How do you know when another person is saved or not???

As a born again Christian, I was saved over 40 years ago by the grace of God, with outward signs of that conversion experience. It was a dynamic personal experience with Jesus Christ, having been convicted by the Holy Spirit of my sins, recognizing that I needed Jesus Christ in my life and making a conscious decision to surrender my life to Him. It was an experience that burned indelibly on my soul and changed my life. Today I KNOW THAT I KNOW that I have been saved having been washed in the blood of Jesus Christ and he is now my Savior and Lord.

In my statement above, there are many "catch words" which serve as testimony to my belief and it is those catch words or phrases that may convince many of you that I am indeed sincere and secure in my belief,and that I am indeed a child of God. But to many that I encounter in life, that conversion experience may not be as dynamic and there may not be any outward signs that anything happened at all. It did with me, but maybe did not with them.

I have been reading Brother Mike O'Neal's webpages at this link and know that in order to be saved as witnessed countless times in scripture all you have to do is BELIEVE. Outward signs may not be present at all. And too I have heard this spoken of multiple times in the years since my conversion.

So how do I tell if someone else has been saved if they cannot provide a dynamic picture of their own conversion experience???

Let me explain further. I post on secular boards and have been posting to Christian themes with another supposed Christian. Recently I PM'd this guy as he is very knowledgable in the Bible and what the Bible has to say on topics of concern for today. I told him that I was a believer having been born again in 1963 in a Southern Baptist Church. When he returned my PM he stated that he: "had been raised in a Southern Babtist Church all his life and he has been receiving a Primitive Babtist newsletter" (from which he had posed some questions about some of the topics he was posting on).

Now a red flag went up in my mind as I know that "attending" and being reared in church (any church) does not save you. I also know how to spell Baptist and would expect anyone who was reared in a Baptist church to be able to spell it correctly when all of his other spellings aren't mispelled. But then too I don't want to use his spelling against him as evidence as that is a misnomer.

So I wrote him back and asked point blank for his "profession of faith" statement (only I had a Senior moment and called it "confession of faith"). His response back was that he didn't know what I wanted exactly but stated that "I am a believer and have been Babtized in the blood of Jesus."

Once again I am confused as to how to judge this man's conversion, as I was not Baptized IN the blood of Jesus, I was Baptized IN WATER BY the blood of Jesus. My baptism was an outward sign of an inward work.

I was always taught that if a man declares that he is a believer then that is sufficient for proof of him being saved. Thus, I should be convinced but I am not and this bothers me.

Thus, the bottom line here is that I am requesting to know by scripture and theology what the markers are for determining the rightful place in our knowledge of another person's conversion.

[ January 07, 2004, 01:09 AM: Message edited by: mac ]