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To: MarkBsnr
"...but not voluntary in the strict sense of free will that man deliberately chooses specific actions freely?"

Let me answer your question by asking you a question; what choice do you think that man, as a free agent capable of choosing specific actions would make if given the choice of heaven or hell? Put another way, if God lined everyone up in the Garden of Eden and told each person, "Don't eat the fruit.", do you think there would be some in the crowd that would heed what God said? Do you think that you are far more capable of making a better decision than Adam who was perfect man? Yet that is what you are saying.

It's the way in which we have been created. We will all take that fruit because we want it. Adam was perfect but we can get down on him. We would make the exact same choice. 100% of the time.

8,036 posted on 10/03/2007 8:58:33 AM PDT by HarleyD
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To: HarleyD

In other words, you’re ducking the question as to the level that God controls each individual.

Okay, let’s take the Adam scenario. The Cherub called Lucifer tempted Eve and Adam to eat of the forbidden fruit. Until that temptation occurred, did either Adam or Eve have inclination towards disobeying God? Nope.

It wasn’t until the serpent brought that temptation forward that Eve, then Adam disobeyed God. The serpent persuaded Eve, who then persuaded Adam. If the temptation was not there, we have no evidence that Adam and Eve would have disobeyed whatsoever.

The father of all lawyers persuaded Eve. He didn’t frogmarch her over and make her eat. He didn’t program a robot slave. He was smooth and slick and influenced her to make up her own mind. So she did. Now did she know the extent of what would happen after she did what she did? Not really. Did she know that: Gen 3:

16
To the woman he said: “I will intensify the pangs of your childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children. Yet your urge shall be for your husband, and he shall be your master.”
17
To the man he said: “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat, “Cursed be the ground because of you! In toil shall you eat its yield all the days of your life.
18
Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you, as you eat of the plants of the field.
19
By the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat, Until you return to the ground, from which you were taken; For you are dirt, and to dirt you shall return.”

She didn’t know that she chose hell. The difference is that we do know, we Christians. We do know that God reaches out with His Grace and we do know that if we repulse it, then we choose hell as well as Eve. We do know the difference between good and evil because it passes to us from Adam and Eve.

And, faced with a choice between heaven and hell, with God in His Heaven on one side and satan and his angels in everlasting fire on the other, most people are going to choose God.

It is a ridiculous notion that God chooses people to go to hell and adjusts their mindset so that they like it. The descriptions of hell are the worst possible descriptions of any environment that the early Jews could think up. Hell is NASTY. It is TERRIBLE. It is everlasting agony beyond description for all eternity.

Now what exactly it is, or where it is, or anything along those lines - does it really matter? No. All we need to understand is how utterly impossibly terrible it is. We need God’s Grace to understand the difference between them, as well as the understanding that our actions and choices lead us along the Via, the Way, the Journey. The Reformed contention that God’s Grace is necessary is absolutely true. It is.

But it doesn’t stop there. We suffer the consequences of what we DO. And don’t do. Salvation is not a bottomless drink glass that we get as a door prize, or a debit card that never runs out no matter how much we sin.

Jesus said that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. He doesn’t say that He drives the bus to Heaven. He walks beside us. But we have to walk.


8,039 posted on 10/03/2007 9:43:33 AM PDT by MarkBsnr (V. Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae. R. Et concepit de Spiritu Sancto.)
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