asked sarcastically if I should go and speak in tongues again since I had doubts? I never seen two Baptist ministers shut up so quickly.
Arguments such as, "The world cares as much about assurance of salvation as people do about their potassium levels" sounds good but cannot be substantiated in Scripture. So many feel the need to argue what they think or feel instead of what Scripture actually says.
Doubt is what you do and not the devil. You cannot claim that doubting your salvation is the devil doing it. The devil doesn't do your doubting for you nor your believing as it is you that chooses such things. You cannot blame your flesh, parents, upbringing because God holds YOU accountable. Not one person will ever be able to stand before God and come up with a single excuse as to why they doubting a God that cannot lie.
People that claim to be saved and never had assurance of salvation are deceived. If assurance of salvation to you was when you prayed a prayer, cried many tears, felt such amazing joy and so on then you most likely have not been saved. People that can only claim to be believing when feelings are present or from seeing certain experiences in their life are not believing Christ as they require something other than Christ alone. What happens to you when those feelings are gone? Are you the type that has to get emotionally worked up with some Christian music to get those feelings of being saved? Do you have to read some book to get those feelings back? A good sermon to help you along? It is not Christ you are believing because when those feelings are gone then so is that faith you claim to have. That faith that you claim to have is not based in a Person but in what you experience.
You cannot claim to be believing when you are simultaneously doubting. Doubting and believing are not one in the same. You can be 100% certain of salvation and at the same time be plagued with thoughts of doubt. You probably are questioning me on that statement. You can be assured of salvation based on the promises of God's Word even though your feelings are telling you that you are not saved and your conscience is shouting that you are not saved. It is what you are focusing on is what counts.
Here is an example of what I mean that someone can be 100% certain of salvation even though doubts are plaguing them. Some people go to the airport and board an airplane with obsessive scary thoughts running through their heads. One thought that might be running through their head is, "The plane might crash." Now if they choose to focus on such thoughts then fear will inevitably control them and they might cash in their ticket for a train ride instead showing their lack of faith in air travel. Instead, one tunes their thinking into the proven safety of air travel and how more die from automobile accidents than from airplanes. They consider that months go by without a single plane crash and yet people die daily in car accidents. Their faith has been placed in a fact even though irrational thoughts are trying to convince them that the plane will crash. Their flesh might be jittery but their faith that the plane will get them to their destination is certain.
Faith will look past all threatenings of the law, feelings and so on and will look Christ in the face. They may be having thoughts that their faith is not genuine, their profession is a fake, their sins are too serious as well as too many. Their feelings might tell them that God has packed His bags and has moved on. Experiences around them might be telling them that God has forsaken them. Even the world might be judging their works claiming that they are not what they believe a real Christians would be like. In all of these things, their faith looks to Christ believing what He said and not what their feelings, the world or the law is claiming. I am going to alter John 10 a little bit and make a spiritual application here, "Faith recognizes the voice of the Shepherd and the voice of another he will not follow as he does not know their voice (conscience, law, feelings, etc)."
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