There's no OSAS

[wisdomseeker]

Yes.

Yes.

**Not sure what condemnation you are referring to. Not aware of telling anyone they were going to hell. I did say, and will repeat here, that if you don’t receive God’s gift of salvation as a free gift paid for by the Blood of Christ, you will never receive it, because you are saying, “It is not enough for Him to die for me, I have to add my works to His Work for it to be enough to get me into heaven.” If you fit that last group then I guess you will go to hell of your own choosing, again, not because you did good works but because you are depending on them to get you into heaven rather than on the Work of Christ alone. Good works are the product of saving faith and will get you rewards IN heaven, but they are not something that will get you INTO heaven.

Recall Paul’s strong words against the Judaizers who merely wanted to add circumcision to the Gospel. Now for the Jewish believer that might seem like no big deal. After all, God called it an everlasting covenant to be practiced throughout the ages (Gen. 17). But to make it a requirement for salvation, to say, you can believe in Christ but you also have to be circumcised to be saved, brought Paul’s swift condemnation to the point of labeling anyone who would teach such a thing “accursed” (Gal. 1:6-9). The Greek word is anathema**. Well, the RCC has added many more things to the simple Gospel and would no doubt have received an even more strenuous condemnation by Paul were he writing his letter today. Now, there is nothing wrong with circumcision per se or even some of the things the RCC says should be practiced. But to make them a requirement of salvation is the key. Good works are fine but they can never be made a requirement to get into heaven, any more than circumcision is.

Now, since “wisdom seeker” refuses to answer, would you please explain why Jesus would say, Depart from Me, you evildoer, to someone who has prophesied in His name, cast out demons in His name, and done many wonderful works in His name? Is He saying those things (which He does not deny occurred) were NOT the will of the Father?

Did you not read my post to you? i am still waiting for your answer to my questions. when do your ever hear a catholic using such things in the Church? prophecies, cast out demons. but i assure you i have seen these things in protestants churches.

 

[guanophore]

I see the usual ignoring of the chapter context in this quote.
Jesus was speaking to the apostles and you might have noticed that Jesus said: “But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say to tou, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come.” Matt 10:23

That does not apply to us, but you would seem to say that it does by pulling verses out of context.

To whom, then, do you imagine it applies? Obviously Jesus’ second coming has not yet occurred…

Why not go down to verse 32 “Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.”
It does not say that I have to confess the church or pope before men either. That is nowhere to be found in Scripture.
I confess the Lord Jesus Christ alone as my Redeemer and this I can honestly do,

The confession spoken of here is the witness of martyrdom.
Scripture does not present this recent evangelical innovation of “Jesus alone”. If this is what Jesus intended, He would not have established a church.

since I know that I have been saved eternally by the gift of God through the Holy Spirit, Who sealed me as an permanently adopted born again child of God. There is no such thing as being unborn physically and the same thing applies to never being unborn spiritually. A child of God is forever a child of God.

I agree that one cannot be unborn. In fact, scripture clearly shows that those who throw away the gift they have recieved are in a much WORSE state than if they had never become part of the Body of Christ. They crucify the Son of God afresh.

I can thank my Lord and my God for that gift of eternal salvation, but you can not honestly do so, since you are not sure in your faith that God has given you that gift, which makes your faith incomplete and therefore possibly of no value towards saving you. You can’t trust or have complete faith in God because you see your life as a form of roulette, where you need to work at being “lucky in the state of grace” at death.

This was not addressed to me, so I will assume it is directed to some other misguided and tortured soul that you met on this board. In any case, you present here a very deficient understanding of Catholic soteriology. I hope that you do this in ignorance, because otherwise it comes across as quite slanderous and insulting. To refer to faith in the Grace of God unto salvation as “luck” or “roulette” is even painful to read. What darkness to spread! May God have mercy on the source of such calumny and upon you for pandering it here.

You also have to depend on the church for salvation, which means it is not only Jesus that saves you.

Perhaps you are not aware that Jesus makes no distinction between Himself and His Body?

Acts 2:41-42
42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Do you imagine that any of these things happened APART from Jesus?

You believe that you can earn or merit the “gift of salvation”,

Again, I don’t know which misguided person you were addressing. Suffice to say this is not Catholic teaching. Wherever you learned it, you were misguided.

Go ahead and laugh at what I have just said here. I don’t fear you, or believe that you or your church can “destroy both soul and body in hell”.

I will not laugh, but weep over the lies that have been spread about the Teaching of the Apostles. The Church does not “destroy both soul and body in hell”. If you have been taught that the Catholic Church is the Destroyer, then you have also been misled on that point. Although it is painful to read these comments, it is good that you are here, because perhaps you will get a chance to get some of these misconceptions corrected.

 

[jcoldc]

Phil12123;3606782Now:
To answer your question, Jesus is saying these false prophets are disciples who are performing healing works in Jesus’ name, but living evil lives. Why couldn’t he be talking about Protestants who are doing these things in Jesus’ name, but commiting heresy against the Church Jesus started? Just posing a thought.

Also, Phil, could you answer for me:

1.Since the bible says God will be the judge, what would be the point of His judging if salvation is determined so easily on Earth? If salvation was only about born again baptism, there would be nothing to judge. (Again, you’d be either a star belly sneetch or a plain belly sneetch.)

1. If your SS beliefs are right, why did the schism take so long? Why wasn’t the truth revealed at the beginning? I really don’t know. I’m not trying to be argumentative. Maybe there is an answer. I guess I just think that someone would have started a “different kind” of Christianity sooner. I know there were problems with what some authorities were doing as abuses/mistakes etc. ( And I totally understand that.) But if the problem was with actual doctrine, why did it take so long?

You said you don’t say Catholics are going to hell, but then turn around and say, people who follow Catholicism, at least as you understand it, basically will go to hell. I feel like I need to caution you that heresy is worse than murder because it kills the soul. You can be killing the faith of someone who is still small in their faith. And don’t think that means they’ll necessarily convert to your religion. If you’re squashing the faith of anyone, or who knows how many (I don’t know to whom or how often you say these things) I fear for your salvation. Of course you don’t, which makes me more concerned.

 

[distracted]

I do not reject Christ’s One Church,

If yoiu reject the R. Catholic C. you reject Christ’s Church…

of which all born again sinners become members of by the Holy Spirit becoming a permanent indweller of that soul.

I have no problem w/ this… but Jesus said to be born again of water & the Holy Spirit (baptism)…

Could you show me where the Roman Catholic Church is the only established ONE of those churches?

The only one of what churches?? When Jesus ascended into Heaven, there was ONE Church and there was (is) one Church for the last 2000 or so years. In 1520’s M. Luther broke away and started what he chose to call a “church”… Does that mean it WAS a church?? No… he just chose to call it that. Then people broke away from him and called their organizations churches and then people broke away from those… Hmmm… I guess there was an apostacy after all… that started w/ M. Luther.
Never mind…

The different parts of the ONE Church that Jesus established are shown to be individually responsible to Christ alone for their actions as members.

Again, this is true, that we are responsible to Christ alone… but Christ established a Church and He didn’t do so just for the fun of it… There were reasons why He built his Church the way He did… and He meant that all his followers would be one (united) in this Church… A house divided will fall. Christianity is divided and the world sees this and is not “impressed”… When there was only the One Church, people could see the difference between being a Christian and being non-Christian (outside the Church). Now, to the world, it just looks like Christians are all confused, can’t agree on anything, so (the world thinks), it’s all just a bunch of conjecture… no certainty… and if “they” can’t figure things out, how am I (the world says…).

Maybe you could point to the Roman Catholic Church in another part of the Bible that I may have overlooked, but Jesus does not seem to address that church by such a name in Revelation

Jesus never used the term “Bible” either… just “Church” and obviously, Jesus would see no need to create more than one church… He is not into confusion. In fact, in the bible it says that God is not the author of confusion… .

It is the individual true members of the churches making up His One Church that Jesus seems most interested in

Jesus is most interested in everyone. He doesn’t love Church members more than non-Church members… good people more than bad…
Yes, i am sure you know this, but one would tend to think you don’t, considering how you worded things.
More importantly, you make no distinction between one “church” and another, between a church made by man and the one built by Christ Himself… The R Catholic Ch is not just one of many, it is not just another denomination… (the fact that you see things this way is just another proof of how divisive things have been since M. Luther broke away…).

not any general member that may only be a church member in name, without also being a true church member set by the permanently sealed baptism of the Holy Spirit.

If by “permanently sealed baptism” you mean to imply that once a person has been through this baptism, he/she is going to go to Heaven no matter what… You definitely will not find this in the Bible (not that a Christian should base all his knowledge of Christ on only Scripture… As the Bible itself says, not all that Christ did and said is there… [of course])…
This belief in eternal security is a man-made belief… a man-made tradition and, as you know, Jesus condemned man-made tradition…

Have you ever thought of taking RCIA classes? They are free and no one there will force you to join the Church…

 

[brkn1]

If yoiu reject the R. Catholic C. you reject Christ’s Church…
I have no problem w/ this… but Jesus said to be born again of water & the Holy Spirit (baptism)…

Hi Distracted,

There is a lot to respond to, but I just chose the first two for now.

Your claim that my rejection of the R. Catholic C. means I reject the True Church that the Holy Spirit makes me a member of can not be supported by Scripture. It is just not there in the Bible: (the Roman Catholic Church).

Your quote <…but Jesus said to be born again of water & the Holy Spirit (baptism) > is a deliberate misquoting of Scripture to twist the meaning of Jesus’ words.

The biblical quote is:
(John 3:5) "Jesus answered, ‘Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God’. "

You will notice that Jesus did not say “born again” of water, but rather “born” of water.
There is a natural order of our entrance into the kingdom of God.
We must be first “born of the flesh” , which corresponds to being “born of water”. The water is the natural physical part of the birth process.
The second birth, which is the spiritual birth (the born again birth), follows by the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

You can see from the next verse what Jesus meant:
6"That which is born of flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit."

Jesus further explains how the “born again” birth is completely of the work and will of the Spirit in the next two verses.

“Born of water” may also have some reference to God’s Word, which is referred to as “water”, but the context of how Jesus presented the flesh to the spirit, suggests that the water is not the element that causes any of the “born again” process. It is only the Holy Spirit that effects that work.

 

[VociMike]

Regarding Preacher-turned-Atheist
amazon.com/Losing-Faith-Preacher-Atheist/dp/187773313X

Sounds like he was saved, from what little Amazon lets you read of the book. I just don’t want to spend $25.00 to buy his book, though I would like to hear the rest of his story, or better yet, sit down with him and have a personal one-on-one conversation with him. I wonder if anyone has done that and had any articles published about him. He probably doesn’t do interviews because it would cut into his book sales.

So according to OSAS a person can be saved as a Christian, turn into a militant atheist trying to separate people from their Christian faith, write a book hailed as “an insightful and conclusive indictment of religion”, die as a militant atheist and enter heaven?! Any OSAS believers want to second that?

 

[brkn1]

Regarding Preacher-turned-Atheist
amazon.com/Losing-Faith-Preacher-Atheist/dp/187773313X

So according to OSAS a person can be saved as a Christian, turn into a militant atheist trying to separate people from their Christian faith, write a book hailed as “an insightful and conclusive indictment of religion”, die as a militant atheist and enter heaven?! Any OSAS believers want to second that?

This a very silly “straw man” argument being presented here.

No true born again person could do such a thing as described.

The idea that some idiot hailed the book as “an insightful and conclusive indictment of religion” would only have any relevance to a person who considers man’s traditions and words as having the same validity as God’s Word.

The whole presentation is ridiculous as an argument and that is as far as I plan to respond to it.

 

[jcoldc]

Regarding Preacher-turned-Atheist
amazon.com/Losing-Faith-Preacher-Atheist/dp/187773313X

So according to OSAS a person can be saved as a Christian, turn into a militant atheist trying to separate people from their Christian faith, write a book hailed as “an insightful and conclusive indictment of religion”, die as a militant atheist and enter heaven?! Any OSAS believers want to second that?

I’m guessing, from one of the consumer reviews I saw on Amazon, that they’ll say he was never saved to begin with. But my thoughts are:

1. As a minister, he must have, for a while, thought of himself as saved.
2. And if anyone who is saved can have the"he was never saved in the first place" brand once they do something “really bad” don’t OSASer’s need to make sure they don’t do these things right up until the end? (I know most feel like they wouldn’t do those things but read #3.)
3. Is there a standard of what constitutes “really bad” so that the saved know they need to stay away from that in order for them to not be “never saved to begin with”? Where’s the line? Is murder over the line? Robbery? Rape? Petty larceny? Lying? Who decides what is over the line? Are some people walking around thinking they are still saved while others think of them as not? Are the things that causes someone to be “not saved to begin with” things that most of us wouldn’t do anyway? What about something bad but common like adultery?
4. If they become “never saved to begin with” can they be “resaved”? How many times can they do this?

This sounds like a lot of conditions to me.

If I was an OSASer, I think I’d want to know these things, so I could work to avoid them.

 

[cyberjacques]

As mchale pointed out very early in this thread, among the many examples in the Bible disproving the OSAS idea, the clearest is the Parable of the Seeds. Why would Jesus refer to people coming to the faith and “sprouting”, so to speak, and then withering or being uprooted, if such a thing was not possible? If OSAS was indeed the reality, the parable would refer to seeds falling on hard rock and vigorously sprouting anyway.

 

[VociMike]

This a very silly “straw man” argument being presented here.

No true born again person could do such a thing as described.

The idea that some idiot hailed the book as “an insightful and conclusive indictment of religion” would only have any relevance to a person who considers man’s traditions and words as having the same validity as God’s Word.

The whole presentation is ridiculous as an argument and that is as far as I plan to respond to it.

There is nothing silly about the question whatsoever. Here is a man who we may assume at one time thought he was saved, and whom others around him thought was saved. OSAS says that if he was saved he will be saved. Another non-Catholic Christian poster agrees that he is probably saved. Now you, a non-Catholic Christian, deny that he was ever saved. So what are we who do not accept OSAS to make of all this?

 

[cyberjacques]

This a very silly “straw man” argument being presented here.

No true born again person could do such a thing as described.

This is always the argument used to explain those thought to be “saved” but fall away. They must not have really been saved to begin with. The problem with this argument is that it suggests that salvation is like some sort of craps shoot, you say the words, roll the dice and hope that God saves you. Either that, or it means you have to be perfect in your faith to begin with in order to be saved, which makes no sense either. Faith the size of a mustard seed, remember?

Of course, there are those that take the opposite approach, believing that once you’re saved it doesn’t matter what you do, because you are no longer capable of sin. Even if it’s something that would normally be sinful for an unsaved person, you’re still fine because you can’t lose your salvation. Standard OSAS is misguided, but the extended version is just sick. I’m thankful our friend brkn1 doesn’t subscribe to that one.

 

[Fisher]

If eternal security is not true then do you lose your salvation everytime you sin or only when you do a big sin ?

 

[cyberjacques]

If eternal security is not true then do you lose your salvation everytime you sin or only when you do a big sin ?

Salvation is not something that suddenly happens, it’s a process, which continues throughout our lives. Sin disrupts the process by hurting our relationship with God. The faithful are not saved, they are on the road to salvation. You cannot lose something you don’t have yet, but you can certainly stray off the path, and even become lost. No person should be sure of their own salvation. We can be sure that God will keep His promises, but we cannot be sure that we won’t spoil it in our weakness. All we can do is obey God and hope.

 

[brkn1]

Salvation is not something that suddenly happens, it’s a process, which continues throughout our lives. Sin disrupts the process by hurting our relationship with God. The faithful are not saved, they are on the road to salvation. You cannot lose something you don’t have yet, but you can certainly stray off the path, and even become lost. No person should be sure of their own salvation. We can be sure that God will keep His promises, but we cannot be sure that we won’t spoil it in our weakness. All we can do is obey God and hope.

If being saved is just a process that never happens till death, then why did Jesus say to the sinful woman, “Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.”? (Luke7:50)

Jesus did not say that the woman’s work of repenting, kissing, and annointing His feet is what saved the woman. Those works were only the evidence of the true saving faith which she had.

Jesus declared the woman’s faith as the singular cause of her salvation, not the works.

How could Jesus command her to “go in peace”, if that faith did not have a sure hope of her always being saved from then on?
She already was a weak person, as we could see by her past behaviour, so there would be little chance of her “going in peace” if the continuance of her being presently saved depended on her not “spoiling” everything with her weakness.

 

[DCD]

Jesus said she was saved only after she had manifested her faith, by repenting, kissing, and annointing. Something Simon did not do this is the point Jesus is making.

Peace,
DCD

 

[fdmilkis]

so the conclusion is that OSAS believers believe that a person once saved is always saved but they won’t know that they are truly saved until death.

 

[DCD]

After Jesus has forgiven her she could go in peace. Sanctifying grace has been poured into her soul. Under the system of grace we can do all things in Christ to deny this is to despair.

Peace,
DCD

 

[Peter_Da_Rock]

No true born again person could do such a thing as described.

During Sam Kinison’s Pentecostal days, the people that knew him before he fell would have said he was a “True Born Again” christian through out and through in.

Born in Yakima, Washington, Kinison was the son of a Pentecostal preacher. His father pastored several churches around the country, receiving little income. Sam later attended high school in East Peoria, Illinois. He also lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma for a while with his parents. His father is deceased, but his mother still lives in Tulsa. He followed in his father’s footsteps, as he was originally a pentecostal preacher before becoming a comedian. Recordings of his sermons reveal that he used a “fire and brimstone” style, punctuated with shouts similar to the ones he would later use in his stand-up routines. He attended Pinecrest Bible Training Center in Salisbury Center New York. He was forced to leave preaching when he divorced his first wife, at which time he took up comedy.

 

[brkn1]

After Jesus has forgiven her she could go in peace. Sanctifying grace has been poured into her soul. Under the system of grace we can do all things in Christ to deny this is to despair.

Peace,
DCD

Ah! Sanctifying grace! Now Who poured that into her soul?

It must have been the Holy Spirit, since the visible church had not yet appeared until Pentecost.

If it worked for the saved woman then, why do some claim that ability for themselves now? The Holy Spirit was already doing His sovereign work of applying grace to protect those that were saved. There is obviously no need to change what already works effectively as the Spirit does His Work of now preserving Jesus’ sheep. I think those who now claim that ability as their right to dispense of the Spirit’s Grace are overstepping the role given to Christ’s Church, and are instead, being very presumptuous.

 

[DCD]

Ah! Sanctifying grace! Now Who poured that into her soul?

It must have been the Holy Spirit, since the visible church had not yet appeared until Pentecost.

If it worked for the saved woman then, why do some claim that ability for themselves now? The Holy Spirit was already doing His sovereign work of applying grace to protect those that were saved. There is obviously no need to change what already works effectively as the Spirit does His Work of now preserving Jesus’ sheep. I think those who now claim that ability as their right to dispense of the Spirit’s Grace are overstepping the role given to Christ’s Church, and are instead, being very presumptuous.

Would you be referring to the Catholic Church?

Peace,
DCD