THE BOOK OF LIFE
The church service was really great. Or maybe it was an evangelistic meeting in an auditorium, or even a stadium. The evangelist issues an “altar call” for anyone desiring to receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Someone comes forward, or maybe a number of people. Best would be a large number of sinners who want to be “saved.”
After leading them in the “sinner’s prayer,” the preacher proclaims, “There’s a new name written down in the Lamb’s Book of Life! Hallelujah!”
Do you believe that saying — that “there’s a new name written down” in the Book in heaven? For many years I did. I had always heard it, and never had reason to question it. Then I discovered that it was another “tradition of man” that has no factual basis in the Word of God, the Bible!
Revelation 17:8 The beast that you saw was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.
Yes, God’s Word says “whose names were not written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world.” So much for the common thought that “a new name is written in the Book” when a person comes to the Lord!
A careful search of the entire Bible, Old and New Testaments, from beginning to end, from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21, fails to reveal even one place saying a new name is ever written down. In fact, there are only passages that speak of names being blotted out of the Book for due cause!
A conversation between Moses and God in the Old Testament informs us:
Exodus 32:32 Yet now, if you will forgive their sin; and if not, blot me, I pray, out of your book which you have written.
33 And the LORD said to Moses, Whosoever has sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book.
Later King David, who had a heart after God’s own heart, wrote:
Psalms 69:28 Let them be blotted out of the book…
Back to Revelation, the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ speaking:
Revelation 3:5 He that overcomes, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.
Notice that the Lord did not say that the one who overcomes will have his name written in the Book of Life! He said for the overcomer his name will not be blotted out of the Book!
Clearly, according to scripture, God knew “from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 17:8) all who would ever be the redeemed of the Lord and their names were written down in that book. Nowhere in the Bible do we find a new name being written into the book.
So the next time someone says, “there’s a new name written down in glory,” just smile and silently say to yourself, “Yes, I used to believe that also. But now I know that is just a tradition of men!”
Mark 7:13 Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition… [Jesus speaking].