I Can’t Reconcile “Once Saved, Always Saved”
Another sleepless night. I’m still trying to deprogram even though I was only in Adventism for about one to two years. I’ve been listening to your podcasts and such.
I cannot reconcile once saved, always saved.
Does that mean even rapists, murderers, child molesters, war criminals—child sacrificers—people who were saved and then sinned/slipped will be saved? Christian one day, then Satanist the next—saved then sinner—it makes no sense.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: The Bible never uses the phrase “once saved, always saved.” What it does say is that God’s sheep cannot be plucked from Jesus’ hand nor from the Father’s hand (John 10:20). Jesus said that those who are born again have passed from death to life (Jn. 5:24) and have been transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of the beloved son (Col 1:13).
Those who have been truly born again are new; they are no longer spiritually dead, and they are sealed with the indwelling Holy Spirit. They have God Himself indwelling them, and He never lets His people sin successfully forever. He convicts them when they indulge the flesh.
Romans 7 explain that believers still have “a law of sin” in their members, that they will sin even though they do not desire to sin, but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through Jesus!
Being saved is not about a mental decision nor about improved behavior; it is a conviction of one’s sin from which we repent and accept the reality of Jesus’ propitiation on the cross—He paid the FULL payment for our sin, was buried, and rose again on the third day, breaking our death sentence. Those who do NOT believe and repent, however, remain in their sin.
Those who are born again, as Paul explains in Romans 7, do not desire sin. The fact that our still-mortal flesh still has a “law of sin” within it means that after we are born again, we still have habituated responses and habits that pull us back to old behaviors, old outbursts, old indulgences. But now, with new hearts and the indwelling Holy Spirit, the Lord Himself convicts us and gives the the possibility—even the reminders—to turn to Him and trust Him before we act. If we do not turn to Him before acting, we have a Savior to whom we can go in repentance.
If we sin as believers, we do not get off “Scott free”. We still have consequences and natural results from our sin. Just like David who sinned with Bathsheba lost the child they conceived when he committed adultery with her, believers will experience discipline and consequences for their sins. But David repented, and God forgave Him. God even blessed his marriage to Bathsheba after his repentance and sent them Solomon who was his heir.
Now, the other thing to remember is that when we are born again, we do not desire sin. Even if we give in to temptation, we hate sin in our new hearts because we now have the life of God and God Himself in us. We are no longer acting as a natural person who is dead in sin; we are new creatures who know and love Jesus, and we cannot sin without deep conviction and pain and without the Lord’s “check” in our spirits.
People who are truly born again will live new lives marked by an increasing display of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5: 22–24).
Jesus gave us the parable of the soils which included the weedy soil and the rocky soil. Both of these soils germinate gospel seeds, but in both cases, those plants die. In the case of the rocky soil, the plants die when the heat is on. The shallow roots cannot sustain the life of the tender plants, and those plants die. In the case of the weedy soil, the gospel plants are starved by the cares of the world, and the soil nourishes the weeds of the world instead of the gospel, and the tender gospel plants die.
We cannot always tell who is “bad soil”. In any church there will be true believers, good soil, who are truly born again and committed to Jesus. There will also be people who are drawn to the gospel but are not fully committed to the Lord. They love their natural lives and are unwilling, like the rich young ruler, to give up everything for the Lord. These are the bad soils that ultimately reveal that they have not truly trusted Jesus. They may give lip service to Him, but they haven’t trusted Him with their lives.
All to say this: people who sin unrepentantly and without growth in the Lord likely have not been born again. People who turn away from the Lord and become unbelieving and sinful likely were never truly committed to Him and born again. On the other hand, people who have been born again will not sin successfully forever because God does not allow His sheep to be lost. If a person IS truly born again, if he sins, God will bring discipline into his life in order to bring him to repentance.
A true Christian will not become a Satanist. A true believer, even if he sins, BELIEVES because he is new; he is filled with the eternal life of Jesus’ resurrection and sealed with the Holy Spirit. Even in his sin, he believes and knows Jesus. But a truly born again person will likely not become a habitual sinner or a rapist or killer or adulterer. Of course, a believer may have a moral failing, but God will not allow him to become comfortable in his sin. Repentance is real, but a person has to know Jesus to be true a Christian and able to be disciplined by God.
One more thing: when Jesus said that nothing can ever pluck us from His hand or from the Father’s hand, that “nothing” includes us. When we are truly born again and made alive in Christ, He completes what He has begun in us (Phil 1:6). We can trust Him.
When Will the Anger End?
I’m struggling and have nowhere to turn but you.
I found you a while ago but was struggling before that. Mostly I was struggling to make sense of Adventism. I never understood why I couldn’t read about the investigative judgement in the Bible without a pastor giving me convoluted information. So I guess I’ve always had questions. But I’ve also always believed that what I “knew” was truth. When I figured out that I grew up in a cult, I was broken. Everything made sense, but I was in a state of denial. Now things make even more sense—all the ways everyone was all about looks and not about being real. That kills me. Now I understand.
But here’s the thing—I’m angry. I’m so angry I don’t want to go to church at all. And EVERYONE that was in my support system was an Adventist, and we all know that they won’t listen to anything I have to say about any of this. And I’m not strong enough to argue with them anyway. I have no one that I can share any of this with—I can sort of share things with my husband, but he’s not nor ever was an Adventist, and he really isn’t a Christian. He thinks all religion is fake and that I shouldn’t go to church at all. He doesn’t understand why I miss it so much, and oh, man, do I miss it!…
I wasn’t very good at taking my kids to church when we moved away. Now I’m glad that they didn’t have the Adventist experience like I did with Adventist schools and all that. I guess, looking back, it’s a good thing because they don’t have to upend their whole belief system. I was never super strict about Sabbath, but I knew it was there, and I tried to structure it as family time. When we would go back to to visit my family, we did all theAdventist things.
When is this anger going ease up? Anytime I hear my friends talk about Jesus or blessings or prayer or anything like that, I feel like they’re complete frauds. I find myself reacting to everyone that says anything like “praise God”, “praise the Lord”, “blessings”, “blessed”, “I’ll pray for you or pray for me” and so on. I feel like screaming until the whole Adventist religion is eradicated, and its members have to find a better option.
I made a comment to my best friend about how Ellen White lied to us, and she responded, “Have you even read any of her books?” There was no question in her mind the EGW and Adventism are the true and right thing.
So now I feel I have no support system, and I dream about going back. I find myself thinking it’s not so bad because I miss the camaraderie so much. I’m having a hard time going to a new church because I don’t want to get duped again.
Thanks for listening to my rambling. I’m so glad I found your podcast; you’ve helped me understand so much.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Yes, the anger—that is something we all experience. It’s horrifying to realize that we were deceived and lied to, whether knowingly or unknowingly. I so understand considering oneself to be Adventist even though you don’t go to church regularly. We were given Adventism not only as a religion but also as an identity. We had a church “family” that understood the internal dynamics of the organization, the worldview, the “power system”, the social structure, the food. Whether or not we went to their schools, if we were Adventist, we absorbed the worldview. We saw reality through the same lens, whether we were educated in it or not. We were taught the same worldview, the physicalism, the importance of EGW and Sabbath, the unfinished atonement, the non-inerrancy of Scripture; we were all taught these things even without being in their schools. We were looking at the world through an invisible interpretive grid generated by EGWs visions, and many of us didn’t know it. We just knew we were Adventist and believed that identity gave us a spiritual advantage. We had the truth.
It is shattering to realize all we thought was real and true was a deception.
The evil brilliance of Adventism is that it teaches its members its own definition of God, but it uses normal Christian words. Thus we think we believe in the same Trinity, the same Jesus as all other Christians, but we actually do not. So, when we discover that Adventism itself is not sustainable, that it is not truth, we are trained to believe that God is not true. We were taught that, if we left Adventism, we would ultimately leave God, that the two were intertwined, and we couldn’t have one without the other.
This belief, which EGW taught, is false. The real Jesus is not the Jesus of Adventism. The real Trinity is not the “trinity” of Adventism. The real Jesus took our imputed sin into His body and took our death sentence in our place, suffering the wrath of God as He hung on the cross. He was a willing Sacrifice; He fully paid the sin debt for every single person who will ever believe in Him. He was buried, and He rose on the third day according to Scripture, and He ascended to the right had of the Father 40 days later. He broke death, and there is no further atonement going on in heaven. It Is Finished!
Leaving Adventism will finally allow you to discover and know the REAL Jesus. He is not the weak, lesser-than-God person Adventism told us He is. He is almighty, eternal, omnipresent God, and He took our sins and reconciled us to God!
The anger will ease. In spite of your reaction to God, which I completely understand, let Him reveal Himself to you. Ask Him to show you what is true and real. And I’d like to recommend that you get a notebook and begin literally copying the book of John into it. John reveals SO much about Jesus that I didn’t understand as an Adventist. Just do a few verses a day, copying the words into a notebook and asking God to teach you what He wants you to understand. He knows what you need.
God will redeem your Adventism. He wastes nothing, and He redeems everything we submit to Him. You can trust Him. He doesn’t trick us, like the Adventist god did.
Please feel free to write anytime. I believe the podcasts will be helpful to you as you continue to unpack the Adventist legacy in your head, and learning what Scripture actually says will help a great deal.
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