It is possible for a Christian to lose his salvation and get it again. Though, as Christians, we are free to apostatize any time, but deciding to get back to Christ once you have apostates is far from certain. Honestly, it is almost impossible for someone who was once a staunch Christian and has apostatized to come back to the Lord and be saved again. However, God is so rich in mercy that, sometimes, His mercies make it possible for an apostate to receive salvation again.
To make it clearer, it does not always happen that people who have abandoned Christ and have lost their salvation are restored another time. However, sometimes, the rich mercies of God make it possible for the apostate to be brought back to Christ and to be restored to salvation. This true story says it all:
PAUL KANAMORI was one of the most influential scholars, preachers, and teachers in modern Japan. He was raised in a native school which was attended by some 100 or more scholars. He said that one of the scholars got a Bible, which he read without any aid of commentary. He was fascinated and could not keep it to himself. Others became readers until about one hundred boys were Bible-readers and they formed themselves into a kind of fellowship.
As time went on, these boys, without any teacher or instructor, were gradually but surely converted to the Lord Jesus Christ. The joy of following Jesus filled their souls, and they made it known. They went into the open marketplace, as did those in the Book of Acts, and bore their testimony to the truths they had embraced.
The result was that they were persecuted with much severity. Eventually, one by one they could not withstand the enemy’s persecution, and only some 40 of them remained loyal and true. This company went out one night to a place called the Flowery Mount and there they consecrated themselves to the service of the Lord Jesus Christ as their Divine Savior. They drew up a statement of their faith and pledged to be loyal to their belief.
Kanamori was one of these boys and as the leader of the company, he was watched and eventually was cast into prison. He was searched on entering the jail, but he had taken the precaution to hide the Gospels according to Matthew and John in the lining of his waistcoat. These he fed upon during his exile, committing them to memory.
In time, he was released, and he acquired once more a copy of the Bible and a copy of “Pilgrim’s Progress.” He soon afterward joined a Christian College and became the pastor of a Church.
It was during his connection with this college that he had a sad backset, for he came under the spell of the New Theology and Higher Criticism. He was charmed and enthralled with the German books upon the new interpretation of the Bible. He read the productions of the latest and cleverest writers and became a full-blown Modernist. He was a great linguist and scholar, never ceasing in his studies and attainments. The time came when his theories were so worldly that his conscience began to trouble him. How could he be one thing in the study and another man in the pulpit?
He consulted his many friends and they all persuaded him to go on with his pulpit work; but he said very emphatically, “I could not be two-faced, I must give up my Church. I could not be receiving their money and neglecting to preach the Gospel. I had become an unbeliever.” Eventually he resigned his charge. He became an out-and-out Modernist. The Bible was full of mistakes. The myths and errors were many, and the Book was uninspired. It was on a par with the books of Mohammed, Buddha, and others. Everything he read was destructive and he was no better than an agnostic.
“Now I must look for a new sphere of labor, and so I went through my country lecturing upon socialism and economics and abandoned the Gospel and the Cross. Christ was not Divine, He died as a good man with a fine character, He was only the son of Joseph and Mary. The virgin birth was all a myth. When He died there was an end to Him. His resurrection was all imagination. The disciples were deluded.”
It is hard to believe that after such a previous history, he could fall away from the faith and become an apostate. He translated the German writers into his language and those volumes were simply devoured by the young aspiring scholars of the times. His writings were read by all the intellectuals until he became famous throughout Japan as the scholar and teacher for the schools. He was indeed a wanderer from God and a prodigal, “eating of the husks that the swine did eat. “
At the end of this long period, an event happened which brought him to think and consider his ways. Though he had forgotten his Heavenly Father, He had not forgotten him. His dear wife, the mother of his nine children, died. It was a sad and terrible loss. His children could not be comforted. They cried day and night. There was no comfort in his theories and myths. His new beliefs were hollow and meaningless. Where could he go, to whom could he look for help and relief? His children kept coming to him for help, but he could give them none. They talked of their mother being in Heaven, and yet she was needed so much on earth and in their home. They sought comfort in her photographs. They had them placed in the different rooms of the house. They had one in the kitchen. They kept talking to them. Mother seemed very near in spirit. Then the youngest child cross-questioned him: “You go away and come back again. Mother has gone away. Why does she not come back again?” Then he told this little child of four years, “God needs mother and she is kept busy and is very happy,” “But father, cannot you go and take mother’s place and let her come here? We all so need her and want her.”
Then he said the first thing the child asks for when he comes from school is “mother,” not “father,” but there was no mother. In his thoughts, he was thrown back to the resurrection. “I am the Resurrection and the Life,” saith the Lord. “He that believeth on Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth on Me shall never die.” He saw his only hope was in the living, risen, Divine Savior.
He went through a long period of struggle and deep repentance when one day the light broke in. His Heavenly Father received the prodigal. “As He put the robe on me, the ring of heirship on my finger and shoes on my feet, I began to realize He had received me. The old joy … came back, and I felt compelled to make it known. I became like a child, in the pure simplicity of childlike confidence and faith.” He accepted the Saviour once more to deliver him from his errors and unbelief. “He healed my backslidings, He loved me freely” (Jer 3:22).
Kanamori mourned on account of the years he had wasted in pursuing vain things and the great numbers that had gone wrong through his teaching. There was nothing that could blot that out. Still, he rejoiced in that God had spared him 10 years to preach the Cross of Christ. “Wherever I go I preach but one theme, Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” He rejoiced that during the past 10 years he had seen over 7500 people in his own country turn to God, and many turned from their disbelief and error back to the old paths and the saving power of the Cross.
In his closing remarks, he testified to his firm and unreserved faith in the inspired Word of God. He held up the Bible, saying, “he believed in it from cover to cover.”
So you see, Paul Kanamori was a Christian and, in fact, a pastor of a church. Then along the line, he defected from the faith, became an unbeliever, and of cause, lost his salvation. However, by the mercies of God, while mourning the death of his wife he had a turning point, he came back to the Lord Jesus, embraced the Christian faith again, and received salvation again.
There are a lot of such stories. Some Christians, for whatever reason, apostatize, lose their salvation, and, by the mercies of God, they are brought to repentance again and they are restored to salvation.