Departing From or Coming to Truth?

Ever since I was delivered from the teachings of the anti-means paradigm, word often comes to my ears that I have "departed" from the truth. There is a serious begging of the question here as it automatically presupposes without question that what I once held was that very thing: truth.

The same charge was recently repeated to which I make this reply.

The idea that sinners must have faith in Christ for salvation is one of the most fundamental truths of the Christian faith. To go from a position that says multitudes of unbelievers are saved (NOTE: This is a cue to the Christian community to shudder at such an idea!) to one which claims that they are damned, and that salvation is exclusive to believers in Christ is no departure from truth, but a deliverance from error! To go from antinomianism to perseverance is not an example of leaving the old paths, but submitting to the plain teachings of scripture (Job 17:9; Col. 1:20-23; Heb. 3:6)! To claim that the gospel in the ordained means of salvation is no novelty, but the teachings of the bible itself (2 Thes. 2:13-14; James 1:18; Romans 6:17)!

If what I've come to see taught in God's Word is a departure, then there is a vast host of far more learned men than myself who must be included as well.

The adherers of the Westminster, London, and Philadelphia Confessions of Faith.
The Kehukee Primitive Baptist Association.
The Ketocton Primitive Baptist Association.
The Black Rock Brethren.
All the Puritans without exception.
John Calvin.
Charles Spurgeon.
John Gill.
Arthur Pink.
Martyn Lloyd Jones.
etc.

To this list I claim as well the first generation of Primitive Baptists as well as a number (growing I hope) of current elders who have been delivered from the mixed bag of Arminianism, Pelagianism, and Antinomianism that is conditional time salvation.

Departed from the truth? Seriously?

The reality is that it is the other way around. As Elder E.H. Burnam testified in the trial of Mt. Carmel Church in the latter part of the 19th century:

"Since I was here there has been put forth the idea that a man could be saved, if regenerate, without faith. The faith of Mount Carmel Church, as the faith of all the Baptists of our connection, Old School Regular Baptists, has been by the grace of God through faith. There has been a departure from that in the putting forth of the idea that men could be saved without faith.

...That was made by what we call the Anti-Means Baptists, in 1891. by Dr. Waters, editor of Zion’s Advocate"

Bingo.