Posted on 06/08/2005 4:41:38 AM PDT by echoBoomer
God didn't mess up with Adam and Eve.
How dare you inpugn the sovereign Lord.
I find it funny how you Arminians say the God of Scripture is sick.
Can you please tell me how a person who hates God and is DEAD to sin, a person who CAN'T EVEN KNOW the things of God will come to faith in Christ without the Holy Spirit working in his life FIRST?
If your god ruled, we would all be in hell since since the Fall we are all dead to any goodness and anything of God.
Thank goodness God is on his throne so that we came to be saved by the glories of his grace.
By the way, your belief that everyone can choose God of their own free will (nevermind that we are dead spiritually...dead people have no function whatsoever....and also called "slaves to sin" in the NT) makes God a respecter of persons by creating people who are better than others. The ones who are better are created with the ability to see something good in God, while he lets everyone else rot because they have a lesser capacity to see any good in God, so they reject Christ. It is by necessity that the Arminian belief creates classes of people, one smart and one dumb, instead of an equal human race.
In Sovereign Grace theology, we are all equal in the eyes of God, but he has chosen of his own mercy and without seeing anything good in us to save some people of the freeness of his gracce. There is nobody better than another because WE ACTUALLY ACKNOWLEDGE that is is God who saved us, not ourselves by "choosing" him when we were spiritually dead and unable to choose anything but evil. Calvinism doesn't create classes of people.
Arminianism does. Which one do you think is Biblical?
Calvin's God is the God of the Bible. Read it more carefully. Jesus said you must be born again. Have you been born again? If you have been born again, you will know when you are. If you aren't born again, you aren't saved. Church denomination, doctrine, signing a piece of paper, all don't save you. The Bible clearly states some will go to hell. Jesus said He didn't want anyone to go there, but that they must go through Him. Ergo, Osoma is bound for hell unless he repents and is born again.
Are you saying Muslims can enter heaven without Jesus because Jesus died for them? If so, your oil is about 2 quarts low.(Parable of the 10 virgins) Are you saying the people at Noah's flood ended up in heaven? Sodom and Gomorrah? I was saved from the foundation of the world. Did they get saved some other way?
Calvin's God is the God of the Bible. It sounds like yours might be from a trip on LSD from the 60's.
Peace brother.
lololol good 1
So, you don't think Jesus is actually related to His mother?
SD
Gee, if only Jesus were starved to death instead. Then there would have been no suffering for our sins, only feelings of bliss and euphoria.
Funny tagline, considering you have a closed mind.
Look, I used to believe like you as well. I used to believe in a God that left it up to us.
But, once I realized how serious the Fall was, I finally understood that I can't choose anything but death of my own will. And I began wondering how people God saved, and I realized it had to be God. It has to start with God, for it could not start with me because of how corrupt I am.
Calvinism is the only theology that acknowledges it is God who is ultimately responsible for our salvation.
I initially rejected predestination, but Scripture refers to it numerous times, so I could not any longer. I had to break my pride and accept what I DID NOT want to....that it is God who started the whole process of saving me and that my acceptance of it was just in response to the work he began long ago when he predestined me, sent his son to die for me, and then when the time was right, sent his Holy Spirit to move me to Him. He begins and will finish the work in me because I certainly can't.
"He who began a good work in you will
perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ." Phil 1:6
Ezekiel 36:22-27:
"Therefore say to the house of Israel, 'This is "Therefore say to the house of Israel, 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone. 23 I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Sovereign LORD, when I show myself holy through you before their eyes.
24 " 'For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will PUT my Spirit in you and MOVE you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws."
Ezekiel 37....the Israelites were the dry bones and dead spiritually, but it was God who brought them out of the pit:
"Then he said to me: "Son of man, these bones Then he said to me: "Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, 'Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.' 12 Therefore prophesy and say to them: 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 Then you, my people, will know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. 14 I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the LORD have spoken, and I have done it, declares the LORD.'"
Romans 8:29-30 shows how salvation happens....it is God behind the scenes the whole time:
"For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. 30 Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified."
That is why I believe what I believe, not because I like a God that allows people to go to hell. But, it is a far better God who gives any mercy at all to wretched creatures than one who would allow us all to go to hell by giving us the choice to choose life or death ourselves...death being the choice us dead sinners would always and forever choose if left to our own devices. What a horrible God that would be, and I don't believe in that one.
I praise God that he saved me when I certainly did not deserve it.
Yes, I believe in evangelism. That is how God has chosen to find and save his elect, and I won't question that.
By the way, you will notice that in the First Great Awakening, many of the greatest evangelists in American history....Whitefield and Edwards....were both Calvinists.
...why He died is more important that how He died....
He died for all of us. He is not a failure because a certain person doesn't choose Him. "For G-d so loved the WORLD He gave his only son...." The world....
Please don't read any editorial into my comments. They were only meant to re-orient the previous poster as to medical reality. I am a physician and not a theologian.
Well, I guess now that we know Jesus died from a blood clot and not the crucifiction the Jewish people are off the hook!
"gave his life as a ransom for many..."
Again, check on the meaning of world. It is used multiple times in the NT, and doesn't necessarily mean everybody in the entire world.
Wow.
Uh, "core hardness?"
... I am not a bible scholar, so you could probably whip my tail when it comes to the Word. But I believe in my heart that he made and loves us all, we just have to choose Him. That choice is what makes us truly belong to Him.... we can ask Him what he meant when we see Him again...
Don't concede that! "Bible scholar" is often a euphemism for someone who has constructed their own elaborate personal interpretation of scripture, one which does not necessarily find itself grounded in, well, scripture.
I just wondered. Is it like, "well, I kinda believe in Christ" or something like that?
I was pretty-much just making a joke. I don't have a ready answer to your question.
The bleeding itself doesn't hurt, it's the wounds that do.
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