Can a person be saved who doesn't believe in eternal security?

Amen to this post.

 

Let us pray for this young man to get an education.

Now I am and independant fundamental Bible believing Baptist who prefers the KJV but reognizes the need,use, and validity of other english translations of God's Holy Word.I also recognize the need for Bible college and seminary training which includes language study(greek&hebrew)as well as good Bible doctrine and sound theology.

Although I am not an intellectual myself I do enjoy reading,research,and study. So although I may not be the brightest bulb in the box, I am not the dimmest either.I think as you will find in most places there is a wide cross section of mental abilities, whether it be liberal or fundamental.

 

From the Church's main web page.


I fully agree with Rev. Jim and Craig. Just because we use newer Translations of God's Word does not mean we are liberal.

 

Good post Bill.

 

If a person can be 'lost' by not believing "OSAS" then the main objective of teaching must be to psyche them into believing it at some instantaneous point in time, since if it is true and the person believed it even if just for an instant, its truth must endure to salvation, or else it's not true.

What a bunch of baloney this whole issue is, as well as that post-and-run coward who started it.

 

Of course they can. If they were truly born of the Spirit...yes, of course.

They will struggle in areas where God would not have them struggle, but they would of course still be saved.

(even during those times when they thought they werent!)

God bless,

Mike

 

Jim,

I'm a 5 pointer too!

Mike

 

Then you're not typical 5-pointers, gentlemen; the TULIP-pickers I've known have all been miserable so-and-sos whose use of the English language is limited to sentences beginning with the word "Don't...".

Looking forward to a cuppa in Heaven with both of you...proper Christians only drink tea, don't you know...and God of course is English

 

Many Christians do not believe in eternal security and cite Hebrews 6:4-6 and Hebrews 10:26-29.

As a youth I really believed you could lose your salvation through rebellion against the Lord by sinning after knowing Jesus. It was only in my third year of Bible College that, through my independent study, that I came to believe in the perfect security of the believer. In I John 5:18 by studying the Greek via Kenneth Wuest I read that is Christ who keeps believers and noone or nothing can tear us out of his hand and loving care.

Many are taught that people like us teach that one can get saved and then future behavior does not matter. Sin that grace may abound. Since Jesus takes away all our sins, we have our ticket for Heaven--not matter what.

 

I agree, especially with the last part - many are under the impression that the OSAS doctrine gives a licence to sin, the denomination I belong to holds to that! I personally am leaning towards OSAS but do wonder about the verses in Hebrews you pointed out.

 

Romans 5:20 Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound:

6:1 & 2 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?

 

Whether a person believes in or doesn't believe in eternal security, does not make that person saved. The only Salvation is through believing on the Lord Jesus Christ.

If believeing in eternal security was the only thing someone had to believe in, then many outside of Christ would be saved. That is not the case.

Jesus said 'No one cometh unto the Father, but by me.'

 

Most people I've ran into on this board believes in Eternal Security including myself.

Some believe that you are save even if you stop believing and stop following Christ.

There are others (usually in the same group) that believe you can live completely worldly (while believing in Christ) and die in that state and you will still go to heaven.
Yet there are those who take Christ at his words and persevere till the end (Rev 3) and are saved. While beliving all of the Bible promises (warning and encouragemnts).


But you ask can a person be saved who know differently than you, yes they can. No one on this board is ever Completely right about everything. You may be able to learn something true from those that are outside of your group that can save your life.

 

There are more than a few Baptists who have learned that the concept of eternal security was entirely foreign to the early church and that the doctrine of eternal security was first formulated in the 16th century during the Protestant Reformation as a byproduct of a seriously erroneous view of the sovereignty of God that was first formulated a few years earlier.

There are also more than a few Baptists who have learned that the “proof texts” used to support the doctrine of eternal security, when very carefully read, especially in the Greek New Testament, do NOT teach that doctrine.

There are also more than a few Baptists who have learned that the “proof texts” used to support the doctrine of conditional security, when very carefully read, especially in the Greek New Testament, DO teach that doctrine.

If no one could be saved unless they believe in the doctrine of eternal security, no one was saved until the Protestant Reformation and Jesus, his eleven faithful disciples, Luke, Paul, James, Jude, and the Church Fathers that it pleased God to use to establish the New Testament Canon and to formulate the doctrine of the Trinity will all burn for eternity in the fires of hell. It could not be more obvious that it is the heretics and unbelievers rather than the followers of Christ who will spend eternity in the fires of hell.

 

Here are some of the verses in the Bible that for the first 1,500 years of the Church were understood to teach the doctrine of conditional security, and which since then have been used by the large majority of Bible scholars, pastors, and Christian lay people to teach the doctrine of conditional security:

Matt. 13:20. "The one on whom seed was sown on the rocky places, this is the man who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy;
21. yet he has no firm root in himself, but is only temporary, and when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he falls away.

Matt. 24:14. "For it is just like a man about to go on a journey, who called his own slaves and entrusted his possessions to them.
15. "To one he gave five talents, to another, two, and to another, one, each according to his own ability; and he went on his journey.
16. "Immediately the one who had received the five talents went and traded with them, and gained five more talents.
17. "In the same manner the one who had received the two talents gained two more.
18. "But he who received the one talent went away, and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money.
19. "Now after a long time the master of those slaves *came and *settled accounts with them.
20. "The one who had received the five talents came up and brought five more talents, saying, 'Master, you entrusted five talents to me. See, I have gained five more talents.'
21. "His master said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.'
22. "Also the one who had received the two talents came up and said, 'Master, you entrusted two talents to me. See, I have gained two more talents.'
23. "His master said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.'
24. "And the one also who had received the one talent came up and said, 'Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you scattered no seed.
25. 'And I was afraid, and went away and hid your talent in the ground. See, you have what is yours.'
26. "But his master answered and said to him, 'You wicked, lazy slave, you knew that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I scattered no seed.
27. 'Then you ought to have put my money in the bank, and on my arrival I would have received my money back with interest.
28. 'Therefore take away the talent from him, and give it to the one who has the ten talents.'
29. "For to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away.
30. "Throw out the worthless slave into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Mark 4:16. "In a similar way these are the ones on whom seed was sown on the rocky places, who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy;
17. and they have no firm root in themselves, but are only temporary; then, when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately they fall away.

Luke 8:13. "Those on the rocky soil are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no firm root; they believe for a while, and in time of temptation fall away.

John 15:5. "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.
6. "If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned.
7. "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
8. "My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.
9. "Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love.
10. "If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love.
11. "These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.

1 Cor. 9:27. but I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.

1 Cor. 10:11. Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.
12. Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall.

Gal. 5:1. It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.
2. Behold I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you.
3. And I testify again to every man who receives circumcision, that he is under obligation to keep the whole Law.
4. You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace.

Col. 1:21. And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds,
22. yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach--
23. if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister.

2 Thes. 2:3. Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction,
4. who opposes and exalts himself above every so- called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God.
5. Do you not remember that while I was still with you, I was telling you these things?
6. And you know what restrains him now, so that in his time he will be revealed.
7. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way.
8. Then that lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His coming;
9. that is, the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders,
10. and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved.
11. For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false,
12. in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness.that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God.

1 Tim. 4:1. But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons,
2. by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron,
3. men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth.

2 Tim 4:1. I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom:
2. preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.
3. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires,
4. and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.

Heb. 3:12. Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God.

Heb. 6:4. For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit,
5. and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come,
6. and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame.
7. For ground that drinks the rain which often falls on it and brings forth vegetation useful to those for whose sake it is also tilled, receives a blessing from God;
8. but if it yields thorns and thistles, it is worthless and close to being cursed, and it ends up being burned.

Heb. 10:26. For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,
27. but a terrifying expectation of judgment and THE FURY OF A FIRE WHICH WILL CONSUME THE ADVERSARIES.
28. Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
29. How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?
30. For we know Him who said, "VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY." And again, "THE LORD WILL JUDGE HIS PEOPLE."
31. It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

2 Pet. 2:1. But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves.
2. Many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned;
3. and in their greed they will exploit you with false words; their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.
4. For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment;
5. and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;
6. and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter;
7. and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men
8. (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds),
9. then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment,
10. and especially those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires and despise authority. Daring, self-willed, they do not tremble when they revile angelic majesties,
11. whereas angels who are greater in might and power do not bring a reviling judgment against them before the Lord.
12. But these, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, reviling where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed,
13. suffering wrong as the wages of doing wrong. They count it a pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are stains and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, as they carouse with you,
14. having eyes full of adultery that never cease from sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed, accursed children;
15. forsaking the right way, they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness;
16. but he received a rebuke for his own transgression, for a mute donkey, speaking with a voice of a man, restrained the madness of the prophet.
17. These are springs without water and mists driven by a storm, for whom the black darkness has been reserved.
18. For speaking out arrogant words of vanity they entice by fleshly desires, by sensuality, those who barely escape from the ones who live in error,
19. promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved.
20. For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.
21. For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment handed on to them.
22. It has happened to them according to the true proverb, "A DOG RETURNS TO ITS OWN VOMIT," and, "A sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire."

2 Pet. 3:14. Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless,
15. and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you,
16. as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.
17. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness,
18. but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.

Jude 1:4. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
5. Now I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe.
6. And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day,
7. just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.
8. Yet in the same way these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh, and reject authority, and revile angelic majesties.
9. But Michael the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, "The Lord rebuke you!"
10. But these men revile the things which they do not understand; and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed.
11. Woe to them! For they have gone the way of Cain, and for pay they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam, and perished in the rebellion of Korah.
12. These are the men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted;
13. wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam; wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever.
14. It was also about these men that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying, "Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones,
15. to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him."
16. These are grumblers, finding fault, following after their own lusts; they speak arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of gaining an advantage.
Keep Yourselves in the Love of God
17. But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ,
18. that they were saying to you, "In the last time there will be mockers, following after their own ungodly lusts."
19. These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly- minded, devoid of the Spirit.
20. But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit,
21. keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life.

(All Scriptures are from the NASB, 1995)

 

Good work, Craig....and sobering.

 

I used to belong to a denomination that doesn't teach once saved always saved: the United Methodist Church. I believe that if I had died while still a Methodist I would still go to Heaven because I believed in Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord.

I'm currently a Lutheran, and Martin Luther taught the final assurance of salvation.

The following verses have been used to support the possibility of losing one's salvation:

1. Ezekiel 18:24-26.
2. Ezekiel 33:13.
3. Matthew 24:13.
4. Mark 13:13.
5. I Timothy 4:16.
6. James 5:11-20.
7. Hebrews 3:13-14.
8. Hebrews 10:36.
9. Revelation 2:10.
10. Revelation 3:5.
11. Revelation 3:10-11.
12. Revelation 3:15-16.
13. I Peter 1:3-5.
14. Hebrews 6:4-6.
15. Hebrews 10:26-29.
16. I John 5:16.
17. Philippians 2:12.
18. Colossians 1:23.

Passages called upon by those defending the security of the believer:

1. John 10:27-29.
2. John 3:16.
3. Romans 8:1.
4. Romans 8:9-11.
5. Romans 8:28.
6. Romans 8:29-31.
7. Romans 8:32-33.
8. Romans 8:35-39.
9. Romans 11:29.
10. Galatians 3:1ff.
11. Ephesians 2:8-10.
12. Philippians 1:6.
13. John 6:29.
14. Hebrews 10:39.
15. I Peter I:3-11.
16. I John 4:4.
17. I John 5:11-13.
18. I John 3:2.
19. Romans 1:16-17.
20. I Corinthians 5:4-5.
21. Zechariah 4:6.

These verses were taken from a pamphlet called "Security of the Believer" by the Christian Research Institute.

 

I hope that your are aware that the Lutheran Church does NOT teach eternal security but that those who are truly regenerate can fall from grace and lose their salvation. Philip Melanchthon, a close friend of Martin Luther and a Professor of New Testament at Wittenberg University, drafted a confession of faith and presented it to Emperor Charles V on June 25, 1530. It is now commonly known at The Augsburg Confession and it is the foundation of Lutheran theology. Notice especially the words that I have emphasized using bold type in Article XII of that Confession:

May I recommend that you read the following Lutheran Commentaries on Hebrews:

Delitzsch, Franz. Commentary on the Epistle to The Hebrews. Translated from the German by Thomas L. Kingsbury, M. A. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1871.

Lenski, Richard. The Interpretation of the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Interpretation of The Epistle of James. Minneapols: Augsburg Publishing House, 1966.

 

Thank you for that information, Craigbyhesea. I was never informed of that when I took my church's membership class and studied Luther's small catechism. I'm going to get a copy of the Augsburg Confessions and other Lutheran writings and find out more. Thank you again. That was an eye opener.