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To: HarleyD

That particular sermon preached against what Arminians claimed about free will.

It does not say that Spurgeon says man has no free will, just that the the Arminian view of free will is unBiblical. I agree with Spurgeon.

I think you, not intentionally, selected a portion of a Spurgeon sermon to support your view, which is O.K.

However, it is very hard to reconcile that particular excerpt with Spurgeon’s writing on the Baptist Confession of Faith; all four parts of it.


102 posted on 08/01/2014 5:58:25 AM PDT by SeaHawkFan
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To: SeaHawkFan

I don’t normally post an entire sermon simply because of space. Sometimes this is challenging as people like Augustine, Calvin, and Spurgeon can be very verbose. But I do try to include my links so that others may read the article in its entirety to ensure that what I’m stating is correct and not out of context.

Spurgeon does not say man doesn’t have a will. He would disagree (and has on a number of occasions) that the will is free to make choices. Given a choice between heaven and hell, man will always choose hell-100% of the time. This, by definition, is not free and shows a greater problem with our hearts. This is what the confession and Spurgeon are saying; we will never choose heaven on our own. Spurgeon is in complete harmony with the Baptist Confession which states that a man cannot come to God through any power of his own. A man can only come if the Spirit of God draws that man to Himself.

I find most Protestant intuitively understands and personally believes this. When asked how they were saved, they will answer somewhere down in their testimony that “God saved them.” either through some sort of circumstance or event. But for some reason this concept seems to be difficult to understand when applying it to someone else. We seem to think that if uncle Albert would simply confess he would be saved. What we don’t understand that uncle Albert, on his own accord, will never ask Christ into his heart. No amount of pleading or altar calls will ever change that. God has to move uncle Albert’s heart and, it may just be that altar call is what God uses to bring uncle Albert to Him. In Moses’ case it was a burning bush. In Samuel’s case it was a voice in the temple. Everyone is different and unique, but we all come the same way-through His Spirit who moves our hearts.

It isn’t what we do for God. It’s what God does for us. This is the love of God.


103 posted on 08/01/2014 7:01:19 AM PDT by HarleyD ("... letters are weighty, but his .. presence is weak, and his speech of no account.")
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