Salvations Probationary State

Nice spin, but it's just not Biblical. Again you have to but your personal spin on things to try and keep up the unScriptural game of let God's words really mean what I want them to mean.

See eternal salvaiton is not about walking a path. Eternal salvation is about a one-time decision in a person's life. Walking the correct path is only for those that are saved. If you aren't saved you aren't walking a path you are dead in trespasses and sins. Dead men don't walk unlike what the movie title says.

 

Sheep are called holy all throughout Scriptures.

Someone who's headed for the lake of fire is not holy.

 

Why does it seem impossible for you to debate without becoming insulting and putting words into other people's mouths?

But, Numbers 18:17 gives us the picture: But the firstling of a cow, or the firstling of a sheep, or the firstling of a goat, thou shalt not redeem; they are holy: thou shalt sprinkle their blood upon the altar, and shalt burn their fat for an offering made by fire, for a sweet savour unto the LORD.

He's not going to give a picture of an animal as being holy in one place, and then use them as a picture of someone who's going to the lake of fire in another.

God is not the author of confusion, I don't care what you've been taught your entire life. I was taught that "lost sheep" were unsaved, when I was younger. But, I came to realize that "lost sheep" are sheep who have gone astray.

When a shepherd looks for his lost sheep, they were already his. Now, he may look for new sheep for his flock, but his lost sheep were already his!

The Bible doesn't spend a great deal of time on how to become saved and on those who are unsaved, but it spends a great deal of time on what to do after salvation, and the consequences of such actions. (Both good and bad.)

 

How much more clear could I make it that this is what Scripture is saying?

I've stated it, I've explained it, I've shown the picture in the OT that we're given to show this...

There aren't many more ways that I can show this.

They are sheep that are perishing (the word translated as "lost" is "perishing"), just as the children of Israel perished in the wilderness. The children of Israel were in the Promised Land when they left Egypt; then they were baptized, then they wandered in the wilderness; then a "few" (the children of the children of Israel and only two others) reached the Land Flowing with Milk and Honey (the Kingdom).

Lost sheep are those that have gone astray, not those who have never been sheep. They are in danger of perishing or losing their lives.

This interchangeability with "lost" and "unsaved" that has popped up in the church in the last many years has led many people into grave error in studying Scripture.

 

HP you are all over the place. You just need to stick to one subject

You are cherry picking a lot of verses there that don't speak to the same subject.

Let's just take what the text says. Jesus came to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Most of Christendom has taken the word lost and equated it with unsaved, but there is nothing in Scripture that shows us that equation.

What does it mean to be lost? It means that it is an object that belongs to an owner which is not currently in his possession.

So you have saved individual that belong to God, who are not currently in His possession because like the prodigal son they have gone off to do their own thing.

But unlike the father in the prodigal story, the Father has gone looking for His sheep to save them. Not because they are eternally unsaved, because they are already His sheep, but because they are away from His care and are among the dangers of the wolves and other enemies of the sheep.

Also you just have to look at the message that was being delivered to these people to know they were spiritually alive, which means they were eternally saved. The message was a spiritual message of the kingdom. The kingdom is located in a spiritual realm that is not perceivable with the five senses.

So in order to even understand the message to either accept or reject it their spirits had to have been alive or they wouldn't have even been able to understand what was being said.

That's what Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3. He rebuked him because these were things that he should have known already.

If he was unsaved then there is no way possible he could have known these things, but Jesus said he should have which means his spirit was alive, just very sick.

 

HP, let me ask you a question: Have you ever lost a $20 bill that you never possessed? If so, how?

How about the following:

Luke 15:8: Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it?

Did she lose that piece of silver without ever possessing it?

 

"Lost", in Luke 15:8 is an aorist, active, subjuntive. She did the action. She lost. In order to lose it, she had to have it. It perished from her possession. How can that be if she never had it?

So, let me ask you a question again: Have you ever lost a $20 bill that you never possessed? If so, how?

 

If you actually believed what you typed you would be well on your way. If God does not possess them they have no right to the inheritance.

That's EXACTLY right. However eternal salvation is not an inhertiance it is a gift. Two different things. Our inhertiance is the opportuntity to rule and reign with Christ.

I wanted to repeat this, because this is exactly the point that we (myself, HoG, James) have been trying to make for some time now.

But it says Son, not Saviour. There's a reason why it says Son, because sonship has to do with inheritance and the inheritance is ruling as firstborn sons of God. And just as you said if we are not possessed by God, because we aren't possessing the Son then we are not going to get the inheritance.

Again eternal salvation is a gift, not an inheritance.

EXACTLY!!!

That's not true at all. Believers can fall away and forfeit their hope.

 

The Bible says those people are "dead" not lost.

That could be true of the salvation of the soul I guess, but not eternally saved people, because their salvation is never in jeopardy.