In a recent article about the Laodiceans you said you don’t think a true believer can become lukewarm.
I know I wasted many years after I was saved, doing what I wanted to do instead of growing mature in the Lord as I should have done. Yet God has pulled me back now, and I am striving to die to my old self, and fully go forward as God always intended me to do.
But all those “off” years, I was lukewarm! God’s Grace brought me back to Him again. Are you saying the Prodigal Son would have gone to Hell if he never came Home ?
The Lord described the Laodiceans as thinking they had everything and were in need of nothing (Rev. 3:17). What made them lukewarm toward him is they didn’t think they needed Him. I wonder if they were even saved. After all, they serve as the model of the apostate post-rapture church. I don’t believe a true believer can get to the point where they don’t think they need the Lord. Remember, they have the Holy Spirit sealed within them.
As I’ve written in my commentaries on the Prodigal Son, this parable is not about salvation. The prodigal never stopped being his father’s son, nor could he, and his place in his father’s family was never in doubt. In his time of estrangement, he had no fellowship with his father but he never stopped loving him. Therefore, he was never a “lukewarm” son, neither loving nor hating his father, but a rebellious one.