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No longer being a believer rids me of the need to find the "correct doctrine" on "once saved, always saved" (or "incorruptible seed," if one were to insist). I don't think the Bible's authors agreed on the matter, to be honest. It's only when one posits that there was "one author, but many writers" that the need for a coherent, consistent, correct doctrine becomes necessary. My advice to you would be, follow the doctrine that inspires you to do the most and greatest good. If you are worried about losing your salvation, don't do anything that would jeopardize it. If you are confident that you're a son of God and nothing, nowhere, nohow can separate you from the love of Christ, then act like it. Don't be a p-grabbing, lying, misogynistic racist boob just because the threat of hell no longer applies to you. Can a Christian lose salvation? That's for Christians to answer. No matter where you land on that question, there are scriptures to support your view and scriptures that conflict with it. I would think that if God preserves His will in His Word, the fact of such contradictions makes it obvious that it is not a vital concern to Him. And that makes sense. Why would God even WANT to reassure those who, like me, decided to chuck it all because it no longer made sense? I'm not listening to Him anymore! What reassurance does he have for me? "Its okay, you're still my son. I won't send you to hell!" That might reassure you guys about me, if you believe in incorruptible seed. Or you think I'm going to hell, if you don't believe in once saved, always saved. But to ME, the threat of hell is on par with the threat of a lump of coal in my stocking on Christmas morn. So from YOUR perspective, I think God is far more concerned with encouraging people to keep on believing and praying and being a part of the One Body, and not at all concerned with letting believers know they have an out if they want to rebel.

Thank you for this post, Skyrider. You sum up what the overall atmosphere was at that time, and it had a little "utopian" feel to it for sure. I was at HQ in the 2nd Corps, 1971 - 1973. We felt invincible for God. We felt our goal was what God wanted, "The Word Over the World." But it was a man's goal, an egotistical, ridiculous idea ... to put it mildly. You mention local ministers at that time. Recently, I got a note from a current minister in New Knoxville, Ohio. He gave me permission to publish it on my blog, so here's the link if you're interested https://charleneedge.com/echo-in-new-knoxville-ohio-minister-reads-undertow/

From Another STFI split I know that Vince Finnegan reached the same conclusion [that salvation could be lost] after I dropped out of his offshoot in the late 1990s. It seems to me that the Apostle Paul would not warn about using grace as a license to sin if he felt losing your salvation was a possibility. It does appear, obviously, that VPW and TWI did use grace as a license to sin in practice, and to a lesser extent in doctrine. I think many sincere Christians believe salvation cannot be lost, and many other sincere Christians believe it can. That this should be the case with TWI and its offshoots should come as no surprise. Personally (and I'm going slightly off-topic and into doctrinal/questioning faith territory here) I think it's because the New Testament writers were not in agreement with each other. The gospel writers quote Jesus saying he who endures to the end will be saved. Paul at the very least implies once-saved-always-saved. Whoever wrote Hebrews seems to think that salvation can be obtained once and lost once but never regained. Dispensationalism can smooth over the differences between Jesus and Paul, but (to quote Spock) it takes a feat of "linguistic legerdemain" to make the writer of Hebrews say salvation cannot be lost. My opinion NEW MATERIAL NOW: Not exactly new. More of a recap. When you open your mind to the likelihood that the New Testament writers were in frequent, passionate disagreement with each other, a lot of doctrinal questions get resolved right away. There was no single answer to "what did the first century church believe." They argued as much as we do. The insistence that there is one correct answer is what leads to arguments. But it requires each side to ignore passages that obviously prove them wrong. .

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