Beware of dangerous errors in understanding perseverance | Clip from Perseverance of the Saints

Hi, welcome to the Whole Council podcast. I'm John Snider and with me again is Chuck Baggett And we're looking at the book salvation in full color 20 sermons by the

Great Awakening preachers on the doctrine of salvation. It really is Quite a wonderful book.

It it does take some Earnestness to make it all the way through it's 20 chapters and they're not they're not light and fluffy chapters, but it really does

Prove worth your time this week. We're looking at the doctrine of the perseverance of the

Saints And this is a topic that we feel is very important So we want to stop and talk about that a little bit more in a minute before we work through the sermon

But Chuck, why don't you introduce us to the preacher? Yeah, the preacher is William Tennant and this is not

William the first but William the second so it's William Tennant's son brother to Gilbert John Charles and Maybe others but at least those who are also all preachers

Their dad is the guy who had the log college and so they all studied under him

William Tennant also did became earnest I Guess a

Christian and about the wanted to be in the ministry As a young man, so study under his father then went to study under his brother

Gilbert and as he was studying Preparing for Examination for ordination he suddenly fell sick and They thought he had died too.

I mean they were ready to bury him and a friend who was a doctor There's no evidence of life except for a tremor under like his left arm and so he pleads with them to wait and Brother Gilbert's like he's dead.

He's stiff as a stake, you know You tell me he's alive. And so they the doctor urges him to wait they wait for like four more days come back

He's still out. They've tried whatever they can try He the doctor pleads with them for another hour hour comes and goes pleads for half an hour pleads for a quarter of an hour and the quarter of an hour is almost up and all of a sudden he stirred and They got him something to drink and He was alive

Kind of remarkable he forgot how to read and write in all past memories but regained those things fairly quickly and Soon after that was able to preach for his brother

John who had taken ill and eventually passed away He lived to the age of 72 and I believe pastored for like 44 years

So it's just kind of an odd situation there at the early stage of his life but The the folks who knew of him said that he hated sloth and was always in action kind of a good sermon for him about walking and being persevering here's a man who was always

Hate busy and evidently busy about the good things so the sermon is on the perseverance of the saint and It is the kind of a doctrine

I think that is of all the doctrines in the book other than the doctrine of regeneration

I think this is one that we could say that evangelicals today have It's kind of like we have a near -miss which

I think we were discussing this earlier I think is almost more dangerous than some of the doctrines in this book that people reject

So maybe the doctrine of election and they say well, I I don't agree with that I didn't grow up believing that or that's

Calvinism or whatever and and you know, and so they reject that and there are Consequences when there when there are errors in our biblical understanding

Just like there are wonderful impacts You know Every truth has a beneficial impact on the believer and every error to some degree is has a negative impact

But there are some errors That are you know heresies that you can't be a

Christian and believe this, you know You can't deny the deity of Christ, but there are some errors that aren't really heresies but they are errors that are so close to truth that you don't know you have an error and Therefore I find them to be in the in our church setting today some of the most dangerous

And we talked about this You know, there's think of the Christian life as a race

We have a race and the starting line we get wrong and the finish line we're getting wrong

So the doctrine of regeneration is often almost correctly understood people say well, you know, you have to be born again

We're right and then but when they go to define that it's so far from what Scripture says

They think they have the truth, but they don't so it's almost as if they're at a starting line of a different race

It's like hey guys You think you're at the starting line? It's not and then the finish line

We say well one saved always saved and there is a lot of truth in that in that statement the security of the believer

There's a lot of truth in that statement. And those are precious truths for the Christian But if we're not careful, we can get really close to the right answer

But if we don't have the biblical picture of the perseverance of the Saint what if we don't end at the right finish line

Yeah, if you think of the Christian life is as a marathon, but you line up to run a hundred -yard dash you may outpace the

Kenyans and the Ethiopians in those hundred yards, but you stop at the wrong place and You don't run the race that's been set before you you don't finish the course and so You endanger being disqualified