Confronting,sobering yet comforting and encouraging! Thank God for His Word.
"Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth."..."Be not afraid, only believe."..."For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind"..."Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind"..."for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
(John 17:17-2 Tim 1:7-Mark 5:36-Romans 14:5-2 Tim 1:12)
Thank you, FRiend. For the believer His word is milk for the soul, and for the unbeliever it is a sword that will lay them low.
I am amused and saddened when people spout off on doctrines they obviously know nothing about and have never opened the Book to study. “Once saved always saved” was casually thrown out as a point of division among Protestants., as if that is proof of anything. They forget, if they ever knew, the words of the Apostle Paul, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” (1 Cor 13:12)
There is much nonsense in this thread, so I decided to seize the opportunity to show, from Scripture, to Protestant and Catholic alike, how “Perseverance of the Saints” is a most biblical doctrine. Most will totally ignore what I said or the Scriptures cited. But our sovereign God has promised that His word never returns void.
“So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:11)
I bet you will agree with me that the only thing I can say here that will be of any eternal value whatsoever, that might be any blessing, is that which is in accordance with His Word. My opinions don’t matter one wit, all that matters on any debate such as the one we are having is what God has said on the issue. I don’t care what a parent, pastor, professor, philosopher, priest, potentate, or pope has said. I care only what God said. Therefore it seems imperative to develop our doctrine from Scripture. If our doctrine is not supported from Scripture we know it isn’t from God.
Also, it is rich for Roman Catholics to point to disputes within Protestantism. At one point in their history there were three men claiming the papacy simultaneously. Centuries of murder and intrique litter the history of Rome. Calvinists such as Whitefield locked arms with the Arminian Wesley, they didn’t take up arms or resort to arsenic.