Bill Gray-
You seem to have a pattern of picking “low hanging fruit,” namely those posts that you think you can easily rebut. I have put up some high-hanging fruit lately that I wish you would deign to respond to. In both cases the subject is “once saved-always saved,” a favorite doctrine of Calvinists and of cafeteria Calvinists such as yourself.
Here for you is some high-hanging fruit, reproduced for your convenience from other posts.
High-hanging Fruit No. 1:
“Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith.” (I Tim. 4: 1) How, pray tell, can one depart from the faith without having once been in the faith? Paul is here affirming that there will be a day when some who were in the faith will depart from it. His statement makes no sense if it is impossible to depart from the faith. Keep your Calvinist theologians, Bill--I'll stick with what the Holy Spirit expressly says about departing from the faith.
I suspect that there is, somewhere, a desperate and convoluted attempt by the OSAS advocates to say that "depart from the faith" means something other than "depart from the faith." I suspect that such an "explanation" will be pretty much the same kind of extreme stretch used by OSAS proponents to "explain" that other scriptures plainly teaching the very real possibility of apostasy do not really mean what they seem to mean. But I anxiously await your reply, Bill--or that of Charles Stanley or others who struggle so hard to wrest the OSAS doctrine from scriptures that simply do not support it and to nay-say the plain teaching of scriptures that clearly teach contrary to it..
High-hanging Fruit No. 2:
The more widely one reads in the New Testament, the more one encounters passages that powerfully dispute the widely-held, though heretical, doctrine of "once-saved--always saved"
I have already, within this forum, served up for consideration by OSAS Bill and other cafeteria Calvinists the very uncomfortable (for him and them) passage of Hebrews 3:12, which warns "brethren" (hence Christians," or as Bill prefers, "true believers") to "take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart in departing from the living God." I have pointed out that it is not possible to depart from that which one was never a part of, but that the apostolic writer here clearly contemplates the possibility of "brethren" departing from God and hence reverting to a lost state. No answer yet from OSAS Bill other than some irrelevant deflection, avoiding the central question.
Reading in the book of I Thessalonians yesterday, I came across another passage that establishes, for those who care anything about sensible interpretation and application of scripture, that there is indeed the possibility for someone who was once saved to later become lost again.
I refer to two passages, the first being I Thess. 1:3 &4, where the apostle Paul, writing fromAthens, characterizes his recollection of the Thessalonian brethren thusly:
(3)“Remembering without ceasing your work of faith and labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of our God and Father, (4) knowing, beloved brethren, your election by God.”
Can there be any doubt but that Paul, in his recollection of the state in which he remembered these “brethren” considered them as having been saved people? Of course not.
But later in this same letter, Paul describes his great anxiety to the effect that the same Thessalonians, having faced tribulation, might have succumbed to temptation to the extent that “...our labor might be in vain.” Here is what he wrote (I Thess. 3: 4 & 5:
4”For, in fact, we told you before when we were with you that we would suffer tribulation, just as it happened, and you know. 5 For this reason, when I could no longer endure it, I sent to know your faith, lest by some means the tempter had tempted you, and our labor might be in vain.”
Quite clearly, Paul was deeply troubled and anxious about the spiritual state of his converts at Thessalonica. He “could no longer endure” not to know whether these persecuted “brethren” remained grounded in the faith or whether, alternatively, his labor in bringing them to Christ “might be in vain”.
There is no honest, rational, way to read and interpret this passage without coming to the obvious conclusion, namely that it was indeed possible for these “brethren” to have lost their faith under the stress of persecution (“tribulation"). If that were not the case, then how could Paul have been so worried and troubled that he “could no longer endure it” and thus dispatched Timothy to investigate on his behalf (see 3:2) so as "...to know your faith, lest by some means the tempter had tempted you, and our labor might be in vain"?
Or was Paul just a chronic worry wart--troubled about something that was not worth worrying about because it could not possibly have occurred?
See where this OSAS madness leads!>>>