Sin sends people to hell. If you are preaching that someone can be engaged in sin, especially mortal sin, and still go to heaven, you're a heretical liar of the first degree! Your gospel is not that of Jesus Christ. It's the gospel Satan preached to Eve! And it has the same result today as it did then. It results in separation from God rather than union with God.

      If you don't believe in this heresy but attend or work for a church that does, you need to get out of it before YOUR FAMILY MEMBERS become deceived and end up in hell like the young man I knew!

      If you're a "Baptist," I'm not asking you to become a Pentecostal or formalist or any such thing. There are Baptist Churches who strongly teach that the condition of a sin-purged heart and straightened out life is the PROOF someone is saved and eternally secure.

      Find a Baptist church like that and take your family there. The issue is not "eternal security," the issue is SIN.

      If you're a preacher, especially if you're a Baptist preacher, and you believe that people who go back into sin were never truly saved from sin to begin with, make sure your congregation knows this is what you believe! Make sure they know that the wages of sin is ETERNAL death.

      There is security in Christ--a security which God promised will take the truly converted to heaven if they continue in a born again state. John 10:27-29 and Romans 8:38-39 make this very clear.

      In John 10, the one who can not be "taken out of my [Jesus'] hand" is the individual who is a "follower," not just a hearer. These followers are the "them" Jesus gives eternal life (Himself) to. This makes the endowment of His eternal life, and our receiving it, dependent upon our continued action of following.

      According to Romans 8, no person, place, or thing can separate us "followers" of Jesus from Him as long as Jesus is "our Lord."

      These passages proclaim in plain language the spiritual security of the individual who is a follower of Jesus Christ, for he is submitted to the lordship of Christ.

      Thus, the only thing that can take a Christian out of Christ's hand is his own failure to follow! We place ourselves into Christ's hand when we hear and obey His voice. We take ourselves out if we turn again to the voice of sin and follow our own will.

      Now, this sounds like a lot of security to me because I can LOSE Him only if I make a willful decision to LEAVE Him and go back to living for myself. And I sure don't plan on doing that! But then, neither did Adam!

      Thus, if I, or anyone in this eternally secure position, did choose to return to a life of self, we certainly would deserve the sentence of Hebrews 10:26-31. Indeed, the secure believer will not escape God's eternal judgment if he willfully neglects and forsakes so great a salvation by returning to a life of sin (Heb. 2:3; Deut. 31:8, 16-17).

      Indeed, the issue is not eternal security. The issue--the problem--is sin!