17/07/2026
Men,brethren and fathers!
Get your terms right first
People throw three different things into one pot. Separate them or you will fight the wrong man.
1.Perseverance of the saints.
The Reformed teaching. God keeps His people — and He keeps them holy. The warnings in the Bible are real, and God uses them to keep you. This one actually demands a changed life.
2. Once saved, always saved.(OSAS)
The altar-call version. You prayed a prayer in 1997. Done. Nothing after that counts.
3. Hyper-grace. Don't confess sin. Don't repent. Don't examine yourself. If you feel convicted, that's the devil.
What is troubling churches in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt is number 2 and number 3. It is not Calvin. So don't waste your bullets on Calvin. Shoot what's actually shooting at you.
Now look at Acts 27. Look closely.
God gives Paul a promise. Flat, plain, no conditions: "there shall be no loss of any man's life among you" (27:22-24). An angel said it. 276 men will live. Full stop.
Then the sailors try to sneak off in the lifeboat.
And the same Paul — the man carrying the promise — turns to the centurion and says:
"Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved."(27:31)
Read that again.
He didn't say "relax, God promised."
He didn't say "if they leave, they were never really passengers."
He said: if they get off, nobody gets saved.
And the word he uses for "saved" is the salvation word. The word for "abide" is the same word Jesus uses in John 15 — abide in me.
So here's the shape of it:
- The promise is 100% certain.
- The condition is 100% real.
- The promise happens through the condition, not around it.
- And they didn't leave it to feelings — the soldiers cut the ropes(27:32). They made staying the only option.
The OSAS mistake is simple: God promised, therefore the warning is just decoration.
Acts 27 kills that. Paul himself kills it. The ship is how you get saved. Getting off the ship is possible. Getting off the ship kills you. And the reason everybody lived is that Paul warned them.The warning is not proof the promise was weak. The warning is how the promise worked.
Same pattern elsewhere:
Ezekiel 18:24 — the righteous man turns back, and "all his righteousness that he hath done shall not be mentioned." God doesn't say he was never righteous. God says his righteousness won't be mentioned.
Ezekiel 33 — God says the wicked will die. God still commands the watchman to shout. If the man hears and turns, he lives. God's sovereignty and God's warning are not enemies.
The Bible is soaked in "if"
This isn't one or two awkward verses. Open anywhere.
- Colossians 1:22-23 — presented holy and blameless... "IF ye continue in the faith."
- 1 Corinthians 15:2— saved... "IF ye keep in memory."
- Hebrews 3:14— partakers of Christ... "IF we hold... stedfast unto the end."
- Romans 11:20-22 — branches broken off. You stand by faith. "Otherwise thou also shalt be cut off." And he's saying this to Christians.
- John 15:2,6— the branch IN ME that bears no fruit is taken away, cast out, withered, burned. It was in the vine. That's the whole point.
- Galatians 5:4— "ye are fallen from grace." You cannot fall from where you never stood.
- 2 Peter 2:20-22 — people who escaped the pollution of the world through knowing Christ
then got tangled again. "The latter end is worse than the beginning." The dog goes back to the vomit. You cannot go back to what you never left.
- 1 Timothy 1:19-20— Hymenaeus and Alexander made shipwreck of the faith.Another ship. Another man who got off.
- 1 Corinthians 9:27— Paul beats his body "lest I myself should be a castaway."If Paul believed OSAS, that verse is a performance.
- Hebrews 10:26-29 — a man "sanctified by the blood of the covenant" who tramples it. Sanctified. By the blood. That is the language.
- Revelation 3:5— "I will not blot his name out of the book of life." Why say that, if it can never happen?
The escape hatch: "they were never really saved"
Every time you show these verses, you get one answer: "They were never truly saved." Then they quote 1 John 2:19.
Look at what that move actually does.
It can never be wrong.No matter what happens, the doctrine survives. Man serves God 30 years and walks away? "Never saved." There is no possible evidence that could disprove it. A belief that can't be wrong isn't strong. It's empty.
It contradicts the text. Hebrews says sanctified by the blood. Peter says escaped through knowing the Lord. Jesus says in me.OSAS has to cross out God's own words and write its own.
It destroys the very assurance it's selling. Think about it. If a man who prayed the prayer, preached, cast out demons and then walked away was "never saved" — how do you know you're not that man? OSAS promises you certainty and hands you a lottery ticket. It tells you to be sure, then tells you that being sure proves nothing.
And 1 John 2:19 doesn't say what they think. John is talking about specific false teachers who denied Jesus came in the flesh. He is not making a universal law. And read five verses down: "If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son" (2:24). There's that word again. Remain.
Their favourite verses — read them properly
John 10:28— "neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand." True! Glorious! But read it: **no outsider can sn**ch you. It says nothing about a sheep who stops following. Look at verse 27 — "My sheep hear my voice... and they follow me." Present tense. Ongoing.
Nobody could sn**ch a sailor off Paul's ship. A sailor could still climb into the lifeboat himself.
Romans 8:38-39— look at Paul's list. Death. Life. Angels. Powers. Height. Depth. Any other creature. He lists the whole universe. He never lists you. Nothing outside can separate you. Paul isn't talking about the man who walks out.
Ephesians 1:13-14 — sealed with the Spirit. Yes! But turn two pages. Ephesians 4:30 — don't grieve that Spirit. Ephesians 5:5-7 — to those same sealed people: no fornicator has any inheritance in the kingdom, "let no man deceive you with vain words."
Philippians 1:6 — "he will perform it." Beautiful. Now read chapter 3:12-14, same letter, same man: "not as though I had already attained... I press toward the mark." God is faithful. That is not permission to be careless.
Why this is troubling?
Let's be honest about why this doctrine found such good soil here.
It fits perfectly with prosperity teaching, where you're always God's creditor and never His debtor.
It gives cover to a "believer" whose life you're not allowed to question, because grace already settled his account in advance.
Jesus gave us the test: "By their fruits ye shall know them"(Matthew 7:16-23).
And catch the terror in that passage. The people He rejects are not atheists. They are prophesying. Casting out demons. Doing many wonderful works. In His name. We have more of those per square kilometre than almost anywhere on earth.
That passage was written for us.
Be honest about the pushback
If you want to convince a thinking person, handle the real objections, not the weak ones.
A Reformed man will claim Acts 27 for himself— and he has a point. He'll say God ordains the end and the means, and the warning was the means. That's fair. So be clear: Acts 27 destroys popular OSAS. It does not destroy classical Reformed teaching. Either way, the man in the lifeboat has no confidence left.
Real Reformed preachers preach holiness. Spurgeon. Edwards. Whitefield. Piper. None of them would recognise what's being sold in these auditoriums. Careless Christians have never had an honest right to quote them.
Our side has its own danger.
Preach conditions carelessly and you'll create terrified believers who never rest. Wesley wrestled with this. Shouting about hell doesn't fix it.
Assurance is real — 1 John 5:13 is real — but it's 'present tense' resting on a living relationship with Christ today, not on a receipt from something that happened in 1997.
Remember, Hebrews 6 has a minority reading you should know about before you assume the argument is over.
The whole thing in one line
'Stay in the ship'
God promised the ship gets there. He never promised the man who lowers himself into the lifeboat at 2am gets there.
And the apostle carrying that promise is the one who said so.