Hellfire Goodbye!

This is a continuation of my last blog, O.S.A.S. Quench Your Hellfire! Here, I wish to demonstrate how reading only a few Bible verses and then reading Hellfire into these verses can have a negative impact on a believer's faith and his relationship with God. OSAS is an acronym for Once Saved Always Saved, and its origin, believe it or not, was from a negative perspective, dreamt up by an itinerant preacher who constantly denies the truth of this statement, insisting that a believer can lose his salvation and end up in Hell after death if he was to fall away from his faith or commit a serious sin.  Therefore, before I go any further, let me define two words which may be jargon to anyone who is un-churched.

 

Arminianism - From James Arminius, 16th Century Dutch Theologian. Denies the reality of OSAS, instead insist that a believer in Christ can still end up in Hell after death if he falls from his faith, commit a serious sin, or to live an ungodly life. Arminianism is an offshoot of Roman Catholicism whose Catechism includes the forfeiture of divine grace should a Catholic commit a mortal sin. Salvation is more of human choice rather than God's sovereignty.

Well known advocates alive at present: Dan Corner (USA), David Pawson (UK).

 

Calvinism - From John Calvin, 16th Century French Theologian. Accepts the reality of OSAS due to the foreknowledge and predestination of God, and of his Sovereignty. Also known as Eternal Security of the believer, Calvinism emphasises the rebirth of the spirit in the believer, therefore making him a new creation in Christ and as such, cannot lose his salvation. Moderate Calvinism, the position held by the majority of those who accepts Eternal Security, also accepts that every person is commanded by God to come to repentance, indicating human choice.

Well known advocates alive at present: R.T. Kendal (USA), Terry Virgo (UK).

James Arminius 

As a moderate Calvinist myself, that is one who accepts Once Saved Always Saved as Biblical, I have seen shortcomings with this idea, as I have seen shortcomings with the Arminian group. The reality lies in the situation if a Christian falls into serious sin, or falls away from the faith. The Arminian will use such a case as proof that a believer is not at present eternally saved, and unless he comes to repentance, he would have forfeited his salvation and is in danger of eternal doom. However, if the believer's faith fails, and ends up as a permanent doubter or unbeliever, or even hostile to the faith, he has passed the point of no return, and is unable to repent. The only remedy with this kind of Sotorology (study of salvation) is for the believer to die physically shortly after conversion, while his faith is still alive and strong.  This Arminian way of thinking totally denies the Omniscience of God, as well as his Omnipotence and his Sovereignty.

 

I have personally known two separate church pastors who had both lost their role in church leadership after each of them having committed adultery at different times and places. Interesting enough, one pastor was a Calvinist, the other an Arminian. However, both parties believe that their salvation were kept by their confession and repentance from their sin. But supposing both of them carried on with their sinful lives? The Arminian would insist that they were both saved in the past, but now they are lost again and Hell awaits them both. But the Calvinist, who accepts Eternal Security, would insist that those two were never saved in the first place. That means they would have both ended up in Hell if they died even before committing the sin or falling away.

 

And here is what I see is the dreadful shortfall of those who believe in once saved always saved. According to them, a person can be committed to Jesus Christ for thirty years, then something horrible happens, and he falls away. According to one author:* the Calvinist would insist that he was never saved in the first place. But suppose he came back to the faith, and starts serving God again. Oh, he was saved after all. Then he falls away again. Ah! He wasn't saved after all. But he returns to the faith a while later. Oh, so he was saved all the time. So on and off, on and off. What is meant to be expected for a saved person, of course, is a life of constant godliness. And this is why I think this whole idea is totally ludicrous. Could it be possible for a person to be truly committed to Jesus Christ, publicly confessing him as Lord and enthusiastically celebrating his Resurrection every Easter Sunday - only to be proved that throughout all that time, by an unfortunate incident later in life, that he was still in his sins?

Let us consider this Scripture:
That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth you confess and are saved...For everyone who calls on the Lord will be saved.
Romans 10:9-10,13.

Now either this Scripture is true or it isn't. If true, does this imply eternity? Or is there some small print to be found elsewhere?  A couple of Old Testament verses can be applied here. In Isaiah 64:6, it says that all our righteousness are as filthy rags, and like a shrivelled leaf blown in the wind, we are all swept away, and no one calls on God's name. Jeremiah 17:9 confirms this, by declaring that the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Therefore can the Arminian, and for that matter, also the Roman Catholic Church, really put forth a convincing argument that once saved, we have to hold out faithful to keep our salvation and to refrain from sinning? If we were so helpless before believing, to the point that every good deed we have accomplished still stank before God, then are any of our efforts better after believing? How valuable are our works in order to stay saved, if they were worthless before believing?

But both Arminians and Calvinists alike find small print in the New Testament by adding the threat of Hellfire to all believers, when the writer had no intention of doing this. A classic example is 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 which reads:
Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

Christians in general, whether they believe in Once Saved Always Saved or not, always read Hellfire into these verses without properly considering what Paul was saying here. Calvinists would say that anyone who profess to be a believer and practices those things is proof that he was never saved - even if he might have been a devoted believer for a number of years earlier in his life. Arminians would say that anyone who falls back into this way of life after believing loses his salvation he had before, and is lost again - unless he repents. This is almost parallel with the Roman Catholic Catechism.

This seems to be the wretched consequence of chapter and verse! Originally intended for rapid searching and quoting of specific texts, Paul's intended thoughts are often lost. The New International Version, from where all these verses were taken, also adds in subtitles, breaking up the chapter entirely and forming separate subjects of discussion. Therefore what the writer is trying to say gets lost under a mountain of theological debate.

So what is Paul saying here? He was showing his shock and disgust over believing Christians taking their disputes to a Court of unbelievers. In verse 2 and 3, Paul assures with a promise that they - the Corinthian saints - will judge the world, and they will judge angels. (A promise of Eternal Security?) So this must apply to us also. If we are to judge angels, what on earth are we doing, bringing a dispute to Court, to be decided by an unbelieving magistrate? Paul then shows us that these judges, to whom the disputing saints were allowing to decide for them, were themselves guilty of many sins, one in particular was abandoning their wives to bed with prostitutes, along with other ungodly acts. But prostitution, apparently was the magistrate's chief sin.

So in this context, I have stripped the chapter of verse references, and I have condensed it to make clear Paul's thoughts. Here is the result:

What? You who are believers in Jesus Christ Resurrected are taking a dispute to Court? Are you letting an unbelieving magistrate decide your case? This is crazy! You are going to judge the world, and angels too - and you take a dispute to Court. Really, how pathetic you really are! Don't you know that these magistrates are guilty of many sins themselves, so how could they possibly decide on your case? Don't you know that those unbelieving judges who practice sexual immorality will not inherit the kingdom of God? Neither will those who steal, are greedy, slander, swindle, drink to excess, engage in homosexual acts, and so on. These magistrates do all those things, but you have been washed by the blood of Jesus and made holy by the Spirit of God.

Gosh, by letting them set an example over you, you even do the things they have been doing, such as prostitution. Don't you understand that if you, who have the Spirit of God dwelling in you, lie with a prostitute, you become one flesh with her? Yet you look up to these judges so much that you are following their ways. So I say to all you saints: Flee from fornication! For whoever sin in other areas sin outside the body. But if you fornicate, you sin against your own body. Consider this: Would your life be honouring to Christ before other men if you were to cringe in pain as a result of your actions? How dishonouring to God is it, if the temple of the holy Spirit is cringing in pain due to a sexually transmitted infection?

In this paraphrase, I tried to stay as close to the original Scripture as I possibly could. But I can see the real meaning of Scripture becoming clear. Paul was not threatening Hell fire to the saints. So the average Christian should not read Hellfire into verses which does not imply it.

There are other Scriptures which Christians can read Hellfire into them. Such as 2 Timothy 2:11-13, which reads:
Here is a trustworthy saying:
If we died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him.
If we disown him, he will also disown us; if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot deny himself.

It looks to me that Arminian believers love to quote these verses as proof that we can lose our salvation if we disown him, or fail to endure. They tend to be quieter concerning verse 13, where it says that if we are faithless, he still remains faithful. But isn't faithlessness unbelief, the bottom cause of not enduring or even disowning? By reading Hellfire into these verses, they do imply loss of salvation to the disloyal believer.

But taking in the whole letter, what was Paul's main instruction to Timothy? It was a pastoral letter written personally to Timothy, and it was instructions for good church leadership. For a leader to sin was more serious than one in the congregation, because the behaviour and actions of the leader had consequence for the whole church in the sight of the watching world. Jesus Christ is either honoured or dishonoured by how the church is led. No Hellfire threat implied here, if the pastor denies or disowns Christ, not so much by speech as unfaithfulness to his wife and family, then he would be defrocked as a leader. I have seen this happen myself, on two occasions, and for the same sin - adultery.

I guess there is a good example of this in the Old Testament. It is about King Saul, the first monarch of Israel appointed by God through the anointing of Samuel. What I have found very disturbing was that King Saul had been placed in Hell as a result of disobeying God, not only by Arminians but by Calvinists as well. And for the same reasons - the one says that he was never saved in the first place, the other that he was saved for a while but he then had lost his salvation.

King Saul disobeyed God on just two occasions. The first was while he was waiting for Samuel to turn up and offer a sacrifice to God. But Samuel tarried, probably on purpose to test Saul's patience. But his patience ran out, and perhaps under the bidding of his troops, offered up the sacrifice himself. The second instruction was for him to wipe out the entire nation of the Amalekites - men, women, children, and all their livestock. But after slaying every human, he kept some of the best livestock alive for sacrifice. God then told Samuel:
But Samuel said to Saul...You have rejected the word of the LORD, and the LORD has rejected you as king over Israel. And the LORD was grieved that he had made Saul king over Israel.
1 Samuel 15:26,35.

The Scripture says that God was grieved that he had made Saul king over Israel, and not as a man. God knew Saul. He will not be told, "I never knew you, depart from me, you worker of iniquity" (Matthew 7:23) - because God spoke to Saul through Samuel, set him up as King, and for at least the first years of his reign, had a heart to serve God. This could be implied that the cattle he had spared were for sacrifice, and not to make himself rich. He even pleaded Samuel to worship God with him after his sentence (rejection as king) was passed. Saul failed as a leader, but he was still saved by grace through faith alone.

Yet Arminian public speakers such as Dan Corner has placed King Saul in Hell. Also King Solomon was sentenced to Hell by Corner, and as for King David, he escaped Hell by a whisker, according to this determined Arminian. And Calvinist author Norman Robertson had also placed King Saul in Hell, much to my disappointment. This is the consequence of reading Hellfire into Scripture where there was no implication on such a thing. I have discovered throughout forty years of Christian experience that reading Hellfire into Scripture had always brought me low. I have never felt edified, nor wanting to praise and thank God for his love and goodness. Instead, by reading Hellfire where it was far from the original writer's mind had brought fear, and placed me under the Law.

I would wish to exhort everyone to read their Bibles without allowing anyone to colour their thinking.

To be continued...
 

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*R.T. Kendal: Once Saved Always Saved.

He Who Overcomes...

I have a good friend at the church I attend, who I knew for a few years. One of his strong characteristics is that he is devoted to prayer and spiritual matters. So I approached him to ask  for prayer over some emotional concerns. We began talking, and he suddenly came up with a statement that he does not believe in Once Saved Always Saved (OSAS). Later in the talk, with a little provocation on my part, he revealed that he is a follower of David Pawson. He then went to defend him, saying how helpful he has been to him and that he knew the Bible "inside out."

This young man had read my blogs, and my support of OSAS, or Eternal Security of the Believer, as it is also referred. Yet my heart fell, even though I tried to hide my disappointment. Here in the UK, Pawson, from a Methodist background, is a national celebrity in the Christian world. I would say that he is the British equivalent of the American Dan Corner, who also spends a lot of his time debunking OSAS. And that's why I feel the need to write. Because of his celebrity status, many Christians like my young friend who quickly and without hesitance side with Pawson, and uphold his esteem as someone greater and much better educated than any "ordinary" Christian believer such as myself. Let's face it: Pawson had studied for a M.A. degree in theology at Cambridge, he had also stood in front of an audience in public venues many times, he wrote books, he made sermon recordings and videos. He also speaks regularly on C.B. Radio (Christian Broadcasting.) Little wonder my friend is one of many Christians who feels besotted by him!

British celebrity David Pawson.

I once read of a Methodist church declaring that OSAS is "the devil's doctrine" which would lead to a licence to sin. If Eternal Security had really had its origins from the devil, then we hit a serious problem. The Bible says that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one (1 John 5:19, also 2 Corinthians 4:4, John 12:31, Ephesians 6:12.) If we consider that neither Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodox churches accept OSAS as true, neither does many Protestant denominations - Pentecostal, Church of Christ, Methodists, Anglican Church, Assemblies of God - neither of these believe in Eternal Security, even some members of Baptist churches don't believe in it either, like my young friend.  Thus, a huge majority of mainstream Christians may justify such a declaration that OSAS is the doctrine of devils -  until we add to these, the cults: Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, Unitarians - none of these believe in it, either. Then not to mention Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hindu and Confucianism - which the idea of eternally saved would sound strange to all of them. And even atheists, who is out against the concept of the existence of God, would see OSAS as an odd doctrine, along with the agnostics, people who are unsure about the existence of God.

Therefore by concluding that Eternal Security is from the devil, then as one who has power over an unbelieving world, he has failed miserably in promoting this "lie" - the doctrine accepted by a tiny percentage of the world population. Or in re-wording; if OSAS is from the devil, then why does the large majority of the population believe in the unbiblical idea that one has to either work to earn one's salvation or to strive to keep it?

No doubt, if I was to sit at the feet of Pawson, I would be shown all the verses which disprove OSAS and be encouraged to strive to attain eternal life, with the single present tense of "I am being saved" rather than the threefold; "I am already saved" (spirit, regeneration) "I am being saved" (soul, hence sanctification) and "I will be saved" (body, a future resurrection).

If I were to debate with David Pawson, or Dan Corner for that matter, no doubt they would verbally knock me out, so to speak. Their knowledge of the Bible, I must admit, are immense. But unfortunately, my experience in associating with them, whether its reading their literature, listening to a recording or watching a video, had never known to edify or build up my faith, let alone cause me to sing for joy to the Lord. I have read in one of his books that holiness is based on fear of punishment rather than on love, which casts out all fear. (1 John 4:18) His explanation was that because we are imperfect, perfect love cannot yet work in us, therefore justifying the need to fear. If this is true, then this may have been the motive underlying my friend's fervency in prayer, which seemed to have matched those who hold the same view of salvation.

To write a full debate on this matter would take several blogs, for such a debate would be too much for a single blog. But I would like to quote a few verses and compare:

And this is the will of him who, that I shall lose none of all he has given me, but raise them up on the last day. John 6:39.

My sheep listens to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them from my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them from my Father's hand. I and my Father are one. John 10:27-30.

I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours, you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. John 17:6-7.

So all believers in Jesus Christ are gifts to the Son from the Father for dying on the cross to atone for their sins. If we were to compare the above verses with these below, would we get a flat contradiction?

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes will not be hurt at all by the second death. Revelation 2:11.

To him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it. Revelation 2:17.

He who overcomes will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out his name from the book of life, but will acknowledge his name before my Father and his angels. Revelation 3:5.

To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. Revelation 3:21.

Laodicea, to the church there Jesus said that he too, had to overcome.

David Pawson has written books and made video and audio recordings on these verses, breaking to smithereens any concept of Eternal Security. So comparing all these verses, the impression that comes over is that on one hand, we are gifts to the Son from the Father. The second group implies that a degree of human effort is needed to attain eternal life and not be blotted out of the book of life. In short, Pawson - and others like him - insist that we must hold fast to what we have been taught or else we end up in Hell.

Suppose a believer fails to overcome? Apparently, according to Pawson, the Lord Jesus will blot his name out of the book of life and his soul will suffer forever in Hell. There are a few serious problems with this idea, which I wish to list here:

1. The Son finds that the Father's gift wasn't satisfactory. It's very much like returning a purchased item to the shop after discovering a flaw, or looking at a gift horse in the mouth. Jesus may not be necessarily happy with everything the Father had given him.

2. The Father's omniscience is denied. He selects someone for Jesus, only to find out that this believer failed to meet his credentials. In other words God does not know what is going to happen next.

3. That the Atonement made on the cross was not sufficient enough to have taken effect without the believer's ability to overcome through his own will and power. In short, the crucifixion has failed to atone fully. This is the central core of the Roman Catholic Catechism which demands the need of Sacraments for the sinner to receive forgiveness and attain Heaven.

4. What was that which had to be overcome? The person's sinful habit? Or to remain faithful? In that case we are left with either a sinful Christ or one whose faith was threatening to waiver. In Revelation 3:21, Jesus himself overcame in order to sit on his Father's throne. What if he had failed to overcome?

So where Pawson's interpretation of these verses (and there are three more very similar verses within these two chapters) indicate a believer must either overcome or perish, both John (who many believe wrote Revelation) and Paul had different ideas about overcoming.

In 1 John 5:4-5, most likely the same person who wrote Revelation also wrote in one of his letters:

For everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory which overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

Paul backs this up. In Romans 8:37:

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

This set of verses looks to me that they give a satisfactory explanation to those found in Revelation. The person who believes that Jesus is the Son of God is already an overcomer and more than a conquerer, because Jesus himself achieved these victories on the cross. It is exactly the same with righteousness. The righteousness we have as believers is his righteousness, imputed into our accounts through faith. He was the one who conquered. He was the one who overcame. Both these victories are imputed into our accounts through faith. And what is this faith? According to John's own testimony, it is believing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

To say that Jesus Christ had overcome sin would mean that he himself was sinful, unless he overcame our sins. Rather, I tend to believe that what he overcame during his life were the three temptations: turning stones into bread while hungry, accepting a throne from Satan, and putting on a spectacular show to convince onlookers that he was the Messiah. It was a possibility that Satan also tempted him in the Garden of Gethsemane not to go to the cross because of the horrors associated with it.

Then what was the case with Judas Iscariot? Wasn't he a believer? A disciple? One of the apostles of Christ? According to Pawson, Judas was as much of a believer as the rest of his disciples. In Mark 6:7-13 (along with Matthew 10:1-15 and Luke 9:1-6) Judas was paired up with another disciple and sent off to preach the Kingdom of God with the others, two by two, making six pairs in all. We are not told whose Judas' partner was, neither do we have any record of feedback on what he got up to. Chances were that it was Judas' partner who did the preaching, healing and casting out of demons while Judas himself gave backing support. But according to Pawson, Judas failed to overcome temptation and ended up hanging himself as he stepped into a lost eternity.

But it was John who gave a greater insight of Iscariot than the other three Gospel writers. In John 12, we have Mary, the sister of Lazarus and Martha, breaking an expensive jar of perfume and annointing the feet of Jesus with it, filling the room with fragrance. Judas objected, pretending to be concerned for the welfare of the poor. But John narrates that he didn't care for the poor, instead he wanted the perfume sold so he could dip his hands into the money bag. As treasurer, this has been going on for some time. Obviously, he did not believe that Jesus was the Christ, nor did he care, for he was more concerned for his own welfare and kept on stealing what was donated to the group.

In the next chapter, we have Jesus washing the disciple's feet, which must have included Judas' feet. When Peter got rather excited, Jesus explained that not all of them were clean, referring the one exception to Judas, vs.10-11. After the last supper, Jesus prayed for his eleven followers, (chapter 17) and he declared that both Father and Son had protected the eleven, and kept them safe from falling (eternal security) - except for the one doomed for destruction so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, v.12. The fulfilled Scripture referred here was most likely Psalm 41:9 which reads:

Even my close friend, whom I trusted, he who shared my bread, has lifted up his heel against me.

Another proof of God's omniscience, which makes Pawson's ideas look rather foolish. To "lift up his heel against me" after up to three years dipping his hand into the purse with dishonest intent, shows every sign that throughout the three years of Christ's ministry, Judas remained an unbeliever - even though he had plenty of time and opportunity to repent and believe Jesus as the Messiah. And God knew all this from eternity past.

David Pawson is a well-educated man with a thorough knowledge of the Bible. Thousands of Christian believers across the land adore him and uphold his authority. Personally, I don't believe Pawson is deliberately trying to trip us up. Rather, I believe that he is concerned that clinging to OSAS will lead to spiritual slackness and on to a licence to sin. My own experience as a believer in Eternal Security refutes this. God has saved me through faith in Jesus Christ. It is God who keeps me safeguarded and protects me from falling. My wish is to see more and more people come to the knowledge of the Truth and believe, especially my elderly parents.

Much of Pawson's teachings - which includes writing, audio, video recording and radio broadcasting - was gotten from Cambridge, where he collected a M.A. degree in Methodist theology. But it looks to me like he had taken a huge array of verses from different areas of the Bible and re-arranged them to form a theoretical chessboard - very much the same way as the Watch-Tower Society of Jehovah's Witnesses handle the Bible to support their theology of prophecy with movable dates.

My friend in church says that David Pawson was a big help to him. How much more of a greater help would Pawson could have been if he devoutly embraced OSAS?
 

Eternal Security? It's In The Genes

The church service had not been running long. You are singing the first verse of a traditional four-verse hymn. Suddenly you hear a slight scuffle three or four rows behind, to your left. Curiosity at the intruding noise causes you to turn around, only to see a strikingly beautiful, curvaceous young woman, in modest dress, just arriving to settle at her seat. Perhaps with a slight tinge of frustration over her full body cover, you mentally undress her, and imagine how she would look in a bikini. Suddenly your eyes and hers meet for a fleeting moment and you immediately turn to face forward, and you sing the remainder of the hymn with a much louder tone of voice than at first.

Four different views are put forward to explain this incident, the first one positive.

The first is what the evolutionist would explain as a healthy sign for the survival of the human species. According to him, you should feel elated over your red-blooded sexual desire. After all, this was what Charles Darwin was writing about concerning Natural Selection, nature's way to ensure that mankind still have a future.

But the next two are rather less positive. If the church you are in is a Roman Catholic church, then deep inside you will be fearful, despite your loud singing. Would this sin committed be a venial sin or a mortal sin? If venial, then this would add an unspecific time to your duration in Purgatory. A few minutes? Unlikely. More likely a few years, even centuries. Nobody knows, not even the highest echelons of the clergy. But if the sin was a mortal one, according the the Catholic Catechism, it would mean eternity in Hell. Even then the clergy would not be able to tell whether that particular act was a venial or mortal sin. But the safest remedy would be to confess to a priest next time the Confessional is open, and receive the Penance, a course of specific prayers and good works to restore the grace of God in your soul. So you better pray that you won't die before the Confessional opens, or else you will be in deep trouble!

If, on the other hand, your church holds to the Arminian view of salvation, then you still have cause for fear. Such a church is Protestant, but believe that your salvation can be lost if you commit certain sins, or fail to overcome your sinful nature, or to lose faith. As with the Catholic church, no one really knows just where the line is drawn, but if you believe that you are still saved, then you better watch out, because your salvation is teetering on the brink. Otherwise you need to confess to God on how you mentally undressed that woman in order to get your salvation restored, and promise not to do it again, as in the Catholic church.

But whether you are Roman Catholic or an Arminian Protestant, despite your efforts in restoration, you know deep inside that such restoration won't last. After all, you have a strong sex drive which could ignite at any time, especially if, like this morning, you weren't expecting it to happen. Then, on the other hand, the thought of losing your libido is a very serious threat to your manhood. You actually want to remain red-blooded - it's a natural attribute to your self esteem, vital for the species to continue, according to Darwin.

So you are squeezed into a corner, with one side telling you that your sex drive is not only vital to life, but also to your self esteem. Then the other side threatening you with hellfire if you indulge in its pleasure except strictly in the confines of marriage. Little wonder that such trains of thought quickly leads to liberalism and eventually atheism. Darwinism appeals strongly to liberalism, which says that the Bible is not the authoritative Word of God but fables written by men to teach, to a certain extent, morality. Instead, Darwin explains the scientific view which sets us free from any ideas of accountability to a fickle God for our peculiar state of behaviour. Conversely, left to themselves, Roman Catholic and Arminian Sotorology has done a tremendous amount of harm over the past centuries of church history.

Just prior to writing this blog, I was browsing "Eternal Security" on Google. Right up among the top of the page was various websites linked to Daniel Corner, a radical Arminian who has spent a lot of time and effort debunking Eternal Security, or Once Saved Always Saved (OSAS) - founder and director of Evangelical Outreach as well as author of an 800+ page book, The Believer's Conditional Security. I have read about Corner before, and I mistakenly thought that his church was based in Washington DC, but further investigation showed that he leads a church in Washington, Pennsylvania - a smaller town just south of the city of Pittsburgh. There was even an article written about Corner on when he met our Methodist author and preacher David Pawson, and concluded that the two Arminians did not like each other very much due to some differences in opinion on various matters!

Daniel Corner
Dan Corner is a former Roman Catholic who has repudiated much what is taught in Rome, including veneration to Mary, the Rosary, the Seven Sacraments and other Catholic doctrines. However, it is so ironic that Corner embraced Arminianism. The irony is that Arminianism originated from none other than the Vatican, in its stand against the doctrine of Sovereign grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone. In one of my former blogs, Once Saved Always Saved - How Did This Originate? published 10th April, 2011 - I gave a full description on the history of the debate. To summarise, James Arminius, a 16th Century Dutch theologian was, as a student, brought up to believe in the Sovereign Grace of God advocated by John Calvin. But feeling uncomfortable with such doctrine, he travelled to Rome, where he became a student of Luis De Molina, a Spanish monk who was also a Jesuit. The Jesuits themselves were a society founded by a Catholic priest, Ignatus Loyola, who at first had an occult  vision of the Virgin Mary telling him to fight and put out the "Babylonian whores," referring to the new Protestants formed by Martin Luther and John Calvin respectively. As a result of Jesuit Molina's teaching, Arminius wrote his own treatise, A Reconciliation of Free Choice With the Gift of Grace, Divine Foreknowledge, Providence and Reprobation. (1588)

This book became standard for many Protestant churches, particularly Methodism, the Anglican Church, the Pentecostals, the Assembly of God and others. Arminianism is the branch of Roman Catholicism which has also found a home in all other groups - the Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, Unitarian and even Freemasonry - despite all denying any links to the teaching of the Vatican. On a wider scale, the idea of working for an uncertain salvation prevails in all other religions - including atheism. Here lies the irony of Dan Corner repudiating Roman Catholicism, yet strongly proclaiming the arm of the Vatican used to weaken the tenets of Protestant Christianity.

So as it is fair to say that Arminianism - the teaching that a believer can lose his salvation by not holding faithful or by committing certain sins - has its roots in the Occult (Loyola's vision). So far we have not looked at the fourth conclusion of the sin committed above, a look at a few examples of Eternal Security found, yes, in the Old Testament.

Our God is eternally Omniscient. This means that there is nothing he does not know about. He cannot be taken by surprise, and everything, yes, absolutely everything, about us was known, and will be known by God long, long before we were even born. So when we believed on the Son of God, we were saved once and for evermore. There is no possibility of ever losing our salvation - or else we be denying God's omniscience - a form of blasphemy!

So what happened when you mentally undressed the other person? Did you sin? Yes. Did you lose your salvation, or was it teetering on the brink? No, of course not. Instead the sin was laid upon the Cross of Jesus Christ. We sin every day, to the greater or lesser extent. But every sin committed is laid at the Cross. It will be an ongoing thing until the end of time.

In the Old Testament, we read of the exactly the same happening, the only difference was that the sin committed was carried into the future to the Cross which was yet to happen. One good example of this was the righteousness of God imputed to Abraham. (Genesis 15:6 with Romans 4:1-3) The Cross atoned for Abraham's sins some two thousand years before the Crucifixion.

Another case, even more specific, applied to King David after committing adultery with Bathsheba along with his conspiracy to have her husband Uriah murdered. When Nathan the prophet came to confront David with his sin, the King confessed, "I have sinned against the Lord." To which Nathan replied, "The Lord has taken away your sin. You are not going to die." (2 Samuel 12:13.) Where had God taken David's sin? To the Cross of Christ. In Psalm 51:12, David, reflecting on his grave sins, asks God to restore to him the joy of his salvation, not salvation itself.

On another instance with King David was when he had his army of fighting men numbered. God passed judgement on the king as a result (1 Chronicles 21.) In verse 15 we read that while God was about to execute the men in Jerusalem, he saw, and told the angel to stay his hand. What was it that God had seen? The Cross of Christ. Apparently, all those in Jerusalem and beyond had their sins transferred to the Cross instead of suffering the consequence of David's sin.

When Jesus died, he died on a cross. A cross has a stem and two arms. One symbol of the two arms of the cross is that they each represent time. One arm points to the past, the other to the future. The two arms can also represent Israel and the Church. However, the sins of every believer from Adam to the end of time has been put on the Cross of Jesus Christ. It was, and is, and will always be, the plan of salvation God already knew about, right down to the very last believing person, before the beginning of time.

If you are a true believer in Jesus Christ, you are eternally saved, and you will never lose your salvation. When you die, the Lord will welcome you home with open arms.

Here is the beauty of God's character, his boundless love, his unlimited glory. Eternal Security is in the very heart of God, so to speak, it is in his genes. You are a gift given to the Son from the Father as a reward for atoning for your sins. To say that you can lose your salvation is blasphemy, because it would be the same as saying that God screws up, or he does not know what is going to happen next.

Arminianism is a false gospel with its origin in the occult. It should be repudiated, for it brings no glory to God, only fear to those who believe in it.

As for the beautiful woman in the church, take your eyes off her and set them on Jesus, the Author and Finisher of you faith. For he can satisfy you in a much richer way than any human being can do.