In Reply to: Re: Do you think Berg was saved? posted by Jesse H on November 02, 2002 at 09:29:30:
I read in the rules of this board that they don't want endless arguments over basic Christian doctrines and I assume that means stuff like "Can you lose your salvation or not?" However, this is a big question for so many of us and it's a question that just does not go away. And it is relevant as we try to make sense of our experience in the group.
We as ex-members are now in the process of rethinking every bit of our Family training, sorting things out and choosing for ourselves what we believe. After studying this matter in some depth I believe that Berg was saved in his early days but that he divorced himself from God by his actions in his later years. You can't "lose" your salvation like so much change in a pocket with holes in it. But I believe a person can willfully reject God and I believe Berg did that.
I don't think that someone who puts faith on ice is in that same danger. They've been deeply hurt, they're angry at God, they maybe even don't have much faith in God any more because of the horrendous religious abuse they've suffered. I don't think they're in that kind of danger. I have friends who've been there, and God is compassionate and big enough to understand.
But someone like Berg who willfully, knowingly, in the broad light of day did the evil that he did, has divorced himself from God. Preaching God out of one corner out of his mouth and doing such horrendous evil with his life. I think destroying one's soul is not a thing easily done but that if people are insistent enough and hardened and willful enough, that they finally push the envelope beyond the point of no return.
Lydia has been all over this territory with Cancion and I don't think we need to cover everything again. It's not as simple as saying, "If you don't believe Berg is saved then you're preahing a works salvation, because if Berg 'lost' his salvation then grace is not enough." I know you did't say that, Jesse, and I didn't get that impression from you, but others have said it in the past.
While there are lots of verses that talk about the security of salvation, there are also verses that talk about people literally leaving their faith, "doing despite to the spirit of grace" and becoming "enemies of the cross of Christ." In the Family we faithfully zeroed in on the verses that backed the Eternal Security position and ignored or glossed over or explained away the verses that indicated that people could willfully turn from God and fall from grace.
And of course, the you-can-lose-it-for-any-little-sin people turn a blind eye to the many, many verses talking about salvation being a gift you can't earn by good works, and that we can rest in grace. So these two sides often sit in entrenched postions.
I take a middle position. I believe if you balance the book of John against Hebrews and Jude and 1John, that you come up with a position where salvation is a work of grace, a gift, something you could never earn and something you can't "lose" --- tho Berg did willfully cast it away because he repeatedly, willfully, stubbornly declared himself an enemy of God by his words or his actions. As the saying goes, "The streets of hell are paved with the skulls of the priests."
I believe that despite Berg's sitting crying while he sang songs about heaven, that far too many of his words "crucified the Son of God afresh" and that his actions certainly denied Him. "They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate." Titus 1:16.
The good, the witnessing the wonderful deeds of self-sacrifice we remember from the Family were all done by individual Family members who were at a basic, sincere relationship with God. Just because Berg continued to preach witnessing long after he himself was backslidden, does not give him allthe credit for the good done in the Family.
Berg is responsible for the evil that came into the group because he willfully brought it in. So yes, I believe that a huge milltone is waiting for Berg and that he will indeed end up in the sea. I don't have this wish for him to go to hell, but I certainly think the Scriptures give that indication. Do I know for sure? Do any of us know for sure one way or the other? No.
By the way, Jesse, tho I disagree with you on this one point, I very much appreciated the other points you raised. Thanks.