Let the unredeemed reader pause: in a moment, here and now, he can have _everlasting life_ with God's assurance that he "shall never perish" ("I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish."--John 10:28). It is a tremendous decision, and it may prove to be a fatal one, to turn away and not believe on Christ and have as a present possession eternal life. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, _hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life_."--John 5:24. _FOR FURTHER STUDY_:--Some who believe that the redeemed have only the _promise_ of eternal life, but that they have not eternal life, as a real present possession, base this belief on such Scriptures as, "In hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before the world began" (Titus 1:2), in connection with, "Hope that is seen is not hope; for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for what we see not, then do we with patience wait for it."--Rom. 8:24, 25. Their thought is, if we live "in hope of eternal life," then we have not really eternal life as a present possession; that we cannot hope for what we already have. But Jesus said positively that the believer "_hath passed out_ of death _into_ life" (John 5:24, R. V.), and He contrasts the one who "_hath_ eternal life" with those to whom He says, "Ye have no life _in you_." A man can have eternal life here, and at the same time hope for it beyond the grave. A man has his wife and children _now_, and _hopes_ to have them next year; a man away from wife and children has his life _now_; and yet he lives in hope of his life (the same life, that part of it not yet lived) with his wife and children a month from now; an exile from home has his life now; yet lives in hope of his life (the same life, that part of it not yet lived) in his native land a year from now. So, the child of God's, the redeemed man's, citizenship is in Heaven (Phil. 3:20); he lives in hope of eternal life there; yet it is the same eternal life (that part of it not lived) that he has here and now.