I've been thinking of the sermon by Thomas Mann posted here sometime ago entitled 'Rethinking My Position on Conditional Time Salvation'. I searched for it on our site and read this excerpt again about the novel teaching's claim, and that which troubled the speaker.
"Probably the most disturbing part of it to me is this. It suggests that many, at least in its extreme forms, it suggests that many of God's people, many saved people, never come to an awareness of their salvation or never come to know Jesus Christ as their Savior or that they never produce fruit in their life but they live essentially in a spiritual, vegetative state all their life. Of course the implications of this would go something like this. It would suggest that simply because American Indians worship the Great Spirit, that's indication that they're born again. Well, now it's possible that God had people among the American Indians; I wouldn’t argue that point. But what I would argue, I would refute the notion that because a person worships an idol god, that means he’s born again. The Bible teaches everywhere that God's Spirit draws a person to Christ and not away from Christ; not toward an idol but to Jesus. So it is not an evidence of grace just because a person worships an idol god. Okay?"
What strikes me most remarkable is that the elder even felt a need to share this very basic fact! Imagine a people so far removed from a proper understanding of salvation that they must be instructed to see that the Holy Spirit leads men to Christ, and to Him only! To what other group in Christendom must we defer in which their leaders must pause and point out that idolatry is not an evidence of regeneration?
Fascinating.
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