This week on The Word of the Lord Indoor's Forever, we move further in our adventure in Acts with John and Peter in Samaria,

Philip and the Ethiopian Unic Part 1, Philip and the Ethiopian Unic Part 2, the road to Damascus and Ananias sent to Saul.

Join me, Pastor Will Whedon, for The Word of the Lord Indoor's Forever, your daily 15-minute verse-by-verse Bible study on demand.

Listen at The Word Indoor's.org, or your favorite podcast provider.

Every time we put out a call for questions, for our segment, responding to your unanswered Bible questions,

we get a question about creation. Why do Lutherans continue to hold to a literal reading of Genesis 1 and 2?

That's one of the questions, also questions about circumcision, what happens when you die?

Welcome back to Issues, et cetera. I'm Todd Wilkin. On this Thursday, June the 29th, we're going to respond to your unanswered Bible questions.

Joining us to do so, Pastor Brian Catchwell-Mire. He is a Lutheran Church of Missouri-Senate Pastor and author of Book Reading, Isaiah with Luther. Brian, welcome.

Great to be your Todd.

And Pastor Brian Wolfmiller, he's pastor of St. Paul and Jesus, St. Paul Lutheran Churches in Austin, Texas. He posts theology on the YouTube channel of Wolfmiller 1.

And he's author of several books, including his American Christianity failed. Brian, welcome.

Thank you. First for you, Pastor Wolfmiller. Russ has a question. He says, I have a question about a person's salvation and everlasting life.

If a person was baptized, repetitive sins, accepts Jesus as Lord and Savior as a young man, but later in life renounces God and the Trinity and gives into a life of non-repetent sin worshipping Satan, does that person still receive salvation and everlasting life?

I hope Russ is just asking for a theological example, and he doesn't know someone in this situation, but we do lament that this can't happen and that there is a reality of apostasy.

Jesus explains it in the parable of the soar. They receive the word with joy, but later, either through the pleasures of this life, that would be like the thorns that are growing up or the struggles of this life, like the heat that beats down on the grain.

It, in fact, a person can lose their faith and fall away from the faith and lose that great gift of salvation.

It doesn't undo the work that Jesus did on the cross. It doesn't even undo the promise that Jesus gives of salvation, but we can, through the loss of repentance, through pride and despair, through throwing away a concern for sin or a concern for Christ, step away from the grace that God has given us and fall from the faith.

So we do not confess or believe as the Calvinists would like us to once saved, always saved as if a moment of faith puts us in some sort of heavenly lockbox or something like that, but that repentance is an ongoing reality that God, the Holy Spirit, is working through His Word to keep us in that, through life and through death, unto life eternal.

So the possibility of being a believer and falling away is one that the Bible warns us about and also gives us comfort that as we cling to Christ, not our own perfections and our own works, but as we cling to Christ at His promises, He has us safe and secure and we can live in that assurance.

What would you make of His statement of accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior?

Yeah, that's a danger that that language is taught to us by the revivalistic tradition in the United States that says that to become a Christian is an act of our own will where we invite Jesus into our heart or we accept Him as Lord and Savior or we submit to Him or something like that.

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