Originally posted by JohnR7
((I am not quite clear as to the overall Mennonite (and I stress Mennonite vice Anabaptist) stand on eternal security.))
(Menno Simons, <I>Complete Works</I>, I, pp. 44, 113, 154).
It is perfectly evident from a reading of the New Testament that the apostles of Christ possessed the happy assurance that they were the children of God and that He who began a good work in them would also enable them to persevere to a happy end in Christ. This type of assurance is possible only for those who understand the plan of salvation: that it is God who moves the sinner to repent, that it is God who bestows upon those who accept Jesus the gift of eternal life, that converts enjoy the forgiveness of their sins not through any merit of their own but alone through the redemptive death of Jesus, and that God is able to keep, and intends to keep, every one of His children. It should be noted that Christian assurance is not built upon a particular type of conversion; nowhere in Scripture is salvation made to depend upon any particular experience in connection with conversion, such as weeping, seeing a vision, or participating in an ecstasy. Christian assurance is also not based upon feeling. Certainly good health, physical, mental, and spiritual, tends to promote an attitude of optimism and euphoria, but the assurance of salvation is not dependent upon "feeling good." Least of all is salvation dependent upon any sort of merit; the notion that any human being can approach God through personal merit is absolutely unscriptural and untrue. The only way any believer throughout history has been able to stand before God is through the perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is a certain sense in which evangelical theologians even speak of Christ "keeping the law for us"