‘Lord,
You have been our dwelling place throughout all generations... From
everlasting to everlasting, You are God’(Psalm 90:1-2). The Bible begins
with the words, ‘In the beginning, God...’. Before the world began,
there was God - ‘the eternal God’. He is ‘the high and exalted One’. He
is the God ‘who inhabits eternity’. He is the God ‘who lives for ever’.
He has no beginning. He has no end. He is ‘the beginning and the end’.
Our life on earth has a beginning. It has an end. Trusting in ‘the
eternal God’, we rejoice in His precious promises - ‘The eternal God is
your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms’; ‘I have loved you
with an everlasting love’; ‘The free gift of God is eternal life
through Jesus Christ our Lord’(Genesis 1:1; Deuteronomy 33:27; Isaiah
57:15; Revelation 21:6; Jeremiah 31:3; Romans 6:23).
A response to a comment by G. R. Osborne on Berkouwer’s understanding of the doctrine of final perseverance
In his contribution to Clark Pinnock (editor), Grace Unlimited (1975), G. R. Osborne states that Berkouwer, in Faith and Perseverance, pp. 9-10, “speaks of the time less ness of the doctrine of final perseverance, founded on ‘the richness and abidingness of salvation” (p. 188, emphasis mine). This single-sentence comment on Berkouwer’s view hardly gives a fair indication of the type of thinking found in Chapter 1 of Berkouwer’s Faith and Perseverance - “Time li ness and Relevance” (pp. 9-14, emphasis mine). Berkouwer insists that “the living preaching of the Scriptures, which offer no metaphysical and theoretical views about … ‘permanency’ as an independent theme in itself, does nothing to encourage ‘a continuity which is … opposed in any way to the living nature of faith” (p. 13). Berkouwer stresses that “The perseverance of the saints is not primarily a theoretical problem but a confession of faith” (p. 14) and that “The perseverance of the saints is unbreakably connected wi...
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