Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.
Select a thought to read by choosing a collection, the month, and then the day:
"A sheep is always a sheep, even before he comes to the Lord. A goat is never changed into a sheep."
According to a popular old Christian hymn, a newly-born again person can sing with joy, "There's a new name written down in glory, and it's mine! Oh yes, it's mine!"
Thrilling as this thought may be for some to contemplate, the event sung about never happens. There has not been one new name written in God's Book of Life since before the foundation of the world. The names of all people who have ever been converted to God were written in heaven's Book of Life from before the foundation of the world. God foreknew all His children and wrote their names in His book.
This is what Preacher Clark meant when he said that no goats ever come to God and become sheep in the Shepherd's pasture. If you have received the holy Ghost, or if you are among the many who will receive it in the future, your name is there in God's Book, and it has been there since before this earth was created.
Although it is impossible to have your name added to the Book of Life, it is possible for one of God's sheep to have his name "blotted out" of the Book. In Revelation, Jesus warns his saints of that possibility several times. Even Moses mentioned the fact that names could be blotted out of God's Book, and was willing to have his name blotted out, for the sake of God's children (Ex. 32:31-33). What an awful thought! Try to imagine being cast into the Lake of Fire to be tormented forever, knowing that your name had been in God's Book of Life, but that your ungodly conduct forced God to erase it.
It is of God's goodness that names of all His sheep are in the Book of Life, and it is a demonstration of the severity of His righteous judgment that some names of His sheep are blotted out. "Behold, therefore, both the goodness and the severity of God. On them that fell, severity. But toward you, goodness, if thou continue in His goodness; otherwise, thou also shalt be cut off" (Rom. 11:22).