I didn’t volunteer to serve the Lord as a pastor – I was conscripted! This came about in 1989 through several close friends who saw in me something I had not seen in myself. Without having a great deal of Scriptural truth stored-away between my ears, I said ’yes’ and went forward as a lamb to the slaughter.

Having made that decision thirty-three years ago I can testify in all honesty and without any reservation that it was not in desperation that God called me to serve Him in a pastoral capacity, nor did He make a mistake. However, since making that mega life-challenging, life-changing, decision I have made a ton of mistakes, mainly in the earlier years of my service to Him. These mistakes resulted primarily through ignorance of His truth.

In the early years of pastoral service, the larger portion of my learning came through hearsay of generally accepted theological views from local and global sources… from people in whom I had come to trust as being scripturally sound and reliable… A BIG MISTAKE! Second-hand sources of learning can be risky. The Bible is our first-hand, reliable source of divine truth – Its the well of Scripture we should draw from – not from human sources!

I wish I could wind-back time to correct my mishandling of theology, that which I now know to be incorrect. Claiming naivety as an excuse for not teaching the ‘pure’ truth of God’s word will never be acceptable by me. Friends, errors can be dangerous – Errors can be deadly – Errors can not reflect the pure ‘light’ of God’s truth. And, it’s only by truth can we glorify our God (Psalm 119:105).     

On-top of my mountain of once firmly-held theological truths lies the popular teaching: “Once saved, always saved”. Oh dear…. how wrong it was of me as a disciple of Jesus to have taught, promoted, and emphasised such an error. May the Lord forgive me for any harm caused to others that came about through my ignorance.

Friends, no where in Scripture will you find the phrase “once saved, always saved’. Well, where did it come from? It’s understood that in Europe in the 1960’s this phrase first emerged. As the phrase had a great ring to it, it spread like wild-fire across the globe through well-intentioned evangelical teachers and preachers in churches of mainline denominations.

The most widely used passage of Scripture in evangelistic enterprise is John 3:16. In this verse, when the correct tense of the verbs ‘believe’ and ‘saved’ is correctly understood the intended meaning is quite different than is presently held and conveyed by most believers. The difference is quite serious! How serious? Believers can become quite complacent and careless with their faith through banking on the untruth – “once saved, always saved!” (Concluding Part 2 next week.)

Best wishes,
Bill Joukhadar