Quote
gotribe said:
Hi Marie,

This kind of question always makes me a bit, well, uncomfortable.

I really think it's inappropriate to even give an opinion about a person's ultimate salvation; let alone say, "No, he wasn't saved" or "Yes, he was saved." Salvation is of the Lord from beginning to end and the Judge of all the earth will judge righteously.

We all have opinions. And we all think about such things. But it seems to me that the only good that can come from such speculation is if one's contemplation of the Biblical record of another person's life leads to examination of one's OWN life according to the Scriptures.

For the most part I agree with you here, but I think in the case of Biblical figures we can usually say a little more. Since the Bible is inerrant, I think we can take what it says about the hearts of those in it. For example, would you say we shouldn't speculate on the salvation of the thief on the Cross because we can't know that person's ultimate salvation. The Bible clearly says he would be in Christ's presence that day. What about Enoch. Should we not speculate on his ultimate salvation? To say that we cannot say whether either one of those people were ultimately saved would be a denial of the inerrancy of Scripture in my opinion. In the case of other Biblical figures, it might be more difficult to say one way or the other, but in some cases I think we can infer from Scripture clearly whether they were saved or not (David was a man after God's own heart). In the case of any non-biblical people where we don't have the infallibility of Scripture to rely on, then I would agree with you that it's impossible to comment on a person's ultimate salvation.

John