There’s realism in the ministry of Jeremiah. He prophesies the
Babylonian captivity. There is also hope. He looks beyond the Babylonian
captivity: “They will be taken to Babylon and stay there.I come for
them, declares the Lord. I will take them from there and bring them back
to this place” (Jeremiah 27:22). The way we are led may not be easy.
The destination will be glorious. When things are going badly, we must
never lose sight of the final goal of God’s working in us and through
us. Beyond the suffering, there is the glory.
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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