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To: White Mountain; OrthodoxPresbyterian; la$tminutepardon
Total Depravity is false.

In your present state, you are not qualified to discuss any issue of doctrine with us. You worship false gods. Until you repent of this, you will not be qualified to discuss doctrine with us.

399 posted on 02/28/2002 5:19:08 AM PST by CCWoody
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To: CCWoody; WhiteMountain; xzins
Until you repent of this, you will not be qualified to discuss doctrine with us.

TRANSLATION: We will not soil our hands by discussing the plan of salvation with the unsaved.

400 posted on 02/28/2002 5:27:26 AM PST by Ward Smythe
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To: CCWoody
Total Depravity is false.

All the little children possess the light and like good fairies they will sprinkle you with that light, but you have to believe! Clap your hands real hard now, and go Tinkerbell! Tinkerbell!

572 posted on 02/28/2002 12:28:48 PM PST by la$tminutepardon
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To: CCWoody
Your #399: you are not qualified to discuss any issue of doctrine with us.

Says who? This is what you say when you do not have an answer to my post.

Free will, God-given, properly defined, and as commonly understood, is not that hard a concept to grasp, Woody. It is interwoven all through the Bible. But the theological debates you conduct are divorced so much from common sense and your everyday experience that apparently you must be led by the hand to re-experience the world you live in.

When was the last time you purchased something at a store? Was it cash, credit card, or debit card? You had a choice, Woody. You could choose the right and pay for it, or choose evil and attempt to shoplift it. All shoplifters will be held accountable before the bar of God, if not before an earthly judge.

But think, Woody, how many of those you unjustly consider unregenerate and going to hell make the right choice every day and pay for the things they shop for! They can choose to do the right thing, and you can stand in the checkout area and watch them! You see them blessing the lives of others, praying for others, making Christ the center of their lives, seeking to do His will, accepting Him as their Savior!

Yet you figure out some way to consider them unsaved and going to hell, substituting your own reqirements for salvation for the Biblical ones. That reflects more on you than on them.

Think of all the righteous choices all around you that you must ignore to consider them Totally Depraved and incapable of righteous Wants, choosing only evil continually. You have to blind yourself to your daily experience.

There are people who are steeped in evil. The Bible talks about them. Yet even these can turn and repent and begin to look to God and live. See Jeremiah 18. See the book of Jonah.

To agree to a doctrine like Total Depravity one must believe that all people before they are born again are so evil that they cannot choose the right, cannot seek or ask of God, or exercise faith in Christ. That is contradicted by your everyday experience, and causes me to wonder if you have been born again, since you apparently cannot see the obvious. The mistake of Calvinism as presented here is in making your own private Biblical interpretation, not having authority, and then driving it to extremes.

Unconditional Election is similarly a denial of all free-will efforts to repent and improve by those who are not yet born again. The god you propose ignores all such efforts, or is in denial that there are any such efforts.

Limited Atonement also denies free will. If you have not been "chosen" you cannot repent and must unavoidably go to hell. This is false. Our Savior has redeemed all from the Fall of Adam, including little children, and has redeemed us from individual sins on condition of repentance.

Irresistible Grace also denies free will, the freedom to refuse God's grace. The grace to repent, or ability to repent, is extended by God to all, but many refuse because they love their sins more than God.

Perserverance of the Saints also denies free will, claiming that once born again you cannot return like the sow to her wallowing in the mire. The apostles were speaking out against apostasy throughout the New Testament.

Calvinist predestination denies free will the most blatantly, claiming that the god you propose predetermined all choices, both good and bad, denying free will to everyone, and becoming the author of both good and evil. This is false. God is not the author of evil. God has given us all the freedom to choose between good and evil, and holds us accountable for our choices in our stewardship here on earth.

Free will, properly understood, and a proper understanding of the nature of God, is the antidote for all these false doctrines.

808 posted on 03/01/2002 2:00:27 AM PST by White Mountain
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