History of Doctrines of Salvation
Vern Peterman · Aug 31, 2003
Church History, No. 09
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262258385345

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We are proceeding this morning with the History of the Doctrines of Salvation, and this kind of includes a section I think you're going to find fascinating. History of the Doctrines of Salvation and the History of Spiritual Growth Teachings, those two kind of go together here, and you'll see next week a little bit more why. But we'll introduce the pair, if you will, here this morning. Any questions, comments, input before we get rolling here?

Yes? No? I either answered every question or so baffled you that no questions arrived. Okay. Alright. What's that? Just totally baffled you. Okay. Now at least I know where we are. Okay. The thing to bring out is just the gospel is really simple, isn't it? The gospel is really simple. It is by faith in Christ and one of the things that here is laid out. We mentioned some weeks back with Jude, contend for the faith that was once for all delivered for the saints. So we went through the details in the original language there in order to make that clear. That's the simple statement.

And yet what happens, we'll find, is over the centuries of history, that's not been the case. Christendom has deviated substantially. What we find here is fairly quickly, I mean, within a couple of generations of the end of the New Testament era, things are getting wildly off track. As I started looking at it, I was frankly stunned. Man, they got off track really big, real quick. And we'll see how that happens here.

One of the things that's real clear is that the apostles taught salvation is through faith in Christ by the grace of God alone. These are but some of the passages that bring that message home. Real simple, okay? Any attempt at trying to add to the gospel, change it, or take away was met with corrective teaching. And what I have here is a very short list compared to the total.

There was one seminary class that I heard about. The professor set the whole class into small groups and he said, okay, I want you to go out and find out what's the number one subject in the whole New Testament. What's the number one subject? And they came back, and each of the small groups came and reported back, they all reported back, correction of false teaching. Correction of false teaching. So this is a very short list. The bottom line being that Scripture lays out what is true and corrects what is false. And it's something that Scripture does consistently and repeatedly.

One area where people have gotten off track is an understanding of baptism. Water baptism in the New Testament is presented as a picture of the believer's identification with Christ. It is death, burial, and resurrection. It pictures physically what has, and get this, already taken place spiritually. It's completed. Many times what you'll find is even perfect tense statements The idea is it's completed past action with ongoing results into the future, as you read through the New Testament.

In practice, water baptism was often done immediately after one became a believer. And keep note of that because we're going to see just a few slides from now how it got changed. It doesn't say that we must do it, but it was often done in practice. And it got switched, as we'll see in a minute.

The Lord's Table in the New Testament, When Christ established the Lord's table, and I think this is an important point, what was He doing? It was Passover, right? And if you go back in the Passover text, what does it say? Now this day will be a memorial to you. And if you look in Exodus 13, the next chapter, it says, remember, a sign, a reminder.

It is a picture. It is to remind us. It is a memorial to cause us to remember. The church shifted that into the elements of the Lord's Table turning into something magical. As we'll see here in a little bit. We'll see how that shift took place. The Lord's Table is a remembrance. So what happens is the Lord in Luke 22 tells them, this do in remembrance of me. It is based on this. He's carrying that over. And what happens there is not physically effective for salvation. It does not become the body and the blood, literally. One other point.

This is a Jewish custom. And what the Jews would do is, in a marriage situation, the father and the son would go visit the father and the daughter. The fathers negotiated the bride price. Okay, not not a purchasing, but for the loss of a compensation for the loss of once the price was set, the father of the son would pour out a cup of wine and the son would carry it to the woman who would kneel and the son would hold out the cup to her and say, this wine is a new covenant in my blood. You see that it is a it is a covenant symbol. Okay, and that is what you hear in the Lord's Table. It is an establishment of the covenant that has been made.

Christ was offered as a sacrifice once. This is important because what happened was as the centuries went on, it became a re-sacrificing of Christ. You see that? Every time that people would take the Lord's Table in the following centuries, it came to mean that the Lord's table was a re-sacrificing of Christ. That when this wafer becomes the body of Christ, for example, that that then is a re-sacrificing.

What this makes clear multiple times in Scripture, especially in Hebrews, this He did once for all, through His own blood, once for all, offered once to bear the sins. You go through the list there and you have it in your handout as well. It's very clear it's a one-time offering. That also, by the way, makes it a little tough for, for example, the Book of Mormon where it has Jesus being sacrificed in the Americas too. Incidental here. Okay.

Now, as we get into this time right after the New Testament era, one of the things that happens, remember last time we looked at the bishops and priests then began to stand between God and the believers. And, well, you couldn't have the Lord's table without a bishop present, okay? When that started happening, then that put another human mediator between God and man. See the problem there? So the church structure issue made a setup for a change in the doctrine of salvation as well. Because, after all, you couldn't have baptism, you couldn't have the Lord's table. without a church official present. Richard? Was the bishop always present for that then?

What happened is initially, no. But the bishops, through a tizzy fit, that wouldn't be their term, but that's mine. The bishops, through a tizzy fit, writing letters of fury for doing it without them present. Yeah. And we actually have those documents where they would, you know, you must not do this. without a bishop present. And they got real ticked off about it. We're going to see that in a little bit. Yes. But let me quickly answer. It means good. EU means good. Good gracing. OK. Good gracing. OK.

Now, going through this here, here's Irenaeus. Irenaeus had this recapitulation theory of the atonement. The idea was this, Adam brought us down, Christ brought us back up. There is some truth to it, but where it falls short is that we weren't just restored to Adam's place, were we?

There's the problem. Irenaeus, and here's a guy that's in the century immediately following the apostles, and what is he doing? He's lost the identification truth. He has lost the fact that doesn't put us back in the place of Adam. We don't go back to the garden. We're now seated with Christ. Irenaeus, within less than a century, had lost that truth. Less than a century after the New Testament. So, Irenaeus didn't get the point.

We are not simply restored to Adam's place. The place that we have is far above that, and far different. Adam's place puts us back into a place of being in the garden in a perfect state on earth. The New Testament puts us seated with Christ in the heavenlies. Big difference.

Okay. Origin. Okay? And he came, you know, some decades after Irenaeus. What he came up with is the idea, and it's true, but it doesn't go far enough, this idea we've been ransomed, bought from Satan. Okay? Yes, we have been bought with a price. Scripture makes that clear. But Satan doesn't end up with any long-term goods out of this process. And it's kind of incomplete, although it's a true statement. Here is getting into some of the questions Doug was addressing. Here is the sequence of what happened.

Initially, here is the first century after the apostles. Initially, baptism was seen as a symbol, then it became effective for salvation. And do you notice how fast that happened? 220. Just a little over a century after the apostles, it became first mentioned, and then by the time of Augustine, who died around 430 in an invasion of the Vandals, by the time of Augustine, it is effective for removing original sin from babies.

Yes. You might say that, yes. What's that? But what you see now, all of a sudden the water becomes effective. The water becomes effective in removing original sin. What happens to believing? And where do you see any mention of infant baptism in scripture? None. Okay. Nancy? Yes. That's right.

Water isn't going to do it. Go ahead and give the babies a bath. I don't have a problem with that at all. But it's not going to accomplish what they have laid out up here. So here's Augustine. By this time, within a year of Augustine's pronouncement here, The Roman Emperor just said, you're going to baptize all the babies or you're dead.

Parents who refused to baptize their babies and were caught were killed. It had changed to that point. Because remember, this was about a little more than a century after Christianity became not just a legal religion, but the only religion. And now that this was established, if you didn't baptize the babies, the parents were killed. That was the pattern. Here's one, and when I saw this, this just blew my circuits. What they did, look at the sequence.

If you wanted to become a Christian, first you had to become a hearer, and you were allowed to attend the ministry of the word. When you were at that level in the church, at the end of hearing the message, you had to leave. Once you got beyond that point, because they had a time sequence, then you got to be a kneeler, and you could stay after the message to pray. Then, at the end of three years, you'd be examined by the bishop and prepared for baptism. You'd have water and spiritual baptism and conversion would happen then.

How about that? This is only by a little over a hundred years after the New Testament's closing. How about that? Then finally at the end, then you were a church member and you could take Eucharist. That's the question that Doug was asking about. So all of a sudden this process has changed. It's no longer like you see in the book of Acts. These people are saved. Any reason why they can't be baptized? No. Now there's a three year process. And now you have gradations. And you get in there and you go through each of these steps a three year minimum. before you could be actually considered saved, a church member, and take the Lord's table. This is wild. We're talking three generations after the death of John, and this is in place. Wow.

Now, the Lord's Supper was another change, and notice again, when did this start? Initially here was just basically sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving moved into sacrifices both sacrificial and praise but non-meritorious as we'll see here shortly it then changed into this is meritorious and you have to accumulate merit. So here's a gradual change. None of that change founded in scripture. None of it. It was all added on by traditions of men. Here's Cyprian in 250. Notice the difference there?

Each church had a priest and an altar and a sacrifice. We know from the book of Hebrews that all of those have been set aside. Christ died once for all. We're not giving sacrifices anymore, okay? It's the problem with the teaching that this, you know, wafer becomes the body of Christ. Now they're going back to an equivalent of the Jewish system. None of it based on scripture. The church had now deviated from the position of the church, the position of leaders in the church, and we don't have an altar here.

All right, now, stepping into the imperial era, here's Constantine. We mentioned it before, so I'll quickly move past it. Basically, that change was massive. Now, we get into a couple of different guys who have some big issues here. One is Pelagius. Here's this fellow Pelagius, and there's a question mark there because he kind of went off to the east and just sort of disappeared, so this time of his death has a question mark, but he said that people are not born sinful. They're basically good, and it's only when they misstep that they sin and therefore have a spiritual problem.

That was Pelagius' teaching. So then, of course, if you then sin, it is, man is then capable of saving himself. Jesus died so that you can save yourself with his teaching, okay? Yeah, he was a monk, he could say that, yes. And then Augustine comes along and he says, no, no, no, no, no, this is not right. He says, no, people can't save themselves.

God has to be the one who does it. And people are totally depraved. They're born sinful. So here's the opposition. The way it ended up, here's Pelagius and Augustine side-by-side comparison. And if you look through this here, see, Adam's sin injured only himself, or all men fell on Adam. Of course, Adam sinned. Remember the two men? You know, the teaching we find there in Romans? The two men? No, all mankind is impacted.

That's not what Pelagius said. So, a major problem in what Pelagius has to say. All have sinned. Scripture says. Pelagius set that aside. What happened is, here's Augustine and Pelagius, and they passed away. But some compromise positions were developed, and about a century after Augustine, or Augustine, however you want to put the emphasis there, a century this came up, salvation originates in God and proceeds from God and man. Or another similar position, salvation originates in man and proceeds by man and God. Okay? Whoa. Okay? If you look in Scripture, that's not what you see. What you see is a whole bunch of passive voice.

Like, Grace, you have been saved. What you see here is what ended up happening is the church ended up embracing combinations of these two. For centuries, most of Christendom embraced these two. And basically, when the reformers came along later, what did they do? You can keep the law, right? Not for salvation, initially, but as an everyday thing, they're still looking to this. Okay, now here's the big shift. In a process that began when the church was still under Roman persecution, the gospel presented by the church shifted.

These are some simple faith in a saving Christ to faith in a saving church. We've got the bishops, and you've got the altar, and we've got the priests, and you have somebody standing between man and God. And the doctrine of baptism and the Lord's Table all got shifted to accommodate that. From one mediator between God and man, and the church is the mediator. From salvation by faith alone, through grace alone, to salvation by faith and earned merit through the church's sacraments. A big shift. And finally, from salvation symbolized by baptism and the Lord's Table, to salvation gained by them.

Those were some of the big shifts that began taking place during those centuries. As we shift into this 590 to 1517 time period, the Middle Ages, we've brought out before this chart here that shows the emergence of the teachings of the Catholic Church.

What you find here is, for example, attendance at Mass made mandatory, and we'll see why in a minute. You must do it, that was a thousand about the year 1000 when that was instituted as a mandatory requirement. Or here's another one, the Rosary, repetitious praying with beads invented by Peter the Hermit.

So that was a thousand years after the end of the New Testament era that that was finally declared official belief. And some of the others there. Finally, tradition claimed equal authority with the Bible in the Council of Trent. That's kind of the grand finale that displaced the biblical authority. All these things were added on many centuries after the Apostles.

Sue? I've got a copy of the Catholic Catechism and I've gone through it in pretty heavy detail. And what they'll do is they'll quote scripture, they'll quote the Apocrypha, which of course we don't accept as authoritative, they'll quote church canon law, And then they'll also quote the early church fathers and some of the, you know, guys from the Middle Ages, that sort of thing, Aquinas and Anselm and people like that. So it's a combination of things. And scripture by itself is not considered a sufficient authority. And so, do they have scripture? Yes, some. Sometimes you'll look at it and scratch your head, but yes, they do. Okay, here's Anselm comes along. Anselm, believe it or not, is the first one that we have any record of presented what we call the substitutionary atonement.

Christ died in our place. And he came out of the Roman Catholic system, so that was an advance. The problem is that the teaching that went along with that is Christ didn't die once for all, and he is exclusively our basis of salvation. Instead, Christ died so that you may merit your salvation. There is a big difference. So, while he made some headway here, he also did it in a context that takes a lot of the power out of what was being said. Here's another one. Peter Abelard.

This basically says that Christ didn't really accomplish anything spiritually. At least this teaching doesn't acknowledge that. but it is just morally encouraging. Now, this is what a lot of liberal and humanistic groups will go for this, and one of the reasons is because there's nothing specifically spiritually effective in Christ's death, is there?

It's just, boy, isn't that something for Him to go on the cross and stand up there and take it like that? Boy, that just really grabs you. That's all there is, folks. And so there's no real content in this. And that's one reason why it's taken up by a lot of folks who don't want to have Christ's death on the cross be actually effective for anything. They just want it to be inspiring. Make sense? Are you inspired? Okay. Just checking. Peter Lombard came up with another one.

He basically set out the seven sacraments as the means of grace. There were, by the way, other lists that developed at the time. Some had as many as 30 sacraments, and they were set aside. They settled on the seven, and so that's what's in the catechisms. But these are the sacraments, the baptism, the confirmation, Eucharist, or in terms symbolically, we call it the Lord's Table, but it means good gracing, penance, unction, orders, and matrimony. The history of the doctrine of the Lord's Supper now, the Lord's Supper has taken on significance.

It has undergone an evolution from the biblical picture where it is a remembrance, do this in remembrance of me. It is a symbol of the covenant. Instead, it's done for salvation through the saving church. It's had that progression now by this time. This is the Roman Catholic plan of salvation.

I think you have an entire more readable copy. And we'll be referring to this next week as well. But one of the things, if you look through this, this line here, this is spiritually alive, this is spiritually dead. This is the flowchart. Boy, I mean, you look at that and it's something. But this is the flowchart for salvation.

Basically what happens, an infant starts here, is baptized to remove original sin, and then is spiritually alive. And the idea is that then they stay up above here and don't commit a mortal sin. A mortal sin is a serious sin. Yeah, Tom? Yeah, this is basically taken out of the catechism and Now, mortal sin takes you down here, and then there's this step of coming back up into being spiritually alive. It is theoretically possible, for example, for a person to have been, say, the Pope, under this system, the Pope, and he commits a mortal sin, say, in his last days, and doesn't make the trip back up, he's going to hell.

That's the scenario. What this does, though, is it puts the pressure on the person to earn their salvation. And one of the things that, of course, they're encouraged to do is stay in this loop because it's in this loop where you accumulate merit for salvation. We'll touch on this a little bit more next week. But at least you have it there and you can take a look at it and you can study it for hours. Next, we go here into the Reformation period. And what we see there, the Reformation had this kind of the battle cry, if you will, salvation by faith alone through grace alone.

And they typically said that in Latin, you know. But the point being there, they had that right. But there were other issues that they didn't. Basically what they did is in the area of authority, in the area of of scriptural authority, and in the area of salvation, they had things substantially corrected. What they did, however, is basically retain the rest of what they had gained.

Many of the Reformers, I think of the major Reformers, Calvin is an exception, many of the Reformers were simply Roman Catholic priests who then had tried to reform the system and were rejected in trying to do so. and so they carried along what they did not see needed to be corrected. So that was carried into the Reformation.

An exception to the above was the Anabaptists, and of course they paid dearly for objecting to these things being carried on. If we look at the tree, recall this kind of family tree of the different denominations, one of the things that happened here You have the Anabaptists and the Baptists.

Independently, each of these groups, they looked at scripture, and they said, I can't see infant baptism. And so it was discovered many times over the centuries. The Anabaptists were one group. The Baptists, you know, it's a separate part of the tree. But all that happened is they independently discovered, as they looked through scripture, there's no infant baptism. And so each of these groups started up because of that discovery. It was independently discovered because that's what you see in scripture. And so it was that that they began to question.

Now, another doctrinal divide that involves salvation is the Calvinist and Arminian controversy. Most of you folks have heard that, right? You've heard of this controversy or maybe even been in the thick of it. But I think one of the points that I make here, it's a Protestant doctrinal divide, and I put in this Afterthought for emphasis, it's a senseless Protestant doctrinal divide.

We brought up before that at the Council of Dort here, one of the Armenian guys was beheaded. Several of them were imprisoned. Some were given beatings. So, I mean, these days, that sounds pretty severe, but that's the way the original confrontation and argument went. The basic error of this controversy is not seeing the spiritual death as separation. That was a huge oversight. Both groups missed seeing that. And it's because of that logic. And it goes like this.

You are spiritually dead, out on a slab cold, you cannot respond. Next, since you cannot respond, then God has to make you alive. Since God has to make you alive, and you don't have any faith without that, then God has to give you faith as a gift. And then you believe, and then you're saved.

Now, how does that fit in with the identification truths? It doesn't. Because you're not... being alive is being raised, right? And what passage in scripture do you see being raised, made alive, and then given the gift of faith and believing. You don't find it. It's not there. None of the identification truths passages support that idea.

And every place you see death talked of in terms of spiritual death, you keep seeing it as death of separation, death of separation, death of separation. This whole incident and beheading the guy and everything else started and continues based on lacking that piece of important information. among other things.

Okay. Now, salvation. Can one lose it by willful intent or negligence? A big question that starts to arise here. Hmm, what do you think? Okay. There are groups that hold that once saved, one cannot be lost, while others hold that salvation once gained can be lost by willfulness or negligence. Cult groups typically hold to loss of salvation. Why? Because salvation is gained by works. Those people who come knocking at your door, two at a time, they're in this boat. They're afraid to lose it because they've got to gain it by working.

In addition, denominations that hold the Law of Salvation include Methodist, Nazarene, most Pentecostal and Holiness churches, and some churches that came out of the Anabaptists and some Baptist churches. That's largely where you'll see that idea coming forth. Yes? I know that a lot of people who believe in the Law of Salvation think they have a spiritual value. I think several things.

One of them is that they will look at something that is really intended to be encouragement to Christians that they continue to behold the Lord and basically not go into a position of just kind of going in idle. And there are warnings to Christians about that. And what will happen is, without discerning that from those that address specifically salvation, a believer is in trouble. And that's where the lack of distinction there makes people tend to go this direction. A lot of church leaders like to hold that over people's heads because it's a point of control. Grace is just tough for them to handle. What? Teaching grace? It's a tough thing for them to handle as church leaders.

So holding that over their head is a position that church leaders who like to drive people using that will point to. Okay. Salvation by identification. With the teachings of John Darby, the identification of the believer with Christ as a means of salvation was introduced. It is amazing.

It's basically been less than 200 years. out of the centuries of church history. But remember Irenaeus? He taught basically that we've been brought back to the position of Adam by what Christ did. Even Irenaeus, within less than a century after the New Testament era, had already lost it. Already failed to understand what had been taught clearly during the New Testament era.

One of the things that also impacts clearly is spiritual growth, which will be addressed next week. So we'll go into that in more detail. One of the things that's amazing here, each of these passages had been taught earlier. That is, you can find commentaries on the verses, but somehow guys never saw it. It is amazing. We have a great many old commentaries, and they didn't get the idea of what was happening. They missed it. Tom? Yeah, they never saw it as a body of truth. They never saw it as a big picture item. It was sort of an incidental that got lost along the way.

Yeah, that's a good way to put it. So as a consequence, it's only been less than the last two centuries that the church has grabbed hold of this and still by and large most churches don't understand it and even in the Brethren churches where this had started many have lost it. Fifteen years to a Brethren church and you didn't see that. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. So here it is amazing how quickly it was lost in the early church You know, here's Timothy being told by Paul, you know, these truths that I've told you teach to faithful men who in turn teach others also.

And here's, you know, Irenaeus had lost it by less than a century, a few generations at most outside of the apostolic era. And it had been gone. And yes, it's less than two centuries ago when Darby presented this to be approximately a century and a half. And now already a great many brethren churches have already lost that truth. So it is phenomenal how dismal the picture of church history is.

When we look at the next, we'll be getting into the history of spiritual growth teachings and obviously be looking at the identification truths again. One of the things that we're going to find is that what tended to happen in the church is Once you lose the idea of the identification truths, quickly, spiritual growth gets gobbled up by earning your salvation.

You see that? When salvation becomes something I earn, there is no spiritual growth. Because I'm constantly worried, not about growing, but about earning what I don't yet have. See the difference there? And so what is phenomenal, and again we'll go into it in more detail, is the amazing thing that was lost. We talk about spiritual growth, and to us it's an of course kind of thing. But for much of Christendom now, and for much of Christendom over the centuries, that understanding that you could actually grow spiritually, having a salvation and a position that is eternally fixed, It's just a rare thing, a rare thing.

Okay. I finished a little bit early on purpose here. Any questions here? As we've gone through things, we've been moving pretty quickly. Yeah, Carol. Oh, yeah, basically I felt like I'd covered that before, but certainly loss of salvation would be included there, yes, as well. I was looking primarily at the Protestant denominations in that list. Yeah? Well, that's an interesting thing. And here's a problem when you get into so-called Christian legalism. Paul would say, there isn't any such thing. But when you get into Christian legalism, the problem is, what's on your list?

My mom was raised in a Pentecostal church. Assembly of God. Her dad was a pastor. And she got into some trouble The church held a special prayer meeting. They had an emergency prayer meeting mid-week. They got everybody together and had this special prayer meeting. And the reason that they held this prayer meeting, they wanted to pray that she would not lose her salvation.

The reason? She had gone to a movie. That was it. No, no. It was on the list. One church will have this list. Another church will have that one. The problem is that it's not in scripture, so it's all things that human beings cook up. Does that answer it? When? It varies from which church? Well, scripturally there isn't any. Scripturally there isn't any.

John 10.28 is not the only verse, but it's one we focus on because it's so abundantly clear.

Christ says of His sheep, He says, I am constantly giving them life. They cannot, and the Greek word is umē, the pair of words is umē, not even the slightest chance that they can lose their salvation of their own doing. Neither can anyone else take them out of my hand. The next verse And the father has them in his hand, and they can't take them out of his hand either. It is absolute that Jesus says, I am constantly giving them life. The person cannot lose the salvation of their own doing, and nobody else can influence or make it come about either. It can't be done. And he uses ume, which is the most extreme way in the Greek language that you can say, not the slightest chance. It can't be done. Impossible.

One of the passages, for example, that is often pointed to is Hebrews 6.4, which is when they'll say, you know, once a person has tasted, you know, they can't be restored. You know, the problem is many of the teach this will have people rededicated, re-rededicated, rededicated, resaved. That verse says you cannot be restored again to repentance.

That's scary. I've seen and heard of some stories of those who, when confronted with that, who are in this group, they get scared. Because what that says, once you lose it, you're lost if you take it that way, if you interpret it to mean that. And to them, that's frightening.

Other questions? We've gone through a lot of things quick. Yes? Okay. Basically, you know you've got last rites you hear about okay, so this is your your unction Okay, and then you've you've got So you've got that and that's why though there will be in in Roman Catholic and some other related systems you know orthodox with a they want some sort of a last ceremony to make sure that you know you're delivered into the right hands and So there's that and with with orders you've got basically things that the church says, you know, you're going to do this and you're going to do that, and you've got certain categories of disciplines that you need to be under and things of that sort. So that was his way of bringing things down into seven categories. Some of the other guys introduced more and just broke it down into smaller detail. It was basically the same thing. Yeah?

The mandatory thing that's really every week is mass. And it's interesting, a lot of folks who will consider themselves Catholic more culturally They don't realize what that's saying. You've got to have this or you're not getting the re-sacrifice of Christ every week. They'll go through the annual festal cycle that goes along with that.

There's a number of other things that are connected. Also, in terms of the penance issue, There may be things that you're told to do that, okay, you've got to do this and that and the other thing, and say so many of these and do this, and other things that you'll be told specific to the particular wrong or sin to correct for that error. Yeah. Yes.

But we need to make clear that this is not a Christian thing. This is a set of man's rules that man has been taught. You won't find that in scripture. You won't find that in scripture. It's not biblically called out. It is something spelled out basically from traditions of men. It's added on centuries later. Tom? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

The truth is, it is valuable at all times for us to go back and to look at scripture and say, why are we doing this? Why are we doing what we're doing? And examine it from the standpoint of scripture. Because that's the ultimate authority that we measure things by. And to not get caught up in just, here's our tradition and this is the way we've always done it. The truth is, nothing has always been done that way. We ultimately have to go back to scripture as the authority, not the way we've always done it. Other questions? Comments? I guess I would say that's a passage that would take some going through in order to make sure we had it clear.

But the point being, those who point to a loss of salvation will frequently look to Hebrews 6.4, and if they do so, then I point to them and say, look what this says. You can't be restored again. You're in trouble. You've lost it for good. if that's the way they take it. So I take their interpretation and say, hey, if that's the case, forget about rededications. You've lost it. There is none.

And the idea is to get them to think and look real carefully and ask, what is that passage saying? Not just jump to the conclusion that, hey, this supports my position, because that all of a sudden will get them also in deep, deep, eternal trouble, because it's irreversible, the way they interpret it. Yeah? Yeah, yeah, this one would take a lot of time. It is not talking about loss of salvation. That's the key, okay? Any other questions? Enough enough? Okay.

Let's pray. Lord, we do thank you for, as we look at this marvelous salvation we have, Lord, that we could be blessed so abundantly that we could have this salvation that we can count upon, that you have been overflowing with your marvelous grace. What a wonderful and tremendous thing that is. We pray, as Paul did, that the eyes of our hearts would be opened to the depth of what that means. each and every day. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.