Note: this topic is from 12/25/2015. Thanks Arthur McGowan.
Posted on 12/25/2015 2:41:05 PM PST by Arthur McGowan
Proof of when the Star of Bethlehem happened and how...
No way to start the New Year...
Ouch!
So . . .
Jesus' actions in John 6--letting his followers abandon him precisely because they took his words literally--demonstrate that Jesus' words in John 6 were and are intended to be taken literally: He promises to give his flesh as food to be eaten and his blood as drink to be drunk.
Your statement is not a correct interpretation of the passage nor of the transactions in the context, Arthur.
How is it that you cannot realize that:
(1) only the hearers who were not spiritually discerning, who did not understand His words, who believed Jesus to be speaking literally and not figuratively, were the disbelieving ones who left, walked no more with Him, and were still on the path to eternal damnation;
(2) only the hearers who had accepted His teachings, were trained to understand parables, believed Jesus to be speaking in the figurative-literal sense, and were the only ones to remain with Him, being on the path to eternal security; and
(3) only one hearer who understood both methods of speaking, who continued to choose eternal damnation from before the beginning of being invited by Jesus as a member of The Company, though constantly secretly rejecting Jesus' words of life, remained behind with the eleven other believers?
Huh?
Do you get this?
And in which class does that put your line of thinking, Arthur? Hmm? With sincere concern . . .
Perchance the solution is that it takes two “yes” votes to elect? Not just one?
Also, that there is usually no “no” vote on His part, for nothing need ever be done for someone to perish. We are not told, for example, that all things work to the harm of those who can’t seem to love Him and likewise of all humanity it was only said, in so far as scripture is concerned, of just one man, Judas Iscariot, that it would have been better for him to have not been born.
Rather, we find all His effort on the side of rescuing the elect, through His providence and, yes, outright in-your-face efforts (Paul cannot be the only one).
I think that people, in fantasizing about things like human “goodness”, may be utterly underselling the sheer effort it takes to redeem anyone. Not just the Cross but every struggle in every life so that we should finally come to agree with Him, His will, in our wills: to relent, repent and be washed. To vote “yes”.
Salvation is heroic effort. Nothing less. It is making the blind to see and the deaf to hear ... often when they were perfectly content to remain blind or deaf but that He broke through to them.
The saints are so often like post turtles who confuse our struggles with actual climbing, but we never put ourselves where we find ourselves even if our little legs do flail a bit.
If you look at what Paul said to them, and understand something of who those Greeks were as he no doubt did, I think you’ll find he applied more than pagan ideas.
Realize that those of the Areopagus were disciples of the philosophers, the grammarians, and that long before their mentors had struggled against and vanquished a competing class of teachers of wisdom called the Sophists. Now the Sophists had in mind that a person could actually know what it is to be Man, a kind of wisdom they called Sophia.
One of the protest that the philosophers raised against men being able to know for sure what it was to be Man was sensibly the perceived difficulty that any man, still alive, could know for sure if the soul of man was immortal or not. Now, don’t get me wrong: men like Socrates did make arguments as to why it was reasonable to believe that the soul was immortal but that isn’t actually knowing that it is, and if you don’t know that how could you claim that you knew Sophia?
They simply resigned themselves that there would be, or could be, no compelling or binding evidence on this side of the veil to say that souls do endure.
But Paul preached to them the resurrection of the dead, not just mere resuscitation, which is precisely the evidence they thought they’d never hear!
So what could they do? Well, some mocked ... maybe something along the line of “Hey, we’ve got an actual Sophist here!” ... but others were interested to hear more about this new evidence.
Yes, certain additional information was needed to bridge the gap. But what I mean is that Paul respected the approach that had been made. The bridging information was given as “I declare to you.” It was an assertion of faith. But he didn’t do that with what they already knew.
The more I’ve lived in this faith, the more it looks to me like a gracious God has put the onus of refusal utterly on humanity. The timing of the work of salvation “as seen in this mortal coil” does not come instantly upon the acceptance; that is why it is true when Paul says in Romans that it depends not on the man who wills or runs, but on the Lord who has mercy. The years of time are a miniature stage upon which the drama of the Lord’s work plays out and the work of mercy can be seen to have its fruit. I can certainly vouch for that from experience. But the “promise” does come instantly. That is consistent with Jesus’ “whosoever will.”
Anyhow, perspective probably explains everything that needs to be explained about the biblical paradoxes of destiny/election vs. choice. The Lord has access to perspectives or “angles” that transcend what we see in this world. Trying to mix the perspectives in discussion only reduces the discussion to nonsense, and we need to get a fix upon what perspective is intended when making out a scripture verse (and the Holy Spirit does that without need for human philosophizing, but some people don’t get the point and sound off anyhow as though they had, leading to pointless discord).
I interpret the words of Jesus ("The man who eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, will have eternal life...") to mean "The man who eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, will have eternal life..."
I interpret the words of Jesus ("My flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink...") to mean "My flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink..."
I interpret the words of Jesus ("This is my body...This is the chalice of my blood...") to mean "This is my body...This is the chalice of my blood...")
...And you are a sheep and live in a pasture?
Jesus expected us to use reasonable sense and to understand that He was saying that we must take His flesh and blood into ourselves spiritually in order to be saved. Not that we should literally drink blood and eat flesh and certainly not that we should worship any material thing turning it into an idol. And by the way, even though Jesus said that He is the bread of life He isn't a slice of bread.
You are ignoring the fact that in the course of the discourse in John Six, most of the crowd abandoned Jesus precisely because they took his words literally, and were horrified, and he did not call them back to explain that he was using a metaphor.
If your theory that the language about his body and blood was metaphorical is true, then Jesus was a lousy preacher. In fact, he was a DECEPTIVE preacher. By his inept preaching, he drove people away from himself, and thus to damnation.
So what happens to those who die quickly and young who haven’t the time and experience to well consider salvation? What happens to the hoards of peoples who never have heard the Gospel? It has to be God who chooses for His own purposes as spelled out in Bible repeatedly. The dead cannot choose to live but must be revived by something outside of themselves. The carnal mind, which is all that an unregenerated soul has, is an enemy to God. People cannot understand nor accept that God has the right to choose to save for His purposes those whom He decides upon. All rightfully deserve to burn forever in hell, that some are pulled out of the fire doesn’t make it unjust that the rest burn forever. It is to the praise of the glory of His grace that by no effort of my own, not even my own choosing, that I will spend eternity in His glorious presence. Forever and ever I will never be able to claim any reason to boast of my own merits. It is all Him.
I suggest that you reread John 6. Jesus answers their concerns about what He said. He repeats that only God can save and choose. This is a huge contention today. People cannot accept that it is God who does the choosing, not man. They think that this makes God unjust. Read the whole chapter again without prejudice. The people that left Jesus He already determined to be unbelievers who would not believe. They followed Him because they thought they could get fed food for nothing.
John 6:26 Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled.
35 And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.
John 6:36 But I said unto you, That ye also have seen me, and believe not.
Jesus plainly taught that it was by coming to Him and believing that one was saved. It wasn’t by anything else at all.
40 And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.
John47 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.
Again I ask you by the mercies of God to reread John 6 without prejudice.
If God wants the offer of choice to be part of His glory who are you to deny Him that? And the bible is clear throughout that in fact, it is.
Just because we do not understand all dimensions involved, does not negate its scripturally backed reality. We do not get to reduce God’s work to our dimensions. Certainly we can always count on God’s work to never be SMALLER than our dimensions.
Put that in your judgment-happy pipe and smoke it.
Au contraire! You can’t accept the gifts that God bestows! Even on the lost.
I ask you to re-read John 6 without prejudice. Jesus plainly teaches that he intends to give us his flesh as food, and his blood as drink.
He was perfectly capable of telling us to have faith, to believe, to have trust, etc., without talking about munching and chewing on his flesh, and drinking his blood.
He was capable of telling us that he intended to give us eternal life, without telling us that we must eat his flesh and drink his blood in order to have eternal life.
Note: this topic is from 12/25/2015. Thanks Arthur McGowan.
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