Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: lums@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu (Andy Lumsdaine) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Once Saved, Always Saved? Message-ID: Date: 20 Jan 91 19:19:02 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics Lines: 33 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article louns@cs.washington.edu (Michael Lounsbery) writes: > >I have known actua{ people who were, in their early 20's, very >sincere, faithful, practicing Christians. Years later, they rejected their >Christian faith, and lived a new life, apparently in contradiction to >Christian values. I think you would argue (please correct me if I'm wrong), >based on what I tell you of their later life, that their original Christian >life wasn't genuine all those years. But having known these people fairly >well, I really doubt it. I have a question about this that maybe someone on the net can answer. Alot of the discussion about "once save always saved" seems to revolve around the fact that you must be a Christian at the time you die. That is, one could lead as bad a life as could be imagined, repent shortly before death, and go to heaven. Why is that it matters what the person's state is at the time of death? Let's say person A becomes a Christian when he is 20 years old, "falls away" when he is 21, and dies when he is 60. Let's say person B becomes a Christian when she is 59 and dies when she is 60. What is the difference between person A and B? Both were only Christians for one of 60 years (let's also assume that they both acheived the same level of spiritual maturity in that one year). Can someone help me with this? Regards, Andrew Andrew Lumsdaine "We don't understand the software, and lums@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu sometimes we don't understand the hardware, MIT RLE but we can *see* the blinking lights!"