Yes, I Believe In Eternal Security!

Vera was an elderly lady who sat alone in a corner at a pub (bar) as she had for the last ten years. She was in her mid-sixties, lonely, with nobody ever approaching her to ask how she was. One evening, a young woman named Doreen approached and sat at her table. After handing out a tract to her, they engaged in conversation, with Doreen gently telling the senior citizen how much Jesus loves her.

"I sat here every evening since my husband died and nobody had ever spoken to me," was her response.

When Doreen offered to escort her home, Vera's eyes lit up and asked, "Will you? And stay to have a cup of tea with me?"

The two made their way to Vera's little house and over a cup of tea, Doreen introduced her to Jesus Christ. Both fell to their knees and Vera gave herself to Jesus that very night.

A few days later, Doreen returned to visit her elderly friend.
"I'll never need to go back to the pub again." Vera said as her face shone with joy. "Instead I'll get my comfort from the Bible you gave me. I'm now ready to meet my Maker."

True to her word, Vera was never seen in the pub again. A week later she died peacefully in her sleep and had gone to Glory.

(Adapted from Doreen Irvine, From Witchcraft to Christ, Concordia, 1973.)

The above is a true story. It took place in Bristol not long after the end of World War II. But it is also a story which has a lot of truth crammed into it. It tells how God loves sinners and his heart goes out for them to be saved. It also has no regard to the person's age. She recieved Christ within the last few days of her entire life. All her sins were forgiven. Neither was she baptised in water. Nor was she warned that she must stay faithful and not sin, or else she would lose her salvation. Instead we see Jesus, warmly embracing her the moment she gave herself to his redemption, and shortly afterward escorted her home to the glories of Heaven, with no particular works done other than to find comfort in the Bible. On top of this, her refusal to return to the pub had nothing to do with fear of punishment or losing her salvation. Instead it had everything to do with finding a greater source of personal joy and satisfaction in the Bible. That is the grace of God.

Vera's face was radiant with joy when Doreen returned to visit her. Does this mean that, because she was not baptised in water, that she went to Hell after her death? Just to ask such a question exposes the sheer foolishness of the theory! Yes, Jesus did say that he who believes and is baptised will be saved, and Peter endorses this with the exortation, "Repent and be baptised, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."
(Mark 16:16 with Acts 2:38.) I do believe that every believer should be baptised in water after conversion. I was baptised myself, and I remember this as being an exhilerating experience. But to say that conversion without baptism is void and that salvation is forfeitable, looks to me as putting a limit to God's power to save as well as a serious flaw in God's character. God's grace is much greater than many churchmen would believe.

The heart of God is to save sinners, to give them eternal life which include everlasting fellowship with him in his presence. But we as Christians have imposed conditions over the centuries which had clouded God's love for us with the fact that God is so holy, that he cannot have anyone tainted with sin in his presence, and therefore the need to be shut out from his presence to a lost eternity - unless we believe in and do certain things.

The Bible teaches two attributes of God. The first one is that he is perfect, holy and totally repulsed by any sin, and anyone tainted with sin. The other attribute is that God is a loving being, that he loves us so much that his heart's desire is to have us - mankind - to share in the pure, glorious love that eternally existed between Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  It is rather like what I call, The Impossible Object. Although it looks fine drawn on paper, it is impossible for it to be manufactured and exist as a solid. Simply because to two ends of the object are incompatable with each other.

That is how God is to us, and Christian believers have been wrestling with this for nearly two millennia. To get a clearer idea to what sin is really all about, we only need to look on what Jesus taught about it during his ministry.

In Matthew's Gospel, we have Jesus telling us that we only need to look at a woman with a lustful eye, and we have committed adultery with her in our hearts (5:28.) And he also said that to call someone a prat, so to speak, is guilty of murder (5:21-22.) And James adds that snobbery and favouritism is equated with murder as well (James 2:11.) So if thoughts and motives alienates us from God, indeed we have a problem. Only through the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ can such an impossible object exist.

And that is the whole purpose of God's grace, accomplished through the Atonement made by Jesus Christ. I wonder on how intense the love of the Father and of the Spirit have for the Son, and the prospect of severance must have been like for the Godhead.  When Jesus hung on that cross, his body crushed with agonising pain, how did this look to the Father? And for the first time in eternity, had to look away, as the sin of the whole world was poured onto him.

The extent of the Father's grace was, and will always be, to reward his Son for laying down his life for us. In John 17, we see Jesus interceding with his Father for all believers. He emphasised his possession of all believers as a gift to him from his Father as a reward for laying down his life for them (John 17:6-7, 9-10. Also 10:27-30.) This is a fulfillment of what the prophet Isaiah wrote:

Therefore I will give him a portion among the great (or many), and he will divide the spoils with the strong (numerous), because he poured out his life unto death, and he was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
Isaiah 53:12.

Eternal Security of the believer is an essential part of the Gospel, and believing in it makes an impact to the Christian life. One thing it does not do, and it is so important to realise, that I emphasise:
Believing in Eternal Security of the Believer does not encourage the Christian to sin willingly! Instead, accepting such doctrine would help and encourage victory over sin.

Christians who believe that one can lose his salvation by falling away from the faith or by committing a serious sin, or a number of serious sins, are often known as Arminians, because this idea was endorsed by James Arminius, a 16th Century Dutch theologian who insisted on human choice over Sovereignty of God.  Arminianism is taught widely in many Protestant churches, and it is really a cross between Roman Catholicism with its seven sacraments for salvation, and the Reformation with its emphasis on being saved by faith in Christ only. Arminian Christians believe that Eternal Security is "the doctrine of devils." But as one blogger on this site has put it, wrote that all religions embrace the "Arminian" view of a forfeit-able salvation, from John Wesley's Methodism to Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and other religions. It is true that only a small section of the Protestant faith believe in Eternal Security, if so, then this does not bare well for the Devil, who, according to the Lord Jesus, is the ruler of the whole world.

But the real problem with Arminius's conditional salvation was unwittingly exposed by a British author, Methodist David Pawson, considered a modern-day prophet by many Christians due to his good schooling. He recommended keeping accounts of sins committed and making sure that they are remembered and confessed. This is little more than Roman Catholicism, except that the confession is made directly to God instead of to a priest inside a confessional box. And here is the crunch which reveals the flaws of Arminianism. Can you as a believer can really be true to yourself and declare that you never lusted after a woman? And if you did, did you immediately confess? Or did you just forget about it? And what about when that person winds you up the wrong way? You shouted, "Idiot!" or some other name. Or do you, as a university graduate, feel superior to your neighbour who holds a manual occupation? With this train of belief, little wonder that God is seen as implacable, and despite your belief in "faith only" - you really have to work hard to stay saved and to keep your salvation. It is just the right recipe for liberalism and eventually atheism.

The belief of Eternal Security has been the fruit of my experience. After a bad experience with Christians back in 1994, I too renounced Christ and the Christian faith. I was in Israel at the time, and I found myself lying on the bed at a backpackers hostel, empty of people, in the middle of the day, while the souk outside within the walls of Jerusalem Old City was alive and bustling. I felt wretched and miserable, a victim of poor evaluation by other Christians for not being well educated and not holding a profession. Some months later, an Arminian Christian named John asked me if the Lord was bidding me to return to him with a threatening attitude, or else suffer the consequence of eternal death. I told him not so, but I felt the Lord calling me very, very gently, and I felt his love. Gradually, I came round and began to rebuild my faith. Such as the belief in Eternal Security!

The character and the ways of God are like the Impossible Object. The truth is there is nothing we can do to "correct" the matter! Salvation is given as a free gift to all who believe. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ accomplished it, and all we can do is to receive it. And because salvation is of God, and not of ourselves, there is nothing we can do to hold on to it, but to revel in it and bring honour to the One who gave it.

Glory to God, his ways are unsearchable!

Pelagianism - The Foundation of British Christianity - Really?

In my last blog, 300 Young People Saved... I suggested the idea that underscoring the Calvinism/Arminian debate was the possibility that not everyone who gets converted, particularly at a large Christian festival such as Newday, Spring Harvest or Stoneleigh, become genuine believers in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. Here I brought up the Parable of the Sower, delivered by Jesus Christ himself, which can be found in Matthew 13:1-9. We saw that the first group, which represents the hard soil trodden down to form a solid surface of the footpath or wayside were those whose hearts refused to take in the Word of God and after a while, had forgotten it. I then suggested that it was unlikely that any in that group of 300 were represented at Newday.

Then there were those in the fourth group, the good soil. These people had hearts which took in the divine message and with it nourished their souls. Eventually they will produce crops which will glorify God and become beneficial to others. These are the true saints, genuine believers who have received the gift of perseverance within their salvation package, and therefore they will never fall away and become lost souls again. This concept is known formerly as The Perseverance of the Saints, Eternal Security of the Believer, or Once Saved always Saved and this was advocated by Church Reformer John Calvin, Hence Calvinism.

But Jesus also mentioned two other types of ground on to which the seed fell, one being the rocky ground with a thin layer of soil. Seed which fell on this kind of ground actually sprouted, but soon withered under the scorching heat of the sun. These represented the falling away from the faith as soon as a challenge arose or when the chips were down. The other kind of soil affected was one which had other plants growing from it, choking out the young saplings. These were those who loved the world and the things therein.

It was this departure from the faith and from the churches which might have stirred the debate. If these people first believed, were they saved? For the Calvinist, no they were not saved. They most likely had an intellectual belief in the Gospel but failed to mix this information with saving faith, that is, to place their personal trust in the Saviour. I confess that I hold to this concept. The Arminian, on the other hand, believes that all three were actually saved, but both the rocky ground and the overgrown had fallen away and in turn, had lost their salvation and therefore are lost again. As such, we can ascribe a greater sense of generosity to the Arminian for accepting all three groups as potentially saved, but remain subject to self-perseverance of the will or suffer eternal loss.

To sum up: The first group, the footpath, are unbelievers who first resist then forgets the divine message. The fourth group, the good soil, are true believers who had allowed the message to bear fruit in their lives. The other two, the rocky and the overgrown grounds, can be described as "false converts." This phrase became common during the Great Awakening of the churches in America during the 19th Century. It is used by some churches to this day, and I think it's more of an American terminology than a British one.

Although in a typical church, it can be very difficult to tell a false convert from a genuine believer, sooner or later they will manifest their phoniness, mainly by falling away from the faith and leaving the church entirely, either in an apathetic state (couldn't care less about anything spiritual), or with a degree of hostility.

We also saw in the last article how 19th Century evangelist and revivalist Charles Grandison Finney used the term false convert quite freely in his lectures and sermons. However, after reading some of Finney's Revival Lectures as well as the assessments of his critics, it is a sad fact that I cannot agree with all of Finney's theology, for he had based his philosophy on Pelagianism which, in a nutshell, it means that one can be saved by self-purification of one's own heart, the free will and ability to choose between good and evil. Finney strongly advocated total obedience to God's Law in order to be saved.

In order to present this article, I had the privilege to read an article here on the Internet presented by Lewis Loflin, a devout supporter of Pelagius. You can reach his website by entering "Pelagius" in your Google browser, then click, "Pelagius Was Right".

Pelagius

According to Lewis Loflin, Pelagius was a rugged British monk who was born around AD 354 and died any time between 418 and 425, although records of his life are pretty scant. But there is reliable evidence that Pelagius opposed the teachings of Augustine, who believed in the Sovereignty of God and Original Sin. Instead, Pelagius advocated salvation only through free will and full obedience to the Law of the Old Testament.

Loflin is a Pelagian himself, which reveals in his blog a startling departure from Biblical truth with which not only set the stage of Finney's theology but also the thought pattern of many a British form of Christianity - individualistic, freewill and stoic.

Within Loflin's blog, Pelagius advocated these six points:

1. Adam was created liable to death, and would have died, whether he sinned or not.
2. The sin of Adam hurt himself only and not the human race.
3. Infants at their birth are in the same state as Adam before the fall.
4. Neither is the death nor fall of Adam does the whole of man die, nor the Resurrection of Christ (brings man to) rise again.
5. The Law introduces men to the Kingdom of Heaven, just as in the same as the Gospel does.
6. Even before the coming of Christ, there were some men sinless.

It is also interesting that Loflin also supports the Arian heresy, which flourished during the fifth Century. Arian was a bishop who denied the Deity of Christ, therefore relegating him to an angel inferior to the Father and as such, forever subordinate to God. The Watchtower Society of Jehovah's Witnesses teach very much the same heresy today. The consequence of all this is that the Atonement of Christ on the cross had no longer any imputation power to redeem the sinner. Instead, Christ was crucified as a show of public justice, a theory which Charles Finney advocated.

Instead, the sinner has the natural ability to turn from his sins and put his faith in Christ. But rather to receive the imputation of Christ's own righteousness bestowed on the sinner, the sinner himself must reform his own heart to full obedience to God's Laws as defined in the Old Testament, namely the ten Commandments. It is actually a life of perfectionism. According to Finney, the Christian is always in danger of slipping back into apostasy (looking after his own selfish affairs and not on God's interests) and ending up in Hell after death.

But at least Charles Finney accepted all of the New Testament as the inspired Word of God, which includes all of Paul's letters, on which some of his sermons have as the main text. Lewis Loflin on the other hand, has a distinct dislike for Paul, and he does not accept his letters as inspired. Instead, he slams at both Martin Luther and John Calvin for embracing the theology of Paul and Augustine and rejecting Christ's own moral teachings as irrelevant.

Pelagius (as shown by Loflin) taught that only sinners will die for their own sins and denies any connection with Adam's. He quotes Scriptures such as Ezekiel 18:20 and 33:20 as examples. Rather, according to Loflin, it was Paul who coined up the idea of inherited sin, especially in the 5th chapter of Romans. He also pushed forward the idea that there were men who chose to remain sinless before the first Advent of Christ. This would include Abraham, whom God called his friend, Caleb, King Joshua, Isaiah and Daniel, who God called "beloved". In Luke's first chapter, the priest Zachariah and his wife Elizabeth were described as "walking in obedience of God's Commandments, blameless" before the conception of Christ. And when Jesus was ministering, a young man approached and asked, "What must I do to enter life?" To which Jesus replied, "If you want to enter life, obey the Commandments." (Matthew 19:16-17). According to Pelagius and Loflin, no mention of the cleansing power of the Blood of Christ is found here.

Although Pelagius disagreed with Augustus on Original Sin and divine Grace, as one born a Roman Catholic, I can see a remarkable resemblance between the teachings of Pelagius and the Catechism of the Catholic Faith.

There are some differences too, such as in Catholicism, the cleansing power of God's Grace in the Sacraments, particularly Baptism, Confirmation and the Eucharist (Holy Communion). All this was denied by Pelagius. But how a sinner attains Heaven, there are similarities between the Catechism and Pelagius. In Rome, one must be baptised as an infant - to cleanse the baby from Adam's Original Sin (a doctrine taught by Augustine), then receive Confirmation, the receiving of the Holy Spirit according to Pentecost, then Communion, where the power to cleanse from sin is in the sacrament itself. But to get to Heaven, the Catholic must remain sinless and obey both the Ten Commandments and the Church's own Commandments. If he commits a mortal sin, he loses the Grace of God and will go to Hell for eternity after death. The only way a fallen Catholic can regain this Grace is to undergo Penance, a set of prayers and good works ordained by the priest. Similar to this, Finney taught that a fallen Christian must start again with his first work to receive forgiveness, which like with the Catholic Church, is for past sins only.

St Peter's Church, Rome

Then in the 16th Century, a Spanish Jesuit monk Luis Molina became the lecturer of a young Dutch student named James Arminius.

For a detailed discussion of this event, click on to my blog published April 10th, 2011 - Once Saved Always Saved, Part 1 - Origins

Molina was able to convince Arminius of a halfway knowledge between the Roman Catechism and Calvinism, which was Arminius' background. Molina taught this "Halfway Knowledge", also known as semi-Palagianism. This teaching was a way to reconcile two opposing views on one's salvation - self-will versus the Sovereign Grace of God. Semi-Pelagianism became the core teaching of many Protestant Churches, particularly the Anglican Church and the Methodists. And that, according to Loflin, the Arminians deny having anything to do with Pelagianism. There are, of course some differences. Arminians accept God as the Father of all true believers and one is saved by Grace through faith, but this grace is merited on human choice of the free will, and in turn, every believer must persevere in his faith and walk with God, or else he falls from Grace and lose his salvation. Arminians will encourage a fallen believer to recover his grace through repentance, but there is a point of no return, beyond whom the apostate is lost forever, unable to repent. It is interesting to note that the point of no return, in addition to Finney, was also advocated by David Pawson, one of England's leading Methodist and Arminian preacher, in his book, Unlocking the Bible.

For an answer, here I wish to concentrate one Biblical based argument about the sinlessness of all Old Testament Saints. It becomes obvious that neither Pelegius nor Loflin really understood the Bible at all.

For example: Isaiah, when confronted by the Glory of God, cried out:
"Woe is me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty."

Then the prophet Daniel, when interceding for his people and for Jerusalem, prayed:
...We have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and rebelled. We have turned away from your commands and your laws. We...we...etc, and not "They have turned away... Chapter 9:4-19.

Abraham, when interceding for Sodom, referred to himself as dust and ashes, and even young David sees himself as a flea when confronted by King Saul. All these indicate that these great men of God were indeed sinners and not sinless, as Pelagius and Loflin thought. They were indeed saved, but not by their obedience to the Law but by faith in their coming Messiah.
The righteousness of Christ were imputed to them due to their faith in that their Messiah was due to arrive in the future of their point in time. For us, the righteousness of Christ is imputed to every genuine believer for his faith in the Christ who has already come. In other words, they looked forward, we look back, but the faith and imputation is the same. Works in upholding the Law follows after salvation, not before.

New hearts are given to every believer, it is not the reformation of the old, sinful heart. We are regenerated, born again, given a new birth. We become a new creation, the old has passed away, crucified with Christ. The Bible promises something much better than the likes of Augustine, Pelagius, Arminius, Finney or Loflin could ever offer.

Loflin made a comment about the statement made by German theologian Karl Barth when he visited Britain. He noted the strong adherence to Pelagius by the Brits- a reflection of the rugged individualism of the Celtic monk, free to choose between good and evil, stoic, faith being practical as well as spiritual, his care of the garden, the natural environment and for wildlife, along with respect for each other. All very well I suppose, but with reasoning like that, what is the point of Christ and him Crucified?