Conclusion from Peru and Mexico

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."

FK: “”Would Archbishop Sheen call an amoeba in a petri dish “free”? It really depends on how you look at it doesn't it?””

You're forgetting that God gave man power to rule over moving things and animals. It is the freedom of Man who took the freedom away from the amoeba by putting it in a petri dish and enslaving it outside of its environment.

You're making my point. Man has the power to determine the amoeba's freedom and God has the power to determine ours. Which is the greater gulf, amoeba to man or man to God? That is, who has the greater authority? If you agree with me that the answer is God, then that would be evidence against those who argue that man's freedom is absolute to the extent of determining one's own destiny. Man, with far far less power completely determines the destiny of the amoeba in a petri dish.

FK-””Man has varying levels of freedom within the parameters that God sets.””

Perhaps you can explain what these levels are?

Sure. The basics are that man as born is dead in sin. He is free to sin but he is not free to do good in God's eyes. However, once a man believes and is sealed by the Holy Spirit, then he has a new freedom that includes doing good in God's eyes. At this point he retains the freedom to sin. Finally, when man is glorified and admitted into Heaven, he loses the freedom to sin. Of course, throughout all of this, no freedom of man ever trumps God's will at a particular time. God's Holy plan is higher than man's freedom, whether to do good or evil.

Man certainly has freedom to enslave himself by cursing God,committing adultery ,aborting babies etc....

Yes, but not over and above God's will.

Can you name some things that man is NOT free to do within the bounds of physical laws of nature?

Yes. A lost person is not free to do anything that would please God. And, a saved person is not free to do anything that would cause him to lose his salvation (a theoretical possibility but for God's promises). Finally, no one is ever free to do anything in contradiction to God's plan. There are zillions of examples in each category.

“Freedom that ignores the transcendent difference between good and evil ends in the denial of freedom itself.” -Fulton J. Sheen

Sounds cool, but it sure ain't Biblical. :) God defines what is good and what is evil, and God determines what freedoms man has and when.

But it was Adam and Eve who did the sinning. When the serpent was deceiving Eve, God just watched (in HD :)

But according to Calvin, God didn't just arrange the situation and do nothing to interfere with the sin of Adam and Eve, merely foreseeing, that is, taking a permissive role and seeing ahead of time what man, in his own moral authority, freely chose to do, but actively willed that it take place and, because he had willed that they should sin, they did sin.

“God not only foresaw that Adam would fall, but also ordained that he should.”
(Calvin’s Inst., b. 3, c. 23, sec. 7.)

“...[Adam] fell not only by the permission, but also by the appointment, of God.”
(Calvin Responsio ad Calumnias Nebulonis cujusdam ad Articulum primum.)

“He sinned because God so ordained, because the Lord saw good.”
(Calvin’s Inst., b. 3, c. 24, sec. 8.)

Man's action in sinning, therefore, was not conditional but determined. That is, there was nothing in man having to do with unconditioned volition that was the cause of sin for which he bore the moral responsibility. Man's sin, therefore, was the expression or outworking of the will of God. He could no more not sin than water could choose to be not wet. Man's sin was as caused as his nature as man was caused and, according to Calvin, the cause of both, the responsible agent of both, was God. The reason? "...because the Lord saw good."

With that viewpoint, one wonders what one must make of the Bible reporting that God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness."

FK: "But it was Adam and Eve who did the sinning. When the serpent was deceiving Eve, God just watched (in HD :)"

But according to Calvin, God didn't just arrange the situation and do nothing to interfere with the sin of Adam and Eve, merely foreseeing, that is, taking a permissive role and seeing ahead of time what man, in his own moral authority, freely chose to do, but actively willed that it take place and, because he had willed that they should sin, they did sin.

Yes, it was God's will. He accomplished that particular will by Divinely choosing to not protect them against the sin He knew they would commit without His protection. They are still responsible for their sins since God had no duty to protect them. God willing it to happen does not mean that He "injected" them with sin to cause it to happen. There was no need. Adam and Eve as created were already capable of sin.

Man's sin, therefore, was the expression or outworking of the will of God.

I would never say it that way because it invites false connotations of obedience, which has nothing to do with this. It was certainly God's will that Judas betray Jesus, but Judas was not in obedience to God when he did so.

Man's sin was as caused as his nature as man was caused and, according to Calvin, the cause of both, the responsible agent of both, was God. The reason? "...because the Lord saw good."

No, none of the quotes from Calvin you have given lead me anywhere near this idea. In Reformed theology, the concepts of "cause" and "responsible" are complicated and have to be worked through. I think you are jumping to conclusions in blaming God here.

With that viewpoint, one wonders what one must make of the Bible reporting that God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness."

Why? That concept obviously means some things, BUT NOT others. Further reading and understanding of the scriptures is necessary to know what those things are.

No, it was determined by God AND volitional by man. God did not MAKE Adam or Eve sin. As the Potter, He created them as He did, capable of sin, and then allowed them to sin. God could have prevented them from sinning, but He chose not to here. Since He had no duty, God's hands are clean. It is no coincidence that God let the serpent into the Garden at the same time He was going to be unavailable to counsel Eve. However, it was still Eve, and then Adam, who did what they did. That's not on God, unless you can show me a duty.

Sadly, that is not the view of Calvin or of many others of his day. Not only did God not act to prevent them from sinning, they sinned because God willed them to sin. They had no choice in the matter. They were created as specifically for that purpose as a hydrogen atom was created to act as a hydrogen atom. He placed them in the Garden. He put them before the Tree. He laid the prohibition upon them. He gave them the idea of sinning and, regardless of anything they may have felt or thought (if, in the Calvinistic universe, those have any meaning at all), he impelled them to sin. As certainly as a rider compels a horse to go this or that way at the rider's pleasure, God directed and caused Adam and Eve to sin (if that any longer has any meaning in a fully deterministic universe). They sinned at God's command.

Even Calvin recognized the horror of this position:

“I confess it is a horrible decree; yet no one can deny but God foreknew Adam’s fall, and therefore foreknew it, because he had ordained it so by his own decree.”
(Calv. Inst., b. 3, c. 23, sec. 7.)

“God of his own good pleasure ordains that many should be born, who are from the womb devoted to inevitable damnation. If any man pretend that God’s foreknowledge lays them under no necessity of being damned, but rather that he decreed their damnation because he foreknew their wickedness, I grant that God’s foreknowledge alone lays no necessity on the creature; but eternal life and death depend on the will rather than the foreknowledge of God. If God only foreknew all things that relate to all men, and did not decree and ordain them also, then it might be inquired whether or no his foreknowledge necessitates the thing foreknown. But seeing he therefore foreknows all things that will come to pass, because he has decreed they shall come to pass, it is vain to contend about foreknowledge, since it so plain all things come to pass by God’s positive decree.”
(Ibid., c. 23, s. 6.)

“The devil and wicked men are so held in on every side with the hand of God, that they cannot conceive, or contrive, or execute any mischief, any farther than God himself doth not permit only, but command. Nor are they only held in fetters, but compelled also, as with a bridle, to perform obedience to those commands.”
(Calv. Inst., b. 1, c. 17, s. 11.)

Once one accepts Calvin's logic, which one is by no means constrained to do, one must find innumerable ways to make plainly stated scriptural passages mean something radically different than what they plainly state--simply to make them become somewhat consistent with the extra-Biblical logic of a human conceptual scheme. One must also devise various ways to reinterpret common human experience to fit the logic even though it contradicts what we know; such as this: God has his secret will by which he has decreed that someone will be doomed to hell. Because that person has been, by the decree of God, reprobate, he is impelled to sin. But the revealed will of God says that man should choose to follow righteousness and not sin. From the human's point of view he finds himself violating that revealed will of God, and that violation is sin and, from the standpoint of the revealed will of God, God is spared the charge of having compelled the sin which, according to the hidden will of God, was the way he had laid out throughout all eternity for that human to act regardless of what that person happened to believe (for that matter, all his thoughts as well as actions are preordained as well). The human's final perdition is not because he sinned, but because God had ordained, in a way independent of foreknowledge, that he would be. The sin was, for the final state, merely an attendant circumstance, though one decreed and brought to pass by the hidden will of God*.

Thus, the living word of God is either stretched or chopped back to fit on the Procrustean bed of systematic theology.

*"Nor, nevertheless, does it follow that God unjustly complains of men when they sin, though they do nothing but what God wishes to be done by them. For, first, that distinction is to be kept in mind between God's secret will (called voluntas beneplacti) which is always done, and his revealed will (called voluntus signi) which is to us the rule of life and action. And, secondly, it is to be remarked, that the sins of men are to be judged, not by the secret, but by the revealed will of God. Therefore, though man, when he sins, does only what God by his secret and most just will has ordained, nevertheless he cannot be excused, because he acts in opposition to the revealed will of God, which he knows to be the rule of duty" (Thesis 7 de Reprobationa)., p. 571).

FK-””You're making my point. Man has the power to determine the amoeba's freedom and God has the power to determine ours.
Which is the greater gulf, amoeba to man or man to God?””

I'm not making your point,you're talking Apples and Oranges,Dear Brother!

An amoeba is not made in the image and likeness of God and Man with the ability to love and know moral good and evil.

FK-””However, once a man believes and is sealed by the Holy Spirit, then he has a new freedom that includes doing good in God's eyes. At this point he retains the freedom to sin..””

Presto! Just believe you're sealed and it must be true.Please,FK!

So,by this analogy man determines that he is sealed by the Holy Spirit by just believing it.

Does this mean it's ok to sin now that you're sealed and have already determined for yourself that you have been selected to be in heaven?

Sounds like you have taken away God's power to Judge you when you die by just believing you're sealed you must be guaranteed heaven

FK-””A lost person is not free to do anything that would please God. And, a saved person is not free to do anything that would cause him to lose his salvation””

Here you go again,FK. We don't know if we are the lost or the saved,we are going to be judged at the end of our lives.

Salvation is an ongoing process that can be lost

From scripturecatholic.com
1 Cor. 1:18 - for the word of the cross is folly to those perishing, but for to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. Salvation is not a one-time event. It is a process of perseverance through faith, hope and love.

2 Cor. 2:15 - for we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved. Salvation is a continual process.

Phil. 2:12 - we are working out our salvation through fear and trembling. Salvation is an ongoing process.

1 Peter 1:9 - you obtain the salvation of your souls as the outcome of your faith. Working out our salvation in fear and trembling is a lifelong process.

Matt. 10:22, 24:13; Mark 13:13 - again, Jesus taught that we must endure to the very end to be saved. Salvation is a past, present and future event (not a one-time event at an altar call).

Mark 16:16 – Jesus says whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.

Acts 15:11 - we believe that we shall be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus.

Rom. 5:9-10 - since we are justified by His blood, we shall be saved.

Rom. 13:11 - salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. How can we be only nearer to something we already have?

1 Cor. 3:15 - he will be saved, but only as through fire.

1 Cor. 5:5 - Paul commands the Church to deliver a man to satan, that he will be saved in the day of the Lord.

2 Tim. 2:11-12 - if we endure, we shall also reign with Him. This requires endurance until the end of our lives.

Heb. 9:28 - Jesus will appear a second time to save those who are eagerly waiting for Him.

James 5:15 - the sacrament of the sick will save the sick man and the Lord will raise him up.

He gave them the idea of sinning and, regardless of anything they may have felt or thought (if, in the Calvinistic universe, those have any meaning at all), he impelled them to sin. As certainly as a rider compels a horse to go this or that way at the rider's pleasure, God directed and caused Adam and Eve to sin (if that any longer has any meaning in a fully deterministic universe). They sinned at God's command.

I would agree that they sinned because God created the conditions necessary for them to surely sin, but I'm not sure I'm on board with the idea of God giving a command. I see no command given and no command obeyed. IMO, in the way we use the words today there can be no obedience without a known command given and a known command followed. I know that seems to disagree with your Calvin quotes, but I think I am just coming at the issue from a different angle than he is. But Calvin and I would surely agree that whatever God wants, God gets and in one form or another He ordains. All that happens is ultimately to His glory.

Even Calvin recognized the horror of this position: “I confess it is a horrible decree; yet no one can deny but God foreknew Adam’s fall, and therefore foreknew it, because he had ordained it so by his own decree.” (Calv. Inst., b. 3, c. 23, sec. 7.)

I don't know if it's so horrible in the big picture, for by this decree the need for Christ was born. How's that for optimistic!? :) God obviously wanted our brief existence in this world to be like ......... THIS. So, next to eternity whatever little problems and trials we have here are nothing.

Calvin is right that "eternal life and death depend on the will rather than the foreknowledge of God". As the Creator, that is God's decision to make. If God passed the buck on those decisions, it would show He doesn't care.

Because that person has been, by the decree of God, reprobate, he is impelled to sin. But the revealed will of God says that man should choose to follow righteousness and not sin.

The revealed will of God is revealed only to the elect, not to the reprobate, so this makes perfect sense vis-a-vis Calvin. There is no contradiction.

The human's final perdition is not because he sinned, but because God had ordained, in a way independent of foreknowledge, that he would be.

That's just an artificial transfer of responsibility away from the actual sinner onto God. That is improper UNLESS the commentator can show a duty on God to prevent the sin. God can ordain that something DOES happen through the negative, by NOT doing something. Critics then blame God for what God DIDN'T do, but where I think they come up short is in explaining why God had a duty to act in the first place.

FK-””However, once a man believes and is sealed by the Holy Spirit, then he has a new freedom that includes doing good in God's eyes. At this point he retains the freedom to sin..””

Presto! Just believe you're sealed and it must be true.Please,FK! So,by this analogy man determines that he is sealed by the Holy Spirit by just believing it.

The scriptures say that a man CAN know if he has a true relationship with God or not. After that, God's promises are either good or they are not. Paul said:

1 Cor 6:19-20 : 19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.

2 Tim 1:12 : That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.

Paul seems to think we can know. And notice that Paul didn't need another person to declare whether he was saved or lost. Paul knew it because of the personal relationship he had with God, one on one. It is the same with believers today.

Does this mean it's ok to sin now that you're sealed and have already determined for yourself that you have been selected to be in heaven?

Not at all:

Rom 6:1-7 : 6:1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3 Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

5 If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7 because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.

That pretty much sums it up. The truly changed heart will not seek to sin in the way the Adamic heart did. The old has gone, and the new has come.

Sounds like you have taken away God's power to Judge you when you die by just believing you're sealed you must be guaranteed heaven.

For Heaven, I don't agree that God judges based on how many God points we rack up during life. He judges on whether we are justified or not.

We don't know if we are the lost or the saved,we are going to be judged at the end of our lives.

Then on what basis do you say we will be judged for Heaven or hell? I don't think I have ever heard an answer from an Apostolic that doesn't amount to a point system.

Salvation is an ongoing process that can be lost.

I have no problem characterizing "salvation" as a process, since it has more than one component. However, it cannot be lost, or else God is a liar. We are told that God's sheep are known to Him from the foundations of the world. We are also told that no one can snatch them out of God's hands. Therefore, the saved cannot be lost. Some men relish the idea that they are powerful enough to snatch themselves out of God's hand. I don't understand why they would want such an ability, but in vain they certainly do want it.

You see, a lot of people are ignoring the totality of what Calvin referred to when he said that all things happen because God ordained that they take place. This means that all things, every vibration of every quark, every apparently random movement of this or that subatomic particle, every thought or impulse or action, every word spoken, every action that seems to spring from choice or unconditioned volition, every instance of self-sacrifice, every instance of what appears to be our recognizing what is right and submitting ourselves to it, every sin (though even that in a determined universe has no meaning) to every degree with every outcome, everything is determined. This is worse than anything dreamed up by physicalists or other forms of naturalists who seem to think that in quantum indeterminancy there may be some hope of liberation for the ghost in the machine.

Some seek to escape this by asserting that God simultaneously ordains the whole of creation and everything that takes place in it at the same time that he creates a free will that actually exists and works itself out through time. But this cannot rise above the level of an assertion because it is contradictory. They rely on imagery like someone in chapel did at a Calvinist college I attended who said, "We clearly see free will and we clearly see God's predestination. Up close they are like railroad tracks that seem forever separate. But when we look off into the distance of eternity, we see they do come together." Man, that's just painful to see someone try to use that kind of intellectual emollient to soothe the dissonance caused by simultaneously holding mutually contradicting views of reality and human nature and then punting everything onto God:

"We say, then, that Scripture clearly proves this much, that God, by his eternal and immutable counsel, determined once for all those whom it was his pleasure to doom to destruction. We maintain that this counsel, as regards the elect, is founded on his free mercy, without any respect to human worth, while those whom he dooms to destruction are excluded from access to life by a just and blameless, but, at the same time, incomprehensible judgment"
(Calvin, Inst. Book iii, chap. 21, sec. 7).

In other words, Hey, we know that it all happened because that's the way God willed it and God is good, therefore, anything he willed must be good. But in a completely determined universe, we cannot know anything, especially since every thought, and each chemical antecedent to those thoughts, lies in an unbroken chain of cause and effect that stretches back either through an eternally existing, though incomprehensible, non-personal being known as the physical/material universe or to the incomprehensible judgment of an eternally existing personal being called God who devises a temporary, equally determined universe for purposes of "glory" and "goodness," terms that in a deterministic universe have no meaning whatsoever, especially since such qualities are, in God, subordinate to his will which is exercised with no condition whatsoever, the outcome, made without respect to anything in the creation, a perfect expression of that will.

Competing with those two deterministic philosophies there is only dualism (eternally existing opposing forces) and pantheism (all that which can be named is illusion--there is no separateness; all is one). Oh, and the idea that God created a real universe with a cause and effect nature peopled with beings said to have been created in his own image with the capability of making free moral choices that are not determined by their surroundings but which are made with the same conative freedom experienced by God himself so that they and God could live in fellowship with each other even though such a state of affairs carried with it the risk of alienation and suffering due to free exercise of the will of the created against the will of the creator.

We could say that this is also incomprehensible that an eternally existing perfect being would bother creating out of nothing other immortal creatures with free wills that, at first in principle and later in fact, could defy the will of the creator and result in an eternal separation from the creator in spite of the fact that he chose to be born into that same creation and experience death in such a manner that it opened up a way for the rebels to return to their creator if they would only turn and believe and yield their will to his. Some things still do appear incomprehensible, such as why would anyone not return to the loving arms of the Father or why was there no such provision made for angelic beings who rebelled? But everything else, the freedom of will that true moral action requires, self-sacrifice, love, and even rebellion and the concept of punishment, is real, rather than just apparent.

Paul seems to think we can know

So does every Tom, Dick and Harriette. Not there there can be any chance of self delusion, or even outright insanity, right?

And notice that Paul didn't need another person to declare whether he was saved or lost

That was the appeal of Paul's gnostic approach: no one can prove you wrong!

The truly changed heart will not seek to sin in the way the Adamic heart did

And since there is no one who doesn't sin, there just aren't any truly changed hearts, and there are no truly "saved" (justified) people.

For Heaven, I don't agree that God judges based on how many God points we rack up during life

The Bible says we are to be judged for our deeds. It's that aprt of the Bible some choose not to see.

Instead they posit that the "points" are used to assign who gets to live in the heavenly penthouse, and who in the basement. Now, that's truly Biblical /sar/!

Therefore, the saved cannot be lost

Of course not. They will be in heaven. No one can snatch them from there! Trouble is, none of us is in heaven yet and some confuse heaven with earth.

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