Once Saved, Always Saved 2 — Jacob Prasch

Hebrews 6 and the Possibility of Falling Away

Let's begin understanding Hebrews 6. Hebrews, of course, was written to believers, specifically Jewish believers, and there is some suggestion of falling away. He, of falling away from belief in Jesus as the Messiah, and trying to go back under the law.

Now, this kind of doctrine was more a feature of epistles like the Galatians than it was Hebrews. In Galatians, of course, they were practicing a form of hard unionism. They were not really legalists, saying that you're saved by the law, but they were saying you're saved by keeping the law in addition to Jesus.

Well, are we saved by Him? We should never be saved by works, and again, Christians do works because they've been saved, not to get saved. However, Hebrews was written to Jewish believers, and there was some danger of people going back to Judaism in some way, but not in the same way as Galatians.

I'm going to read from the Greek text of Hebrews chapter 6. We'll be reading verses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. Therefore, let us leave the elementary doctrines of Christ and go on to the truth, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead work and a faith towards God, with instruction about absolution, laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.

So He begins. He talks about people who've been saved, and they need to lay this particular foundation. But immediately after that, He introduces what goes on, and He begins with the Greek word ger. The Greek word ger means for.

For. That is, because these other things have happened, let's press on. And He begins talking along the following lines. He says, This we will do if God permits, for it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gifts and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit.

They have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they then commit apostasy, since they crucify the Son of God on their own account and hold Him up to contempt. This word ger, again, means for.

The Greek word is not a subjunctive or a conditional subjunctive, but it does imply the possibility that something can go wrong, that it could happen. It's not a subjunctive thing. It's doubtful if it'll happen.

It affirmatively says it's conditional. But then it goes on beyond this. It's impossible to renew them. A dinosaur. This is the same word as we have in Chapter 6, verse 18, saying God cannot be false.

Impossible. A dinosaur. It becomes so impossible for these people to be renewed that it would mean God was false, that they could be at the same time. God cannot be false, but neither can these kinds of people be renewed.

What is that talking about? We only have one kind of thing where people cannot be renewed. Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Now, what is this? In its context, blasphemy of the Holy Spirit had to do with the Pharisees, or the religious leaders of Jesus' day, attributing to Satan that which they knew was of God.

They knew it was of God. They didn't think it was of God. They knew it was of God, right? And the power of the vineyard, it says clearly in Matthew, for they knew he spoke the parable of them. So, they knew it was of God, but then, knowing it was of God, they said it was of Satan, in such a way as to mislead others away from the way of salvation.

Now, that's changing trades. You know something is of God, you know it, but for your own interest, you say it isn't in such a manner as to mislead others away from the truth that's going to bring them into some destruction.

In its context, that was a description of the impregnable sea. We don't know at what point the Holy Spirit leaves someone. A backslider does not know at what point that happens. When King Saul went the way he did, he didn't know that the Spirit left him, did he?

Moreover, he continues to prophesy and fall among the prophets. Remember, the gifts and forming of God go forth without repentance. The Spirit may have been on him in terms of the pouring out of the Spirit on the church, in terms of gifts and ministries and so on, but it was not inside of him anymore.

Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit and Irreversible Apostasy

Lord, did we not do this, that in your name? I never knew you, Matthew 7, 22. We don't know at what point that happens, but there is a possibility of someone, a backslide, so irrepentantly and so far, refusing to come back to Jesus that they have come to a place where they've lost the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit can get the backslider continually, continually and continually. When someone falls away from the Lord and has no peace in themselves, they have no peace in their prayer life, they have no peace in anything, and you keep resisting and resisting and resisting, people like that will ultimately, ultimately not be saved.

They'll go so far, there's no coming back. Now, that can happen. That can happen. You can actually reach that point. Now, it's not easy, but there are people who will become so backslidden that they know the truth, but yet they will not allow their wives or their children, the wives who bring the children up in the church, don't take them to church, don't take them to Sunday school, don't take the kids with you.

There's people like that. There's people who have husbands or wives who are so backslidden that they will actually lead their own children away from the truth, even though they themselves know the truth.

This is a terrible kind of sin. There is some basis to associate this with blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, at least some basis to do that. But let's go on beyond this. The case of those who have once been enlightened.

Sotus centes is the Greek word. Sotus centes. The idea is, is that they have seen the light, or they have come to the light. It's not some abstract thing. They know what it is. They know exactly what it is.

Sotus centes, adoniton gertus, apex, sotus centes, gesumenus tes, doreas tes, eporegnon, kai, metoxis, genesentes, tumatos, edion. Once being enlightened and tasting of the dorea, the gift, and the heavenly, it's not really the heavenly experience, but the heavenly, and sharers or partakers, more sharers, they are becoming, it's not that they became, but they are, it's something ongoing, present, continuous, active, becoming like that.

There is no way that these people who have been actually experiencing the Holy Spirit and in contact with their heavenly destination, there is no way you can say that this is not about belief. No way.

It's about belief. It's people who've actually been saved. They came to the light. They came to the sotus centes. I saw the light, the true light of coming into the world by the light of the living man.

They came to Jesus. As a result of coming to Jesus, something else happens. They tasted of it. The word is, sotus minos kalon. They tasted the goodness. What this text is doing is basically drawing on Psalm 34, verse 8.

Let's look at it. Taste and see that the Lord is good. How blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. These are people who've actually tasted it. As we continue reading this text, the one who tastes the Lord, we have the Greek term theorema, tasting the taste of the word, but it's not the logo, it's therema.

You have two basic terms for the Bible, the word of God, in the New Testament in Greek. Therema is one, and logos is the other. Now, they're virtually synonymous. You can't really make the kind of distinction some people do, to the degree they do.

Some say that the logos is the printed word, and therema is some kind of personal revelation of the Spirit. That's not true. What we can say is that the logos is objective. The Bible is the word of God, and Jesus is Jesus, and it's in the print.

But the therema is when it becomes an experiential reality, a truth in our lives. Jesus is Jesus. He's the logo. But only when the logo comes to us in a personal way does the Bible really come alive, and that's the term that's used here.

Logos soteos is the term in chapter 4, verse 12, that Paul is building up to in chapter 6. For the word of God is living and active and sharper than a two-edged sword. The word there is not logos, it's just personal encounter.

In other words, you can have an academic theologian, a scholar who knows Greek and Hebrew perfectly, but he's not born again. He'll have the logos in some way, but the logos will become a personal experience in his life.

There'll be no therema. There'll be no real revelation of it. It'll purely be intellectual. The Bible in the hands of a man like that is useless. It's only somebody with God's Spirit inside of them who has partaken of the Holy Spirit.

That's what Paul is saying here. If you've partaken of the Holy Spirit, this objective truth, the logos, now is the therema. These are people who have really come to some kind of personal experience and faith in Jesus.

Partaken. Metopos genesentes. Now, in Luke, chapter 5, verse 7, this word is translated in the English Bible as literally comrades. In other words, they were people who became our comrades, camaraderie.

They were one of us, not people who were never one of us. They were one of us. They were saved. And they partake of the heavenly gift. Crestoreus, cres et hominem. This is a hate text to Gemini as a phrase, not as a word.

It occurs only one place in the Bible in this phrase, using the word, not charism, grace, but toreas. We can say God's grace is in some way for everybody. He's gracious to everybody, even unsaved people.

That's true. God is even gracious on saved people. But this is not the word charism. It's not that kind of grace. It's toreas. It's the gift of salvation. It's His grace unto the saving knowledge of the truth.

It's more than the general type of grace that God gives to all people. Now, the reason I point this out is because Calvinists, arguing from Calvin's institute, were trying to say that, well, it meant that they really didn't come all the way.

They only came part of the way. That's their argument. This is the basic argument of people who are Calvinists. But the text simply does not support that. What Calvinists do is what a lot of other people do.

They begin with a presupposition, and then they have to begin doing monkey tricks with the text to fit that presupposition. But that's not what the text in its context, in any way, supports. These were people who knew the Lord.

Now, I'm breaking it down from the Greek, but then we'll just read the whole thing all together if you would press on. Then it says that they commit apostasy if they go away. Verse 6. Now, that word for apostasy, or if they have been fallen away, is not apostasia.

It's not apostasia. Apostasia is something different. This is another word. It's a Greek conditional expressed in the Tartar scriptural, para pesantam. It goes against the following argument. There's an argument that these people are Jews who believe, and Paul, or, sorry, the Hebrews were saying to them, look, there's no way you can go back to Judaism now.

It's impossible. There's no longer a sacrifice outside of where you are, as it says in chapter 10. If you can't go back, this is what it means. You've got to stay where you are. And when you read it in that context, it has nothing whatsoever to do with saying you can't fall away.

That is an argument some people try to put. If the word was apostasia, that would be one thing. But the word is not apostasia. The word is para pesantam. Para pesantam goes directly against it. It means something very different.

It means falling away from a standard. Apostasia comes from an entirely different Greek word altogether. The Greek root of apostasia means to depart. It means to depart. You were here, and now you've left us.

This word, for falling away, means you haven't stopped believing, but you've stopped living what you live. So, if the argument that this was written to Jewish believers, and he was telling Jewish believers in the first century that, look, you can't fall away now.

You know, if you fall away, it's hopeless to go back to Judaism because that's.

Not going to work. The temple's going to be destroyed, etc. You've got to stay where you are.

That's the kind of argument some people use that was written before the second temple was destroyed. So, therefore, it means to these Jews who believe they can't go back to the temple, the temple is going to be destroyed.

You've got to stay where you are. It's not possible to go anywhere, and it's not talking about you can lose your salvation. If that was the case, the word would be apostasia, depart. But it's not that word.

It means stop living up to the same standard. You used to live a Christian life, but now you've not departed from your beliefs, you're just not living anymore. That exactly fits the context. Chapter 6 opens with, therefore, leaving the elementary principles.

When you find people—we see what this is on the Kashuk and Samanthi—baby-food Christianity. They've been saved ten years, twenty years, fifty years, and they're still eating baby food. That's not formal or healthy.

When you see people who become stagnant in their Christian life, never growing greater, they never grow in the knowledge and understanding of the Word, they never grow in having a character changed by God into the image and likeness of Jesus.

They're always the same. Well, people like that are really backsliding. When I was a kid, it was a Bob Dylan song, and one of the lines in this song was, He who is not busy being born is busy dying. It's something like that.

If we're not going ahead, we're going to go backwards. The word here for falling away is not apostasia. It's not people who departed from their beliefs. I don't believe in Jesus anymore. I don't believe the Bible anymore.

That's not what the word means. Apostasia could mean that, but this is not apostasia. This word means, I haven't departed from the belief. I still believe it, but they're not living it anymore. And so, by not living it anymore, they go into a form of things that is worse than they were before they were saved.

You cannot meet the Lord Jesus and be the same person. You're either going to be better, or you're going to be worse. If you come to Jesus, you're going to be better than you used to be, or you're going to be worse.

But you cannot get saved and remain the same. You cannot come to taste of the Lord, to be partakers of the Holy Spirit, to experience a foretaste of the heavens. You cannot have that happen to you and be the same person.

You're either going to be going one way, or you're going to begin going the other way. Much worse. And the use of the word here, anastaronka, means to crucify again. If you crucify him again, anastaronka, he'd be crucified.

And even holding in contempt what he did. Parabhigmatazonka. When you find people who are on one standard, and now they've left that standard while still claiming to believe, they're worse than before they believed.

They're worse than before they believed. This is talking about backsliders. Now, having broken down the Greek meaning, I'm just going to read it. For in the case of those who have once been enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gifts, and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come...

Sounds like Christians, doesn't it? It is Christians. And then have fallen away, not from believing, just from living what they believe. It's impossible to renew them against the repentance. Now, it doesn't mean if you fall away, you can't repent and come back.

The Greek does not have a present tense in the sense we do in English. It's present continuous action. You know in John's epistle where it says, he who is born of God does not sin. That does not mean that Christians do not fall into sin.

What it means is they do not practice. Now, because he's writing here to Jews, he's drawing on the Levitical mentality from Torah. The Torah has provision for inadvertent sins. It does not have provision for continually practiced willful sins.

The Torah and Leviticus have provisions for inadvertent sins. We have two Hebrew words for sin and two Greek words for sin. The two basic Hebrew words for sin are het and hetron. One means missing the mark by shooting an arrow at a target, literally not going far enough.

The other is going too far. We can sin by either not meeting up to God's standards or going beyond it, okay? The Greek equivalent to hamartino hamartino. Leviticus provided for inadvertent sins. It provided for sins of ignorance.

We call this barut in Hebrew. The high priest on Yom Kippur made his home as a sin of ignorance. But there was not provision for people who practiced willful sins, even under the Torah. And this connects directly with what we see in Scripture.

Hebrews 10, Fellowship, and the Danger of Backsliding

Under the law of Moses, what would happen if the testimony of two or three witnesses? How much more is it going to happen to believers if they go back to this kind of departed? In the case of those who've once been enlightened, they came to the light, they saw Jesus, they tasted of the heavenly gifts, and they've been made partakers of the Spirit and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come.

They've tasted it and then have fallen away. You cannot fall away from where you have never been. The other argument here comes from John Calvin in his Institutes, Book 3, Chapter 2, Verse 11. He puts it this way, that they only saw a glimmering of light, that they heard the gospel preached and they understood it and knew it was the truth, but they never, but they only tasted it in the sense of, they didn't really go all the way and made a full commitment.

First of all, the text does not justify that. It's not a glimmering light. It's not what the word means. When you look at the text in its context, these were people who knew the truth. You cannot get doreus, the gift of God as eternal life for Jesus Christ, or what?

You don't get that gift unless you're a saint. You don't get that gift unless you're a saint. Mr. Calvin was dead wrong, and you'll even find extreme expressions of Calvinism, as I said, all due to licentiousness.

It's because a real commitment was made at one time that they could still go on and practice it. Now, again, that's not common, but there are those who believe it. I knew people who were teaching it. Let's turn now to Hebrews, Chapter 10.

Hebrews, Chapter 10 puts it in an eschatological context and connects it with ecclesiology, with church. In verse 25, it says, "...forsake not the fellowshiping, or unassembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another all the more as you see the day approaching.".

Again, most of you know from other tapes, it is the, again, use of causa homer, the first of the result of Rabbi Hillel in Midrash. What's true in a life heavy, in a life situation, becomes particularly true in a heavy situation.

In other words, fellowship is always important, but in the last days it becomes especially important. If you can't stand together, you'll never stand alone. Now, putting it that way, we begin to understand there's a particular danger of backsliding in the last days.

Jesus said, many will fall away, didn't he? Many will fall away and be slain one another. Backsliding is always possible, but in the last days it becomes more and more prevalent. One of the things essential in God's economy to prevent backsliding is fellowship.

Christians supporting each other, bones cemented together. When you find people out of fellowship with other Christians, that is a direct reflection of the fact that they're out of fellowship with the Lord.

There's something wrong. I don't care if it's five, six people meeting in a house, or if it's five, six hundred meeting in a church, which is what God wants you to be. Now, if it's something beyond your control, it's no fault of your own, no choice of your own, if you're the only Christian out in the village in Saudi Arabia, that's something different.

God will see those believers through. But for us, when you find people out of fellowship, they're heading for trouble. It's not a coincidence that this introduces what comes next in verse 26. For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins.

Hercules, willfully, again he's drawing back to the Levitical concept of only provision for inadvertency. But then he says something else. If we, he must, he puts himself in the situation. The writer of Hebrews was not preaching at other people, he was also reminding himself.

And Paul does the same thing, doesn't he? Doesn't Paul say that? What's that? I lose it myself? How can you lose something if it can't be lost? But then it goes on saying something more. The knowledge of truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins.

Tens aletheis means the body of truth. And the word for knowledge is not a normal knowledge, but ethiknathos. Ethiknathos does not mean you know a truth about something, it means you know the full body of truth about something.

These were not people who understood only one aspect of the Christian life or of salvation. These were people who understood the full paradigm of it. Now, somebody can be told, Jesus died for our sins, and Jesus came and he died to take our sin and give us eternal life.

Somebody should know that, okay? That is nothing. But when you begin saying, Jesus called us to co-die with him, and we become new creations, the same as he was when he rose from the dead. And when you begin to say, his spirit will inhabit us and give us the power to overcome desire in the flesh.

And when you begin to say, the Bible is the doctrinal and insoluble word of God, and the Holy Spirit is purposeful for us and gives us the power to live it, we have to follow this standard. And when you begin to say, salvation means all these other things, well, that's not ethiknathos, that's ethiknathos.

These were not people who just heard something about the gospel. These were people who understood it. Understand what I'm saying? They really knew. They knew. And they knew the full body of truth. Pes alethios, but a certain terrifying expectation of judgment, the fury of the fire which will consume the adversary.

Everyone who certified the law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severe punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled underfoot the Son of God and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has insulted the Spirit of Grace?

Do you see that? Insulted the Spirit of Grace. They can reach the point where they blaspheme the Holy Spirit. An ill-intented gaslighter can reach the point where they blaspheme the Holy Ghost. That's what it's saying.

That's exactly what it's saying. You have to do some monkey tricks to try to say that this is talking about unsaved people. Pes alethios, trample underfoot. Honam hegesonemos, means literally treating as common the blood of Jesus and the word where there is any bleeding.

Insolent. Being insolent to God's Spirit. Yes, there is an unpardonable sin. Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10 directly connect. An ill-intented gaslighter will get to the point where he will blaspheme the Holy Ghost.

You understand? That's what it's saying. Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10 go together. Hebrews 6 raises the possibility of an ill-intented gaslighter blaspheming the Holy Ghost. Hebrews 10 reiterates the same point and says that's what's going to happen.

There is a point of no return. Again, go back to the prodigal. He broke it and remade it. He broke it and remade it. He broke it and remade it. But eventually, even the prodigal gave up. Now, that's not there to get anyone discouraged, but it is there to make sure we understand what we've gotten ourselves into, and that we do not take lightly what God has told us.

It's not departing from the Lord. This is not a blasphemer. This is departing from Him. When you read Jude's epistle, the whole theme of Jude's epistle is about backsliders in the Church. There's as many backsliders in here as there are out there.

Backslider in heart, what's it say? We still look his own way? Now, it continues in verses 28 and 29 of Hebrews chapter 10. I'm sorry, verses 28 and 29. Two or three witnesses will cause the law of Moses to be enacted with capital punishment.

It'll be worse for those who are Christians, because they didn't have a way out. A stasis means violated. A stasis means violated. But doikēte, doikēte, do you think? In the Greek, this is rhetorical.

Do you think? When you ask a rhetorical question, it means you know the answer. If this is what happened to the law of Moses, when they didn't even have Jesus, they didn't even have the blood sacrifice that you have.

You daily have the animals. But you have the real thing. If that's what happened when people did this on the Torah, what do you think is going to happen to you if you go this way? Now, he's warning. He's warning.

But he doesn't leave them there. He begins talking about our need for endurance in verse 36. We need to endure. How do we endure? Keep the life jacket on and keep swimming. Oh, we're saved by grace through faith.

That's true. What is faith? It continues, chapter 11, verse 1. Faith is the hypostasis, the assurance of things hoped for. In the Bible, hope equals future thoughts. I guarantee you, if you'll keep following Jesus, you're going to go to heaven.

I guarantee you, if you don't take the life jacket off, you won't drown. I guarantee you. Not that I hope you won't drown. I guarantee you won't drown if you keep the life jacket on. I guarantee you'll go to heaven if you keep following Jesus.

I guarantee it. This will be eternally sure of your salvation. This way. But if it's not this way, we're playing with fire. And there's certainly people today who are playing with fire. There is no way you can say, as John Calvin does, that it means people who heard the gospel and came to a certain point and then were true.

It's not so. It's simply not so. They had the domain. There is no way you can say it only meant that Jewish believers could not possibly go back under the law. Talk about people who can fall eight ways, depart from God's standards.

Imputed Righteousness and the Necessity of Works

They have to play games with the text instead of letting it say what it means and means what it says. Let's go a bit further. They'll tell you, Calvinists will tell you, righteousness is imputed. Now, we have to understand what imputation means.

It's an interesting term, impute. Turn with me to Hebrew, to Romans, chapter 6, please. So then, are we to continue in sin, that grace may increase? May it never be. How shall we who died the sins still live in it?

Understand that imputed righteousness can be misunderstood. You actually have people in the Greek churches who believe that the new creation, that only the new creation matters, it doesn't matter what the old one does, we'll make it right to keep sinning with the old creation.

Paul understood that imputed righteousness can be misunderstood, that people could think it's okay to sin and still be saved. Well, again, let's look at why he's saying this. He's writing to believers.

So, therefore, the people who believe in an unconditional one-saved-all-we-save will say, well, if they go back and talk to sin, it means they were never saved to begin with. They were not ever truly born to begin with.

They were never born again. They were never really believers. They just made an empty or false profession or they had a religious experience or something like this, and they were never really saved. That certainly does not mean he was sick.

It certainly does not mean he was dead. Look at the product of fun. So, the product of fun has multiple interpretations. The rabbis say that a parable had up to 70 different interpretations. Seventy meaning multiple, anyway.

One of the interpretations of the product of fun is a backslider. A backslider would wind up the way the product of fun did. Odd faith and humiliation and begin coming back to his father. When a backslider comes back, the father will forgive him and take him back, but he has to come back.

How often does the father say, my son who was dead, Jesus will hide. He was dead. He was dead. So, let's get back to this idea of imputation. Romans chapter 4, verse 10. The Greek word is elogista. We get the word impute from the Vulgate, from the Latin imputare.

The Hebrew is choshev, meaning sink. What impute means is to wreck it. It's not that it's really given to us, but it's wrecked. God takes it into account that when Jesus died on the cross for our sins, God took our sin and put it on Him, and took His righteousness and put it on us.

Even though He was righteous, unrighteousness was imputed to Him on the cross. Even though we are unrighteous, His righteousness is imputed to us when we come to the cross. Yes, righteousness is imputed.

Abraham believed God and it was wrecked into him as righteousness. But then what happens? Yes, the righteousness is imputed, but not the fruit. You cannot impute the fruit of the Spirit. You cannot ascribe the fruit of the Spirit.

We're called to prove to be His disciples. Let's look, please, at the book of Revelation, chapter 3, verse 21. "...granted Him to sit down with me on my throne, as I also overcame and sat down with my Father on His throne.

For he who has an ear, let him hear.". To go to heaven, you must be an overcomer. Now, we cannot overcome in our own strength. We cannot overcome in our own righteousness. It has to be the righteousness and strength of Jesus.

He does it for us. You can never swim the channel in a storm with your own strength. Somebody has to give you a life jacket. But once somebody gives you the strength, you must put it into operation. Quite clear, just like little Tommy's model airplane.

Heaven is for overcomers. God will give you the grace, the means, and the will to do it. But He also gives you the free will to make your choice. When you get saved, your free will is given back to you.

Revelation, Overcoming, and the Book of Life

Let's go back to Revelation. Revelation 22, 14. "...those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter by the gates of the city.". Outside of the dogs, the sorcerers, the immoral persons, the murderers, the idolaters, and everyone who commits and practices idolatry, it says.

Blessed are those who wash their robes. Now, some people wash their robes. But the Bible talks about those who make them dirty again, doesn't it? We can always go back to the blood of the Lamb and wash our robes.

But taking their robes off. In Sigia, that's the young man who ran away naked when Jesus was arrested, remember? When persecution came, he ran away. In Sigia, he lost his garments of salvation. Back to the seven churches in chapter 2, verse 11, Jesus says,.

"...he who overcomes will not be hurt by the second death.". He was writing here to born-again Christians. He was telling Christians that if they overcame, they would not be hurt by the second death.

Obviously, there is a theoretical possibility at the very least that these people could fall away. Jesus actually says,. "...I will brought your name out of the book of life.". I would like anybody to explain to me logically, in chapter 3, verse 5,.

"...he who overcomes, the overcomers shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not erase his name from the book of life.". How can your name be erased from the book of life if it was never in there to begin with?

It doesn't even make sense. They have to come with their presuppositions and do monkey shit. Let's look at Matthew 25, 30. "...cast out the worthless servant into the outer darkness, in the place where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.".

We are all given a certain amount of talent, and our talents are always in proportion to our abilities. In chapter 25, verse 15,. "...when Jesus comes back, he will not settle for people who bury their talents.

The people with the highest reward will be invested, but he won't settle for anything less than an interest-bearer.". Those who just bury their talents, those people will be taxed for this. They have religion, they don't have Christianity.

If you or I have a living relationship with Jesus, he's going to employ our talents. Now, you know, for years and years and years in Israel, I led a congregation and was very active in evangelism, but I also had a day job, and in Israel it's a six-day week.

It wasn't easy having a day job at a family and being a minister. I know how difficult it is, but I did it because God gave me the grace and will to do it, and I made the choice to cooperate with that grace.