"If God is "out of time" as many of you claim (and I would agree) then God knows when that person is going to raise their fist and fall away. Why then would we believe they had salvation and then lost it? God never granted it to them in the first place. John states that "They went out from us for they were not of us, for if they had been of us they would have continued with us." That sums it up nicely."
Harley, your remark points up the disingenuousness of proof texting. What does 1 John 2:18 talk about? The AntiChrist and "antichrists". And those "antichrists" are the ones who were in The Church but then left it and by their leaving manifested that they were not of The Church but in fact were "antichrists". These antichrists were and are the heretics through whom the AntiChrist does his work. Those people, those heretics, were apparent even when +John wrote this epistle. +Ignatius of Antioch's Epistle to the Ephesians gives us a good report about this situation...and Harley, you remember who +Ignatius of Antioch was.
Only a Calvinist, and a Calvinist with absolutely no knowledge of the history of the very earliest days of The Church, could see that as proof that if you are "saved" you can never be unsaved.
On the contrary. I would say that if God took the time to give you grace and faith wouldn't He give you ENOUGH grace and faith to keep you going? I would suggest that anything outside of this reasoning is inconsistent unless one wants to say that it is man's works that saves him. Then you get into another sticky issue.
As far as the heretics in the early church, Johns plainly recognized this fact and states that they were NEVER part of us because if they had been of us they would have continued with us. The reason God gives us heretics is so that we can see what is false gospel. Our Lord Jesus has always stated there would be the wheat and the tares. (1 John 2:19) It is my personal belief that we all hold errors and God's divine reasoning for mixing genuine Christians up with tares is so that we CAN sort out the truth if we are honest with ourselves.
Those who are of the true Christian faith will continue with Christ simply because of God's grace and mercy in His bestowing upon His chosen His faith. Would you disagree with this last sentence?