Posted on 04/15/2008 8:34:19 PM PDT by blam
Oh, your poor weak god TRIES to influence you. How pathetic.
Either God is Master of everything, or he is weak and pathetic. Either he is Lord of Lords, or he hopes you might, possible, pretty please chose him. Either he is King of Kings, or YOU get to decide to obey him, making YOU in charge.
You are letting the child tell the father what you are going to do. No, that’s not even right, because at this point the non-believer is NOT a child of God.
You gave a portion of a verse, I gave a whole chapter. I win :>)
***Care to Answer any more of the questions,
Why, they are based on the same confused/faulty logic.***
Go ahead and answer then using your own faulty logic.
By the way, I have never heard from you what YOU believe.
If we don't have a free will to accept or reject God and His Son, the whole thing is MEANINGLESS!!! It just absolutely floors me that you could be an elder in a mainstream church and yet just have so little understanding in this! Wow!
You have one serious mental block here. It IS possible for God to be all sovereign, omnipotent, all powerful, etc., etc., and yet still give man a free will to accept or reject Him. Only to you, is that somehow beyond God's ability.
Sure you have. Go back and read what I posted.
The problem is that you think this is a mainstream idea. It used to be, but not since the liberals took over.
Check the website for PCA, OPC, RPC or other REFORMED churches and you will find that ALL of them agree with me. Anyone who accepts the Westminster Confession of Faith believes as I do. You should get out more.
I will give you a simple easy to understand example of “free will”.
When man is unregenerated, man has the will to sin, or not sin.
When man is regenerated, man has the will to sin, not sin, or to please God.
Unregenerated man cannot please God, therefore cannot seek God, and in fact avoids God.
You gave a portion of a verse to bolster your distorted view of God. Shame on you.
You believe in free will? So? All liberal believers believe that. Are you Catholic? Baptist? Lutheran? What?
AMEN!
That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things." -- Isaiah 45:5-7"I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me:
watch that right hand buster.
Why? Did you make the rules? Did you create the world and everything therein?
Go back to the Bible and learn that no man can come to the Father who first hasn't been regenerated by the Holy Spirit. And that decision is ultimately God's call.
"Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach unto thee" -- Psalm 65:4
You have one serious mental block here. It IS possible for God to be all sovereign, omnipotent, all powerful, etc., etc., and yet still give man a free will to accept or reject Him. Only to you, is that somehow beyond God's ability.
No, that paradigm is ultimately jibberish. If man has the final say about his own salvation, then God spends time and eternity waiting for men to give Him a heads up so that He can save them. And that denies the very idea of who God is -- the sovereign Creator of all that exists.
"Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure" -- Isaiah 46:10
Greater minds than ours have pointed out the important fact that if men are responsible for their own salvation, then Christ really didn't save anyone on Calvary; He only made salvation possible.
Which is not what the Bible says. Hebrews 10 tells us that the one-time sacrifice for all the sins of the flock of the "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" has been offered and accepted by God, marked "Paid-in-Full."
From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that he had said before, This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin." -- Hebrews 10:12-18"But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God;
Romans 8 and 9 tell us that all men are fallen and none is capable of pleasing God unless and until God gives them a new heart and new ears and new eyes and a renewed mind in order for them to know their salvation has been won for them by Christ on the cross.
"For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth" -- Romans 9:11
Ephesians 1 tells us that God has determined this, and not men, and did so from before the foundation of the world. We are saved by unmerited grace, and grace alone.
Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved." -- Ephesians 1:4-6"According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:
Most of us once thought exactly like you do. And then we understood better. All glory to God alone.
Yes, only if God is JUST LIKE YOU, i.e. He doesn't know the future and has to wait to see what happens. No wonder you just don't get this...
Adam and Eve could NOT have sinned unless God himself provided not ONLY the means, but the PENALTY for eating the forbidden fruit. God planted the tree in the garden in order that they would eat, so that his PLAN FOR SALVATION would go forth. That is, of course, unless God didn’t know what he planted, and didn’t know that they would eat, and that God then had to scramble around trying to find a way to fix the mess that Adam did all by himself. I could just imagine THAT conversation... “Well, Son, looks like I’ve got to kill you, they did something I didn’t expect, that’s for sure.”
Well guys, it’s been fun, but I am a half hour away from flying off to Disneyworld. See ya at the end of the month. God bless all of you. Yes, even you AU :>)
I get what Scripture tells us -- that God not only knows the past, present and future, He has "declared" all of them.
Read the Bible verses I offered and tell us why you understand them differently. They seem pretty clear to me.
Have a safe trip and enjoy every minute of your vacation.
Well, that certainly turns this scripture on it head, doesn't it?
"Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:"
Whoa! That's quite a statement. It's almost like God watching us on TV and not knowing what will happen to the Brady Bunch.
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