Once saved, Always saved ?

Originally posted by SourJax
Just because someone doesn't want to go to heaven doesn't mean they are insane. Some people have some ideas that we would consider crazy but that doesn't mean that those people are truly insane (or mentally incapable of make that choice of "life/heaven or death/hell"😉.

It all goes back to the question of that person's actual mental capacity to weigh the risks and rewards of their choices.

so the judgement is simple, you go to heaven, unless you are capable of fully understanding.
If you are capable of fully understanding, then you would only make one choice, because if you don't make that choice then you obviously do not understand fully, right?

Originally posted by snowinscotland
so the judgement is simple, you go to heaven, unless you are capable of fully understanding.
If you are capable of fully understanding, then you would only make one choice, because if you don't make that choice then you obviously do not understand fully, right?

No, accountability is dependent on whether you know the difference between right and wrong, you become accountable for your sins the moment you know something is wrong but you make the decision to do it anyway.

As I said before if you do not have the mental capacity (due to age or mental illness or any other reason) to weigh your decisions then you are not held accountable.

A good example that happens to everyone, at some point in your life you do something wrong (i.e. you steal a piece of gum from the store) and get caught, when you are asked about it you deny doing it. You may not have know it was wrong to take the action you did but when you are asked about it you have an internal dilemma (do I tell the truth or do I deny it so I won't get in trouble). When you deny it to avoid the consequences, you are held accountable for that denial because you made a choice to lie (out of self preservation) even though you knew at the time that lying was wrong.

The above scenario assumes you knew internally that lying was wrong and you lie anyway, obviously small children steal and lie but don't have the ability yet to understand that lying and stealing are wrong. But almost everyone comes to that point to where they know the difference between right and wrong and simply choose wrong.

Now back to the scenario of someone like myself that knows the difference between right and wrong now and something happens and I become so mentally ill (and I mean truly mentally ill) that I decide I don't want to go to heaven anymore, I believe that God knows that if I were in my right mind I would have never made that choice.

I don't know what would happen if that actually took place, I can only assume that I would be saved because God knows my heart even though my mind wasn't operating correctly. I suppose my fate would depend on how the mental illness happened.

Hope that clears things up.