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Winston ...We are warned about causing a child to sin..and about separating a husband and wife..but if we could interfere with the salvation of another don't you think we would have been warned about that too?

Winston what makes one will to come to Christ and not another?

Two different questions.

First, You have narrowly construed Jesus' comment about causing others to sin, choosing to limit it to causing "a child" to sin. That may not be justified and in any event misses the import of the warning.

Of the three synoptics, only Matthew (whose arrangement of gospel materials is often not chronological) mentions the account in the context of a disussion of a child. Mark places it after a discussion of non-followers casting out demons in Jesus' name and Luke places in the context of a discussion of causes of sin. As I mentioned in the earlier post, Matthew and Mark recount the statement as applying to those who cause those "who believe in me", while Luke does not add that qualification.

Both the express qualification (those "who believe in me") of Matthew and Mark and the context of Mark and Luke suggest that the reference to "little ones" was not to children but to guileless, childlike believers -- perhaps those young in the faith and thus most prone to damage. [As I have previously expressed to you privately, that is the only reason I spend the time to rebut the Calvinist construct here whenever I do. The minds of the Calvinist defenders of the construct are well-closed and double-locked with pride, but I worry of the non-believers and the young believers in Christ reading their nonsense and perhaps, thereby, being deterred from following or continuing to follow Christ because of their hurtful arguments.]

But the more important lesson here is that one person can be a cause of another's sinning. In an age which was prone to ascribe all bad things to "demons" and "spirits", Christ gives a stern warning: we can cause evil results in others' lives.

But your question presumes that we are free to legalistically restrict the warning to its narrowest possible application, i.e. that our actions can cause others to sin, but not sufficient sin to cause them to withdraw from following Christ. Yet there is no textual support for such a restriction.

Ans since sin (willful violation of known moral law) and salvation (the gift of God resulting from a (willful and ongoing) belief in Jesus Christ) reflect the basic nature of our relationship to God, there is no reason to apply a limitation on human capacity to cause evil -- or upon Christ's warning to us about its consequences.

Moreover, I think it is dangerous (and only concurrent with the beliefs of our legalistic Calvinist brethren) to limit every injunction of Christ to the express terms of the example given on the premise that "if He had intended to apply the injunction to other circumstances, He would have given us those." Without trying to be pejorative, that was one of the modes of reasoning of the Pharisees: that which is not express forbidden is permissive.

So, the precise answer to your first question is "no", there is no reason to believe that Christ had to provide all possible applications of the injunction to beware of "interferring" with the Christian life of others.

As to the second question of "what makes (sic) one will to come to Christ and not another?", your questions presumes a "compelled" will (a distinctly Calvinist fallacy) and is therefore self-contradictory as phrased. One can only be said to exercise a "will" if it is free of compulsion.

But the resulting question, "why does one, in the exercise of free will, choose Christ and another, in the exercise of a similarly free will, does not?", is, in my view, unaswerable from the human perspective.

Certainly, we can discuss the "pleasures of sin", the almost gravitational 'attraction' which we feel toward sin, which the Bible tells us is somehow the result of the fall of Adam. But how it actually works, and the nature and quantum of 'pull' it exerts, is so essentially of the nature of God's omnisicience that we cannot (and frankly need not) know.

We do know, however, that God is not arbitrary or unfair and that He provides "sufficient" grace (going-before or pre-venient grace) to insure that all have the capability to choose belief in Christ. [Of course, the provision of that pre-venient grace assures that we have no reason for pride or self-satisfaction that we have 'achieved' anything of our own strnegth.] And yet because God loves us so much He sent His Son to die for (all of) us, He desires that we will to believe in His Son. That decision makes all the difference. And, should we choose not to believe in Christ (call it the world, sin, whatever you like) no one is responsible for our fate but us.

Having said that, all the fooolish claims of some on these threads that "only they" know "how" we come to believe, etc, is just so much prideful preening that they can recite some construct of a long dead writer. It has, of course, the same kind of appeal as the 'secret lodge' with the 'secret handshake' and the 'secret password.' It is a nature human condition to want to assert our superiority over our fellow men because we "know" something they don't know. But, of course, just making such foolish claims doesn't make it so.

Paul had to wean the Ephesians of their deisre to parade their "knowledge" of the "mysteries" of the pagan mystery religions. The appeal of such "only my group knows the true secret" didn't start with the Calvinists or the pre-trib rapturites. It is as old as human nature -- indeed as old as sin.