Your salvation does NOT lie in the balance at the time of your death. If you have asked the Lord Jesus Christ to come into your life while you are alive, and you obey His commands, satan cannot snatch you out of his hands. You can have the assurance of your salvation before you die. You can have it NOW. Your church has kept you in bondage over this issue. Mary can’t help you then if you haven’t received her son into your life.
That’s a big “if.” Catholics call this a conversion, when we pass from a formal relationship with the Lord, to a more personal one. Be careful that the assurance you feel is not merely complacency.
Why does my citing scripture in the format of the Hail Mary prayer evoke so much hostility and condescension?
If our lives display a pattern of perseverance and spiritual fruit, we have not only a confidence in our present state of grace but also of our future perseverance with God. Yet we cannot have an infallible certitude of our own salvation. There is the possibility of self-deception (cf. Matt. 7:22-23). As Jeremiah expressed it, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it?" (Jer. 17:9). There is also the possibility of falling from grace through mortal sin, and even of falling away from the faith entirely, for as Jesus told us, there are those who "believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away" (Luke 8:13). It is in the light of these warnings and admonitions that we must understand Scripture’s positive statements concerning our ability to know and have confidence in our salvation. Assurance we may have; infallible certitude we may not.
As the Bible says, I am already saved (Rom. 8:24, Eph. 2:5–8), but I’m also being saved (1 Cor. 1:8, 2 Cor. 2:15, Phil. 2:12), and I have the hope that I will be saved (Rom. 5:9–10, 1 Cor. 3:12–15). Like the apostle Paul I am working out my salvation in fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12), with hopeful confidence in the promises of Christ (Rom. 5:2, 2 Tim. 2:11–13).