What do you think? (Stupid answer to a stupid question.)
Once saved, always saved?
- Thread starter NDS
- Start date
Could you possibly elaborate on this incredibly vague one liner? This response is not adequate for most of us IAC since most of us are not as spiritually enlightened as you are. So please, guide us through what exactly you mean by "Born of God's Spirit by adoption." Pretend we are third graders, and help us understand.
If you want your sins forgiven, and so, go to Heaven rather than Hell when you eventually die (if the Lord doesn't comeback first), then ask God to forgive you and adopt you as His child, for Him to be your Spiritual Father forever, to save you from your sins, and give you hope and peace in this life, and the life beyond.
Okay, from your post it seems that:
1. In order to go to heaven, a person must have their sins forgiven by God before they die.
2. To get your sins forgiven by God, you must ask him to forgive you, usually in the form of prayer.
Here is the problem. I can sincerely ask God to forgive me and adopt me one minute, and turn into a murdering atheist the next minute. Wouldn't this constitute as going from a saved to an unsaved state?
1. In order to go to heaven, a person must have their sins forgiven by God before they die.
2. To get your sins forgiven by God, you must ask him to forgive you, usually in the form of prayer.
Here is the problem. I can sincerely ask God to forgive me and adopt me one minute, and turn into a murdering atheist the next minute. Wouldn't this constitute as going from a saved to an unsaved state?
No, and as Paul said, the more he matured in the Faith, the more he realized how wicked he was, so there is always that battle between the Spirit and the flesh and Satan.
Well NDS, I know exactly where you are coming from, because that's how I thought before I was saved. I simply could not think of how it would work, that if I got saved I would be able to go do everything immoral and still go to heaven. The key is to not go in with the wrong intentions. You must go to god because you know and understand that you need him, that you want a relationship, not with the mentality that you just want to get to heaven. Finally, when I did get saved, these things such as sex, drugs, alcohol etc. They simply did not appeal to me anymore. It really is hard to communicate how peculiar such a change is. This is one of the big clues I can use to try and distinguish between unsaved and saved people.
You might want to take a look at these "inspired" passages, NDS.
2 Peter 2
20If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. 21It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. 22Of them the proverbs are true: "A dog returns to its vomit," and, "A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud."
Hebrews 2
1We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. 2For if the message spoken by angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, 3how shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation?
Hebrews 3
12See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. 14We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first.
Hebrews 6
4It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, 6if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.
Hebrews 10
26If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, 27but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. 28Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? 30For we know him who said, "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," and again, "The Lord will judge his people." 31It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
These guys are, at the moment, pretending that these verses are not even in the Bible.
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Old Covenant (Old Testament), New Covenant (New Testament), it doesn't get much easier than that for most.
Please Ice!!!
All of the above verses were written in the New Testament and were addressed specifically to New Testament believers.
I am not quite as stupid as I look!
It really does not matter what I think, does it Ice?
I personally have no "problem" with these verses. They only represent a clear contradiction to the doctrine of "eternal security".
I could post more examples for you if you wish, but I don't currently think that even 500 quotes would change your mind in the slightest.
Just buy Dan Corner's book if you really want to take an in-depth look at this topic. He would probably say that you are teaching a "doctrine of the devil" and that you don't even know it.
Thanks!
I would appreciate someone defining "saved" and "born again" in the following format:
saved -
born again -
From what I have read I think the following is the definitions:
saved - A state of being in which if someone dies while they are saved they will go to heaven. This state of being involves repenting for sins and putting forth a certain degree of effort on a continual basis to not sin.
born again - the Holy Spirit enters someone's body whether by a powerful spiritual person (Jesus, Peter, Paul) physically contacting them with their hand or by some other means. May be accompanied by the speaking of tongues.
saved -
born again -
From what I have read I think the following is the definitions:
saved - A state of being in which if someone dies while they are saved they will go to heaven. This state of being involves repenting for sins and putting forth a certain degree of effort on a continual basis to not sin.
born again - the Holy Spirit enters someone's body whether by a powerful spiritual person (Jesus, Peter, Paul) physically contacting them with their hand or by some other means. May be accompanied by the speaking of tongues.
Carcano
Valued Senior Member
For the word 'saved' to have any meaning there must be something one is saved 'from'.
In Christianity it is the wrath of God for the sin of man...expressed as eternity in hell, whether you believe hell to be a state or an actual place.
The sin of man is of two kinds:
Original sin (of Adam and Eve) which is absolved by christian baptism, and the sin of one's own will, absolved by the suffering of Christ...IF one choses to believe in it.
So in order to be considered in a "saved" state, a person must:
1. Be baptized in water which cleanse them the original sin of Adam and Eve
2. Believe that Jesus is the Son of God, the Christ, etc.
This is where I get confused. There's many people who have sincerely believed in Jesus at one point, then they lost that faith. If someone loses that faith, then, to me, that would bring them back into an "unsaved" state meaning that if they were to die during an unsaved state they will go to hell (or the Lake of Fire at the end).
So really, someone's final destination would be determined by what they believe at the moment of death. They could alternate between a saved and unsaved state during their entire lives but only their state at the point of death matters. Is this correct?
Or, does God judge people on the cumulative actions of their entire lives. Can someone live 70 years as an extremely sinful atheist commiting every sin imaginable every day and still make it to heaven by repenting and suddenly believing in Jesus on their death beds?
1. Be baptized in water which cleanse them the original sin of Adam and Eve
2. Believe that Jesus is the Son of God, the Christ, etc.
This is where I get confused. There's many people who have sincerely believed in Jesus at one point, then they lost that faith. If someone loses that faith, then, to me, that would bring them back into an "unsaved" state meaning that if they were to die during an unsaved state they will go to hell (or the Lake of Fire at the end).
So really, someone's final destination would be determined by what they believe at the moment of death. They could alternate between a saved and unsaved state during their entire lives but only their state at the point of death matters. Is this correct?
Or, does God judge people on the cumulative actions of their entire lives. Can someone live 70 years as an extremely sinful atheist commiting every sin imaginable every day and still make it to heaven by repenting and suddenly believing in Jesus on their death beds?
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You don't HAVE to be baptized in water to be saved. It is part of the process of becoming closer to God. Yes one's destination is determined by their belief at death. Sinful people repent on their death beds and get into heaven. But why take the chance that you will get that opportunity? Many people die suddenly/unexpectedly and are now frying in hell.
Once you're saved you don't WANT your old life back. It feels disgusting compared to your new life.