I will pretend for a minute that I an a Calvinist

Because he doesn't know. I've believed in God as long as I can remember and I don't know why except that God did it.

 

Pat answers = concise answers that others can't face.

 

I was speaking in terms of man-centered convincing. When God convinces, no one can resist! Welcome to the ranks of Calvinism...

 

No one should think they can't that is what is important that they do turn to God to save them through Jesus Christ. It doesn't matter how but they do.

That person knows and maybe we can do a survey to find out, that is the only way to know is to ask the people who rejected Him.

 

I'm just wondering when we stopped trusting GOD (GOD!) for our salvation so much that we require our own effort to assist Him in His ultimate divine judgment?

 

They all say the same thing.

I just don't believe all that stuff.

The bible is just a man made book.

Not everything is black and white like you say.

I think if you're good, you'll go to heaven.

I don't even believe in God.

I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

If you can prove God exists, then I'll believe.

I wish I could feel what you feel, but I just don't.

Well, everybody sees it differently. You don't know that you're right.

 

AMEN!

There is a teenager who came from a tough home life who attended the Village church for a while in the Dallas area where he learned reformed doctrine (Matt Chandler). I counseled with him and his fear was that he wasn't elect because of all his addictions and history of problems. He was just convinced that God would never choose him.

I explained to him that even if he accepts Reformed theology that the election was UNCONDITIONAL and NOT based on his sin. But he said he understood that. What he meant is that because he couldn't stop his sin he just didn't believe he has been regenerated. He doesn't think God wants him. It makes me wonder how many people in a similar situation walk away from reformed churches thinking they are one of the many out there that God doesn't really love?

 

That he is even asking the questions presents to me that God is already at work drawing him. It is the ones who simply turn and die that are not elect -- or not yet.

 

I actually told him almost that exact same thing. He is just hurting and caught in some serious addictions. The last thing he needs running through his brain right now is "God hates me." He actually said to me, "Maybe I'm just another Esau."

 

Hebrews 3:
Warning Against Unbelief
7 So, as the Holy Spirit says:

“Today, if you hear his voice,
8 do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion,
during the time of testing in the wilderness,
9 where your ancestors tested and tried me,
though for forty years they saw what I did.
10 That is why I was angry with that generation;
I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray,
and they have not known my ways.’
11 So I declared on oath in my anger,
‘They shall never enter my rest.’ ”[Psalm 95:7-11]

12 See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. 14 We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end. 15 As has just been said:

“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion.”[Psalm 95:7,8]

16 Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? 17 And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? 19 So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.

I want everyone to have the same hope I have and doubt is a bad place to be and I don't want anyone to believe there is no hope even those who are an enmity to God, because I have been there.

All I have is His word and that is all I need. I just can't doubt His word.

Ezekiel 3:
18 When I say to a wicked person, ‘You will surely die,’ and you do not warn them or speak out to dissuade them from their evil ways in order to save their life, that wicked person will die for[Or in; also in verses 19 and 20] their sin, and I will hold you accountable for their blood. 19 But if you do warn the wicked person and they do not turn from their wickedness or from their evil ways, they will die for their sin; but you will have saved yourself.

James 5:20
remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins.

 

Imagine his joy when God breaks through and convinces him otherwise! This young man is under classical conviction, and you seem to wish to talk him out of it.

 

Invalid equation....Null Set....No solution.

The left side is not in all ways identical to the right side and furthermore no equivalence relation has been established.

 

All this squabling, infigthing, and back biting that goes on in the seemingly endless arguments on this board about Election vs Free Will !

This topic has torn the Baptist church apart in the past, and is doing so again today.

Yet, for most of three hundred years, these seemingly opposite theological views existed peacefully within the Baptist church.

Instead of carrying the message of the Gospel, as we are commanded to do, we have this endless argument going on over something, that no matter which veiw you believe, has nothing whatsoever to do with salvation, nor the Gospel message.

"Jacob and Esau." One would do well to study Romans 9, without the blinders on.

I aslo encourage you to read Charles Spurgeon's Sermon # 239 concerning "Jacob and Esau".

Spurgeon was a Calvinst, if ever there was one, however he did not take it to the extremes I see all over this board.

He understood something pertaining to this topic that is exactly what allowed both doctrines to exist peacefully side by side in the Baptist Church for most of the last three centuries, except for periods here and there when the "Old Controversy" sprang back up, as it has done nowadays.

Spurgeon, understood, that BOTH of these doctrines are in scripture.

He understood that if they are BOTH in scripture, they BOTH are truth.

He understood that if such a thing is hard to understand, it is man's failing to understand it.

His sermon from a January morning in 1859 clearly deals with this, and very eloquently shows why these two views "are old friends".

It is from the very fallen nature of man that any one of us wants to claim to "know" more than another, and in arguments of this kind that fallen nature leads to sinful arogance in such an extreme we have people, all professing to be Christains, who spend their time aruging over the very nature of God.

As if man has the capacity to even come close to a full understanding the nature of Almighty God!

Anything at all that takes a "Christian" down such a road, is a total distraction of purpose.

More interested in arguments over nonsense with other believers, than being interested in spreading the Gospel of the Lord.

The work of the adversary is no more than that.

 

In the words of a well known BB member who I like and respect (but almost always am in some type of disagreement with)

"Fiddlesticks"

 

Your own thread would be the perfect fit for your signature...

 

It gives God glory is to believe Him and His word. Without faith it is impossible to please God and faith without deeds is dead and without love makes me nothing

I praise God that I can love my enemies as God does by given them their only hope Jesus. To have no doubt in God's word that He does love them that He sent His Son.

God loved the world that He sent His Son, praise Jesus.

If you want me to lean on my own understanding I will not. Go ahead and say what you want I pray to God that He will keep my heart soft and care for those who can't care for themselves and give them a hope that only Jesus can give.

They can come to Jesus.

 

Take heart Psalms, only some believe you are in any way attempting to glorify yourself. Most reasonably thinking folks know differently. Blessings to you.

 

Someone with a similar objection, once said that if he thought the same way in which Charles Spurgeon did, in regards to unconditional election, he wouldn’t bother to preach the gospel.

Spurgeon replied by saying,

:applause:

 

Precisely...

Like (I tried) to say above, Calvinists DO follow the Scriptures and we DO preach the gospel and we ARE active in mission work, and we CAN be compassionate, even when others cast dobts, aspersions, and pejoratives onto us because of their stereotypes and strawman arguments.