Posted on 05/22/2015 4:54:44 PM PDT by OK Sun
I have been taught Dispensationalism from my mother’s womb. I was born in a dispensational environment. It was assumed at my church to be a part of the Gospel. There was never another option presented. It made sense. It helped me put together the Scriptures in a way that cleared up so much confusion. And, to be honest, the emphasis on the coming tribulation, current events that prove the Bible’s prophecy, the fear that the Antichrist may be alive today (who is he?) was all quite exciting. But what might be the biggest attraction for me is the charts! Oh how I love charts. I think in charts. And dispensationalism is a theology of charts!
The first time I came across someone who was not a Dispensationalist was in 1999. I am not kidding. It was the first time! I don’t think I even knew if there was another view. It was when I was a student at Dallas Theological Seminary (the bastion of Dispensationalism) and I was swimming with some guys who were at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Once they discovered I was a dispensationalist, they giggled and snickered. They made fun of the rapture, the sacrificial system during the millennium, and the mark of the beast (which, at that time, was some type of barcode). It was as if they patted me on the head and said “It’s okay . . . nice little dispensationalist.” I was so angry. I was humiliated. I was a second-rate theologian. They were “Covenantalists” (whatever that was). But they were the cool guys who believed in the historic Christian faith and I was the cultural Christian, believing in novel ideas.
(Excerpt) Read more at reclaimingthemind.org ...
Whom would you leave out? ... For God so loved the World that He gave His only begotten Son, that whomsoever ,,,
Again, you're making the assumption that people "hope of salvation". This is Renaissance thinking when our thought process was changed to think that man was basically good. Thus man wants to love God, love their fellow man, love nature, etc.
I'm not sure of your point with Nineveh. God cares for all His creation in spite of ourselves. There are many cases in the scriptures that teaches of God's mercy of non-believers repenting-not salvationwise but because they feared God. Abimlech repented of taking Sarah and God blessed him (Gen 20). The midwives of Egypt refused to kill the Hebrew males and God blessed them. And God promised Abraham that He would spare Sodom if there were ten righteouse men. There were not.
As far as Nineveh was concerned, they were a wicked and vile city. Yet, because they threw on sack cloth before God, He spared the city (at least for 100 years). This only shows the compassion of God-it does not mean that Nineveh experience a revival. You may recall that Ahab also did the same thing. This simply shows us how much God loves us. But it also shows us our wickedness when God could be so gracious that we turn right around and start doing evil all over again. And, might I add, that we simply underestimate the splendor of the Holy Spirit endwelling in us to help us in overcoming our old nature.
Everyone has hope if they place their faith in our Lord Christ Jesus. That IS the promise of God. But let's not sugar coat this-man is wicked. There are many who will simply reject God. They will not change nor do they want to. Do we know who those people are? No. Perhaps the leader of ISIS will become a Christian tomorrow. The thief on the cross certainly experienced salvation and he must have done some very vile things to have been cruxcified.
All who calls upon the name of the Lord shall indeed be saved. But they are those whom the Lord calls.
BTW-To show us the hardness of our hearts, we only have to ask ourselves what do we like to hear; 1) about God’s love, or 2) about our wickedness? Everything today is couched in the love of God with little emphasis on our state. Preaching has certainly changed in the last 150 years. We certainly would not be like Nineveh today.
That's not for me to say.
Mat 22:4 Again he sent other servants, saying, 'Tell those who are invited, "See, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast."'
Mat 22:5 But they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business,
Mat 22:6 while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them.
Mat 22:7 The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.
Mat 22:8 Then he said to his servants, 'The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy.
Mat 22:9 Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.'
I have read everything you have posted. It amazes me that you insert snippets of text but seem to fail to understand them in context. You quoted (without attribution for context) from 1 Thessalonians 5:24.
1 Thessalonians 5:24 Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass.
It's God who calls and God who brings to pass the act of responding.
Another you quoted is from Romans 4:9.
Romans 4:9 Is this blessing then on the circumcised, or on the uncircumcised also? For we say, "FAITH WAS CREDITED TO ABRAHAM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS."
Man wants to credit that faith to Abraham but let's look at what scripture really says.
Philippians 3:9 And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:
Galatians 2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith OF the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
It's not our faith by which we are saved it's the faith of Christ instilled or given to us. Look closely at the next verse.
Ephesians 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
Notice that the "faith" is a gift of God to us. Paul again says;
Romans 3:22 Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:
It's not our faith but the faith of Christ given to us as a gift from God by which we believe and are saved. God doesn't force us to believe. He gives us the gift of the ability to believe and love. Without that gift we, in our natural state, would not even have the ability to believe or have faith. Man trying to take credit for even as much as a little faith is arrogant. It's God who gives that faith.
Hebrews 12:2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Romans 12:3 For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.
Well said.
So, playing subtle games of gotcha. Well, the tangle of this series of exchanges is ab example of how viewing History in dispensations is useful. But you already know weverything you’re going to know so I won’t eleborate.
Hmm, eleborate? Small keys, large hands ... and too great temptation to respond.
Hi Harley,
I got to meditating on “Jonah 4: 10 But the LORD said, “You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?”
I had to decide if God feigns concern or if His concern is real.
I don't play games of gotcha. If I offended you, you certainly won't be the first that I've done that to.
It is my firm belief that we understand the scriptures in their entirety. It is in this way that we come to a complete knowledge of God. We are to STUDY to show ourselves approved.
I tend to be a little snippy in my comments at time. It is only because of my poor writing style and my incomplete thought pattern. Others such as SR and gamecock are much better at articulating doctrine.
I do ask that people study what is written down in the Protestant confessions. It will help them in understanding God. Others on this board will tell you that I too have had my journey. There is much I don't know. There are some truths to which I am absolutely convinced.
God is concerned about all of His creation. We read in Amos 7 that the purpose of His wrath is to draw people to repentence. Even King Ahab who "did more to provoke the LORD, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him." (1 Ki 16:33) found favor from God. After his wife Jezebel killed the prophets, he had Naboth kills so he could get his garden, and he did evil things over and over, we find God saying this:
Quite frankly I can understand why the prophets would throw up their hands. God can be very frustrating in His love and endurance. We would love for Him to strike people down but that isn't the way He works.
So, no, God does not feigns concern. His concern is real. The issue isn't God's love. It's that people don't care about God.
But your point is an interesting one. If someone went today to, say, Baltimore and told people they needed to repent and turn to God, how many do you think would put on sack cloth?
The problem we have today is that there is no fear of God because few believe in sin. We have preached God is love for so long that we have forgotten the message is to repent, call on the Lord and you will be saved. Instead, it's all about what God will give us.
My thoughts were that God sent Jonah while they were still sinning, and God says He did it because He was already concerned about them.
It seems to me that any appeal to foreknowledge or foreordination can be used to change God's simple expression of His concern by explaining it away.
We then must decide if God intended us to believe that really He didn't actually care for them.
I know that there are verses in scripture where it appears that God changed His mind about something. But then how do you reconcile other verses such as:
Mal_3:6 "For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.
Do you think it was creative writing that caused God to have concern for Ninevah? Did He send Jonah to preach because of that concern or in an effort to support His creative writing? Did He express what was driving His decision about Ninevah just so we would know He really didn’t mean it?
I take His concern for those people to be real.
It, of course, aligns with “God so loved the world...”
Now that we have that out of the way let's look at the other side of the coin, man doesn't love God. God told Jonah to head to Niveveh to preach the gospel. Both Jonah and God knew what the outcome would be and Jonah didn't want to do it. Why? Because he knew that Nineveh would repent and God would stay His hand. It isn't that there was a massive revival in Nineveh. They didn't all become Hebrews. It's that they stopped their sinning at least for a little while. And God, in His loving and merciful way stayed His hands of judgment. And, poor Jonah, threw up his hands and said, "Oh brother, as if I didn't see that coming. I hope there was some purpose for me being in that fish for three days."
You want to put all the responsibility on God. God is love and long suffereing. But sorry-it's not a "God issue". You better look at the other side of the coin.
God’s concern for them had nothing to do with their response to Him.
Why does Jesus stand at the door and knock?
On the other hand God response to them has nothing to do with their response to God. This is the point you’re missing.
Man does not want to come to God. The first response when Adam sin was to hide.
Mat 13:16 But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.
...
Mat 16:16 Simon Peter replied, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."
Mat 16:17 And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.
Do you not yet see the contradiction in your reasoning? If the saved have no choice, being forced to love God and thus no choice in open the door to The Lord, again “Why does Jesus stand at the door and knock?” If anyman ... do you not see that the one opening the door made a choice, to open the door, else Jesus would not stand at the door and knock? Again I say to you, LOVE IS NOT FORCED. Why do some, repeat SOME, love God? Because He first loved us. If you see that as God forcing His love upon you then we have no further need to exchange posts. Believe what you need to believe, I will move along to greener pastures. The Rapture is coming, SOON, and I feel an urgency to explain why only His Bride (that’s a loving relationship, and not a sexual one) will be taken out of the way.
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