April 30, 2018 Show with Daniel Deeds on “Will I Make it to Heaven? A New Look at the Perseverance of the Saints”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 30th day of April 2018.

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I'm delighted to have as a guest for the very first time on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Daniel Deeds, who received his

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BA in theology at Randall University in Moore, Oklahoma.

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He's the son of American missionaries to Brazil and a church planter and pastor, and I know that I'm going to have to be corrected with my butchering of the

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Portuguese pronunciation of this, but I believe this is pronounced

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Igreja Batista Histórica in Lafayette, Brazil, and he's the director at the

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Historic Baptist Theological Institute, board member of the Reformed Baptist Convention of Brazil, a published author, and we are going to be addressing the title, the theme,

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I should say, of one of his most recent books, Will I Make It to Heaven? A New Look at the

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Perseverance of the Saints, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Daniel Deeds.

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Well, thank you. It's an honor to be here. I really appreciate the invitation, this opportunity. Did I butcher the pronunciation of those

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Portuguese words? Well, actually, that was pretty good.

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The way we make the J sound, just like you do in English, so that would be Igreja, not like the

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Spanish thing. Oh, okay. That was the only major thing that I noticed. I think that was good.

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And by the way, brother, I can tell already that sometimes I believe your mouth might be drifting away from your mouthpiece of whatever phone you're using.

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Try to keep your mouth as close to whatever you're speaking into as possible, so we don't have any muffled voices or voices that disappear into the distance.

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Okay, I'll watch that. And, well, tell us about this church that I mispronounced in Brazil.

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Well, we're in a city of about 120 ,000 people, and we're in one of the least evangelized areas of Brazil.

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Right now, Brazil is running about 20 % evangelical, which means a lot of different things in different contexts.

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But anyway, 20%, and our region is about 10%. By the way, right now, your voice sounds perfect, but you were disappearing again.

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I don't know what you were doing, but you got very muffled there for a second. When you were just last speaking, it was perfect.

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Okay, well, let me see here. Let me get it off the speaker phone again. Let me try. Okay, does that help any?

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That's much better. Much, much, much better. Sorry about that. Right, no.

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What I was saying is that in our region, we're one of the least evangelized parts of Brazil in terms of the local population actually identifying themselves as evangelical

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Christians. And so, we started the church there. We have two congregations in other cities now that we've opened up, and we're trying to take the message of the gospel to these people.

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Well, also, let our listeners know about some of these other things that you are affiliated with, like the

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Historic Baptist Theological Institute. Let's start off with that. Okay. Yeah, that was a need that came up in our local church.

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We're not close to any good theological school. It's a long distance for anybody to be able to have any theological training, and so we felt the need to open that up.

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And that's a recent project, so it's still getting started, and it's going very well.

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We have, at this point, 25 students, and these students are learning theology, and they're getting prepared to minister.

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Some of these people are from different denominations. There are a few people from our, I guess, maybe about one -third of them are from our church and other people from other churches, and they're making a lot of progress learning.

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It's kind of like a Bible Institute, not necessarily a big school, but it's a need that we have locally, and so we have been working with that, giving some people some theological training.

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I'm not necessarily doing most of the teaching there, but I do coordinate it, and I help out a lot. Great, and now let us know about the

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Reformed Baptist Convention of Brazil. Right. Well, that's a real exciting thing.

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When I became Reformed back in the 90s, I really didn't expect things to happen as God has done them, but we've been seeing a lot of people discovering the

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Reformed faith, and that's happened here in the United States, and it's happened in Brazil. And so a lot of people from different religious backgrounds, different denominations, have been awakened to the realities of the doctrines of grace and to the historic message of Protestant theology, and people have been going back to that, and a movement has started in Brazil.

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And, of course, we've been holding that standard in our church since we started back in the late 1990s, and right now we've seen that pick up, and other people have gotten in touch with us, and we've contacted a lot of people, and we're starting basically a convention of churches.

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We're going to have a little bit over 100 churches cooperating at this point, and there are a lot of other people that are watching us with a lot of interest and are very friendly to us that, depending on how things turn about, they have also expressed interest in joining with us.

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And so that is also a new thing, but it's the result of years of labor to try to pull something together.

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This is a national thing. You know, Brazil is a big country. The country of Brazil is almost the size of the continental 48 states here in the

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United States. And so we have people spread out in every region of the country who are part of this, and a lot of pastors, and they come from different backgrounds.

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A lot of people are from the Baptist convention that was basically started by Southern Baptist missionaries in Brazil.

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We also have people who come from missionary Baptists, regular Baptists, independent Baptists, and not a few people from movements that were not

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Baptist in their identity. Maybe Pentecostal groups, other kinds of evangelicalism that have come to the

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Reformed Faith and are reforming their church, and they've come to a view of ecclesiology that is basically

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Baptist, that even though their church background might not have that name, but that's what they believe.

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They are credo Baptist. They believe in a very significant level of autonomy for the local church, and they were interested in being able to cooperate, do more missions together, do more church planting, theological training for leaders, and just the need for that and the need for cooperation along those lines has led all these people to come together and start cooperating in this way.

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And so we're very excited about that. It's something that thrills me to see what the more missionaries going out just with this objective to start new churches and reform within certain areas where there needs to be reform, because a lot of people have been discovering that, and it's been a thrill to me.

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Now praise God. Is it a confessional convention, or are you allowing differences in whether or not a church is strictly a confessional church or not?

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Well, the convention subscribes to the 1689 Baptist Confession, and we're working out some of the details of having perhaps a little bit of flexibility on some of the issues that are not so central.

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There have been some concerns about, do I have to accept the idea that the

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Pope is the Antichrist, or do I have to really take this particular view of the covenants so that I don't have any margin of disagreement here?

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So we're still working on some of those issues, but what we're doing right now is I'm involved in a project for this to actually try to define how much tolerance we can have if there's going to be some areas where a person can say, we subscribe to the

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Confession, but we have some doubts about this, and so on that issue, can we actually stand aside and still be a part?

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We want to be able to have as much cooperation with like -minded people as we can without losing quality, and so I can't really say how we're going to work all that out.

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We might lose some people. We might actually cooperate on things that we feel that are most important and not make an issue out of some of those points, but we've looked at the way that people have done things here in the

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United States. We've looked at founders. We've looked at groups like Arbica or the

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Reformed Rabbis Association. We've looked at other groups, and we've learned, I think, lessons from what other people have been able to do, and so right now we're defining those kind of things, and I believe that we're very close to having a clear identity so that we can actually work together and guide everybody towards a very safe confessional stance.

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Praise God, and we'll be providing all the contact information that you have to share with our listeners towards the end of the program.

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Can you tell us, before we move into the subject at hand, will I make it to heaven, can you tell us about the religious makeup of Brazil?

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I'm assuming that the vast majority of Brazil is Roman Catholic or at least nominally

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Roman Catholic, but I could be wrong. Why don't you give us some more details about that? Yes, that's correct.

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Brazil is a traditionally Catholic country, and so Catholicism is still around 75 % of the demographics of Brazil.

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However, that doesn't mean that if you talk to these people they really believe in Catholicism. There's a lot of nominalism.

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There are many people in Brazil who really believe in Spiritism. They will believe in things like reincarnation.

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They will go to séances where they actually try to speak with spirits of dead people, contact their dead relatives and things like this.

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There are people also who will be very much atheistic. They don't believe in Christianity in any form.

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They don't believe in the God of the Bible. They don't believe in Trinity, but they will identify themselves as Catholic, and they will go to the

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Catholic Church to get married and to baptize their kids, but really they don't practice anything. That's a big part of the

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Catholic group. Actually, you might have in Brazil today more people going to Evangelical churches than to Catholic churches on Sunday.

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Wow, I'm very surprised to hear that. Yeah, well that's true in many cities. It's not true in all cities.

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It's not true where I live, but it's true in many cities, and so with that context, you know, when

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I speak to people who are Catholic, and we evangelize people who are Catholic a lot, and we realize that we have to take them the message of what is the

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Trinity. We have to talk to them about the reality of how things are in life after death, because these people frequently do not believe in heaven and hell and resurrection of the body.

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They do not believe that Jesus is the incarnate Son of God, and that they profess they're

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Catholic, but there's nothing like that really being communicated in many of the Catholic churches. So that message does not, even that content that we as Evangelicals would agree with, the official stance of the

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Catholic church, they don't believe that necessarily, and so we have to communicate that to them. And that's a lot of the first steps that I take every time that I'm dealing with a

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Catholic person, is to try to see how much they believe of the content of the Catholic church, and frequently it's very little.

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And by the way, I've got to introduce you. If you haven't met him or communicated with him already,

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I've got to get you introduced to Dr. Tony Costa, who is the professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

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He is from a Portuguese background, but he's a solid Reformed Baptist, and he might be delighted to help assist you in some of your work there.

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And he's my guest tomorrow, actually. He's one of my guests tomorrow, providentially. It wasn't planned this way, but he is going to be on to have a discussion slash friendly debate with a

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Molinist, Kirk McGregor, and my friend Anthony Eugenio, the founder of New York Apologetics, will be co -hosting with me tomorrow.

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So if anybody's listening and they want to hear Calvinism contrasted with Molinism, tomorrow is a perfect day to find out more about the differences with Tony Costa.

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But one of the things that I do, brother, when

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I have a first -time guest on the program, typically, is I get you to give a summary of your testimony on the religious upbringing you had as a child, if any, and how our sovereign

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Lord providentially drew you to himself and saved you, if you could. Let our listeners know a summarized version of your testimony of salvation.

15:38

Sure, yes, I'd be glad to. Well, as you mentioned at the beginning of the program,

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I was the son of American missionaries to Brazil, and my parents went to Brazil as missionaries for the

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Free Will Baptist denomination. I was raised in the Free Will Baptist Church, and that's where I grew up.

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I went to Free Will Baptist Bible College, the Randall University is a Free Will Baptist school.

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And so my parents were, of course, very devout, very wonderful Christian people with a heart for missions.

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They planted churches in Brazil, won a lot of people in Brazil to, you know, really believe in the

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Bible, believe in God and salvation through Jesus Christ. And I grew up in that context, seeing my parents do that.

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The Lord really spoke to my heart and called me when I was 16 years old, and I very soon felt that I should go into the ministry.

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And so I prepared for that, and when I was 18, I went to Bible College. And under those circumstances,

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I was in a Free Will Baptist school. And what really happened in my experience that brought me to the

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Reformed faith is that I didn't know anybody personally who was

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Reformed. I mean, I guess I did know one pastor in Brazil, and I was in the United States at this point, but I knew one pastor in Brazil, but I'd never even spoken to him about those kind of issues.

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But anyways, what I did is I decided I'm going to really dig into the

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Bible. I want to get a handle on what the Bible teaches. And so I made a decision to read the

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Bible in this way. I would read the Bible, each book of the New Testament. I was going to go through it repeatedly until I really felt that I got a handle on what it said.

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And so I started with Matthew, and I went through Matthew over and over many times. And then I went on to Mark and Luke.

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And when I got to John, I started having a lot of questions, a lot of passages that I didn't really understand.

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I knew I didn't understand them. I was looking at them, and I was saying, this doesn't fit what I believe. And so I would go to commentaries, and I would go to my professors.

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I went to other pastors, and I shared my questions about what the passages meant.

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And they were very helpful in terms of providing material for me to read and asking me to look over these issues and those issues.

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And so I did. And I struggled in every possible way to defend

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Arminianism in the face of what I was facing as I read the Bible like that. But I kept going. I went through Acts.

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I had a lot of problems in Acts. When I got to the book of Romans, then I really had a crisis because I just couldn't find the explanations that I was receiving for really dealing with the text in the way that that's what the text meant.

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And so at that point, I didn't identify myself as...

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I thought I was Arminian, and I figured that, well, Calvinism can't be right, because what

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I believed Calvinism was kind of the caricature that sometimes that you get where you have like a hyper -Calvinist kind of view.

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And I was really in a struggle because I was thinking, well, what's wrong with me here?

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Why can't I understand this? Because I don't understand that the Arminian explanation really does justice to the text.

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It can't be the Calvinist view. And I said, well, let me give the Calvinists a try. And so I started getting books, and I read stuff by Spurgeon, some names that I had some confidence in that they were not going to be dangerous people for me.

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And I started getting Bible commentaries. I would go to Bible commentaries for specific passages, and my idea was, let me see what these people say.

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Let me see how they deal with these passages. And when I read them, I began gradually to realize that what

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I had projected in my mind as Calvinism, which I rejected, was not really what Calvinism teaches.

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That was not really the Reformed position at all. And so this kind of gave me a surprise, and the more

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I read the explanations, the more I said, yes, this is really handling the text responsibly.

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Of course, I still had lots of questions. I had lots of doubts. I didn't know which direction to go.

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I didn't know if everything was making sense in a coherent way for me.

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And so I spoke a lot with my professors and with my pastors, with my dad, and other people that I respected a lot.

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And people gave me a lot of material to read. I remember one time at college, I walked out of a professor's office with a stack of five books to read, and I took those books and I read them all through, all of them from the

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Armenian perspective. And the more I read from that perspective, the more convinced

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I was that that could not really be the correct explanations for some of those passages.

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And so what really made me go in the direction of the Reformed theology was the

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Armenian material that I read more than anything else. I was reading the Bible. I didn't know anybody at that point that I could talk to who was

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Reformed. I just had to basically go through books. I'm glad that you're still a

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Baptist, because no offense to my dear Presbyterian brethren, and I have many of them, and I probably interview more

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Presbyterians than Reformed Baptists on my show. I don't mean any disrespect, but a little bit of my heart sinks when

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Armenian Baptists, very often out of ignorance that there is even such a thing as Reformed Baptists, when they discover the doctrines of grace, they leap directly from Armenian Baptist backgrounds into Pato Baptist Calvinism or Presbyterianism.

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So you were able to manage to maintain your Baptistic background when discovering the doctrines of grace, so I'm very happy to hear that.

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Yes, well actually I never had a struggle with that, but I did look into the

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Pato Baptist view extensively, almost in an attempt to make it possible for me to join with them, because I ran into so much difficulty and other circumstances.

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When I became Reformed in the Oklahoma City area, I looked for a church to attend, and I didn't find any church that was specifically

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Reformed, but I did find a Southern Baptist church where there were Reformed people and others who were not, where I was welcome, and so I joined the

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Southern Baptist, and I became active within the Southern Baptist. Very soon after that,

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I had graduated from college, and I returned to Brazil and went ahead to start working there and trying to get a church started there.

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Under those circumstances, I realized that the Baptists in Brazil were largely hostile to Reformed theology.

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Other people had actually, a very small minority, but other people within the convention group that I associated with, were actually drifting on essential doctrines.

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I tried to get enrolled in school to go through a doctorate program in Brazil, and I realized that my teachers did not believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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I realized they were within the Baptist convention there, but they didn't believe in inspiration.

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They did not believe in doctrines like the virgin birth of Christ, so I just didn't even pursue the course of study anymore.

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I abandoned it at that point, and I said, I'm not going to study here. I'd rather study with Christian brothers.

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But under those circumstances, I faced a lot of hostility, and we ended up becoming fairly isolated.

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And so I did find, let's say, the circumstances that would have made it very ideal if I could join with other brothers that would say, come on over to our side.

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But the arguments there never were very convincing to me. Well, I'm going to give our email address for any of our listeners who would like to join us on the air with a question of their own.

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It's chrisarnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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Please give us your first name, at least your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

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Let's say you disagree with the theology or doctrine of your own church where you're a member, or at least some of it.

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Or perhaps you're even a pastor who disagrees with your own denominations, theology, or perhaps you are a non -Christian and you feel like you're being drawn into the

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Christian faith, or you're just curious and you just don't want to draw attention to yourself. I can understand that.

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But if it's not a personal and private question, please give us at least your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. Now the question that you pose in the title of your book,

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I believe, is the most important question that anybody could ask. Will I make it to heaven?

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The subtitle is very interesting. A new look at the perseverance of the saints, and if you could define for our listeners what the perseverance of the saints means.

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That is, for those of you who don't know, the P in TULIP of the acrostic or acronym of Calvinism that came about after John Calvin went home to be with the

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Lord. It was those who took up his mantle later on in history that would adopt that acronym, and this is a very controversial issue.

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In fact, all five points are divided over in the body of Christ and even amongst

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Baptists. It is often accompanied by the word preservation of the saints.

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It's perseverance and preservation of the saints, but if you could define that for us. Sure. Yes, I believe in perseverance and I believe in preservation.

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I think they go together. They look at the same reality from a different perspective, give emphasis on something a little bit peculiar, but the doctrine that the

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Reformed Christians have always emphasized and have always taught regarding the perseverance of the saints is that when someone is truly saved, when there's a real conversion, when there's a real work of grace to bring a person from darkness to light to salvation, that that person is a person who is now forgiven, and that person will make it to heaven.

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He will make it to heaven because God's grace that operated his conversion that brought him to faith initially will continue to sustain his faith and will continue to preserve him in that way in such a manner that he will persevere.

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I think that if you look at the idea of faith, it's the Christian who believes.

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We have faith in Christ, but of course behind that there's an act of God that brings us to faith, and it's also true that we persevere, the saints persevere, but it's also true that God works within us to bring about our perseverance, and he doesn't just work to make it possible.

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He works to make it a reality. What God does is sufficient to guarantee that the people that he saves from sin will continue to persevere in the faith.

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It doesn't mean that we don't sin. It doesn't mean that we don't fall in sin and we have a perfect life.

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That's not the issue, but it does mean that we continue to be believers in Christ, and we continue growing in Christ, and we live a godly life, and the direction of our life is a direction of sanctification, and so that comes about as a result of God's acting first, and our response is an inevitable response of really following Christ with true faith in him, and that's a guarantee that we can have as Christians, and I believe there's a need to learn to just look to God in gratitude for the goodness that he has shown us by giving us faith when we know that we are true

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Christians, that we know that God has brought us to faith in Christ, and to also give him all the glory and all the gratitude for the fact that he is keeping us by his power, and he is working all things for our good, not allowing us to slip and fall as we very well could if it were not for the fact that what

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God does is ensuring our security, and so many times there's a misunderstanding of the

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Reformed position that comes along the lines of what these Reformed people believe is that a person can just be saved, and then he can just revert to a life of sin and unbelief, and just live that way with no care, no concern for God or for holiness, but he's once saved, always saved.

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See, I believe once saved, always saved, but I believe that that's true because God ensures our security through also sustaining our faith and bringing about our perseverance.

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So there's a side that we can focus on. There's the preservation, which is God's act. It always comes first.

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It always brings about a result on our part. It's not something that God does in response to what we do first.

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God acts first, but we also persevere as a gift that God gives us out of grace, and that's basically the

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Reformed view of the perseverance of the saints. Excellent, and we are going to be discussing this, obviously, for the next 90 minutes, so if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, and we already have some listener questions lining up, but if anybody wants to get in line and you want to make sure that your question is asked and answered on air,

30:40

I would try to send in a question as soon as you can to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

30:46

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

30:55

USA, and please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter at C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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35:37

Just going back to what you were saying before, I just wanted to clarify a couple of things.

35:42

By the way, I want to let our listeners know that just tuned in my guest today for the full two hours is

35:48

Daniel Deeds and we are discussing his book, Will I Make It to Heaven? A New Look at the Perseverance of the

35:53

Saints. And many Baptists and other evangelicals that do not believe a true

36:03

Christian can lose his or her salvation, they will use the term eternal security.

36:10

And that is probably the most used term for the doctrine that a

36:17

Christian who is a genuine convert to Christ, who is truly born from above, truly born again, regenerate, etc.,

36:26

they will never lose their salvation. And would you agree that although eternal security is true, that term is true, that those in Christ are eternally secure, the title itself of the is true, but insufficient.

36:46

And that's why reform people prefer the title, perseverance and preservation of the saints, because built into the language, it is more of the implication that you're not going to have a true

37:04

Christian coming to faith in Christ and then becoming immediately an apostate or living like Satan himself for decades until he dies, and that person can still be expected to be in heaven, which unfortunately many who claim to believe in eternal security also have that heretical concept in their teaching.

37:26

Sure, yes, when I was researching this subject, I realized that the term eternal security did not originally intend to convey what some people today have come to believe.

37:40

Just like you said, we are eternally secure in Christ, because our forgiveness is not going to be reversed, our acceptance in Christ is forever, and so that is not necessarily a wrong term, but it has come to mean something different than what it originally was used to mean back in the early 1900s and before that.

38:03

When people said eternal security, they presupposed security along the terms of Reformed theology.

38:10

In Baptist circles, definitely that was true. If you look at Southern Baptists, how they have gone from even confessional stances that were more

38:20

Reformed in the past to less specific on a lot of issues, allowing for different interpretations of what goes on.

38:29

That has really come about, and it's unfortunate because the views that exist today in the

38:36

Church are more than what we had going on say 200 years ago. So today we have a lot of people who really believe that eternal security is true, but what they mean is you can become saved by just making a profession of faith, raising your hand, or going forward in a meeting when you're called to receive

39:01

Jesus as your Savior, and then whether you really persevere or not, it doesn't really make any difference because at that point your eternal security was guaranteed, even if it didn't change your life necessarily.

39:14

And so people have called this kind of view sometimes easy believism, and some people who haven't really gone that far have taken the view that, yeah, well, it's not easy believism, but if a person really believes and really seems to be a true

39:28

Christian, he attends church faithfully for a few years, he might just, you know, turn his back on Christ, go into apostasy, reject it all, but he'd still be saved because you can't lose your salvation.

39:41

That was not the Reformed belief. That was not what Christians within the mainline denominations that followed

39:49

Reformed theology defended, and recently that has become a popular view, and that's,

39:56

I think, a big concern. That is not what the Bible teaches, and I think our ancestors within Reformed traditions and within denominations like that,

40:05

I think they would be appalled that that kind of teaching is actually getting so much following in our days, in our generation.

40:15

Yes, and last but not least, when it comes to the critics of this doctrine, it's ironic.

40:21

When I have friendly disputes, disagreements, debates with those who are non -Reformed, non -Calvinist, they are usually inconsistent in their critiques of Calvinism because, on the one hand, they will often describe it as if it is a fatalism or fatal determinism or in a very caricatured way, as you said earlier.

40:53

They will also equate what we believe with equal ultimacy, that God is supernaturally working in the same measure not only to make people regenerate but also to make them reprobate, as opposed to what the vast majority of Reformed people believe is that God just passes by the unelect in regards to regenerating them.

41:23

They are already totally depraved. He does not need to add any depravity to them or supernaturally intervene to make them depraved.

41:33

Right. But it seems that they can't make up their minds and have to insult us because they will also on occasion accuse us of believing in works righteousness, which is really the opposite of that.

41:44

In fact, at times, the same person in the same conversation will then switch back and forth.

41:51

I have heard some of my Fundamentalist Baptist friends who are not Calvinist, because there are some

41:57

Fundamentalists that are Calvinist, but they have accused us of believing that we are somehow meriting heaven through our perseverance.

42:09

It's our persevering that is helping us to be saved as we cooperate with the grace of God in our good works, and it would be very similar to a

42:20

Roman Catholic understanding. But that's not what perseverance of the saints means at all. I know that I'm right about that.

42:27

Would you like to comment on that? Sure. Yeah, that's a very important point. I believe the inconsistency in the view that you've just described when you have these people that say, well, if you believe that the person has persevered, then what you're saying is that the person contributes to his salvation.

42:44

It's what he does. What they really don't understand is the source of our perseverance and where it really comes from, that it's a gracious gift of God that brings about that.

42:55

And so that's one of the points that I labor in my book to show, is that our perseverance, our actions are the fruit of what

43:04

God does, and it's the inevitable fruit. I mean, you can't not persevere if God, by his grace, operates in you the way the

43:13

Bible says he does for his people. And so the fact that we persevere is something that we receive, even though it's our action, our faith, our obedience, that these things are given to us by grace.

43:27

And the inconsistency in that view is very clear, because, see, these people realize that to be saved, a person must believe.

43:35

And so they have to believe the gospel, they have to believe in Christ, and they'll call upon people to believe in Christ. And then when they believe in Christ, they will say, okay, now you don't have to continue to believe in Christ, because you already believe in Christ.

43:48

But see, the way they're doing it, by ascribing the initial faith to the person who acts out of free will and makes for himself a destiny that God has not really operated in a way that would overcome any resistance.

44:06

God has just thrown it out there and let whoever wants to go for it do his own thing.

44:12

By doing that, what they've done is they've actually transformed the initial faith in the gospel into human action, a human work that is not produced by God's grace.

44:28

And then what they say is now, that human work is necessary for salvation, but that the human work doesn't need to continue, the faith doesn't need to continue.

44:37

If the person believes initially, then that's enough. But if believing for the rest of your life, if that is really a work, a human work, then why wouldn't it be inconsistent to say originally, you have to believe in the gospel, you have to believe in Jesus Christ to be saved, because they do say that.

44:58

And so if they're really going to be consistent, they would have to say, no, you don't even have to believe the gospel. You don't even have to come to faith in Christ initially.

45:06

You can still be saved without that, because that would be something that would be a requirement that God would make.

45:14

But if they can go with us that far and say, okay, sure, you have to believe, you do have to believe the gospel.

45:22

And if they realize that, yeah, and that does not mean you're saved by works. That's something that God graciously brings about in your heart.

45:31

It's the Holy Spirit that operates, and the divine calling that brings a sinner out of darkness of unbelief to understand that Jesus is a sufficient

45:41

Savior, that he needs Christ because he's sinful, and he deserves the wrath of God.

45:46

But his eyes turn to Christ to believe in Christ. If they can understand that that is necessary, but that is not an act of human works that puts a person in a relationship with God, but that's an act of divine grace that brings a person, draws a person into a relationship with Christ through faith, then the key,

46:06

I think, is right there. They could actually understand that, okay, there is no conflict here in the person continuing to receive the same efficacious grace of God to persevere in the faith all the way to the end, because God does that for the believer.

46:23

And so the believer will persevere, but it's not something that he does out of his own ability, out of his own gritting his teeth and going to work to be able to maintain his salvation.

46:38

It's a gift of God. If that can be understood, I think it can clear up a lot of those issues. Right. And as you already stated earlier, it also does not mean sinless perfectionism, which was actually a doctrine of Wesley.

46:53

That sinless perfection is possible on this earth, and no reformed

47:00

Christian worth his salt would ever believe that or teach that. Right.

47:07

And that's not where we want to go with the doctrine. The Bible does not teach that at all. We'll always be sinful in this life, but we depend on God's grace.

47:16

Yes. And many people wrongly refuted or sought to refute or condemn, this is a better way of saying our brother

47:29

John MacArthur, when he came out with the book, The Gospel According to Jesus, which was teaching the necessity of repentance in order to have eternal life.

47:40

And people wrongly took that to mean that works were being added to faith in order to justify a lost sinner.

47:51

And that was completely a misunderstanding or even a slander of what our brother

47:57

John MacArthur was teaching in that. In fact, that reminded me of something.

48:04

Because of your Brazilian connection, did you ever have any friendship communication with the late

48:14

Richard Denham? Oh, yes. Actually, this book was written out of a request on his part to do it.

48:23

Oh, praise God! Yes, he heard me preach a series of messages on the doctrine of perseverance, and he spoke to me at the end, and he said, would you write this down?

48:36

He said, I would be very interested in reading it if you wrote it down.

48:41

It didn't come out before he passed away, but he was basically the key that influenced me to write this book.

48:52

Praise God! I had the honor and privilege years ago, before I had my own talk show, of treating

48:59

Richard Denham to dinner when he was a visiting speaker at Calvary Baptist Church of Amityville, which was where I was saved and baptized, which later became, after a merger with another

49:11

Reformed Baptist Church, Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island. Richard Denham and I can vividly remember this.

49:18

I treated him to dinner at the Beach Tree Cafe, which at that time was in Amityville, Long Island, one of the locations, and he gave me some disheartening news, sad news, that he had his missionary support cut by a very well -known evangelical, conservative, baptistic individual.

49:47

I'm not going to say his name, but he's known worldwide through a radio ministry and books and so on.

49:53

And this pastor who was supporting Richard cut support from him, or for him, because Richard had translated into Portuguese the

50:04

Gospel According to Jesus by John MacArthur. Well, I believe that's a very important book.

50:11

There are a few treatments of that subject that I think do such a good job. I think that's such an important message.

50:18

And MacArthur became controversial because he hit a nerve. That's right. Because exactly what's going on in the weakening of the message of how

50:29

God's grace operates, it's not really saying that salvation is by grace, by saying that, well, there is no transformation of the individual, there is no repentance, there is no holiness in the life of a person.

50:46

It's just some kind of a forgiveness, regardless of any kind of removing a person from the lifestyle that they had as ungodly unbelievers.

50:57

That is not really exalting grace. Grace transforms people. Grace brings people to a desire to please

51:05

God, and we struggle at it, and we fall, but we always aim for that, because we love Christ when

51:11

God regenerates our hearts. Well, I am going to read our first listener question to you.

51:20

Let's see here. We have Casey, who is originally from Davao, and I may be mispronouncing that.

51:29

Davao or Davao City in the Philippines. He is currently living in Kannapolis, North Carolina.

51:37

But he asks, how does Pastor Deeds answer Pentecostals who teach that Jude verse 12 teaches that you can be born again and then die spiritually and lose your salvation?

51:51

And I'm going to put it into context by at least starting at verse 5 in Jude.

52:00

Now, I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all, that the

52:06

Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe and angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode.

52:18

He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these, indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.

52:41

Yet in the same way, these men also by dreaming, defile flesh and reject authority and revile angelic majesties.

52:51

But Michael the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, the

52:59

Lord rebuke you. But these men revile the things which they do not understand and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals.

53:11

By these things they are destroyed. Woe to them, for they have gone the way of Cain and for Peh, they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam and perished in the rebellion of Korah.

53:25

And here's verse 12. These are the men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts, when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves, clouds without water, carrying along by winds, autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted, and going on to verse 13, wild waves of the sea casting up their own shame like foam, wandering stars for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever.

53:56

We'll have you answer that question when we return from our break. This is a longer than normal break because Grace Life Radio 90 .1

54:04

FM in Lake City, Florida requires a 12 -minute break between our two major segments, so please be patient.

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That is also the email address where you could send in a question for our guest today. We are discussing with Daniel Deeds, Will I Make It to Heaven?

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01:10:13

And going back to our listener, originally from the Philippines, now living in Kannapolis, North Carolina, Casey, how does

01:10:21

Pastor Deeds answer Pentecostals who teach that Jude verse 12 teaches that you can be born again and then die spiritually and lose your salvation?

01:10:31

Have you ever heard that argument, Pastor Deeds? Yes, actually I've used that argument back in America.

01:10:38

And you weren't even Pentecostal. Right, no. See, that's, I believe, a basic misunderstanding, which if you look at the text carefully, we'll clear up.

01:10:49

But the text says these individuals who are heretical and they are being denounced as false within the church by Jude.

01:10:58

2 Peter also addresses the same group. Jude says, they are waterless clouds swept along by winds, fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted.

01:11:12

Those two words, twice dead, are usually taken in this kind of argumentation to say, see, they've been dead twice.

01:11:21

They were dead in their sins, they got saved, they received life. And then they died again.

01:11:26

And then they're twice dead. That's really not clearly said in the text.

01:11:33

What the text does say, twice dead, in the sense that by two different criteria, you can see that they are dead.

01:11:43

The first being, it's late autumn and they're fruitless. A tree in late autumn, if it's alive, you would expect to find fruit on it.

01:11:51

But there is no fruit on these people. They've been in the circles of Christianity long enough that you'd expect to see the evidence, but here they are living in blatant sin.

01:12:02

There's no fruit. And then the second proof is that they are uprooted. And it's a figure or image of a tree.

01:12:09

If you come up to a tree and it's all dry, there's no fruit on it. You suspect, yep, it's dead.

01:12:15

I believe it's dead. But then when you realize that actually, it's not even standing, it's been pulled up by the roots and it's laying outside of the ground so that there is no connection between the roots and the land that could be receiving any, getting its liquid from the land, well then you know how definitely this tree is dead.

01:12:35

And the expression here, twice dead, is used in that sense. This is a figure to say, by evidence of two independent things, they are definitely dead spiritually.

01:12:48

First, there's no fruit. And secondly, they're uprooted, which probably is a reference to the fact that there is no connection to Christ.

01:12:56

There is no orthodox doctrine. Their beliefs are heretical. And you can tell just by that, besides the lifestyle, that yeah, these are definitely unbelievers.

01:13:06

It's interesting that when I used the ESV as I spoke, as I read that, but if you look at other translations, for example, the

01:13:14

New American Standard Bible, it says doubly dead. It says autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted.

01:13:23

And so the argument here is not that at two consecutive times in a chronological order, they were dead once, and now they're dead a second time, but it's double evidence of their being dead.

01:13:36

That's really what the text is talking about. So it has nothing to do with anybody having once been saved, receiving spiritual life, and then dying again.

01:13:43

In fact, since the New American Standard Bible publishers sponsor this show, they are the only version that is

01:13:51

God -breathed. Yeah, I really appreciate their work.

01:13:57

And in that first, I think that's a better translation, because it really does give the idea. Doubly dead, not twice in a chronological order, because there's nothing in the

01:14:07

Greek that would say we're talking about chronologically at one time this, and then alive, and then dead again a second time.

01:14:15

That's not really in the text at all. Well, thank you, Casey, in Kannapolis, North Carolina.

01:14:20

Please give us your full mailing address in Kannapolis so that cvbbs .com, who

01:14:25

I was just mentioning a few minutes ago, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, can ship you out a free copy of the book that we are addressing,

01:14:34

Will I Make It to Heaven? by Daniel Deeds. And they will ship that out to you at no cost to you or to Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

01:14:44

And we want to thank Calvary Press, the publishers of this book, for sending us these free copies.

01:14:50

And we also want to thank cvbbs .com for shipping them out for free.

01:14:57

And thank you very much to everybody who helps Iron Trip and Zion Radio serve as a blessing to our listeners.

01:15:04

We have Bashir in Pequot, Ohio. It's either

01:15:09

Pequot or Pequot, I'm not sure. And he asks, What role, if any, does a lack of clear and precise teaching from many pulpits in the area of regeneration contribute to some

01:15:23

Christians' objections to the teaching that a true born -again believer will always be saved and persevere?

01:15:30

Those of us who, hold on a second, I've got to scroll down here. Those of us who affirm the doctrine of perseverance of the saints believe that while it is a hypothetical possibility that a professing believer might fall away, yet a true believer would not fall away.

01:15:48

We also affirm that a true believer is one who has benefited from the supernatural work of the

01:15:54

Holy Spirit in regeneration, having the seed of God firmly planted in them and giving them new life.

01:16:01

I wonder how much the lack of teaching and preaching within the church on the doctrine of regeneration has contributed to a rejection of the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints by many otherwise

01:16:12

Bible -believing Christians. Thank you both for edifying us today with such a relevant and important topic of discussion, and that is

01:16:20

Bashir in either Pequa or Pequa, Ohio, if you could comment.

01:16:26

Oh yes, well that's definitely an issue. In fact, that's one of the focuses

01:16:32

I have in the book, to clarify doctrines like regeneration and justification, which are key doctrines, which if they're not clearly understood, you can really be going around in circles talking with people without making very much progress.

01:16:46

I believe that there is a deficiency in the teaching of many pulpits and other ways of communicating the message of the

01:16:53

Bible about the doctrine of regeneration. I've run into a lot of people who think that regeneration means forgiveness of sins, instead of really understanding that it's a fundamental change in the person when a person is born again and given a new nature, where there's a new inclination of your heart towards God, to love

01:17:13

God, to want to follow Christ and please Him, and so when that doesn't make sense, people will just understand regeneration as, oh yeah, forgiveness.

01:17:23

You've, you know, become Christian, whatever. You get regeneration, and a lot of people believe that regeneration works like this.

01:17:31

You come to faith, and you change your heart on your own, and decide, okay, yes,

01:17:39

I want to be a Christian. I want to follow Jesus, and then you ask God for forgiveness, and He comes and regenerates you, which is, of course, a misunderstanding of fundamentally what regeneration is.

01:17:50

Regeneration is necessary for the person to actually have this desire to call out to God for forgiveness and to become, to really repent of their sins and become a

01:18:02

Christian, and so if regeneration is not clearly understood, then there are all kinds of problems that result from that, and that's something that I've run into talking to people over and over.

01:18:13

People will not understand the doctrine of regeneration. They don't understand that a

01:18:18

Christian is any different from somebody who's not a

01:18:23

Christian in his constitution, in his makeup, and so it's very much like I might choose to, you know, shop at Walmart or some other store like Target, and then

01:18:35

I might choose again to do something else. Nothing's changed in my nature. It's just a choice that I make, and when that kind of understanding of your relationship to God is on that level, it's very difficult to talk about some of the deeper issues.

01:18:52

One of the things that I've realized is that there are many Christians, many people who will tell you, oh,

01:19:01

I agree with justification by faith alone. Oh, yes, I believe in regeneration, but they haven't really got a grasp on all that that means, and when they don't really understand it, many times you don't focus the discussion at that point.

01:19:15

You want to say, okay, well, let's go ahead and talk about where we disagree, and you want to jump those issues, but actually there's a lot of groundwork that needs to be laid at that point, which has not been laid, and it makes it very hard for you to communicate on the other particulars that you're trying to discuss where you know that there is a disagreement, and so one of the things that I felt was very necessary is to establish in the material that I wrote the doctrine of justification, what it really means, and the implications of justification, the idea of faith alone, and the idea of no works and salvation, and the doctrine of regeneration, what it is, how the

01:19:53

Bible defines it, and I think that's a basic understanding. If you can understand that, it might not make you immediately embrace the

01:20:03

Reformed theology and the perseverance of the saints, but if you connect the dots, it'll lead you point by point in that direction, because that's the only thing that will harmonize with it once you go through the process of looking at the implications of where that leads, and that's something that's really important, because I've spoken to a lot of people who will say, oh no,

01:20:26

I believe in these things too, just like you do, and when you start talking about it and say, okay, well let me see, do you really understand this?

01:20:33

Do you understand like this? And the person says, well, hmm, that's...

01:20:39

I didn't know that, and that's, you know, where you run into the foundational issues that have actually made it difficult for you to go ahead and make the second and third floor on top of the foundation.

01:20:50

There's no foundation. Well, thank you, Bashir, and please give us your full mailing address in Piqua, Ohio, and perhaps even let me know how to pronounce it by spelling it phonetically when you send us your address, and please continue spreading the word about the program in Ohio and beyond, and by the way, you will be getting, as I already have mentioned about our other listeners, you will be getting a free copy of the book we are addressing today, the

01:21:22

Calvary Press publication of Will I Make It to Heaven? A New Look at the Perseverance of the Saints. So thank you very much for your excellent question, and please give us your full mailing address.

01:21:33

We have Charlie from Rome, New York. If true believers are eternally secure, why are there so many warnings against apostasy in the

01:21:45

Bible if they will eventually return to the fold? I agree with the doctrines of sovereign grace, but this seems like a contradiction, does it not?

01:21:58

Well, that's a very important issue. In fact, I've got a whole chapter in the book that deals with the warnings against apostasy.

01:22:06

I think that that's one of the questions that makes a lot of people have doubts.

01:22:12

They might see a lot of passages like where Jesus said that no one can remove people from my hand, and they will say, well, that would seem to indicate that that's the way we ought to take this discussion.

01:22:24

But what about those warning passages against apostasy, and that's a major issue. So that's a very good observation.

01:22:33

The point about that is that the warnings against apostasy do not necessarily imply that those who are truly saved do commit apostasy.

01:22:44

That would be overstepping the bounds of what the text actually says. The text does say that we need to persevere, and that's a very important point.

01:22:52

And the whole issue, though, is for us to persevere as Christians. That doesn't happen apart from God working in our lives, and the way

01:23:03

God works in our lives is by his word bringing a message to us and spurring us in the right direction.

01:23:12

It's very similar to the logic of a person who would say, well, if there is election, and if there is predestination, then there's no need to preach the gospel, is there?

01:23:21

Because they're already elect. Well, yes, they're elect, but they're elect to be saved through means, and God has ordained that his people will be called to the gospel.

01:23:31

And that's the process that we see God using to save people. And the same thing is true about the perseverance of the saints.

01:23:38

The saints must persevere, and that has to be communicated to them. So the Bible has warnings, and the warnings have a very clear message.

01:23:47

Those who do not follow Christ, those who abandon the faith, those who turn their backs on Christ, who deny Christ and become enemies of the gospel, they will not see salvation.

01:23:56

And that's the message that is used by God, bringing that to Christians, so that Christians will understand, okay, this is a life -and -death issue, and that's used by God to spur them on in the right direction, and it's a means for God's preserving his people.

01:24:13

And so that would not be possible to really argue consistently and say, okay, if the doctrine of perseverance of the saints is true, there shouldn't be these warnings, because that would be like saying if the saints should truly persevere, if that's what they really need to do, then

01:24:32

God couldn't be able to say anything about that. If God said anything about that, that would be a contradiction.

01:24:38

And you see, that really doesn't grasp what we're saying. That doesn't grasp the issue that we're not talking about a kind of unconditional security in the sense that on no conditions absolutely, a person who once was forgiven will continue to be forgiven, so that that person may apostatize, that person may become a blasphemer and an enemy of the gospel, and fight against the truth and make his mission in life, but he'll still continue to be saved.

01:25:11

No, we don't believe in that kind of thing. We don't believe in this kind of unconditional security in terms of there's no fruit of salvation in the life of a believer.

01:25:24

We believe that there are conditions that are met by God. God's grace brings Christians to live the

01:25:30

Christian life and to persevere. And so one of the means that God does that is through his word.

01:25:36

So it's kind of like, if we believe that God wants us to be holy, then he couldn't have any commandments in the

01:25:42

Bible telling us those things, because after all, if he tells us, doesn't that deny our need or the reality that God will lead us into holiness?

01:25:52

No it doesn't. That's the way that God produces our holiness. And so how does God lead us to persevere?

01:25:58

He leads us to persevere through the faithfulness that he brings about in our lives using his word to guide us in the right direction and understand the importance of perseverance.

01:26:11

In fact, I just wanted to just quickly say in tribute to a dearly loved departed brother in Christ who's now spending eternity with our

01:26:23

Lord, Al Stein, who was the pastor of the

01:26:30

Neighborhood Assembly of God in Belmore, Long Island. He was a dear friend of mine and a guest on a number of occasions on Iron Sherp and Zion Radio and on the old program because he went home to be with the

01:26:44

Lord before I launched the new show, I believe, unless my memory is failing me.

01:26:50

But Al Stein, over the years that I knew him, went from being a five -point

01:26:56

Arminian to being a five -point Calvinist. And he knew that his denomination despised the very notion of eternal security.

01:27:06

So what he did was, to remain in good standing with them, he rephrased what he believed in regard to that doctrine.

01:27:19

And he called it evidential security, meaning that you cannot have peace and confidence in your security unless you are producing evidence, just like you just mentioned.

01:27:32

So I just wanted to mention that in tribute of my dear brother who was a five -point

01:27:37

Calvinist in the Assemblies of God denomination. In fact, he was a bishop. He was an overseer of other churches.

01:27:43

And I miss him dearly. He was a very good friend. And I know that heaven is a sweeter place now for his loved ones, his wife and children, now that he's waiting there for them.

01:27:56

I just emailed you a question from Anthony Eugenio.

01:28:04

I usually don't mention people's full names when they run in questions. But Anthony Eugenio is a friend of mine, and I believe

01:28:10

I mentioned him earlier in the program. He is the co -founder of NewYorkApologetics .com.

01:28:17

And that is spelled out in two words as far as New York is concerned. It's not abbreviated.

01:28:22

It's N -E -W -Y -O -R -K -Apologetics .com. He's actually my co -host tomorrow on Iron Sharp and Zion Radio when we have that discussion between Dr.

01:28:32

Tony Costa, a Calvinist, and Dr. Kirk MacGregor, a Molinist. But I emailed you a question from Anthony Eugenio, and if you could answer it when we return from the final break that we are going into.

01:28:48

In fact, I'll read it now, and you can answer it when we come back. He says, based on 1

01:28:54

Corinthians 9, verse 24, Paul says he might be disqualified from salvation because of something he does.

01:29:03

Doesn't this prove that people, even the Apostle Paul, can fall away? And we'll have you answer that when we return from our last break.

01:29:12

If anybody would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:29:19

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01:29:25

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01:35:32

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We have the Reformed Baptist Church of Kansas City, Kansas, which is not far, about a half hour away from Independence, Missouri.

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01:38:20

And Martin Nisch is the pastor there, or Nisch. And I hope that you look up that church and begin to attend it, and I hope you find a church home there.

01:38:32

Thank you, Connie, in Independence, Missouri. Going back to our question before the break, we had

01:38:40

Anthony, the co -founder of newyorkapologetics .com, asked the question, based on 1

01:38:48

Corinthians 9, verse 24, Paul says he might be disqualified from salvation because of something he does.

01:38:54

Doesn't this prove that people, even the Apostle Paul, can fall away? And just to read the text, do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize?

01:39:05

So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self -control in all things.

01:39:10

They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.

01:39:17

So I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air, but I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others

01:39:28

I myself should be disqualified. And that was 1 Corinthians chapter 9, verse 24.

01:39:34

And your comments, my brother? Sure. Well, when we look at a passage like that, there's an important thing that we should recall.

01:39:44

This is very similar to the previous question, where we're talking about a warning passage.

01:39:50

This is not a warning passage, but it's along the same lines in terms of the implications of this. If we can agree that when he says that I myself should be disqualified, he's talking about being disqualified for salvation.

01:40:03

And it doesn't necessarily mean that we have a problem with the doctrine of perseverance of the saints.

01:40:08

If you understand the doctrine of perseverance of the saints, you'll realize actually this doesn't conflict with anything that we're saying.

01:40:15

When we say that salvation is through grace, and there's no human merit involved, we're not negating that salvation involves faith on the part of the believer, and we're not negating that perseverance is also a part.

01:40:31

What we really believe is that God will bring these things about, he'll bring about perseverance, and he will bring about initial faith first, and then perseverance until the end.

01:40:40

And so we really believe that Christians must persevere, that we need to persevere. And so how do we talk about things like this?

01:40:47

Well, we'll say, I must persevere. I need to be faithful to the end. And I believe that's really how we preach in churches where this doctrine is emphasized, and that's something that I've made a point of bringing out even in the material that I collected from my book.

01:41:01

I put in some quotes from sermons that show exactly how it is that people speak in Reformed churches and emphasize the need to persevere.

01:41:10

That is one of our main emphases when we're talking about these issues. So it's very strange, really, once you understand this concept, to hear people saying, well, you can't insist on saying something like that when actually that's exactly what we believe.

01:41:30

And so there are some illustrations about how this works in the scripture, and let me just mention a few.

01:41:37

If you take a look, for example, at Acts chapter 27, there's, I'm not going to read this, it's a long passage, it's a passage where there's a shipwreck that Paul is involved in.

01:41:45

So Paul is on the ship, and God gives him a revelation that no life will be lost of all the people on the ship.

01:41:55

And Paul goes and he announces that to encourage everybody. He says, take heart, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only the ship.

01:42:05

The ship's going to be lost, but nobody's going to die. And that is proclaimed very clearly. And he says,

01:42:11

I must stand before Caesar, God told me that, and God has granted all those who sail with me.

01:42:18

So Paul clearly says that. Now there's no fight about a passage like that. What did Paul really mean?

01:42:24

Did he really mean that everybody on board the ship was going to survive the shipwreck?

01:42:30

Everybody accepts that's what he meant. But as you read on, you'll find something very interesting when the sailors were ready to abandon the ship and they were going to sneak off.

01:42:40

Paul catches on to what's happening, and he brings this alert to the centurion, to the soldiers, and he says to them very clearly, unless these men, the sailors, stay in the ship, you cannot be saved.

01:42:54

So what happens here is he gives them a warning. He says, you can't let these sailors go away. We're going to need them.

01:43:01

We're going to need them when the morning comes. And what people are doing essentially, when they take the passages of warning and throw them against the passages of God's promise to keep his people, what people are doing is as if they were taking this passage in Acts and throwing the two passages against each other and saying, look,

01:43:22

Paul could not say that the sailors had to stay on board or else the people would not survive.

01:43:28

He couldn't say that. Or the fact that he said nobody's going to die doesn't mean that nobody's going to die.

01:43:36

It couldn't mean that because look what he says now. Now he says that people will die if the sailors leave the boat.

01:43:42

And so a passage like that shows the tension that's involved. See, basically we have a very clear promise from God that these people will all survive.

01:43:53

Then Paul gives a qualification. He says, the sailors have to stay on board. You can't let them go. If they, if they go, you can't be saved.

01:44:02

Well, what happens? Do the sailors leave? No, they don't. The providence of God brought about circumstances to keep the sailors from leaving.

01:44:11

And the sailors were on board. And the next day they made it to the island and nobody lost their life.

01:44:19

And that's how the conclusion of the narrative is. It says, so it was that they were all brought to land safely.

01:44:26

And so what happens is the promise of God is fulfilled and nobody dies. It doesn't mean no means are involved in God doing that.

01:44:33

So when we look at a passage like this one about the Apostle Paul, we can understand that what Paul is really saying is we do have a promise for God that we will not be lost.

01:44:45

The people that God has truly saved, he will keep them. He's not going to lose a single one of his.

01:44:51

On the other hand, that doesn't mean that we don't need to persevere. That doesn't mean that we don't need to struggle against the flesh and overcome the flesh.

01:45:01

It does mean that we have to do those things. And so those things have to be remembered and we have to be warned about it. And as long as we are being warned when

01:45:09

God's providence is securing the fact that those warnings come to us and with our heart that's been made sensitive by the

01:45:16

Holy Spirit, we hear those warnings with ears to hear. What happens is we react and we respond positively.

01:45:24

And so we do persevere. We do the right thing. And so the question that we need to ask about a passage like 1

01:45:30

Corinthians 9 24 is, did Paul persevere to the end? Did he keep the faith all the way to the end?

01:45:37

And he did. And so when we see that he did, see, we don't have any proof in a passage like that, that Paul was not protected by divine providence, by divine grace.

01:45:49

What we have is the realization that the protection of God worked through means and that God also made

01:45:58

Paul aware of his need to persevere, that he should fight against the flesh, that he had to overcome the temptations, and that he had to run the race all the way to the end.

01:46:09

And the grace of God did those things and secured those things. If I may give another illustration of this, it's a similar principle to what you see, for instance, in the birth of Christ.

01:46:19

We know that the devil plotted several times to kill Christ and he used

01:46:25

Herod, for instance, and he used other means or occasions in the Gospels where the Bible says that at that point people wanted to kill

01:46:33

Jesus but it was not yet his hour and so they weren't able to kill him. On the other hand, when you realize that God had a predetermined way that Jesus was going to die and he wasn't going to let that plan be in any way frustrated, why do we find, for instance, the

01:46:52

Bible showing us that Joseph was warned in a dream to take the baby

01:46:57

Jesus and Mary and go off to Egypt and flee because Herod was going to try to destroy the child?

01:47:04

See, that's a warning that you'd say, well, that's not necessary if God has predetermined and God has guaranteed that Jesus is going to make it to adulthood and he's going to die on the cross for our sins.

01:47:15

If that has already been determined, then there's no need to warn Joseph. Oh yes, there is. That's the way God keeps

01:47:21

Jesus alive. And God doesn't work on this concept of, I'll have a plan B in case my plan doesn't work.

01:47:27

I'm going to warn Joseph. If Joseph doesn't seem to respond correctly, I'll revert to plan

01:47:33

B. No, God has a plan and he knows how it's going to happen. He's going to tell Joseph, take the child and go to Egypt.

01:47:39

He's going to move Joseph to have the right kind of heart to respond properly and Joseph will get up and go to Egypt.

01:47:46

The child will be preserved that way from that particular threat. No other plan is necessary because God knows that plan is going to work.

01:47:54

And so when we have all the dangers of sin and temptation and God brings these warnings to us and God brings passages like this one of the apostle

01:48:02

Paul that I have to beat myself into submission and not do what the flesh would like to do.

01:48:08

What we understand is that indeed, that is the way that God communicates to us, that that's what we need to do.

01:48:15

And God will spur us on in the right direction through this. The Holy Spirit will apply that to our hearts and move upon us in such a way that we actually do persevere.

01:48:24

And so the issue is not whether we need to be told to persevere. The issue is, do we actually persevere?

01:48:30

Did Paul actually persevere? Do we have examples of people who are actually transformed and regenerate by the grace of God, forgiven of their sins, who did not persevere?

01:48:39

And we don't. What we do see is God working this salvation and bringing it all the way to the end so that people depart from this life having understood that God's providence and God's grace followed them all the way and kept them safe.

01:48:53

And that's the message that we believe. Well, praise God. And make sure we have your full mailing address,

01:49:00

Anthony, so that we can ship you a free copy of Will I Make It to Heaven?

01:49:05

A New Look at the Perseverance of the Saints. And you have a message of greeting,

01:49:12

Brother Deeds, from Paulo in,

01:49:18

I believe it's pronounced Wantage or Wantage, I'm not sure how to pronounce it,

01:49:24

W -A -N -T -A -G -E, Sussex County, New Jersey, who said he met you a few years ago while preaching in Brazil.

01:49:32

Oh, wonderful. He sends his greetings to you. And by the way, thank you, Bashir. Thank you,

01:49:38

Bashir, in Piqua, Ohio, for clarifying the correct pronunciation of that city in Ohio.

01:49:48

Let's see, we have RJ in White Plains, New York, who says, you haven't yet gotten to the part where you are taking a new look at the

01:50:00

Perseverance of the Saints. Can you please tell me what that new look is?

01:50:05

I always get nervous when someone says they have a new look at something that is ancient or has a lot of historic evidence to it, because usually when someone discovers something new after all the centuries of Christendom, it is typically wrong.

01:50:26

Well, you know, I agree with that. That is a very good point, and I couldn't have imagined that somebody would understand that I'm suggesting a new point of view with that on the title of the book.

01:50:38

That's not the idea. The view is the old view. In fact, I go through quotes from the

01:50:44

Church Fathers, through the Reformers, throughout the period of modern history, and show that the message that is in the book is basically the message that Christians have maintained from the beginning.

01:51:00

And I think that's an extremely important point to make. The reason it's titled, A New Look, is because there are some issues that have come up in recent times that did not have the need to be addressed directly by some of the earlier authors.

01:51:18

One of the things that led me to really feel that I should write this book is that it's hard to find a book that really focuses on the doctrine of the

01:51:28

Perseverance of the Saints, that you can actually recommend to somebody and say, okay, your questions will be addressed in this book in a way that will be helpful to you.

01:51:39

I don't believe in just writing books for the sake of writing books. If there's already a good book out there, I'll just recommend that book.

01:51:45

I'll buy it and give it to the person. And I think that there are so many good books out there. But when

01:51:51

I looked into this issue of Perseverance of the Saints, really I think that the best material that I found was a booklet written by Arthur Pink in the beginning of the 20th century.

01:52:02

And see, that book has some wealth of material, but it doesn't deal with a lot of the new things that have come about.

01:52:10

And so today we're dealing with three different views on the issue of perseverance and security within our minion circles.

01:52:18

We have, of course, the Roman Catholic view, which has been around a long time. There are even arguments about the idea that people can lose their salvation, they can be justified and still go to hell within the

01:52:30

New Perspective of Paul. And I didn't address the New Perspective of Paul by name, but I did take into account all the arguments that are being used along that line and the new definition of justification, and I talked about that in a way that would clarify that.

01:52:45

Because I know people who are reading N .T. Wright and starting to believe, yeah, you know, you can be justified and still go to hell on Judgment Day.

01:52:54

And that kind of idea is not addressed in some of the older books on the doctrine of the

01:53:00

Perseverance of the Saints. And so the new look is just in the sense of a look at our contemporary context, taking into account all the different fights and all the different arguments that are being brought against the

01:53:13

Reformed perspective and trying to give them an answer. And that's the reason it's a new look. Well, thank you,

01:53:19

R .J. Give me your full mailing address, because you have just won a free copy of the book,

01:53:25

Will I Make It to Heaven? A New Look at the Perseverance of the Saints, and CVBBS .com

01:53:31

will ship that out to you at no charge to you or to R .I .N. Trippin's Iron Radio. We want to thank, once again, our friends at Calvary Press for providing us with these free books.

01:53:43

One of the things that makes this a difficult issue for people is that we have all known people who were

01:53:55

Christians, or professing to be, I should say, who weren't just some nominal person who says, oh yeah,

01:54:04

I raised my hand and went forward on an altar call 30 years ago. There are people that we know and love,

01:54:12

I'm assuming that most of us, if not all of us listening to this program, know at least one person that was a vibrant, or it seemed outwardly like a vibrant Christian, who not only was a vibrant Christian, but may have been a pastor, who could teach so clearly the gospel, and was a walking encyclopedia of scriptural knowledge, and they had lives that were exemplary.

01:54:43

They were faithful to their wives. You could not think of much to criticize them for, and then all of a sudden, one day you hear that they've totally abandoned the faith.

01:54:55

I even know of a couple of pastors that became atheists. It's just mind -boggling, and people say to themselves, well, if you believe that we are justified by faith alone, if you believe in Sola Fide, then how on earth could these people that seem to love the

01:55:16

Lord, his word, and knew it very well, and taught it very well, and lived lives that would put us all to shame, then they abandon the faith.

01:55:26

How on earth can you put those two things together, and does that mean that we all, no matter who we are, who are believers in Christ, have to fear that we ourselves may not make it to heaven?

01:55:42

Yeah, that's an interesting point. I really think that the thing we need to remember when we talk about that is that we cannot see into other people's hearts.

01:55:51

We see the outside evidence, and the outside evidence is something that, well, very honestly, a person could be in a cult that's totally heretical in their views of, you know,

01:56:04

Christology or Soteriology and several issues, and still they could have very moral lives.

01:56:10

They could be very religious. They could be going to their church every Sunday very regularly.

01:56:18

They could be active. They could be reaching out to bring other people to believe like they believe, and they could be faithful spouses with a very moral life, honest life, and still you know that the message that they believe is not the gospel.

01:56:35

And so it's also possible for a person to have on the outside a lot of things that we would look at as signs of true faith, but internally there might not truly be a regenerate heart.

01:56:50

What about the people that... Hello? Hello, brother.

01:56:56

Are you still there? Daniel got disconnected. I hope Daniel calls back real quick because we're running out of time.

01:57:03

I hope you hear from me soon, Daniel. But I was going to... There he goes.

01:57:09

Hello, Daniel. I'm sorry. Something happened there. We got cut off. Okay. Daniel, what about the people...

01:57:15

What about the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith Adherents, Reformed Baptists who are teaching the same thing that we believe, who seem to love those things, and they completely fall away from the faith, abandon

01:57:27

God, and so on? What about them? Well, the doctrine in that case is what we believe.

01:57:35

It's an Orthodox Christian doctrine. And so my point about the people who are in heretical groups are just to illustrate the fact that externally good life can happen without believing the gospel.

01:57:50

In cases like what you're saying, what we have to go back to necessarily is what the Bible says. They went out from us, but they were not of us, because if they were of us, they would have remained with us.

01:58:02

And there is such a thing as dead orthodoxy. You can believe mentally the right things, but still be lost.

01:58:09

Right. Definitely true. And people can appear to love God and His word and His gospel, but they may even have deceived themselves.

01:58:18

They may be loving the benefits that come with religion. They may be loving the benefits of being a pastor.

01:58:25

They may love the oratory aspects or even the counseling aspects or whatever the case is, but they never really loved in truth

01:58:34

God and His gospel. They couldn't have, am I right? Yes, that's what I would believe, certainly.

01:58:41

Like I said, we can't see in the heart. I think we do need to apply that to ourselves in this sense. It is possible to be in a church and be active and not really be a true, sincere follower of Christ.

01:58:52

And I think that implies that we should examine ourselves, but I don't think it should take us to despair to say that, well, then

01:58:58

I can never know if I'm truly saved. And we're out of time, brother. What contact information would you like me to share with our listeners?

01:59:09

Well, if anybody would like to get in touch with me personally, you can get in touch with me with my email. That would be danielldeeds at gmail .com.

01:59:20

So it's Daniel Deeds with an extra L right after Daniel. And it's D -E -E -D -S.

01:59:26

That's right. And you can order the book. You can order Will I Make It to Heaven from cvbbs .com.

01:59:35

Just ask for Will I Make It to Heaven by Daniel Deeds, a publication of Calvary Press. I want to thank you so much for being my guest.

01:59:41

I look forward to you being back. I look forward to you returning as my guest. Hold on and let's schedule another interview.

01:59:47

I want to thank all of you who took the time to write in questions, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater