Assurance of salvation

 ”For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” – John 3:16

“Assurance of salvation” taken from Catholic Answers reads:

There are few more confusing topics than salvation. It goes beyond the standard question posed by Fundamentalists: “Have you been saved?” What the question also means is: “Don’t you wish you had the assurance of salvation?” Evangelicals and Fundamentalists think they do have such an absolute assurance.

All they have to do is “accept Christ as their personal Savior,” and it’s done. They might well live exemplary lives thereafter, but living well is not crucial and definitely does not affect their salvation.

….

That one act of the will, he explains, is all they needed to do. But is this true? Does the Bible support this concept?

Scripture teaches that one’s final salvation depends on the state of the soul at death. As Jesus himself tells us, “He who endures to the end will be saved” (Matt. 24:13; cf. 25:31-46). One who dies in the state of friendship with God (the state of grace) will go to heaven. The one who dies in a state of enmity and rebellion against God (the state of mortal sin) will go to hell. 

…

“To deny the assurance of salvation would be to deny Christ’s perfect redemption,” argues Ewin, and this is something he can say only because he confuses the redemption that Christ accomplished for us objectively with our individual appropriation of that redemption. The truth is that in one sense we are all redeemed by Christ’s death on the cross-Christians, Jews, Muslims, even animists in the darkest forests (1 Tim. 2:6, 4:10, 1 John 2:2)-but our individual appropriation of what Christ provided is contingent on our response.

Certainly, Christ did die on the cross once for all and has entered into the holy place in heaven to appear before God on our behalf. Christ has abundantly provided for our salvation, but that does not mean that there is no process by which this is applied to us as individuals. Obviously, there is, or we would have been saved and justified from all eternity, with no need to repent or have faith or anything else. We would have been born “saved,” with no need to be born again. Since we were not, since it is necessary for those who hear the gospel to repent and embrace it, there is a time at which we come to be reconciled to God. And if so, then we, like Adam and Eve, can become unreconciled with God and, like the prodigal son, need to come back and be reconciled again with God, after having left his family. 
 

Continue at http://www.catholic.com/library/Assurance_of_Salvation.asp

The assurance of salvation I believe is not as importance as salvation itself.  Fear should be vanquished by the belief in God’s goodness and love, not by running away from a dreaded truth.

In the article “Secret to mountain moving faith” posted at ITAKEOFFTHEMASK.COM, HIYAS pointed out what it takes in order to have authentic faith, a faith sufficient enough to face frustrations when we don’t immediately get what we want.

Indeed it is true, that whosoever believes in the Son shall be saved.  But let us take note that the Bible clearly states what is required is not a past belief nor a past action.  The word is “believes”, a continuing and persistent faith in the risen Christ.  It is all too easy to fall away believing all is already forgiven, that the battle with the principalities and powers that be is no longer going on to claim our very souls.  Man is not saved by good works alone, but faith without good fruit is dead, and no faith at all.  He who believes also persists; he who cannot persist may not have believed from the very beginning.

On Reincarnation

 As more and more people are being inclined to belief in the endless births and deaths brought about by reincarnation, we are apt to think of the logic or hope attached to a theory that has subsisted ’til the present time.  Why do men suppose we should live again and take upon another body?

Is it because men naturally desire immortality?  Is it for love of this world that men could not bear living it in exchange for something he knows nothing of that he’d ratherspend eternity in the familiar environment in which he has lived, hoping as though cursed, that the next life would indeed be better than the last?  Is this for fear of the Judgment to come, such that men may accept the temporary punishment of living in the body of a fish hoping that this is an easier burden than the eternity of separation from God that awaits those who have chosen the dark path in this life? 

 Men dislike uncertainty.  Men could not accept the idea of dying.  Men desire a comfortable explanation which he can accept and live with without seeking for a truth he fears may not fulfill that which he so desires.

But what does the Church say about all this?  For those who have the courage to hear, what is there to realize? 

Irenaeus

“We may undermine [the Hellenists'] doctrine as to transmigration from body to body by this fact-that souls remember nothing whatever of the events which took place in their previous states of existence. For if they were sent forth with this object, that they should have experience of every kind of action, they must of necessity retain a remembrance of those things which have been previously accomplished, that they might fill up those in which they were still deficient, and not by always hovering, without intermission, through the same pursuits, spend their labor wretchedly in vain. . . . With reference to these objections, Plato . . . attempted no kind of proof, but simply replied dogmatically that when souls enter into this life they are caused to drink of oblivion by that demon who watches their entrance, before they effect an entrance into the bodies. It escaped him that he fell into another, greater perplexity. For if the cup of oblivion, after it has been drunk, can obliterate the memory of all the deeds that have been done, how, O Plato, do you obtain the knowledge of this fact . . . ?” (Against Heresies 2:33:1-2 [A.D. 189]).