There are rough seas ahead for those who desire to remain faithful.  Some have not realised this yet and are surprised such days are upon the Church.  They will learn and hopefully adapt.  Their souls will survive unscathed even if their minds and bodies do not. What should we do in the meantime?  By the grace of God, remain faithful. 

When the Apostle Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, he told them (and us) that before the coming of the lawless one that God would “send a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” 2 Thessalonians 2:-11-12
How else can we explain how so many have abandoned basic Christian teaching and adopted false teaching?  Many of our bishops take pleasure in the unrighteous positions of the LGBT advocacy groups.  A greater number of parochial clergy openly embrace sins that a generation before would have been thought universally sinful nonsense.
This is not a millenarian rant.  This publication will make no prediction about the timing of the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. That said, how else can one explain why so many of our leaders cannot express basic Christian doctrine in a biblically faithful manner — other than we are in a time when God has decided to send a strong delusion to them?
Consider what comes from the mouths of so many in authority.  When they say something that is nothing short of heretical with a straight-face you might well ask, “Where in the world did he get that rubbish?”
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Written by Nicholas T. Batzig |
Monday, September 30, 2024
The ultimate hardening of some who at one time professed faith in Christ ought to leave us unsettled in heart. The severity of apostasy is that there is no return. This ought to be felt by those who continue to profess faith in Christ. There will always be Judases among the people of God in almost any congregation. This means that we should examine our own hearts and lives to see if we have turned our gaze to the world and away from Christ to such an extent that we have hardened our hearts against the truth. The subject of apostasy has massive implications for our spiritual lives.

In John Bunyan’s classic, The Pilgrim’s Progress, there is a sobering picture of the experience of apostasy in the lives of those who once professed faith in Christ but who ultimately abandoned that profession. As Christian makes his way toward the celestial city, he comes to the house of a man named Interpreter. The Interpreter is revealed to be the apostle Paul by the descriptions Bunyan made of him. The Interpreter showed Christian seven different scenes in this house that highlight various aspects of the Christian life, dangers, and realities. The sixth of these is a man in a cage who is in utter despair. When Christian goes to this man and asks him why he is in the cage, and why he is in such despair. The man responded by saying:
 “I was once a fair and flourishing Professor [professor of faith in Jesus Christ], both in my own eyes and also in the eyes of others: I once was, as I thought, fair for the Celestial City, and had then even joy at the thoughts that I would get thither.”
Christian then asked the man what had happened to him. The man said, “I am now a man of despair, and am shut up in it, as in this Iron Cage. I cannot get out; O Now I cannot.”
Christian followed up by asking him how he came to be in this miserable condition; and the man said:
“I left off to watch and be sober; I laid the reins upon the neck of my lusts; I sinned against the Light of the Word, and the Goodness of God; I have grieved the Spirit, and he is gone; I tempted the Devil, and he is come to me; I have provoked God to Anger, and he has left me; I have so hardened my heart that I cannot repent.”1
The imagery in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress has left many professing believers unsettled throughout the centuries; yet, it is functionally the imagery of Hebrews 6:4-6. What are we to make of the language of this passage? Surely these are some of the most fearsome words in all of Scripture. What do we do with the language of those who “were once enlightened,” “have tasted the heavenly gift,” “have become partakers of the Holy Spirit” and “have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come?” How are we to understand the teaching that there are some who it is “impossible to renew to repentance?” Are we to conclude that they were saved and lost their salvation? Are we to understand that somehow they did not do enough to stay in a state of grace? Are we to understand that it is possible for someone to sin so much that they are past the point of repentance? A prima facia reading of the language certainly seems to lend itself to such an interpretation; but a careful consideration of them leads to a vastly different conclusion. Prior to explaining the meaning of the text, we must consider how wrong views of this passage have frequently caused damage to true believers.
Warning Passages in Hebrews
There are essentially five warning passages in the letter to the Hebrews (Heb. 2:1–4; 4:1–13; 6:4–8; 10:26–31; and 12:25–29). Of these five, none have given Christians such interpretive difficulty as Heb. 6:4–8 and 10:26–31. The spectrum of interpretive possibilities published by theologians and commentators over the centuries has not alleviated the hermenuetical challenges that come with these passages. Rather, they have often offered solutions that only serve to extensuate the minds of believers. 
Towards the end of his ministry, the late Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones appealed to Hebrews 6:4-6 and 10:26-29 as “passages that the devil seems to use most frequently in order to distress and to trouble God’s people” by twisting it meaning to hold true believers in servile bondage. He wrote:
“I can definitely say, after some 35 years of pastoral experience, that there are no passages in the whole of Scripture which have more frequently troubled people and caused them soul agony than the passage in Hebrews 6:4-8, and the corresponding passage in Hebrews 10:26-29.  Large numbers of Christians are held in bondage by Satan owing to a misunderstanding of these particular statements.  I do not say that these are the two most difficult passages in the Bible.  I do not regard them as such.  But I do assert that they are passages that the devil seems to use most frequently in order to distress and to trouble God’s people.”2
If we read the warning in chapter 6 together with the warning in chapter 10 we must conclude that the warning relates specifically to what is called, “sinning willfully.” Here too, we must tread lightly when settling on a meaning of the clause, “to sin willfully.” It might help us to say what it cannot mean prior to suggesting what the author’s meaning must be.
“Willful sin” cannot mean what the Scriptures call “presumptuous sin” (i.e., that sin that we know we should not do and yet do it anyway). We know the writer cannot be speaking of this because the Psalmist prayed that God would deliver him from “presumptuous sin” (Ps. 19:13)–thereby acknowledging that he had, at times, fallen into presumptuous sin–and that he was susceptible of falling into it again. Surely the sin of David with Bathsheba and Uriah would have been categorized accordingly.  We also know that Peter’s denial of Jesus cannot be said to be the sin intended since he was personally restored by Christ. The prince of the Puritan theologians, John Owen, explained,
“A man may so fall into a way of sin as still to retain in his mind such a principle of light and conviction that may be suitable to his recovery. To exclude such from all hopes of repentance is expressly contrary to Ezek. 18:21, Isa. 55:7, yes, and the whole sense of the Scripture.”
So what are we to make of the “willful sin” that is tantamount to “falling away” from Christ and putting oneself in a place in which it is “impossible to renew again to repentance?” The answer to this question must be determined by a consideration of what those who fall away fall away from. In Heb. 6:4-5, they are said to be those who were “once enlightened,” have “tasted the heavenly gift,” been made “partakers of the Holy Spirit,” and “tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come.” Thew writer is noting that something has really and truly been experienced in the lives of those who are in danger of falling away. That something is that they have had the influences of the Spirit of God at work on them in the realm of spiritual gifts and experiences. Thomas Peck, the Southern Presbyterian theologian, noted,
 “The illumination and other spiritual endowments enumerated in the fourth and fifth verses are not ‘things that accompany salvation,’ that is, are not so inseparably connected with salvation but that they may belong to persons who never have been and never will be in favor with God. In other words, they are spiritual gifts, not spiritual graces. . .Gifts may be lost, graces never can. It is gifts, not graces, which are predicated of those who may fall away, in the passage under consideration.”
In other words, the phrase cannot mean that a true believer can fall from saving grace. We know this to be true because of such passages as John 6:37; 10:28; Romans 5:1-21; 8:1; 8:28-30; Phil. 1:6; etc. There are so many passages that speak of the definitive safety true believers have in the Person of Jesus Christ. Because of the perfections and finality of His saving work, those who are in union with Him by faith are also safe; since we cannot have an infallible knowledge of who has a true and saving profession of faith–in contrast from those with a false and temporary profession–all we can do is look for the fruit and perseverance they exhibit. This is why the writer of Hebrews can follow what he said in vv. 4-6 with what he says in verses 10-12.
The “we are confident of better things concerning you beloved…things belonging to salvation” is meant to be an encouragement to them that there is evident fruit in their lives. This is important because the writer rebuked them for not going on to maturity in the things of God in 5:13-6:3.
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In this final passive act, the Queen called us to acknowledge not our inner selves, or our felt selves, or our authentic selves, or whatever the latest psychobabble bon mot is that describes incurvatus in se, (the self curved in on itself) – but God Himself above. Her commitment to transcendence – God’s transcendence meant that down here she lived a life lived outwardly and upwardly. 

For one brief day the world was porous again.
For one brief day we recognised that the invisible world still leaks into the visible.
For one brief day – perhaps one final day – transcendence was admitted into the public square in the modern Western world, and we all stood and acknowledged it.
For one brief day the immanent frame of our secular imaginary was peeled back, and we were given a vision, albeit in shadow form, of what true majesty might look like.
And for one brief day the nation, indeed billions around the world, watched as a Queen, whose every fibre acknowledged that transcendence, was honoured and laid to rest.
And for an even briefer two minutes – the whole nation fell silent, and the shockwaves of that silence spread to us as well. No phones, no blips, no bleeps, no pings. Silence.
In this final passive act, the Queen called us to acknowledge not our inner selves, or our felt selves, or our authentic selves, or whatever the latest psychobabble bon mot is that describes incurvatus in se, (the self curved in on itself) – but God Himself above.
Her commitment to transcendence – God’s transcendence meant that down here she lived a life lived outwardly and upwardly. That Archbishop Justin Welby acknowledged that very fact as he opened his homily is worth noting.
I read in The Times just prior to the funeral that the word was that French President Emmanuel Macron would throw “a hissy fit” if he were not right up the front. Which of course makes sense coming from that most secular of countries in which the immanent frame is a public virtue. The desire for transcendence never leaves us, it is merely transferred. Perhaps he is aptly named Emmanuel.
Tony Blair’s senior advisor famously said that the British Government doesn’t “do God”. And, my, how it has shown over the decades since.
Perhaps, if I may be patriotic, a special thank you to our new Prime Minister in Australia, Anthony Albanese, whose grace, wisdom and manner has been exemplary for our nation at this time. Not too heavy, not too light. Just right. But then again, as he himself said, the Catholic Church is one of the great shapers of his own life. He knows transcendence when he sees it.
The Queen, however, was the ultimate counter to all the immanent politics. Her funeral was a breath-taking acknowledgement of the reality of heaven above us, hell below us.
The fact that seating arrangements were such as to ensure warring nations were kept apart, and ancient enmities acknowledged, shows how porous reality is. Hell has leaked upwards. It may be around for some time yet.
And the whole ceremony was a counter to the dreadful opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics – the high point of immanence in our public life – in which John Lennon’s Imagine was the opening hymn. Right in the midst of a pandemic we were told to look within ourselves and be happy. Imagine that indeed.
Imagine too if the Queen had died during the pandemic. We would have not witnessed what we did. Perhaps this was a gift from God to us, to give us one last look at something that publicly pointed to something – to Someone – beyond itself and beyond herself. Am I over-egging the cake?
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