Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 09087 Whether a congregation can stop being a true church is not a theoretical question in Britain, where a good many buildings still open on Sunday for gatherings in which the gospel has not been preached for two generations. The question is uncomfortable because it requires a judgement about other Christians, and we are…
Reading Time: 8 minutesQuestion 7070. Biblical apostasy is a word we reach for quickly and understand slowly. I have heard it applied to a friend who stopped attending church, to a denomination that has drifted, to a preacher whose theology went sideways, and once or twice to somebody who had simply irritated the person speaking. Scripture handles the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07062 Judas Iscariot was never saved. I hold that with more confidence than I hold most things, because Jesus Himself said so in several ways, and the alternative would require us to believe that a man could be chosen, indwelt and forgiven and still be described as one who was lost from the beginning….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07059 Can a true Christian commit apostasy? My answer is no, and the reason is not that believers are strong but that God is faithful. A person who genuinely, finally and contentedly repudiates Jesus is revealing what was always the case rather than losing something they once possessed. That answer needs working out carefully,…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 07050 Few things trouble a tender conscience quite like the fear of falling away. I have sat with believers who could recite the promises of God perfectly well and still could not sleep, because somewhere at the back of the mind sat a suspicion that one cold enough season, one serious enough failure, and…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 07019. Can you lose your salvation? I do not believe you can, and I want to give you the reasons rather than simply the conclusion, because this question deserves better than a slogan. It is asked by frightened people far more often than by curious ones, and a frightened person needs argument, not reassurance…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 07008. Hebrews 6:4-6 is the passage people reach for when they want to argue that a genuine believer can be lost, and the language about falling away is undeniably severe. I am not going to pretend otherwise, and I have no patience with treatments that wave the difficulty away. If you have been troubled…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10106. The Bible teaches that a one world religion will exist during the Tribulation, that it will centre on the worship of the beast and be enforced by the false prophet, and that it will be destroyed before the return of Jesus. It is not a conspiracy theory bolted on to Scripture. It is…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10085. A falling away must come before the day of the Lord, according to Paul, and Christians have argued about what he meant ever since. Some read it as a great abandonment of the faith in the last days. Others read it as a technical term for the Rapture itself. The two readings could…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 04041. Few questions unsettle a tender conscience like falling away, and few passages of Scripture stir more argument than Hebrews 6:4-6. There the writer describes people who were once enlightened, who tasted the heavenly gift, who shared in the Holy Spirit, and who tasted the goodness of the word of God, and yet fell…