FK: That couldn't have been true for me, and I suspect virtually all other Bible-believing Protestants. I learned what my faith WAS by reading the Bible and adopting whatever its teachings turned out to be
In other words, you had faith but didn't know what you believed in until you opened the Bible? How can you call that faith?
The way you describe this, the Bible gave you faith! If that's so, then things must have reversed sometime between Abraham and the present!
So, there was nothing to mold the Bible TO. What I believe was molded by what the Bible says. That's what led me later to a Bible-believing church.
Let me get this straight: what exactly did you believe when you started reading the Bible?
What if you started reading the Book of Mormon instead of the Bible? Would you have ended up joining a Mormon assembly? If not, why not?
The only way you could tell if something was genuine or not is for you to know what is scripture and what is not. Where would that knowledge come from, and how did reading the Bible add to such a powerful knowledge?
***Let me get this straight: what exactly did you believe when you started reading the Bible?
What if you started reading the Book of Mormon instead of the Bible? Would you have ended up joining a Mormon assembly? If not, why not?
The only way you could tell if something was genuine or not is for you to know what is scripture and what is not. Where would that knowledge come from, and how did reading the Bible add to such a powerful knowledge? ***
What does the Bible have to do with Reformed Salvation? If the Holy Spirit drops on one like a leopard from the trees and engulfs one’s soul, giving all required knowledge, what is the Bible for? Does it merely reinforce the indwelling knowledge? If so, then the Reformed Holy Spirit is obviously too weak to indwell the knowledge, yes?
That doesn’t sound quite as cut and dried as many Reformed would have us believe.
I wouldn't say it worked like that. My faith grew gradually. It started with a Bible study group where I heard the Gospel verbally. From there I started reading scriptures, which confirmed what I had been told. Eventually, at some point, I "had" faith and asked Jesus into my life. None of this would have ever happened had God not first given me a new heart that was able to receive the Truth.
The way you describe this, the Bible gave you faith!
Then I did a poor job. :) Only God gives faith. The Bible explains, confirms and expands on what that faith is.
Let me get this straight: what exactly did you believe when you started reading the Bible?
I had a basic verbal presentation of the Gospel message of salvation. I wanted to learn more so I started reading. That message was confirmed, and I learned other things too. With my new heart I was open to receiving what scripture said until I finally knew that I NEEDED Christ for sure.
What if you started reading the Book of Mormon instead of the Bible? Would you have ended up joining a Mormon assembly? If not, why not?
For one thing it wouldn't have matched what I was told at a Christian Bible study. My parents were Christian in name only, but nevertheless it was what it was and everyone I knew who had any faith was either Christian or Jewish. So, it probably wouldn't have occurred to me to study the Mormon faith.
Secondly, the new heart that God gave me would not have responded to the Mormon faith, if that was the time God had chosen for me to come to faith. It is 20/20 hindsight now, but that's how it turned out by God's sovereign design. (I knew none of this at the time of course.) However, if God's plan was for me to accept Christ at, say, 30, then as a teenager I would have surely been susceptible to joining other faiths. It could have happened, and certainly HAS happened with other people who wind up as Christians.
The only way you could tell if something was genuine or not is for you to know what is scripture and what is not. Where would that knowledge come from, and how did reading the Bible add to such a powerful knowledge?
At that Bible study I met mature Christians (young adults) for the first time in my life. I could tell immediately that they were different from me. I saw what they accepted as scripture and had no trouble accepting that the Bible was THE Book. Issues such as the Apocrypha were immaterial at that point. I had a never-opened Bible from my infant baptism and it seemed to fit in fine with what other people were using so I thought I was good to go. I didn't give particular Bible versions a second thought until I started studying seriously with one of the ministers at my church, a few years after I was married.