Subjecting Christ to Open Shame

By John Fast

For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God, and put Him to open shame. – Hebrews 6:4-6 (NASB)

This world is a wicked and evil world. It is a dark world. It is a doomed world, “the present heavens and earth by His word are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men” (2 Pt 3:7). The New Testament does not offer to make this present world better; rather, we are told it will get worse and worse, “But evil men (that is, the non-Christian world) and impostors (the false Christian world) will proceed from bad to worse,” (2 Tim 3:13). Read more »

When Repentance Is Impossible

By John Fast

For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God, and put Him to open shame. – Hebrews 6:4-6 (NASB) Read more »

The Privileges of the Apostate

By John Fast

For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God, and put Him to open shame. – Hebrews 6:4-6 (NASB) Read more »

The Privileges of the Apostate

By John Fast

For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God, and put Him to open shame. – Hebrews 6:4-6 (NASB)

Ideas have a way of outliving the people who initiated them and taking on a life of their own that continues long after the life and name of the one who introduced them are forgotten. Such are the ideas and teachings introduced by Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), a name that outside of the ivory towers of academia has long been forgotten, yet whose ideas about the nature of Christianity have become the life blood of the mass of modern evangelicalism. Read more »

The Privileges of the Apostate

By John Fast

For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God, and put Him to open shame. – Hebrews 6:4-6 (NASB)

In the last study I began examining the passage of Scripture, Hebrews 6:4-6, that will serve as the foundation for this series of studies into the nature and causes of apostasy. In this passage the author of Hebrews attributed five privileges to those who had apostatized from true Christianity, two of which we examined in the last study, namely, they “have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift”. Read more »