What is the difference between Everlasting Life and Salvation? Or is there a difference? Why are these terms different for the same concept? Or are they the same? I guess to most people, they could care less.

However, if they have the same meaning then there is a great contradiction here. If they are different, then there is something here that we haven’t seen before.

It’s not a wonder most people don’t study and try to understand the bible for themselves, it takes a bible schollar with a doctorate’s degree to understand some of it. So people just leave the interpreting to the guys with the credencials and accept what they have to say as God-sent truth.

According to Jesus, Everlasting Life is obtained by keeping the commandments and doing good works. According to Paul, salvation is merely believing and one cannot be saved by good works which we have done, but belief only is accounted for righteousness. This is a direct contradiction of a basic concept.

To make things more complicated, Jesus says in another gospel, “He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.” So in this place it seems that Jesus is agreeing with Paul in that all you have to do is believe. But then in other places he says clearly that you have to keep his commandments and do good works to enter into life. What is one to believe?

It’s not a wonder that people leave it up to the clergy to get their truth. If a person wanted to find out for himself how to be saved and what this meant, he would get pretty confused just reading the bible, unless they only read a certain part. Then they would only get the part that they read. But then you have different pastors, preachers or priests that have different opinions on the subject. What is it, by good works or just believing?

Another thing. Why did Jesus almost always use the term “everlasting life” and not salvation?

I don’t pretend to have all the answers, I can pretty much just guess as good as the next guy. But do the guys with all the credencials have the answers? Don’t they just make educated guesses too?

What it all comes down to since you don’t have enough information to actually “prove” much one way or the other, is that you have to believe in something to be the truth — you don’t really know it for sure. The next guy also has something that he believes to be the truth. But they can’t both be right. One has to be right and the other has to be wrong.

Like John the apostle said,

1Jn 5:13 These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life.

He didn’t say that “ye may believe”, but that “ye may know”.

And the apostle Paul said,

1Th 5:21 Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.

That’s why things are written down. We use documents to prove that we own things; that we were born in a certain place at a certain time; that we are certified to drive a vehicle, etc. It’s the same with the bible. It’s supposed to be a document that proves something. There is supposed to be proof there that documents that we have eternal life. It is not a matter of believing it is a matter of being able to prove it. The bible is supposed to be a legal document that proves certain facts.

But what happens if men come along and change some of the facts. This happens with our documents today. Men for certain reasons will create false documents, like a passport to make people think that a certain person is from a place he’s not really from. Or he may modify a birth certificate to make it look like the person is older or younger or born in a place he was not really born. There are many motives why men do these things, but they are almost always dishonest and criminal reasons.

So here we have the bible. It is also a document that is supposed to prove a lot of facts about things. But men have come along through the centuries and changed things, taken things out and inserted things that were never there.

When a phrase says, “believe on the name of the son of God”, it is different than, “believe what Jesus teaches”. What does it really mean to “believe on the name”? If you think about it, you would find it really hard to define what this phrase actually signifies. But the phrase, “believe what Jesus teaches” is very clear. But do they both mean the same thing? Not really. One infers that you have faith that something that Jesus taught is true and you do those things and live by them. The other means what?

What does it mean to “believe on” something or someone? What we have learned from listening to preachers is that it means that all you have to do is believe that Jesus is God and confess this to the world and you go to heaven for eternity when you die.

Is that really true? If you really look at this it is actually a contradiction with what is written in other places in the bible. The two things are literally opposites. One says no good works can get you eternal life and the other says if you don’t have good works you don’t get eternal life.

The basic difference is this: if you “believe on” Jesus, then this means that you rely on him alone to justify you based on nothing at all but the fact that you confess to “believe on” him. If you believe in what Jesus said, this means that you receive what he said as truth and you therefore you live and do the teachings

Mat 7:21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

Luk 6:46 And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?

Luk 13:25 When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us; and he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence ye are:

According to Jesus you have to do his teachings to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Obviously, according to Jesus believing alone won’t get one into the kingdom of heaven. There were those who knew of him and believed on him because they said to him, “Lord, Lord”.

James agreed with Jesus,

Jas 2:14 What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?

Jas 2:17 Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.

Jas 2:19 Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.