What IF...?

[Kelly2363]

1 minute ago, David1701 said:

I wish that you had been more careful with your words!

I have very real regard for the needs of the brethren and I love them.  On the other hand, this post of yours is precisely the kind of attitude that hurts the brethren.  It is untrue, insulting and condemning.  This is made all the worse by the fact that I have done no such thing to you.

Why, I wonder, is it often the case that those who talk the most about compassion, show it the least?

Ok David. Have it the way of being hurt if you must do that. But all I said to you brother was that doctrine no matter how exemplary it may be does not do a shred for the real condition of the churches in many places and when it is applied as a measure to address sin in the lives of believers and especially those who have fallen away (sometimes for very long seasons) doctrine will do little to bring them back when it did nothing to preserve them in the first place. I made my responses to your comments on my own words. That is the measure brother and nothing more. And just to say it plainly - I am not wounded and if you are then forgive me. 

[Sower]

2 hours ago, Kelly2363 said:

doctrine will do little to bring them back when it did nothing to preserve them in the first place

Just to be sure I understand you Kelly, when you use the word Doctrine, is that same as saying scripture, or is it a denominational Doctrine?

Thank you for your reply.

[Kelly2363]

4 hours ago, Sower said:

Just to be sure I understand you Kelly, when you use the word Doctrine, is that same as saying scripture, or is it a denominational Doctrine?

Thank you for your reply.

 

I mean what ought to be apparent in context of this OP. 

Denominational doctrines may be true but they are often applied in such a way that they cause schisms and in some instances they become heretical - being the over emphasis of a truth at the expense of another truth. 

Whereas

The author of this OP fell away from walking in Christ for a period of years - as he testified to himself in this forum in the last week. If, for example, he had come to a pastor and tried to explain his direction in faith and was told that a dog returns to the vomit and a pig to the mire how would that have helped - especially when the one who falls away is stumbling in some measure because of a legalistic application of Scripture. 

For the purposes of clarification

David spoke of a diamond and when asked if that meaning was a qualifier he replied yes. When I asked about the outer darkness I was not given an answer other than to say that the darkness is the place for unbelievers. I was given the Scripture citing the dog to the vomit and the pig to the mire. In context of having spoken about what condition I have found some of the sheep whilst preaching on the streets - that is dead doctrine. 

A diamond doesn't come out of the ground polished and refined. 

Neither do believers come into life polished and refined. Try cutting a glass with an uncut and unpolished diamond. The best you will achieve is to scratch the glass. And this is equal to bearing witness of Christ when you are first saved. 

All these stones scratch glass:

lbite, Beryllonite, Boracite, Corundum, Danburite, Elbaite, Euclase, Grossular, Marialite. Oligoclase, Orthoclase, Petalite, Phenakite, Pollucite, Quartz, Sanidine, Sillimanite, Spodumene, Topaz, Zircon, Zoisite - so even that test can be proven false if we intend to apply it legalistically and doctrinally to mean cutting glass with a refined diamond is the proof of a saint - where the saint is a diamond. 

I quoted 1 Corinthians 3:10-15 and that speaks of gold, silver and precious stones as being refined by fire and producing a reward. So in that meaning just as the stones in the above list all scratch glass so we ought to recognise that a saint is not one who is zealous to every effect of upholding doctrines in their walk that can be used to harm - but rather according to their measure of faith. And that will have it that the church is filled with many assorted precious stones in their outworking of good works. 

So to answer my own words as David did is unlikely to produce any semblance of agreement from me when I know that many brethren are in a terrible condition because dead legalistic doctrine was applied to them when the cause of their stumbling was a loveless church. 

 

Edited September 26, 2021 by Kelly2363
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[Kelly2363]

I don't know if this will help myself or help others - but the one thing I have been concerned with for my entire walk is the sheep and not concerned with the reprobate. And that is a most difficult thing to even say - because reprobation is a dreadful doctrine that causes many to stumble even amongst those who are elect of God. 

It has been my time on a few forums that attract many brethren from churches in the USA that has given me a way to form a semblance of understanding of something I have witnessed in historical research of some of the most harmful and often truly wicked men and occasionally a few women also - that has it that they came out of the churches. In short these very harmful men and a few women grew up in strict brethren and strict Calvinist families and when they were children they were able to make a childish response to the notion of Christ as a good shepherd - but then at some point in their lives - usually in their late teens - they took an unimaginable turn and became so wicked that they were roundly condemned by every right minded person and eventually died in that same condition. 

So I am not speaking about that extremity of effects because it cannot be that such a person was ever truly saved or held to a living faith in their teenage years - if they then proved by a lifetime of hedonism and gross sin - to be reprobate.

In short it seems likely that they were simply upheld as children in the cultural and parental effect of their lives - until they were responsible for their own choices. Then when that moment came they chose the flesh and the world and the devil because they did not have the power to choose Christ.

What I am alluding to, and why I say for my own benefit or others benefit - is that same sense - but rather more in a way of a very definite paradox. Because when I have in the past corresponded with believers in the USA they more than any others have brought the paradox to the fore. But it is in simple parlance a sense of reading what is written and at times being frustrated with it - and at the same time believing that in some unfathomable way the USA is both childish and needs Christ and knows that it needs Christ - yet finds it almost impossible to remove from a love of the world if by world I mean self interest and prosperity of possessions. That is a little simplistic I realise and I can say that the same sense also occurs when I am ministering to brethren in the UK as well - yet in a much lesser degree of being pressed into trying to understand and answer that paradox. 

I simply cannot just write brethren off as false - simply to explain this paradox. I don't believe that is in the will of God and I can't see how it will bring glory to Christ. Though there must be a need to sense the time we live in and to see that the public square in the United States - and family life - is becoming increasingly humanistic and hostile to that childish need to need Christ and to hold Him up in the public space.  I literally tremble with a sense of grief what will happen when that effect is gone too far. In that meaning there will be no need to cite doctrine - because the consequence will cause all those who gave their hearts to Christ as children to cry out and then Christ will answer. That will make the separation clear enough. Why would we want to press into that effect when we can walk in the Spirit and live a victorious life now - even if we are persecuted - than to be thrown into a fire of testing that will leave us with only that which remains because our works are burned up and we are left - saved as through fire. 

Edited September 26, 2021 by Kelly2363
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[Michael37]

21 hours ago, Dennis1209 said:

Said another way: “If” they did not continue in the faith grounded and settled, and moved away from the hope of the Gospel; they did not keep in memory Paul’s preaching; they forgot or, came to reasoning to no effect or cause.

Paul, by stating, “If ye continue”, indicated they are currently in the faith and saved.

Again, back to that two-letter conjunction “if”. What ‘if’ they did not (or else)?

Contingent on Continuing:

Joh 15:5-6  "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.  (6)  If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.

A full report on every living person and their life is available to God in Eternity. This means God always has foreknowledge of everything and everyone, so He can choose beforehand what to do.

If a person does not continue in faith they are like a branch on a vine that stops being fed by the roots and the rest of the plant. When the gardener inspects the vine and notices the branch is no longer being sustained there is no point saving it anymore so off it comes to wither and be burnt.

So it is we are warned by Christ Himself not to be like the branch that gets burned.

[David1701]

5 hours ago, Kelly2363 said:

...

The author of this OP fell away from walking in Christ for a period of years - as he testified to himself in this forum in the last week. If, for example, he had come to a pastor and tried to explain his direction in faith and was told that a dog returns to the vomit and a pig to the mire how would that have helped - especially when the one who falls away is stumbling in some measure because of a legalistic application of Scripture. 

...

 

A born again Christian (i.e. a real one - someone whom God has saved, by his grace, through faith in Jesus Christ) CANNOT fall away from walking in Christ, to go back to a life of sin.  The Bible is crystal clear about this.

1 John 3:5-10 (EMTV)

5 You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.
6 No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.
7 Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous.
8 Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.
9 No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's  seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God.
10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

You are teaching falsehood and you need to stop it!

[Ray12614]

The OT and NT are full of conditional verses . . .

How about  . . . .

Ch 7:14(KJV)  Then if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land. 

[Dennis1209]

31 minutes ago, Michael37 said:

Contingent on Continuing:

Joh 15:5-6  "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.  (6)  If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.

A full report on every living person and their life is available to God in Eternity. This means God always has foreknowledge of everything and everyone, so He can choose beforehand what to do.

If a person does not continue in faith they are like a branch on a vine that stops being fed by the roots and the rest of the plant. When the gardener inspects the vine and notices the branch is no longer being sustained there is no point saving it anymore so off it comes to wither and be burnt.

So it is we are warned by Christ Himself not to be like the branch that gets burned.

That is another good example, and that's the way I see it now. I really don't want to rehash and debate the continual OSAS threads on here and stir the pot. Scholars and the best biblical minds have been battling this out and writing commentaries on it for centuries. Who am I to state one way or another this as fact? I'm only expressing how and why my views are changing for me personally, and sharing them. Scholars coined a couple of 50 cent words to describe this; eisegesis and hermeneutics.

How does one define what a scholar or biblical expert is, when there's is two opposing views on the same subject? Someone is right and someone must be wrong, yes?

Every church I have attended, including the Baptist church I now attend, teach that no matter what, you can never lose eternal life [Salvation]. By no means am I going to raise my hand in church, and openly disagree with that doctrine. It depends on how scripture is interpreted.

John 10:28 (KJV) And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.

I suspect this man Jesus refers to is external. It is not said that, "you or any man pluck them out of my hand." The Lord endowed us with free will and choice, to accept or reject, to apostatize or continue.

In my opinion, there's nothing more important than where one's soul will reside for all of eternity! With something that critical with eternal damnation consequences, if an error is to be made, it's prudent to error on the side of caution, given the eternal significance. 

Over the past several years, I have studied Soteriology more than anything else. Because I had terrible thoughts, fears and night sweats before I repented in 2016, and asked for forgiveness, and to take me back into Jesus' loving arms. That's a long testimony in and of itself. 

But anyway, in my Bible studies I started to pay particular attention to the myriads of if's, conditional clauses, contingencies, and continuing in; all associated and connected to Salvation and eternal life; the numerous warnings not to apostatize. I started to better understand Hebrews chapter six, and what I perceive it is saying. 

I don't pretend to understand preordination and omniscience, and how it applies to Salvation or anything else, it's well beyond my comprehension. 

The New Covenant never uses the word backsliding or backslidden, but I'm going to use it here. All the decades I was backslidden, sinning at will and serving the lusts of my flesh; I never apostatized or renounced Jesus. I always maintained belief and trust. All that too is a long testimony.

But one thing is fact, just days after I had a spiritual meltdown and repented in November, 2016. I randomly opened up my Bible to do some reading. My eyes automatically focused on one particular verse; that just jumped off the page at me:

Philippians 1:6 (KJV) Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:

I have some thoughts about how that verse applies to me personally as a backslider for decades, not apostatizing and renouncing my faith in Jesus and walking away; but rebelling and serving my own sinful desires and lusts. 

I thought about the Prodigal son, and if there was any connection and application to me personally?

Shew we this got long...

 

[David1701]

5 minutes ago, Ray12614 said:

The OT and NT are full of conditional verses . . .

How about  . . . .

Ch 7:14(KJV)  Then if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land. 

The OT is certainly full of conditional verses, because much of it was about the application of law.  Law is, "Do this and I will bless you; do that and I will curse you.".  Conditionality is inherent in a legal system.

In the NT, there is much less emphasis on conditionality (not none), because the NT is about salvation by grace through faith and that not of ourselves.  It is the gift of God, not of works, in case anyone should boast.

[Dennis1209]

12 minutes ago, Ray12614 said:

The OT and NT are full of conditional verses . . .

How about  . . . .

Ch 7:14(KJV)  Then if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land. 

Precisely! And here come that big word again, and "IF" they do not? 

There is conditional and unconditional. The Lord made an unconditional covenant with Abraham by Himself. 

Edited September 26, 2021 by Dennis1209