106 - Salvation and Eternal Security [B]

Hebrews Lesson 106    November 1, 2007

^NKJ Psalm 119:11 Your word I have hidden in my heart, That I might not sin against You!

We are looking at Hebrews 7:25.  Hebrews 7:25 is a key verse in understanding the doctrine known as eternal security.

What's interesting is that over the last several weeks, couple of months, I have gotten a number of different questions, requests, comments for clarification from people who are out there really on the front lines of applying the Word in terms of their ambassador ministry for the Lord Jesus Christ.  Things like this where you really get into the nuts and bolts of some of these doctrines really won't mean a whole lot to you if you're sitting alone in your little house and you never interact with unbelievers or with people who are not on the same sheet of music with you (so to speak) in terms of an understanding of doctrine.  If you are out there talking to people about the Bible and what you believe and why you believe it, then they're going to be asking these questions.  If you're in situations as I pointed out last time from one of the families that is listening to some of the streaming video, but they live out on the West Coast in an area where there are not too many good churches.  They have been trying to find an acceptable church in their area.  So the husband, the father has been going to the pastors and asking questions to find out what these churches believe.  What do they actually believe?  He finds that he doesn't always get a straight answer.  He gets acceptable answers, but then he has to learn the right questions to ask to really expose what people believe.  Interaction with him was one of the reasons that I thought it was important to go into some of the aspects of this.  He was struggling because he would get these different answers and he sort of smelled a rat, but he wasn't sure what the terminology is.  You have to sort of understand that there is jargon here just like in any area of thought, any area of study whether you are in business, whether you are in academics or whether you are in literature or writing or whatever area it is; there is always jargon related to whatever the arena of thought is.  You have to figure out that certain words and certain phrases come loaded with a whole lot of baggage.  You have to learn to spot these things.  If all you do is come to Bible class and take notes and go home and you never talk to anybody about what you are learning in Bible class, you are never trying to witness to anybody to help them understand the Truth; then studies like this are going to fall flat. 

"Well, that is kind of interesting but I never see anybody who believes these strange things."

That's because you're not out there getting your fingers dirty as it were in the real market place interacting with people.  But you get somebody who is following the example of the apostles and the challenge to communicate the gospel to the lost, then you are going to be hit with so many questions you won't know what to do.  You'll be in Bible class listening to lessons every time you get a chance just to figure out what the answers are.  There is nothing I think that's more embarrassing (I think) than to sit in a conversation with two or three people and they think, "Well, the Bible says this and the Bible says that." 

You go, "I know it doesn't, but I can't answer it and I ought to be able to say something."

So you feel rather helpless. 

The purpose for the church according to Ephesians 4 is not to come together and share.  It's not to come together and encourage.  It's not to come together and praise God and feel good. It's to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry.  That comes through the teaching ministry of gifted leaders that God gives the church, specifically pastor-teacher and evangelist.  Ephesians 4:11-12

So we are looking at Hebrews 7:25.  This verse says:

^NKJ Hebrews 7:25 Therefore He is also able

That is Christ in His high priestly ministry, specifically beginning at the cross and then ongoing after the ascension. 

to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.

The basis for salvation is what Christ did on the cross.  But, that ongoing security that secures the eternal salvation that you and I have that can't ever be lost is based on His eternality. As we have gone through this study in Hebrews 7 talking about the uniqueness of Christ's high priestly ministry and that it is following the order of Melchizedek.  What makes His high priestly ministry significant and greater than any human high priestly ministry is because He is eternal.  He is the eternal Second Person of the Trinity.

Now I pointed out last time that the key phrases here are this phrase "to the uttermost".  He is able to save not partially, but to the uttermost - completely.  He brings it to its full end.  He saves to the uttermost those who come to God. 

The phrase "save to the uttermost" is a compound word from the Greek word pas meaning all and the root word telos meaning to its proper end.  So it comes to mean to save completely, totally, to bring it to its full completion those who come to God.

This is the same root word erchomai, but it used proserchomai there in Hebrews 7, but it reminds me of Matthew 11:28.  Jesus said.

^NKJ Matthew 11:28 "Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Coming to God is comparable to trusting Christ as your Savior.  That's how we come to God.

^NKJ John 14:6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

Same word.  No one can come to the Father except through Him.  The only way to come to the Father is by faith alone in Christ alone.  We trust in His completed work on the cross. 

So this brings together two key ideas and two key doctrines – one is eternal security and the other is the intercessory ministry of Jesus Christ in terms of His ongoing high priestly ministry at the right hand of the Father.  They intersect in terms of the securing forever of our salvation. 

So we started last time with the Doctrine of Eternal Security.  I taught this before back in the salvation series several years ago.  I have reviewed parts of it in Revelation and I've gone back and added some verses and talked about some new aspects and tweaked it a little more in the last couple of weeks.  So I have added some from where we started just by way of introduction last week.  So we looked at our definition.

Doctrine of Eternal Security

1. Definition - This is the work of God toward the believer.  What I am emphasizing here is when we talk about eternal security, the issue is does - God secure our salvation or is it dependent on us?  The problem that we get into is people somehow think that - basically they have a very small view of what happens at salvation.  They have a truncated view of the problem of sin.  They usually have a pretty diluted view of the sin and the sin problem.  So they have a diluted view of what salvation is.  So for them it's rather easy to think that somebody gets saved and then they lose it like they are given eternal life like it is something assigned to them and then it is taken away.  They don't come to grips with everything the Bible says about their salvation, what God does for them in salvation.  Furthermore they don't understand all the promises that we have in the Bible related to each member of the Trinity.  So it's the work of God. So as we go through these points it always focuses on what God is doing – the essence of God and the roles of each member of the trinity in securing our salvation. 

So it's the work of God toward the believer at the instant of faith alone in Christ alone which guarantees that God's free gift of salvation is eternal and cannot be lost, terminated, abrogated, nullified, or reversed by any thought, act or change of belief in the person saved.  Now every element of that is important because somebody comes along and makes some issue out of some aspect of that. 

The last phrase is you can't think anything, you can't think of any sin, and you can't perform any act. 

You can't suddenly wake up a week from now and say, "Christianity is full of contradictions.  They are just a bunch of hypocrites.  Every where I go they call themselves Christians and I don't believe Christ and I am going to deny Him now." 

There are many Christians who say if you ever deny Christ, that's it.  You have lost your salvation.  So you can't change anything because your salvation wasn't based on who you are or what you did; so its preservation is not based on who you are or what you've done.  If you think you can do something to lose it… somewhere in your thinking buried deep maybe or it's just that you don't realize it is an idea that there is something that you do to get it.  I really do believe that even though it may not be overt, people may not understand it that if they don't understand eternal security or don't think you can be eternally secure, they usually have some element where they think you do something to get salvation. 

Then I broke it down this way related to understanding what happens at salvation. When a person trusts in Christ that means to believe, to accept Him as their savior to rely exclusively upon Him.  I say that – that really gets at the Roman Catholic construct of salvation.  It's Christ alone.  It's not Christ plus the mass.  It's not Christ plus the various sacraments.  It's not Christ plus good works or doing good, involvement in the church.  It's Christ alone – that if you don't do anything else trust in Christ alone – not Christ and the church, Christ and Mary, Christ and the saints.  It's Christ alone and it's faith alone.  What else you do has nothing to do with it. It is pure and simple.  That's why you have to have "alone" modifying both faith and Christ.  Because if it's faith alone in Christ that opens the door to something else.  If it's faith in Christ alone, that faith can come with some baggage.  So faith alone in Christ alone makes it very clear.  And, it's for salvation.  There's an understanding that Christ died for your sins. 

There is a sad thing that has been going on for the – actually it has been going on for four or five years.  It's only been on my radar for a year and a half, two years maybe.  It is splitting the Grace Evangelical Society.  For those of you who aren't familiar with that, when Prof Hodges (Zane Hodges) who was a Greek prof at Dallas Seminary started writing some books clarifying the issues between a pure free grace salvation and Lordship salvation, and what was coming out of the reformed camp and if you don't know what that means we will get into it again in just a minute.  As those things became clear there were a number of people who really began to understand the nature of grace – that grace means it's free, no strings attached.  It's not you are saved and it's free as long as you do something later on.  It's free as long as you are grateful.  It's free as long as you have works consistent with your faith.  It's free.  It's a gift.  He made that clear. There were many, many pastors and theologians who organized themselves together in what became known as the Grace Evangelical Society.  They produced a bi-annual journal (I guess), annual meetings, things of this nature. 

In the last few years there have been some theological issues that have slowly reared their ugly heads.  Some of us became acquainted with that here at the Chafer's Pastor Conference in March '06, a year and a half ago when John Nimela presented a paper related to understanding or accepting the gift of eternal life which God had offered.  The illustration they keep coming up with and you hear a lot is if you are stranded on a desert island and you pick up a piece of paper and it has one little section of a couple of verses in it out of John 5.  (I am going to turn there so I can articulate this correctly.)  You have a couple of verses there from John 5.  (I start talking about it and I get ad hoc here and I can't find the exact verse.) 

^NKJ John 5:24 " Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.

No, it's not 27.  Anyway the idea is that this one verse they pick up a couple of statements in there.  They believe in the Son.  They accept the gift of eternal life and they'll believe.  It doesn't mention the cross.  It is just mentioning this principle that Jesus came, offered eternal life and if you "accept me" you have eternal life.  But there is no mention of the substitutionary atonement of Christ, no mention that Christ died for your sins, no understanding of any of these aspects.  It is just accepting the gift of life from Jesus.  They go to a number of passages in John to support this. 

The problem is that John 5 occurs before the cross.  So Jesus hadn't gone to the cross yet.  So there is no mention of the cross and there is no mention of His substitutionary atonement.  There are some other issues with that.  What they have done is they have basically said you can become saved and you don't have to believe in the cross.  You don't even have to know about the cross.  In fact, you don't have to believe that Jesus is God.  They play around with the meaning of Jesus is the Christ the Son of God. 

"Well, that just means something else.  It is messianic term.  It doesn't means He's full deity.  You don't have to believe the Messiah is full deity in order to get saved."

This is really tearing the Grace Evangelical Society apart.  That's why you have a new organization that is starting called the Free Grace Alliance that's had some impact on Chafer Seminary and some other things.  So this is why I emphasize this.  When a person trusts in Christ for salvation, what does that mean?  That He died on the cross for your sins. 

Paul says in I Corinthians 2:

^NKJ 1 Corinthians 2:2 For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

^NKJ 1 Corinthians 15:3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,

^NKJ 1 Corinthians 15:4 and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures,

That was the priority.  So this is very important to understand the content of the gospel.  When you trust in that gospel, then God permanently justifies. He imputes righteousness, justifies, regenerates, gives eternal life and this cannot be lost no matter what a person does or does not do from that instant on until the day he dies.

That's our definition.  Now another aspect of this is just talking about terminology.  There are other terms that are used in this.  I was asked some questions about this last week so I added this statement in here. 

2. Other terms: Once saved always saved, assurance of salvation, and a term we have already used eternal security. 

Some people think that assurance of salvation and eternal security are synonymous terms and that all three of these are basically saying the same thing.  And, they are not.  They are each saying something a little differently. 

Eternal security is a term that refers to the objective work of the triune God.  We will see that God - God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit - each is involved is securing our salvation, in keeping it secure.  Eternal security refers to the objective work of the triune God in keeping us saved.  This is often called the objective aspect of the doctrine.  In other words God is keeping you secure whether you understand it, believe it or have confidence in it or not.  No matter what is going on God is the one who holds you in His hand.  That's the objective side. That is what eternal security is. 

Assurance of salvation is the subjective side.  That's my understanding of what Christ has done for me and my confidence and assurance that I cannot lose my salvation.  Now there are many people who don't believe in eternal security, but they're still eternally secure.  There are many people who do not have an assurance of their salvation.  They are so afraid because they haven't been taught anything…that if they commit some sin that they can lose their salvation.  So they don't have much assurance of salvation.  There are others who are taught that the only way you can know if you have real, genuine saving faith is if you have certain works that are consistent with genuine faith.  They don't feel like they have those works so they doubt their salvation.  So assurance of salvation is the subjective side.  People can believe in eternal security and not have an assurance of salvation.  That's true of many High Calvinists.  That's true of people in Lordship salvation.  They just can't have an assurance of their salvation, but they believe in eternal security.  Don't confuse the two.

On the other hand if you're an Arminian you may believe that you have an assurance of salvation, but you don't believe in eternal security.  So they are not the same thing.  There are different groups with different views. 

The other phrase I mentioned is "once saved, always saved."  A lot of High Calvinists will say they believe once saved, always saved. 

"But I don't know if I am really saved."

You can't really be sure you are fully saved because you have a false faith in Christ.  I went over that and their views on that last time. 

3. The third point we covered a little bit last time – the historic positions. 

First of all High Calvinism.  That really is the best way to refer to a strong Calvinism – High Calvinism.  The difference between High Calvinism and Hyper-Calvinism is Hyper-Calvinists do not believe you should ever witness to anybody because "if God wants them saved He'll save them without any help from you or me. "

That's a direct quote from a Baptist minister in the late 1700's in England who when William Carey who's considered the Father of Modern Missions came back from India and was giving a report to the Baptist denomination about all the souls that were being won to Christ in India, this old Hyper-Calvinist Baptist got up and said, "Son, if God wants them to be saved, then He'll do it without any help from you or me.

That was his point. 

"We don't need to raise money and send out missionaries.  If God wants them saved, He'll save them." 

So that is Hyper-Calvinism.

High Calvinism is typically a 5 point Super-Lapsarian or infralapsarian type of Calvinism.  If you don't know what that means I am not going to get distracted now.  Like the old problem trying to understand the infralapsarian, Sub-Lapsarians, the Super-Lapsarians and Labrador retrievers.  It is a whole different thing. 

High Calvinism represents the 5 points of Calvinism indicated by the acronym TULIP. 

T stands for total depravity or total inability that man is so enchained, bound, his will is so bound that he cannot do anything to please God.  That's true.  We would say that.  But they would say that he can't even express non-meritorious volition.  You can't do anything. 

You can't even say "God, I want to know more about you" because for them that would have merit.  You can't do anything meritorious so they're totally depraved.  Martin Luther held that view.  He wrote a book on it called The Bondage of the Will. 

Speaking of Martin Luther, how many people know what yesterday was?  That's so good.  Yesterday was the 390^th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation – Reformation Day. 

The U is for unconditional election.  That means God doesn't have any conditions on His choice.  He's just going to arbitrarily choose.  That is where I have a problem because I don't think God arbitrarily chooses who will be saved and who won't.  He just hasn't told us what the conditions are; but He has conditions. I think the condition is that He knows who would believe under certain circumstances and who won't – who will have positive volition and who will not. 

The L stands for limited atonement.  Jesus died only for those who were elect. 

The I is for irresistible grace.  The Holy Spirit will irresistibly make the gospel clear to someone so that when they see the light they will respond and trust in Christ.  The Holy Spirit only performs that act of irresistible grace on the elect. 

The P stands for perseverance of the saints.  Those who were truly elect upon whom the Holy Spirit has irresistibly moved will necessarily persevere in good works and never turn totally from Christ, never reject or renounce Christ and they will ultimately be saved.  It is not equivalent to eternal security although for many people they have made it such.

For Louise Sperry Chafer they were virtually synonymous.  He did not hold to a High Calvinist view of the perseverance of the saints. 

On the other end of the spectrum there's Jacobus Arminius who died in 1609, but his followers were challenged and brought to a church trial at the Senate of Dort in 1618-1619.  They believed that a saved person in classic Arminianism can lose salvation only by a complete denial of Christ.  It's not by sin.  There is only one way you can lose your salvation.  That is to turn your back on Jesus and to completely renounce him.  Once this occurs, according to their view you can never again be saved. 

That's not the only form of Arminianism that is out there.  There is also Wesleyan Arminianism which is out there which is named for John Wesley, the founder.  (He is actually not the founder, but one of the founders of Methodism.)  It actually started with an evangelist named George Whitfield.  George Whitfield was a High Calvinist and an evangelist.  When he came to America to preach revivals, while he was gone the Wesley brothers made an issue (though they had promised not to while he was gone) out of Calvinistic doctrine.  So when George came back to England, he found that the movement was split.  Rather than make an issue, he decided to be a gentleman and he walked away.  The Wesley's high jacked Methodism and made it Arminian. 

The Wesleyan view is that salvation can be lost in any serious intentional sin.  But, you can be resaved if you'll repent.  So this is referred to - we have TULIP theology with Calvinism and this is daisy theology (He loves me, He loves me not, He loves me, He loves me not, He loves me, He loves me not). 

Wesley stated this way:

I cannot believe attainable in this life from which a man cannot finally fall. 

In other words, you can't be permanently, totally confident of your salvation and eternally secure.

He also said:

I find no general promise in holy writ that "none who once believes will finally fall."

A third quote:

On this authority (he is commenting on Ezekiel 18:24)  I believe a saint may fall away, that one who is holy or righteous in the judgment of God Himself may nevertheless so fall from God as to perish everlastingly. 

So that gives you a little bit of the historical issue. 

4. Now the problem that has erupted is this conflict between eternal security and perseverance of the saints.  This is how Calvinists will define it.  I went over last week so I am going to go through them pretty quickly.

Westminster Confession of Faith:

They whom God has accepted into the Beloved (go down to the end)...they shall certainly persevere. 

It puts the emphasis on the "they".  This is a tough passage. 

Some people think, "Oh.  This is just eternal security." 

But the last phrase paragraph picks up the subject from the first of the paragraph – they shall persevere. It's the person who perseveres, not God or Christ who perseveres in keeping you.

There are those who have a balanced view.  Louis Berkoff is a High Calvinist. 

But he says, "Look, we have to be careful not to put the burden of perseverance on the individual on the continuous activity of man, but on God."

Charles Hodge said related to the Apostle Paul in his comments on I Corinthians 9:27, "This devoted apostle considered himself as engaged in a life struggle of his salvation."

Paul wasn't relaxed?  When we get there, just think of all the verses that I am going to go to from Paul that he knew who he believed and was confident that He was able to keep his salvation against that day. 

^NKJ 2 Timothy 1:12 For this reason I also suffer these things; nevertheless I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day.

So the idea of perseverance in Calvinism is there must be perseverance in holiness therefore in opposition to our weakness and temptations.  It's the only sure evidence of the genuineness of past experience.  How do you know you are saved?  By persevering.  They bring works in the back door. 

So ironically it's not much different than the Arminian opposite.  You have Lordship salvation on the one hand (no assurance) and assurance based on works following faith and the Arminian position - no eternal security salvation. 

Actually it is more like this.  They are just slightly different.  Neither one can have any genuine assurance or eternal security.

So let's get into the doctrine itself.

What I want to do is begin with general arguments from the character of God.  Then we will look at specific arguments on the basis of each member of the trinity. So this will probably take two or three weeks.  So we'll start with the general arguments from the character of God Himself. 

So we'll start with our essence box.  God is sovereign.  He is righteous.  He is just.  He is love.  He is eternal life.  He is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, veracity and immutability.  God is all of these things simultaneously. Each of these modifies all the others.  So His love is righteous and just and eternal.  It's also immutable and true.  His truth is based on righteousness and justice.  All of these intersect and interconnect. 

But let's think about a few of these.  For example, God is omniscient.  That means that God knows all the knowable.  God is eternal.  That means that God has eternally known all the knowable.  Well, if God knows everything there is to know (all the actual as well as all the hypothetical) then God knows every single sin you do commit and every single sin you might commit.  God's not surprised.  Billions and billions of years ago in eternity past when there was no time, there were no angels.  There was only the triune God.  God in His omniscience knew every single sin that you were going to commit.  And He knew every single sin that you might commit.  He knew all of the realities and all of the possibilities.  Now in His omniscience, that means that when God decided on a plan of salvation He was going to construct a plan (I'm speaking somewhat anthropopathically) that would be so complex and so comprehensive that every one of those sins that He knew every human being would commit would be paid for by Christ on the cross.  In His omniscience He didn't overlook one.  He didn't miss one. 

He didn't wake up one morning…"Oops.  I forgot to take care of this sin." 

He knew every single sin – the big sins, the little sins, the sins that you don't want to admit are sins, every single sin, every word, every thought He was aware of. He put every one of those sins on Jesus Christ.  He imputed every one of those to Jesus Christ. 

Because God is also omnipotent He had the ability to fulfill His plan and He had the ability to do that.  Because He is just He could judge all of those sins on the cross and design a salvation that would fully and completely satisfy His justice in relationship to all those sins.  To say or think that you can do something today that wasn't paid for on the cross that would cause you to lose your salvation is really blasphemy.  What you are really saying is that God forgot about this sin or "I can (commit a) sin that is too great for the justice of God, too great for the grace of God, too great for the love of God and was unknown by the omniscience of God". 

What that reveals is that you have a very small god.  You don't have a biblical view of God or His attributes. 

Another aspect of this kind of thinking is that in the character of God He is righteous and He is immutable.  That means when He makes a promise, He's going to keep the promise.  He's going to be true to His word.  He is going to be faithful to His promise and He is never going to change once He has said that He will do something. 

A verse that focuses on this aspect is in II Timothy 2:11-13.

^NKJ 2 Timothy 2:11 This is a faithful saying: For if we died with Him, We shall also live with Him.

The faithfulness of God's promise – the word there is not a title for Christ.  It is an emphasis on the promise of the Scripture.  That's where we know we have assurance.  That's one thing that's missed in the debate.  How do you know you're saved?  Because God said so.  God said if you believe in Jesus Christ you will be saved.  He is true to His word.

^NKJ 2 Timothy 2:12 If we endure, We shall also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He also will deny us.

Now does that mean that He will deny us salvation or that He'll deny us rewards?  Those are the two options.  But in the light of the last phrase of the verse which says that if we are unfaithful (that is if we quit believing in Him) He remains faithful. 

^NKJ 2 Timothy 2:13 If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself.

So you can't take the denial that He will deny us as losing salvation without violating the meaning of the last phrase.  We do know that at the Judgment Seat of Christ, Jesus Christ will deny us rewards and He will deny us blessings.  If we are unfaithful (that means if we are disbelieving) He remains faithful for He cannot deny Himself.

So all of this relates to the argument from the character of God – who He is and what He has done.

Do we have time?  Yes, we do. 

I want to get into the first part which flows from the security from God the Father.  The believer is secured by the purpose, the power, the provision and the love of God the Father.  We have seen that from the character of God there is a security of our salvation.  Now we are going to look at some specific verses related to how God the Father secures our salvation.  First of all, and we will probably just get to the first aspect tonight, that is the purpose of God.  God has a purpose in salvation and that purpose cannot be overwritten.  The purpose is to save those who believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior.  And we see this laid out in a series of verbs in Romans 8:29-30.  Each of these describes the same group.  That is what is so important to focus on.  Let me read the verse and then we will go to the end. 

^NKJ Romans 8:29 For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.

^NKJ Romans 8:30 Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.

So what we have is a final group of people that gets glorified.  They end up in heaven.  Now is that the same group of people that are justified?  Yeah.  It doesn't say most of those will be justified or glorified.  So everybody who gets justified gets glorified. 

He calls through the proclamation of the gospel.  It is through the hearing of God's word that people respond to His calling.  So He is going to call them. 

Predestined are those who have a predetermined destiny.  That's what predestined means.  It doesn't mean fatalism.  The Word has that concept of determining a destiny ahead of time.  The point in these two verses is that those who are justified are those who are glorified.  He doesn't drop any.  Nobody falls out by the wayside.  Those who are justified are glorified. 

Now part of the problem that people have when they look at this whole issue of eternal security is they think they can do something that can violate the purpose of God. God's purpose in saving us was to bring us to glorification.  He planned salvation to secure salvation through justification and regeneration that was not reversible.  One of the big problems that you have if you think you can lose your salvation is you have to explain how your righteousness gets "unimputed" and how God is now going to declare you unjust and how you go through this process of going from being spiritually alive and that whole transformation that occurs at regeneration to becoming spiritually dead again and losing your human spirit and everything related to it.  Salvation is an extremely complex thing.  Once it happens then God's plan is going to be brought to completion. 

That looks at just the first aspect which is the purpose of God.  I still want to look at the power of God, the provision of God, and the promise of God.

But I thought that tonight we would stop a little early and have a special presentation. 

Illustrations