Can A Saved Person Go To Hell If He Commits A Sin Just Before He Dies?

By Albert Kang

In August 2023, I wrote an article about one of my church members who was afraid that if he did not fully forgive everybody just at the moment of his death, he might end up in hell. [https://wordpress.com/post/coffeeshopstoryteller.wordpress.com/1994]

In this present article, I want to add more information to help you understand better concerning this matter. For those of us who are the disciples of Christ, we know how the Lord has placed a special emphasis and importance on this topic of forgiving others. He said that if we hold onto our anger and do not forgive, it will affect our relationship with God.

Let’s say if we have bitterness in our hearts and then die, would we go to heaven or hell? Didn’t Jesus say that if we do not forgive others, then God will not forgive us too? (Matthew 6:14-15). To gain clarity on this matter, we need to grasp the THREE TYPES OF FORGIVENESS:

I. REDEMPTIVE FORGIVENESS: The Foundation of Salvation
Redemptive forgiveness is the most important forgiveness we receive when we believe in Jesus as our Lord and Savior. It’s not something we earn by doing good things, but it’s given to us because Jesus already did everything necessary for our forgiveness and redemption on the cross.

When I was pastoring in Pittsburgh, PA, an elderly man told me the reason why he would go to heaven. I thought he would say that because Jesus died for him and provided salvation for his soul. To my horror, he proclaimed that it was because he had been a good person all his life and so he felt that he deserved to go to heaven.

Let me emphasize – salvation is not earned through personal efforts or good deeds, but rather through the finished work of Christ on the cross. This forgiveness is bestowed solely based on faith in Jesus and His sacrifice.

II. RESTORATIVE FORGIVENESS: Sanctification To Transformation
Restorative forgiveness is an integral part of sanctification and occurs after salvation. When we were saved, God accepted us as who we were but He wanted something much better for our life. Our old sinful character of selfishness and self-centredness will not do. God’s desire is to transform us all into the image of His Son, Jesus Christ.

So, sanctification is not just a one-time thing that happens in our lives. It’s an ongoing process where the Holy Spirit is sent by God to help us become the people He wants us to be. When we accept Jesus as our Savior, the Holy Spirit begins working inside us and helps us recognize our sins and make positive changes. Even though we might still make mistakes, commit sins, feel angry, or behave badly, the Holy Spirit will help us realize when we’re doing something wrong and guide us to do what’s right. It’s a journey of our spiritual growth and we are becoming more like Christ, with God’s help.

While our “sins” as believers may not jeopardize our salvation, they grieve God because they hinder the transformative process intended for us. Repentance plays a crucial role in this regard. When we acknowledge our sins, turn away from them, and seek forgiveness from God, we demonstrate our commitment to living according to His will (1 John 1:9). Repentance facilitates our growth, restoration, and an increasing likeness to Jesus.

III. RELATIONAL FORGIVENESS: God’s Love Empowers Our Love
When we have a good relationship with God, our whole being is affected. It empowers us to love, forgive, serve, resolve conflicts, and model Christ’s character. As we grow closer to God, we will become better neighbors and colleagues, contributing to a more harmonious and loving community. Here’s how we can do it:

Love and Compassion: When we cultivate a close relationship with God, we experience His love and compassion firsthand. This love transforms our hearts and enables us to extend love and compassion to those around us. We become more understanding, kind, and empathetic towards others.

Forgiveness and Grace: God’s forgiveness and grace towards us inspire us to extend the same to others. As we grasp the depth of God’s forgiveness, we become more willing to forgive and extend grace to those who may have wronged us. This attitude of forgiveness fosters healthier relationships and promotes reconciliation.

Humility and Servanthood: A genuine relationship with God helps us develop humility and a servant’s heart. Instead of seeking our own interests, we learn to prioritize the needs of others. This selflessness allows us to build meaningful connections with our neighbors and colleagues, as we actively seek to serve and support them.

Conflict Resolution: God’s wisdom and guidance help us constructively navigate conflicts and disagreements. Through prayer and seeking God’s guidance, we gain insights into resolving conflicts peacefully, promoting understanding, and fostering reconciliation.

Model of Christ: When our relationship with God is strong, we strive to reflect the character of Christ in our interactions. We seek to treat others with respect, fairness, and integrity, following the example set by Jesus. This Christlike behavior cultivates trust and promotes healthy relationships with our neighbors and colleagues.

FINAL WORDS
When we accept Jesus as our personal Savior, we receive Redemptive Forgiveness and become right with God. The Holy Spirit through the sanctifying process, helps us transform and grow through Restorative Forgiveness. God’s Relational Forgiveness affects us so deeply and it will bring us to live harmoniously with our neighbors and colleagues.

In summary, as long as we have a true Born-again experience with Jesus Christ as our Savior, we have received the Redemptive Forgiveness. If anything were to happen to us last night, we can be assured that this morning, we would be worshipping our Lord Jesus in heaven.

However, since we are not going to heaven yet and there is much to be done here on earth for the kingdom of God, we still have to go through the transformative process known as Sanctification. The closer we are to the Holy Spirit, the better our relationship would become with others. God’s love influences and empowers us to love, forgive, serve, resolve conflicts, and model Christ’s character. As we grow spiritually, we become better friends, neighbors, and colleagues, contributing to a more harmonious and loving community.

Even though we are not perfect, we are living in the “perfecting” way or the way of sanctification. The Holy Spirit will continue to prompt us to live a repented and holy life, and even if we fail just at the moment before our demise we will never need to worry about what will happen after we die. The Redemptive Forgiveness of the finished work of Christ will take care of our journey to heaven.

Here is a message on YouTube by Rev Albert Kang about these three types of forgiveness and how you can live a life of forgiveness and freedom.
https://youtu.be/lFMjGKG8pkU?si=On_5eaDl_q13yx4i

What Makes The Demons Come Back Again?

A woman desperately wanted to place a curse upon her ex-husband. She had been to different bomohs and witch doctors but somehow, their black magic were not effective. Through some friends, she learned that she could cause real harm to her ex by getting the supernatural power herself. She was recommended to a Thai temple in Bangkok and so with a friend, she flew there. They found the Wat (Thai word for temple) and without hesitation, this hurting woman agreed to perform in a very unique power-endowment ritual. She was to strip and allow the monks to wrap her naked body with a large yellow blanket-like talisman that had many demonic curses written upon it. In that hour-long ceremony, the monks summoned evil spirits to respond to her request and the result was that she, herself, became possessed by evil spirits.

The Result Of Playing With Fire
When this woman returned home, instead of having the supernatural ability to harm her ex, her own life was thrown into a tailspin. She was seeing apparitions, hearing strange sounds and experiencing deep depression. She realized that she was in big trouble and sought for help. One of her friends, who had just become a Christian, brought her to the Church. Later, she repented of her sins, renounced the devil and accepted Jesus as her Savior. But devil was not going to give her up so easily. She manifested and during the deliverance sessions, some demons left. However, her inner struggle with unresolved anger and bitterness towards her ex continued to be the magnet that drew the demons back into her life.

Every time, she had the evil thought and felt the deep anger against her ex, it was as though, she had placed Jesus outside the door, while she partied with the demons inside. There was definitely no Holy Spirit to serve as the Strong Man in her life. Her confession and repentance were only superficial at best. It took many months of counseling, confessing, repenting, renouncing and forgiving before she could be set free. In our experience with such deliverance, the unresolved anger and bitterness are the toughest doors to close. We can cast out the spirits but soon they would return to the victim. We thus called this the type of deliverance the “swinging-door” syndrome.

The Swinging Door of Unresolved Anger and Bitterness
From case to case, we are 100% certain that the “swinging door” of spiritual attack is revolving around unresolved anger and bitterness. When you lack self-control and allow such anger to overwhelm you, the devil will sneak in through the back door and fan the flame of hostility. The devil will instigate you to inflict harm on someone else by falsely accusing them or even uttering a curse against them. Such unrestrained dislike will lead to hatred and bitterness that subsequently will lead to physical violence. The hatred can become so intensified that the person may seek demonic power, just like the woman that I mentioned above, and move you down the dark alley of the occults.

When To Stop Casting Out Demons
There was a very difficult deliverance case, no matter how many times, we cast the demons out, in a short while, it returned back into the victim. In one of our Elijah Challenge training seminars, this woman suddenly created a commotion at the back of the sanctuary. She was singing and praising God loudly. The ushers could not stop her and so Grace rushed to handle the situation. With a few volunteers, she led this woman into the prayer room. By the time the training was over, Grace and the volunteers were still casting out the demons from this woman. When I went in to help, I realized that there was only one persistent demon left. When we took authority over it, the demon was literally weeping and begging. It pleaded for us not to cast it out as it had no place to go. We insisted that it had to leave that woman and it was agreeable. It screamed, “I will go! I will go!” When the demon left and we could see that the tension in the woman was gone and her face showed total relief.

As we prepared to leave the prayer room, suddenly the woman manifested again. It was the same demon who claimed that it had no place to go and so it came “home”. We cast it out, asked the woman to invite the Holy Spirit into her life, but in a short while, the evil spirit came back again. We did that several times and every time it was able to come back. We decided to stop the deliverance session and went into counseling.

We began to question the woman, looking for a reason why there was a swinging-door syndrome. The woman said that she hated her mother and that she would never forgive her. The reason was that her mother had rejected her when she was being conceived and had wanted to abort her. She said that after the abortion failed and she was born, her mother just hated her. In fact, now that she had a daughter of her own, her mother would often talk to the grandchild but would not talk to her. Her heart was wounded with disappointments and hurts. She hated her mother for all the deep emotional injuries that she had experienced while growing up. She hated her mother more for showing preferences to the granddaughter but did not even bother to communicate with her.

It was a big mess of emotional hurts and spiritual bondage. We could not convince this woman to hand all her grievances to the Lord and forgive her mother. She was adamant that it would be wrong for her to forgive that evil mother. To cut the story short, we had to go because she was unwilling to take the first step of forgiveness. When we left her, her whole being was still wrapped in the shackles of hatred, firmly held on by the evil spirit. It was a sad case, the key of hatred and bitterness had given the demon a free access into that person’s life. We have not heard from her pastor whether she was finally set free or not.

Here are some simple steps to prevent evil spirits from dominating your life.

1. Live a repented life – Repentance is changing your mind about your former way of life and turning around to accept the forgiveness of sins offered by Jesus on the cross. By doing that, you have been justified and fully saved. Living a repented life is to continue in the direction of the way of Christ by denying self and taking up your cross daily (Luke 9:23). A life of repentance is not a life of doubt but the tangible expression of the forgiveness of the Lord in your daily walk. It is also a call for your spirit to be aware of your self-centred weakness to follow after your own will and abandon the will of God. A repented life solves tons of life issues that centred around self and pride. And that also solves the bitterness and anger issues.

2. Surrender Your Compulsive Behavior – You know that you have a problem with demonic influence when you are having sudden urges of hostility and rage, strong desire for illicit sex and any forms of sexual perversion, uncontrollable craving to talk dirty, curse, gossip or blaspheme, consume defiled things such as drugs, alcohol and various types of harmful substances. To prevent further intrusion of this demonic influence, you need to refer back to the first point and that is to repent. And to live a repented life by learning how to hand over every assault upon your spiritual life to the Lord. You can learn how to do Handing-Over Prayer every day.

3. Stay away from the occult – Going to fortune-tellers, mediums, bomohs and spiritualists is a sure way to suffer demonic attack. It is just as dangerous dabbling with feng-shui, horoscope, astrology, tarot cards, yoga, qi gong, transcendental meditation, New Age etc. We have cast out demons out of a “Christian” who was obsessed with horoscope. One good guideline for Christians is that if you encountered any so-called spirituality that is not rooted in the Holy Spirit and God’s Word, then you know that you have to avoid them because they are from the demonic world.

VICTORIOUS LIFE IS YOURS – You can live a victorious life if you are willing to learn from Jesus who came as the Son of Man. The writer of Hebrews states in Chapter 4 and verse 15, “For we do not have a High Priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have One who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet He did not sin.” You have the same Holy Spirit, who was then working with Jesus, in you right now. He will empower you to overcome. Moreover, He is that “Strong Man” in your life. Trust that this message will be helpful to you when it comes to resisting temptations.

Here is a short 8-minute video on how to hand over everything to the Lord.
https://youtu.be/0id08_E_-30