FreeGrace2 said:
So, what did they "leave" then? I did read what was posted. And I explained why I disagree with your misread of the verse.
You're really trying very hard to make more out of this than is warranted. Again, believers who get into false doctrine should NOT feel welcome in any evangelical assembly of believers. And it would be expected that they would leave them.
John didn't say what you keep claiming he said. He never said they were unsaved.
18 Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour.
19 They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.
20 But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.
21 I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth.
22 Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son.
23 No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.
As I have already shown, the evangelist who mentored Billy Graham when he started out preaching in crusades ultimately changed his mind and didn't believe in God. That is basically a denial.
Also, anyone who clearly contradicts what is clearly stated in Scripture are obviously "against Christ" by denying His own Word.
So, in this context, even believers can be antichrists. When they reject the clear teaching of Scripture.
I believe you are guilty of this.
See above about how believers CAN and DO deny Christ.
I don't argue that. Charles Templeton "left the ministry in unbelief" too. That doesn't mean CT was never saved or lost his salvation. It means his faith failed. That's all.