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Hello? Yes, sorry, I missed your name. Joyce. Joyce. Joyce, welcome to the programme. Hello. Where are you ringing from tonight? I'm ringing from Newcastle. Newcastle, good.
Yes, all the way Newcastle. Bless you, I think we've spoken before. My love to Leslie and Howard and Joel. Thank you, we'll pass that on to them. And I pray that the Lord's arms are around them. In fact, I know the Lord's arms are around them.
Now, what I want to know is about the prodigal son. I am a prodigal daughter. I became a Christian at the age of 14. At the age of 20, to get out of an abusive home, I married outside of the church. Right?
Yes. Now, for 30 years, I never went to church. Since then, to cut a long story short, I'm on my own now. It took me a long time. I stood outside of church and listened to the hymns. I wanted to go back in.
I felt as though the Lord was calling me back in, and I eventually went back in. So I believe once saved, you are always saved. The problem is emotion. Some people say they are saved, and it's just an emotional thing on the evening, where it passes the next day.
I think this Arminianism and Calvinism, do not think that there's something down the middle of it. You can find something down the middle of it, instead of cutting it in two. Do you know what I mean?
All right, let me just kick him in. Can I first of all just come to Andrew in a moment? Joyce is saying once saved, always saved.
Yes, and I think I'll choose to differ a little bit from that. She mentioned that at the age of 14, she got saved, and then she wandered away, and then she came back to the Lord. There are people that have been saved, and they wander away, and they never come back to God.
I've always mentioned that there are people that can lose their gifts. There are people that can lose their salvation. When the Spirit of God is coming upon a man, we hear people speak in tongues a lot.
But when he's departed, it's just like Saul. When Saul, the Spirit of God departed from him, he did not know that the Spirit of God had departed. When Samson also had the Spirit of God, he was able to do the impossible.
But when the Spirit of God departed, he did not know. And he was still thinking that he was in the presence of God, or probably saved. But at that time, when the Spirit of God leaves a man, the man has broken a relationship with God.
And the man needs to go back to the Father. That is where the prodigal son comes in. If you come back to the Father, then you get saved. You will get saved. It doesn't mean that once you've not gone astray, and you die that way, you are saved.
Do you not think you could be discouraging a lot of Christians at this moment who are perhaps down and out? You know, they don't know which way to turn. And you are discouraging them at this moment in time where they are searching.
They are thinking, well, I'm not saved. This man is saying, I'm not saved. You know, I would like you to clarify exactly what you mean by this.
Yes. It is not a matter of the person. If the person is discouraged, or the person is low, it doesn't make you to be unsaved. I think you have to be clear about that. There are many Christians that are down.
There are many Christians that are sick and all that. It doesn't mean that they are not saved. But I'm talking about a relationship with God. A person that is saved is somebody that believes in the heart, just like the Bible says in the book of Romans 10, verse 9.
It says, with the heart a man believes, and with the tongue, salvation, it comes through the tongue as well. But when a person now decides to reject the Lord Jesus after being a Christian, the Bible says in the book of John, chapter 6, that any man that puts his hand on the plow and looks back is not qualified to enter into the kingdom.
And so there we are talking about Christians that have entered into the place, into the kingdom, and by whatever reason, they've decided to turn their back and away, and they've decided to go into something else.
Well, they have lost their salvation. God has still made provision for them to be able to come back. If they do, like the Prodigal Son, they will be welcome.
Yes, but I honestly think there's a middle road where the two should get together and agree on this, because...
If I could comment, I don't think... Let me bring James in. Yeah, I don't think that there is a middle ground between whether God saves or God tries to save but fails to save. I don't think there is a middle ground between these two positions.
They've been debated for hundreds of years, and the middle grounds are always very, very inconsistent. In regards to whether a person can have salvation and lose it, this again takes us back to whether you view salvation as something God does or just simply something God makes available and we do.
If Jesus Christ is the Savior and we are united with Him, Jesus said in John 6, He will lose none that the Father gives Him. That's none. That's a very important word. Those who make a profession of faith but who fall away, Jesus warned us about them.
Remember the parable of the soils? There are going to be those who spring up but there is no root in them and they pass away. As John said, they went out from us so it might be demonstrated they were not truly of us.
There are those who have false faith. It comes back to who is the author and finisher of our faith? Hebrews 12 says it is Jesus. Faith is the gift of God given to His elect. That's where we differ fundamentally.
If faith is just simply something that anybody can do, then saving faith, true saving faith is something anybody can do, then we don't have any way of making a consistent presentation of the pages of Scripture.
But when you recognize that all of salvation, salvation, grace and faith, Ephesians 2, is the gift of God, it comes from God, it is given to His people, then the reason that I persevere in the faith, the reason that I will endure to the end is not because of me.
It is because of the work of the Holy Spirit in me to the glory of God in Jesus Christ. It is not something that I work up within myself. But would you not sense, James, that those who fall away have never really been saved in the first place?
That is the only way that I can see how Jesus can be a perfect Savior and say, I will never lose one of those given to me. Remember, what does Jesus say about His sheep? He says, my sheep know me and I know them.
What does Jesus say to those He casts away in the day of judgment? I never knew you. How could you be one of Christ's sheep, known by Christ, and then be cast away by Christ, and Him say to you, I never knew you?
Joyce, you obviously know your Scriptures. I can hear you saying amen and agreeing in the background.
Anyone who belongs to Jesus, no one can pluck them out of His hand. I truly and honestly believe this.