Once saved

[Menotu]

Is this true?
My grandfather is a retired minister (and an abusive father and husband I should point out). He taught his church that the concept of 'once saved always saved' is true. Many in the city I grew up in attended that church - and many still do even though he's no longer preaching.
Is the concept of 'once saved always saved' true? It is, as I understand it (I didn't attend his church) is once Jesus saves you from your sin, nothing you can do past blasphemy can prohibit you from getting in to heaven. It seems it was a 'once forgiven all future sin will be forgiven'.

I wonder if it's worth mentioning that many members of this church appear to be anything but Christian; from abusers, to adulterers to thieves - with the exception of murderers, most all of them continue to run the course of continued sinners (and not the "we've all sinned" type but the 'I sinned yesterday and will sin tomorrow" type.)

[onewithhim]

Those who are (saved), love mercy, do justly, and walk humbly with their God. And do not worry overmuch about their own spiritual status. That just comes with territory.

Absolutely, because their assurance, security and identity is in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit -- the Triune Jehovah -- and not in themselves. To Him be all praise, glory, blessing, and honor, forever and ever, amen.

"The TRIUNE Jehovah???" I'm still waiting for Scriptures to support that. The Bible says that "Jehovah our God is ONE Jehovah" (Deuteronomy 6:4) Anything added to that is blasphemy.


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[2ndRateMind]

Those who are (saved), love mercy, do justly, and walk humbly with their God. And do not worry overmuch about their own spiritual status. That just comes with territory.

Absolutely, because their assurance, security and identity is in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit -- the Triune Jehovah -- and not in themselves. To Him be all praise, glory, blessing, and honor, forever and ever, amen.

"The TRIUNE Jehovah???" I'm still waiting for Scriptures to support that. The Bible says that "Jehovah our God is ONE Jehovah" (Deuteronomy 6:4) Anything added to that is blasphemy.


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Interesting. Do you think, then, that Jesus was not divine? Or that the Holy Spirit is a blasphemous irrelevance?

Best wishes, 2RM.

[JehovahsWitness]

Interesting. Do you think, ...that the Holy Spirit is a blasphemous irrelevance?

Well that would depend on what one means by "holy spirit". If by the holy spirit one means a separate person and that individual claims equality with and thus worship directed at, YHWH the Almighty, then yes, I would consider that blasphemous. There can be (by definition) only one individual that is Almighy and to attribute the place reserved to Him alone to anyone else is blasphemous.

It's rather like a man sleeping with his wife's twin, just because they may be genetically identical doesnt make them the same person. His wife should occupy a unique position in his life and to claim there is someone else that can share that position is a violation of their marriage vows.

In the same way to worship anyone but the Father Almighty is a violation of the the greatest commandment.

JW

[onewithhim]

Those who are (saved), love mercy, do justly, and walk humbly with their God. And do not worry overmuch about their own spiritual status. That just comes with territory.

Absolutely, because their assurance, security and identity is in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit -- the Triune Jehovah -- and not in themselves. To Him be all praise, glory, blessing, and honor, forever and ever, amen.

"The TRIUNE Jehovah???" I'm still waiting for Scriptures to support that. The Bible says that "Jehovah our God is ONE Jehovah" (Deuteronomy 6:4) Anything added to that is blasphemy.


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Interesting. Do you think, then, that Jesus was not divine? Or that the Holy Spirit is a blasphemous irrelevance?

Best wishes, 2RM.

What does "divine" mean? Webster says: "of or like God or a god." It does not mean "God." OF God, or LIKE God. So, yes, Jesus was divine. He was born OF God and he was a spirit LIKE God (John 4:24; I Timothy 6:16).

The Holy Spirit is certainly not a "blasphemous irrelevance." It is just not God. It is God's active Force, you might say the power that He uses to accomplish things.

It is blasphemous to say that God is three when He Himself says He is One.


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[Menotu]

[Replying to post 34 by onewithhim]

It is blasphemous to say that God is three when He Himself says He is One.

Then there are a lot of churches in the world guilty of blasphemy these last few centuries.

[amortalman]

OSAS might be the worst teaching ever imagined. Perhaps it's only equal is, "When anyone else does it, it's illegal, but when I do it, it's not."

Hardly the worse teaching ever imagined. What many Christians believe is worse than Once Saved Always Saved is the teaching that a true Christian can lose his salvation. What security is there in that? But I can think of one teaching far worse than either of these: the Biblical doctrine of "lost souls" being burned alive forever in "hell". It doesn't get any worse than that.

But so it is with the Bible. Too many contradictory teachings. One would think this god would make it a little more clear. But then, maybe he purposely intended the confusion. Now that's a scary prospect for his minions.

[PinSeeker]

"The TRIUNE Jehovah???" I'm still waiting for Scriptures to support that. The Bible says that "Jehovah our God is ONE Jehovah" (Deuteronomy 6:4) Anything added to that is blasphemy..

Yes, God is One -- Jehovah -- in three distinct persons -- triune. Nobody's "adding" anything. I wouldn't call truth -- God's Word -- blasphemy, but you're certainly your own person, onewithhim, and far be it from me to tell you what you can and cannot do.

Grace and peace to you.

[PinSeeker]

Dr. J.I. Packer again:

God Saves Sinners
Dr. J. I. Packer

The very act of setting out Calvinistic soteriology [the doctrine of salvation] in the form of five distinct points (a number due, as we saw, merely to the fact that there were five Arminian points for the Synod of Dort to answer) tends to obscure the organic character of Calvinistic thought on this subject. For the five points, though separately stated, are inseparable. They hang together; you cannot reject one without rejecting them all, at least in the sense in which the Synod meant them. For to Calvinism there is really only one point to be made in the field of soteriology: the point that God saves sinners.

God -- the Triune Jehovah, Father, Son and Spirit; three Persons working together in sovereign wisdom, power and love to achieve the salvation of a chosen people, the Father electing, the Son fulfilling the Father's will by redeeming, the Spirit executing the purpose of Father and Son by renewing.

Saves -- does everything, first to last, that is involved in bringing man from death in sin to life in glory: plans, achieves and communicates redemption, calls and keeps, justifies, sanctifies, glorifies.

Sinners -- men as God finds them, guilty, vile, helpless, powerless, unable to lift a finger to do God's will or better their spiritual lot.

God saves sinners, and the force of this confession may not be weakened by disrupting the unity of the work of the Trinity, or by dividing the achievement of salvation between God and man and making the decisive part man's own, or by soft-pedaling the sinner's inability so as to allow him to share the praise of his salvation with his Saviour. This is the one point of Calvinistic soteriology which the "five points" are concerned to establish and Arminianism in all its forms to deny: namely, that sinners do not save themselves in any sense at all, but that salvation, first and last, whole and entire, past, present and future, is of the Lord, to whom be glory for ever; amen.

Dr. J.I. Packer, Introductory Essay, in The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, by John Owen (London: Banner of Truth, 1959) 4-5.[/quote]

[JehovahsWitness]

Yes, God is One -- Jehovah -- in three distinct persons -- triune. Nobody's "adding" anything.

Except the word truine because that word isnt in the bible. Never once does the expresson "Triune Jehovah" appear in scripture. The words of our good friend Divine Insight come to mind (when talking albeit about an entirely different subject) such a notion ..

...is just ignorance piled on top of ignorance.

So I would say, this notion of a "Truine YHWH/Jehovah is "ignorance ignorance piled on top of ignorance"

Peace anf grace to you anyway Pinseeker,



JW

[2ndRateMind]

[Replying to post 39 by JehovahsWitness]

Well, I would not think it blasphemous to think of man as a trifold being; body, mind and soul, so I cannot think it blasphemous to think of God our Creator in that way, either. But really, deep down I think of this as an angels on a pin-head sort of theology. I cannot see what difference it makes in the real world. It just allows some to think themselves the superior of others, and those others to think themselves superior to the some. Come Judgement Day, if I were God, I would not care less what intellectual frames people fit me with to try and understand me. But I would care a very great deal if those frames prevented any one of them from loving his neighbour.

Best wishes, 2RM.