Until just yesterday, I struggled with believing we could not lose, nor walk away from, our salvation. I was sitting at work and it dawned on me that we have a number that has to be fulfilled prior to the rapture. If OSAS isn’t true, that number could never possibly be hit as I see more and more people walking away from true Christianity due to apostate churches. Am I in-line in my thoughts? I know other countries are having success with evangelizing, but in our own nation, the numbers would be dwindling rapidly, possibly enough to balance out new people coming to Christ, making the number incredibly difficult to achieve. I feel like this may be the “proof” I needed of OSAS. Thoughts?
Your premise is accurate. If true believers could lose their salvation because of sinful behavior, or simply surrender it, we would at least have a much more difficult time achieving our full number, and it could even become impossible.
But because of OSAS we know that those who are walking away for good never were “true Christians” to begin with, so they can’t cause a decline in our total.
John wrote, “They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us” (1 John 2:19).
It is possible for true Christians to lose their way temporarily, but God has anointed us, set His seal of ownership on us, and put His Spirit in our hearts as a deposit guaranteeing what is to come (2 Cor. 1:21-22) so we can never be completely lost. When the time is right our Lord will retrieve us, as a shepherd retrieves his sheep, for it’s His Father’s will that He will not lose any of us (John 6:39-40).