Eternal Security Part 1

INTRO: I felt that, having spoken at funeral the other day, I should make some theological explanation for my personal views. Certainly there was not time in the twenty minutes I was given to speak at the funeral to make a theological defence for what I shared.

Throughout Church history belivers have been divided over the issue of the security of the believer in Christ. Can a person, once he becomes a Christian lose his salvation?

Several positions have been put forth but only two are actual possibilities. 1. Yes a person can lose his salvation and 2. No a person cannot lose his salvation.

I do not profess to know all there is to know about these two views and I may have missed important points. If you might shed further light on this subject to me please feel free to point out things I may not yet have considered. However, I have spent many hundreds of hours studying both positions and meditated as many hours on this topic. I have given hundreds of hours to studying the original languages of the Bible so that I could study this and other questions in light of the original Hebrew and Greek languages of the Bible. Further, I have given much time to studying the doctrine of salvation and these studies have shed further light on the topic for me. I fully realize that from not too long after the Lord ascended to heaven this became a doctrinal question for the Church and that it will remain to be such until the day Jesus comes