davidbu@loowit.wr.tek.com (David E. Buxton) (02/14/91)
John MacArthur, in his book "The Gospel Accroding to Jesus" writes what I think makes a lot of good sense: Jesus spoke the words of Matthew 7:21-23 as a warning to people who think they are saved but do not live in obedience to God. Unlike preachers today who avoid upsetting someone's assurance, our Lord was determined to destroy the hope of all who falsely thought they were redeemed. He often challenged such people. He never encouraged someone who was unsure of salvation to ignore the doubts. His message stands in stark contrast to the gospel of today, which seems designed specifically to prop up false assurance. The pattern of modern evangelism is to to take people through a formula, get them to pray a prayer, sign a card, or whatever, then tell them they are saved and should never doubt it. Such an approach to witnessing actually fights against the Holy Spirit, whose ministry it is to bring both assurance to those who are saved (Romans 8:16) and conviction to those are not (John 16:8-9). God knows the diffrence; we do not. Doubts about one's salvation are not wrong so long as they are not nursed and allowed to become an obsession. Scripture encourages self-examination. Doubts must be confronted and dealt with honestly and biblically. In 2 Corinthians 13:5, Paul wrote, "Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you--unless indeed you fail the test?" That admonition is largely ignored--and often explained away--in the contemporary church.
ta00est@unccvax.uncc.edu (elizabeth s tallant) (02/19/91)
In his article, John MacArthur presents an argument that salvation is not permanent. In return, I wish to say that salvation is permanent, and what he cited are examples of people who may have never been saved in the first place. Mechanically repeating a prayer and signing a card do not give someone salvation, and people who have done these acts without any form of sincerity would not gain salvation through them. This is a popular position of people who believe in permament salva- tion. By and large, we believe that once a person recieves salvation, he or she does not lose it. Yet, just because someone says he or she is saved does not mean that he or she is saved. While only God can judge individuals, we suspect that many who claim to be Christians and then utterly and permanently reject all that they profess may have never been Christians in the first place. The Bible warns us that there will be false teachers and false prophets. These people are put into place to make Christians fall and stumble. One of these people who convincingly professed to be a Christain (but deliberately lied) and then committed all sorts of atrocities would be enough to start making others doubt their salvation. According to "permament salvation ministers", this is exactly what the devil wants - to get people to start doubting their salvation and their relationship to God, which will in turn throw them into all sorts of confusion. We urge people to be sure of their salvation from the beginning, and do not doubt it after that.