Posted on 01/27/2008 7:56:14 PM PST by Manfred the Wonder Dawg
January 25, 2008
ESV Romans 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
In recent days I have spent time in Lima and Sullana Peru and Mexico City and I have discovered that people by nature are the same. Man has a heart that is inclined to selfishness and idolatry. Sin abounds in the remotest parts of the land because the heart is desperately wicked. Thousands bow before statues of Mary and pray to her hoping for answers. I have seen these people stare hopelessly at Mary icons, Jesus icons, and a host of dead saints who will do nothing for them. I have talked with people who pray to the pope and say that they love him. I talked with one lady who said that she knew that Jesus was the Savior, but she loved the pope. Thousands bow before Santa Muerte (holy death angel) in hopes that she will do whatever they ask her. I have seen people bring money, burning cigarettes, beer, whiskey, chocolate, plants, and flowers to Santa Muerte in hopes of her answers. I have seen these people bowing on their knees on the concrete in the middle of public places to worship their idol. Millions of people come into the Basilica in Mexico City and pay their money, confess their sins, and stare hopelessly at relics in hope that their sins will be pardoned. In America countless thousands are chained to baseball games, football games, material possessions, and whatever else their heart of idols can produce to worship.
My heart has broken in these last weeks because the God of heaven is not honored as he ought to be honored. People worship the things that are created rather than worshiping the Creator. God has been gracious to all mankind and yet mankind has hardened their hearts against a loving God. God brings the rain on the just and unjust. God brings the beautiful sunrises and sunsets upon the just and unjust. God gives good gifts unto all and above all things he has given his Son that those who would believe in him would be saved. However, man has taken the good things of God and perverted them unto idols and turned their attention away from God. I get a feel for Jesus as he overlooked Jerusalem or Paul as he beseeched for God to save Israel. When you accept the reality of the truth of the glory of God is breaks your heart that people would turn away from the great and awesome God of heaven to serve lesser things. Moses was outraged by the golden calf, the prophets passionately preached against idolatry, Jesus was angered that the temple was changed in an idolatrous business, and Paul preached to the idolaters of Mars Hill by telling them of the unknown God.
I arrived back at home wondering how I should respond to all the idolatry that I have beheld in these last three weeks. I wondered how our church here in the states should respond to all of the idolatry in the world. What are the options? First, I suppose we could sit around and hope that people chose to get their life together and stop being idolaters. However, I do not know how that could ever happen apart from them hearing the truth. Second, I suppose we could spend a lifetime studying cultural issues and customs in hope that we could somehow learn to relate to the people of other countries. However, the bible is quite clear that all men are the same. Men are dead in sin, shaped in iniquity, and by nature are the enemies of God. Thirdly, we could pay other people or other agencies to go and do a work for us while we remain comfortably in the states. However, there is no way to insure that there will be doctrinal accuracy or integrity. If we only pay other people to take the gospel we will miss out on all of the benefits of being obedient to the mission of God. Lastly, we could seek where God would have us to do a lasting work and then invest our lives there for the glory of God. The gospel has the power to raise the dead in any culture and we must be willing to take the gospel wherever God would have us take it. It is for sure that our church cannot go to every country and reach every people group, so we must determine where God would have us work and seek to be obedient wherever that is.
It seems that some doors are opening in the Spanish speaking countries below us and perhaps God is beginning to reveal where we are to work. There are some options for work to be partnered with in Peru and there could be a couple of options in Mexico. The need is greater than I can express upon this paper for a biblical gospel to be proclaimed in Peru and Mexico. Oh, that God would glorify his great name in Peru and Mexico by using a small little church in a town that does not exist to proclaim his great gospel amongst a people who desperately need the truth.
I give thanks to the LORD for allowing me the privilege of going to these countries and broadening my horizons. The things that I have seen will be forever engraved upon my heart. I will long remember the pastors that I spent time with in Peru and I will never forget Adolfo who translated for me in Mexico. I will relish the time that I spent with Paul Washer and the others. When I think of church I will forever remember being on top of that mountain in Sullana at that church which had no electricity and no roof. I am convinced that heaven was looking down on that little church on top of that mountain and very few people on earth even know that it exist. Oh, God I pray that the things of this world will continue to grow dim and that God’s people will be caught up in his glorious presence.
Because of the truth: Pastor: J. Randall Easter II Timothy 2:19 "Our God is in heaven and does whatever He pleases."(Ps. 115:3) "He predestined us according to the good pleasure of His will."(Eph. 1:5) Those who have been saved have been saved for His glory and they are being made holy for this is the will of God. Are you being made holy? Spurgeon says, "If your religion does not make you holy it will damn you to hell."
Well, if true, that would pretty much blow out of the water any criticism of differing Protestant denominations. Right? :) I mention it because learned Catholics have strenuously argued to me that this was NOT in fact the case. They have argued to me that Peter, Paul, and even James were all on the same page, but maybe with different approaches. I happen to agree with the Catholics here. :)
Discuss the issues all you want, but do NOT make it personal.
No, it has nothing do with the personality; it has to do with the dominion.
Oh, so you would say that sharks are created in God's image because they have dominion over the sea? The same for lions in Africa, etc.? :) Yes, man has general dominion over the earth, but many animals have actual dominion over their habitats. This is not the correct distinction between men and animals. God creating man in His image means in part that He created us as personal beings, just like Him, such that we can communicate with God on a meaningful level and we are able to love Him and understand to some extent His love for us.
Yes, I know I wrote it.
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Those are you personal interpretations necessitating God's weakness. I don't agree with them. I believe in a strong God.
What was the purpose of these "negotiations?" Since they changed nothing that God already did predestine, as you observe, they were empty rituals. They were not "negotiations" but reading of the rights.
One purpose was to teach, perhaps Abraham directly, but certainly us. Stories like these show us God's character and nature. Without these stories, man would be free to invent anything he wanted to about God. Unfortunately, it happens anyway, but at least we can be justified in saying they are NOT justified.
So, why all the question marks?
You posted those very words. This is your view of salvation - some are lucky, and some ain’t, and we don’t know who is and who ain’t.
You speak as if you know, but you don’t know. You are guessing like the rest of us.
You are going to seriously lead someone to think that the saved are predestined, and that free will doesn’t matter, in love or salvation. It was all written, and we are just living the playback.
They aren’t predestined. WE GET TO CHOOSE. Judas wasn’t a patsy - he chose too, just like Peter did. Both betrayed Jesus, and worse, Peter knew better.
How so? In Orthodoxy, the fear of the Lord is the awe when we approach Him at the chalice. The love comes from His goodness and mercy for us undeserving sinners.
But those things SHOULD be very related as I said. From Got Questions?:
For the unbeliever, the fear of God is to fear the judgment of God and eternal death, which is eternal separation from God (Luke 12:5; Hebrews 10:31). For the believer, the fear of God is something much different. The believer's fear is reverence of God. Hebrews 12:28-29 is a good description of this, "Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire." This reverence and awe is exactly what the fear of God means for Christians. This is the motivating factor for us to surrender to the Creator of the Universe.
Proverbs 1:7 declares, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge…” Until we understand who God is, and develop a reverential fear of Him, we cannot have true wisdom. True wisdom comes only from understanding who God is – that He is holy, just, and righteous. Deuteronomy 10:12,20-21 records, "Now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require from you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways and love Him, and to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, You shall fear the LORD your God; you shall serve Him and cling to Him, and you shall swear by His name. He is your praise and He is your God, who has done these great and awesome things for you which your eyes have seen." The fear of God is the basis for our walking in His ways, serving Him, and yes, loving Him.
Do you agree to this?
Here’s what we believe, from +Peter of Damascus:
“Fear is of two kinds: the first is introductory, while the second, which grows out of the first is perfect.
He who is afraid of God’s punishment has a slave-like fear of God, and it is this that makes him refrain from evil: ‘Out of fear of the Lord men shun evil’ ... through fear of what threatens us we sinners may be led to repent and may seek deliverance from our sins....
The more a man struggles to do good, the more fear grows in him, until it shows him his slightest faults, those which he thought of as nothing while he was still in the darkness of ignorance.
When fear in this way has become perfect, he himself becomes perfect through inward grief: he no longer desires to sin but, fearing the return of the passions, he remains in this pure fear invulnerable. As the psalm puts it, ‘The fear of the Lord is pure, and endures for ever’. The first kind of fear is not pure, for it arises in us because of our sins. But, independent of sin, the person who has been purified continues to feel fear, not because he sins, but because, being human, he is changeable and prone to evil.
In his humility, the further he advances through the acquisition of the virtues, the more he fears. This is natural; for everyone who possesses wealth greatly fears loss, punishment, dishonor, and the consequent fall from his high estate....The sign of the first kind of fear is hatred of sin and anger towards it, like someone wounded by a wild beast. The sign of perfect fear is the love of virtue and the fear of relapsing, since no one is unalterable.”
Dr. EL Read the Bible, Kosta. "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him...--John 8:44
From which beginning (αρχη) was that, Dr. E?
Is it that of John 1:1 en arch hn o logoV, kai o logoV hn proV ton qeon, kai qeoV hn o logoV?
Are you saying Satan was evil from the eternal "beginning" by God's design? Did Satan exist alongside the Word? (LDS will be clapping!)
Or was it from Gen 1:1 εν αρχη εποιησεν ο θεος τον ουρανον και την γην?
Or are yu saying from the "beginning" of the creation? Are you suggesting, God created Satan as evil before He created the world? Where is scriptural evidence of that? The OT doesn't treat ha-satan as evil.
The verse in John 8:44 you quote says that the devil was the murder form the beginning. This beginning is understood, as the Church always did, as the beginning of his fall, not the beginning of his existence (creation), and that Satan fell all on his own and by his choice, and not by design.
So, no, God did not create Satan evil. God is not the source of evil, else He would have to be evil Himself.
But rest assured that the devil wants all of us to believe that God is evil and that such ideas can only come from the father of all lies.
So according to you, God changes His very essence from the Old to the New Testament
No, the perception of God changes from Zeus-like to Christ.
Do you have any Scripture that says God has changed? Because God doesn't change. God changes men.
God doesn't change. Our perception of God does.
And if, as you theorize, Satan was created "good" but then he fell, how is Satan any different than Adam?
Or you or me?
Is Satan just some reprobate who chooses to sin?
No wonder the EO has a difficult time defining evil and men's fallen nature.
Thanks for the ping.
However, I gave up trying to wrap logic around some EO’s theological constructions on pseudo reality many months ago.
No, this is the Biblical view of salvation, as evidenced by the many verses from Scripture I've offered.
They aren't predestined. WE GET TO CHOOSE.
Unregenerated man will always choose sin and the regenerated man will choose righteousness.
Regeneration by God's grace through faith is a gift given by God to whom He will. A man must be born again, not by the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but by the will of God through the work of the indwelling Holy Spirit.
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:
We are "made accepted in Christ" by God's grace, for God's glory.
Judas wasn't a patsy - he chose too, just like Peter did. Both betrayed Jesus, and worse, Peter knew better.
How did "Peter know better?" Was Peter a "better" human being than Judas? Did God give Peter something He withheld from Judas?
"For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive?" -- 1 Corinthians 4:7
First of all,satan was and angel unlike Adam who was fully human but both were given free will to choose good or evil.
Second,God cannot will evil or it would be imperfection and error on His part.
Kosta is right ,Dear Sister.Your view of God is zeus like
Here is some more Aquinas to help you understand
That God cannot will Evil
EVERY act of God is an act of virtue, since His virtue is His essence (Chap. XCII).
2. The will cannot will evil except by some error coming to be in the reason, at least in the matter of the particular choice there and then made. For as the object of the will is good, apprehended as such, the will cannot tend to evil unless evil be somehow proposed to it as good; and that cannot be without error.* But in the divine cognition there can be no error (Chap. LXI). 3. God is the sovereign good, admitting no intermixture of evil (Chap. LXI). 4. Evil cannot befall the will except by its being turned away from its end. But the divine will cannot be turned away from its end, being unable to will except by willing itself (Chap. LXXV). It cannot therefore will evil; and thus free will in it is naturally established in good. This is the meaning of the texts: God is faithful and without iniquity (Deut. xxxii, 4); Thine eyes are clean, O Lord, and thou canst not look upon iniquity (Hab. i, 13).
Chap. XCII link
http://www2.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/etext/gc1_92.htm
Chap. LXI link
http://www2.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/etext/gc1_61.htm
Chap. LXXV link
http://www2.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/etext/gc1_75.htm
Satan is different from Adam in that, being a spirit weithout a body, he cannot be tempted. Angelic fall is much more grave than Adam's. There is no redemption for the fallen angels. God even created the Lake of Fire specifically for the devil and his angels, but not for men. That an unknown number of men will follow Satan into the Lake is not God's doing; it is their choice. God will simply send them where they chose to be.
It is clear that those who clothed him and gave him water and all that allegorical stuff (in other words who did right things) will be the sheep, and those who did the wrong stuff will be the goats. Nothing predestined there. God knows, but he doesn't make out decisions.
No wonder the EO has a difficult time defining evil and men's fallen nature.
The EO have no problem defining evil and man's fallen nature.
At the dawn of creation, before God made the visible world, but after the creation of the angels, there was a great catastrophe, of which we have knowledge only by its consequences. A group of angels opposed itself to God and fell away from Him, thereby becoming enemies of all that was good and holy. At the head of this rebellion stood Lucifer, whose very name (literally meaning ‘light-bearing’) indicates that originally he was good. By his own will he changed from his natural state into one which was unnatural; he opposed himself to God and fell away from good into evil. [ An Online Orthodox Catechism ]
The Church never taught that evil was coeternal with good and that evil was a creature of God.
Amen, SFA. That is the essential part of the teaching of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, believed, taught and proclaimed everywhere and awlays. God is Virtue, and virtue is not evil. And God is unchanging.
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FK: Yes. And so was the Flood, an almost infinitely greater human catastrophe.
Kosta: Actually, the Flood was God's doing. So, are you saying that what Hitler did was also God's doing?
No, you asked about God's will so that is how I answered.
Or was Hitler doing something contrary to God's will, yet somehow it was still God's will?
Now you've got it! :) There is God's grand design, and there are God's commands to individuals. In a similar fashion, there is God's outward call and His inward call.
PS I doubt that there were millions of people on earth in those days...so your remark that the Flood was "an almost infinitely greater human catastrophe" then Hitler (the evil of Holocaust) is somewhat bewildering, if not repulsive.
Think percentages. :)
He created Hitler so that Hitler would be evil, yet God somehow has nothing to do with it? Scrambling, hey?
No scrambling. God creates everything that has been created, but God has no obligation to protect man from his own sinful nature. God chose not to protect Hitler, to a great degree, and the results are predictable.
I make a robot that will shoot anything on sight. The robot has no choice or say about this. Is it I, the maker, who is the cause of what robot does, or is it the robot?
In this case it would be your responsibility because robots have no will at all. Men are different of course, so we are responsible for our sins. While men have a will that is real, it cannot trump the will of God no matter how powerful men wish to view themselves.
Kosta: Was Hitler simply doing God's will?
FK: On a single, narrow level "yes", but NOT in obedience.
Kosta: Oh, but was it disobedience? Was not Hitler doing exactly what God wanted him to do? How can that be disobedience?"
It seems pretty clear that Hitler did not accept or understand his duty to comply with God's commands, so I would say it was neither obedience, nor disobedience. It was Hitler following his nature. However, a decent case can be made that it WAS disobedience, given that all men are given some sense of right and wrong. I am fine with looking at it either way, but I know that in no way could it be considered obedience to God. There was never a command from God to Hitler to do what he did. Therefore, there can be no obedience.
FK: The revelation God gives us is plenty enough to "know" Him as He designed us to know Him. Your earlier comparison to our pets "knowing" us is no where close to the same thing.
How so? They pick up on our habits and movements and know how to anticipate and how to get our attention and so on. In fact they communicate with us on their level.
You describe shadows of the human experience, simple instincts, repetitions, and imitations. We are told that God created us above all that, SUCH THAT we could have REAL communication with Him. Animals can't do that.
Are you just making this up as you go along?
If Satan "could not be tempted" how did Satan fall?
Is not disobedience a "temptation" to assert one's own will over God?
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