While this train of discussion is not with me - I have a thought to add here about what you said.
I accepted the Lord at 13 and lasted a couple of years until I onsciously left Him due to anger concering my Father's death.
After a time I became a strong agnostic (close to an aethiest).
I stayed in that condition for 15 years or so until the Lord convinced me of His reality through a miracle.
Looking back - I can see the Holy Spirit (with whom I was sealed when I believed in my youth) moving and using me in varios ways to argue against many of the arguments my aethist and cultish friends were using against evangelical Christians.
I believe that I was exercising gifts from the Holy Spirit even in my unbelief.
While I freely admit that I was an "unbeliever" to say the least for over 15 years - I will not agree or say that He ever left me having sealed me securely when my very real conversion happened in my youth.
However - it isn't because of my experience that I believe in OSAS. It is because I know that I passed from death to life when I was 13 and that I will never come into condemnation even if I do come under His just chastisment and even suffer loss in the long run because of my sins.
He is the one who started a good work in me close to 6 decades ago and He is the one who will see that work to completion in my glorification.
It's for the praise of His grace and perseverance that He saved me and it is for His the praise of His grace and perseverance that He will keep me saved regardless of momentary unbelief and indescresions or even ones which last for over 15 years. should He tarry.
I too have a similar testimony, and if I were to go by my experience alone, without what the scriptures teach, I would be in the OSAS camp.
We must not elevate our experience over what the word of God teaches us.
Thank God you did respond to His calling, later on.
I think you misunderstand, the context of the discussion.
The context is departing from Christ, while under persecution.
This is not being backslidden or falling back into a sinful lifestyle.
13 But the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, who believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away. Luke 8:13
- Matthew says it this way:
20 But he who received the seed on stony places, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; 21 yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while. For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles. Matthew 13:20-21
The warning is to His disciples, to not depart from or fall away from Him, and return to the religion of Judaism, because they are being persecuted: Tortured or threatened with death, if they do not renounce Jesus as a false messiah or false prophet, and return to keeping the law of Moses, and sacrificing animals for their sins, and the practices of Judaism, which is a religion that does not recognize Jesus Christ as Messiah or Lord.
To renounce Jesus as Messiah, is to claim that another is messiah.
You must understand the context, in order to understand the discussion.
Here is the writer of the book of Hebrews teaching the Jewish believers the same thing.
12 Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; 13 but exhort one another daily, while it is called “Today,” lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. Hebrews 3:12-14
This phrase "departing from" is the same Greek expression Jesus used in Luke 8:13, "fall away".
Depart From; Fall Away - Strong's G868 - aphistēmi
- to make stand off, cause to withdraw, to remove
- to excite to revolt
- to stand off, to stand aloof
- to go away, to depart from anyone
- to desert, withdraw from one
- to fall away, become faithless
- to shun, flee from
- to cease to vex one
- to withdraw one's self from, to fall away
- to keep one's self from, absent one's self from
This context and warning is carried on throughout the book of Hebrews, whereby the author is convincing the Hebrew followers of the Lord that Jesus is the True Messiah, The True Lord, The True High Priest, and not some man, or false messiah, in which they must be faithful to Him as the True Messiah, even unto death.
In Hebrews 6 we see this continuing context:
4 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame. Hebrews 6:4-6
JLB
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