You Haven’t Endured to the End

Let us have a little fun with logic. If we talk about perseverance or preservation of the saints, it generally means that true saints will endure to the end (Matthew 10:22). Thus anyone who does not endure to the end and becomes apostate or the like would show themselves to have been never really saved. The problem becomes when you say that you are saved and you have yet to endure to the end and prove it.

If you’re reading this I would assume that you are still alive. Therefore you have not yet endured to the end. Therefore you have not proven to me that you are really saved even though you’ll say that you are saved. Yet I can say that I am saved even though I have not endured to the end either. We are forced to suspect each other as possibly being a fake; and we will each insist that we are real.

Once I “know” that I am real and my soul is eternally secure in Christ, if I slack off and allow sin to come in without repentance, you will say that I was never saved even as I will say that I am saved and secure. Once you “know” that you are real, there will be nothing I can do to convince you that you were “never saved” either, even if you also allow sin in and don’t repent. Each of us will self-righteously declare ourselves saved while the other was never saved and we’ll both go to Hell.

You say that you would never do this, but many have and will. So to avoid doing this we fail to mention the “never really saved” aspect (or at least relegate it to a minor amount of attention) so that all may be saved and secure and we can embrace each other as real. Now sin means absolutely nothing, for Christ has dealt with it all, past, present and future. We shall glory in our license to sin, while insisting that it is not.

Examine yourself to see if you were never saved. That sounds ludicrous, does it not? Of course I’m going to find out that I was saved in the past, so that means I am saved now, for to lose my salvation is anathema.

It’s all fun and games until I take the mark of the beast. Ah, now we know that I was never saved. Thus I have been deluding myself for all these years, such a pity. Yet I believed the same doctrine and I was certain that it was someone else who was never saved. And even worse, because I know I was saved and thus secure, I still think that I am saved in spite of taking the mark.

Beloved, when it’s someone else and can’t be you, you have to be on your guard. Eternal Security is playing with fire, and someone has to get burned.