Featured A Passage In Which Many Calvinists Struggle

“Salvation: If it’s force upon me, what else can I be?”

Now that is mindset of fallen carnal man who doesn’t have saving faith but they are so deceived by the Determinists system in the heart and their resentments that they think they have an excuse to not have to make a choice.

 

How about God giving you a new WANT TO and thus it is INTERNAL COERSION by your own Spirit empowered new heart which loves what God loves and hates what God's hate as it is created in "rightousenss and true holiness" (Col. 3:10; Eph. 4:24) after the image of God. God gives you ANOTHER heart which is a WILLING Heart while you still have the old fallen nature which is NEVER WILLING (Rom. 7:18; 8:7).


Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth. - Psa. 110:3

"For it is God that worketh in you both TO WILL and to do of His good pleasure" - Philip. 2:13 Have any complaints about God doing this in you?

 

How about a belief that God got His plan right the first time from creation where He designed creatures to have human freedom and you preach your way and I’ll preach the Way of true Light (John 1:9, 1John 1:5,6).

Simply, unlike the Determinists, I don’t deny the power of God’s loving influences (His work) upon on all His divinely designed volitional creatures. Thereby, all the glory is His for every one of His creatures that come in faith, He gets all the credit for their changed heart because it becomes new through volitional faith in Christ.

To suggest that God would have to recreate His creatures and replace their heart before they can believe is simply a denial of the power of His influences to be effective on volitional creatures. God’s creational design of His creatures was perfect to begin with and His judgment of their responses to His genuine influences will be just and true for that is HIS way set forth from creation.

Deu 32:4
(4) He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.

That is the Rock I stand on, no shame:

Rom 1:16-22
(16) For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
(17) For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.
(18) For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;
(19) Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
(20) For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
(21) Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
(22) Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

You go on in your “wisdom” and pride of your manmade Determinists system which claims man has no genuine ability to respond to the call of God and the influences of Him on their own as He originally designed from creation to have human freedom! Distort the promises of our loving God to be only to a specially pre-selected few! Proof-text your TULIP system using half-truths and in all your enthusiasm while declaring there is no real hope for most in the world apart from being one of the lucky ones that God will have to forcefully go back and fix the hearts of his pre-selected creatures …and go on about continuing to preach your dark message in the world that this is the Good News Jesus died to bring into the world.

When God finished creating the world He said it was “very good” (Gen 1:31) the Determinists say He pre-ordained most in it to be evil.

Jesus said, “come onto Me” you say God’s creation of me was to make me completely evil and I can’t come to Him unless He forces me to through recreation of me.

The Determinist doesn’t want to be obedient, just like Adam and Eve, having human freedom they wanted to be as God, they freely chose to have knowledge of good and evil and thought they would be wise but in ot found shame, but God being Gracious said, now man must put forth his hand and take of the tree of life (Gen 3:23) but the Determinist is too proud to obey in his human freedom and tries to make the excuse he wasn’t made to understand and that God’s Word says he has no choice. Wrong: (Rom 1:20)

The Determinists’ claims remind me of the serpent in Genesis telling Eve she can be as God, she doesn’t now have to choose life. But this time it is you are already like God and you're free to not have to make a choice.

The Determinist isn’t thankful for how he was made (Rom 1:21) he doesn’t glorify God as Only Good, he resents having to give up on being as his own god. He doesn’t appreciate his God given human freedom, he denies that he acquired the knowledge of good and evil so that he could know true Good (God) when he sees it, He claims God didn’t give him the free ability to take His hand. He says his design was only evil. The Determinist wants to so free as to be as a god, like Adam and Eve, that he won’t call the ability to choose the Only true Good available to him a free choice, He calls it a forced choice! He doesn’t like the way he was made and repliest against God: (Rom 9:20) He doesn’t like God having the power to judge his response which must be to die one’s self will and choose God (Rom 9:21) He denies God is longsuffering in Goodness to wait on his free response (Rom 9:22, 2Pet 3:9)

 

Biblicist,

Benjamin posts this verse often ...he uses it like a lucky charm and ascribes an almost mystical meaning to it;;;

He will use it to justify his philosophical claims .....just like his recent eph 1:13 rant where he ignores verse 3-11...lol....You have seen it clearly already!

he then claims that this{benjamins explanation} is the Divine order of salvation, rather then all the other verses that say otherwise.

 

:godisgood:

One of the most blessed scriptural rebuttals to damn the false doctrines of Determinists there is IMO.

 

Sure that is why you post it all the time.It is a great section of scripture although it has nothing to do with what you ascribe to it.
that however is why you like it so much....

You assign a meaning to it independent of what the scripture does.Like in Jr.High when the english teacher asked...Benjamin ,...what do these words mean to you?

Hey Benjamin...why not re-read the greek lesson offered to you before which you dismissed as gymnastics???? It was biblical truth coming your way and you rejected it without a proper reading of it:wavey::wavey:

 

Deut. 5:29 O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever!

Deut. 29:4 Yet the LORD hath not given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day.

Ezek. 36:26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.
27 And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.

In all the above scriptures he is addressing the same people - Israel - and in every text it either explicitly states or necessarily infers they do not possess a heart that can obey God and that God must give such a heart and when God does give such a heart it is the "cause" for their obedience.

Jesus repeatedly and plainly states that the heart from the first birth or old nature is wicked and what flows from it is evil (Mt. 15:19) and that first one must make the tree good BEFORE the fruit (works) can be good.

Your soteriology denies this as you not merely assume but clearly and necessarily infer that the old heart/depraved nature is able to produce good fruit of faith and obedience to God with just a little help. The Bible flatly denies that and the above scriptures (and many more) prove that.

You have no scriptures that declare that the depraved human heart/nature can or will cooperate with the Holy Spirit in gospel conversion without a creatie act by God that CHANGES the heart or gives a NEW heart.

Note carefully that Romans 1:1-15 refers to the saved at Rome. Romans 1:16-31 deal with the unregenerated. Particular note verse 18 the reaction of the unregenerate condition to the truth - they "hold the truth" - the Greek term translated "hold" means to SUPPRESS and thus RESIST.

The differrence between those in verses 16-17 and those in verse 18 is NOT THE TRUTH. Those in verse 18 SUPPRESS the truth. The difference is "the power of God." The gospel does not always come in 'power" but more often it comes in "word only" (1 Thes. 1:4-5). When it comes "in power" it comes in CREATIVE POWER (2 Cor. 4:6) as in Genesis 1:3 when God spoke by command light into existence. That is how faith comes, by the word of command (Gr. Rhema - Rom. 10:17) not by simply the word (Gr. logos).

That is why ALL those who are "called" in Romans 8:30 were also predestinated, foreknown, justified and glorified because it was an effectual call by the power of the Holy Spirit through the gospel (1 Pet. 1:23,25; James 1:18) whereby the law was written on their heart (2 Cor 3:3) producing a new heart, a new inward man which is a believing new heart, beleiving inward man and it is with this new heart man believeth (Rom. 10:8).

You are obviously ignorant of the differnces between "calvinists." You are speaking about a superlapsarin Calvinist that believes God elected people to hell as much as to heaven. Sorry, I am not one of those types so save the rhetoric for those who are. I believe election "to savlation" presupposes the fall and thus God rightly said "very good" when he looked over the works of his hands as a sinless creation. However, God was not ignorant that the fall would occur and purposed to redeem an innumberable people in spite of willful sin and resistance to him in the fall and after the fall by all mankind.

What you cannot understand is that God is equally glorified by His justice as he is by his mercy. He did not have to elect anyone to hell because that was the choice in the fall and the continued free choice of the fallen nature (Rom. 8:7-8). He did not come to condemn man as they were condemned "already" (Jn. 3:18). Fallen man hates the light and will not come to the light and all who do, do so because of God's power working in them "to will and to do of His good pleasure" by internal coersion from their own new heart.

He does not invite all to come to him. He invites only those who are "heavy laden" and "burdened" with sin to come to him. He did not come to save the righteous but sinners.

Oh boy how hilarious!!! The fact is just the opposite, just read Ezek. 36:27 and note the word "cause"! Obedience can only be achieved through a new heart as the old heart is only and always defiant. Obedience can only be obtained by God working in you "both to will and to do of His good pleasure" as there is no will power in the flesh before or after regeneration (Rom. 7:18; Jn. 15:5 "without me ye can do NOTHING."

You really don't understand too much do you? Eve was prefallen at this point not a fallen creature. Prior to the fall she was not encumbered by a fallen nature and her power of choice was not in bondage to sin. So poor analogy.

I have no doubt you are a very sincere fella, but you don't have a very good grasp of Scripture and you simply don't understand what you are talking about. You obviously do not understand the differences between Calvinists as you confuse one with the other by your arguments. I do understand there is equally a wide difference between Arminians as well, just as wide as between Calvinists.

 

Dearest Doctor Ache,

For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us.

For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for you Gentiles- if indeed you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to me for you, how that by revelation He made known to me the mystery (as I have briefly written already, by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ), which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets: that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ through the gospel, of which I became a minister according to the gift of the grace of God given to me by the effective working of His power.

We, regenerate elect Gentiles, know that we are heirs of the promises just as elect Jews are. We are now one people.

 

Have you ever read Heb. 4:2? Or Acts 10:43? Or the precross Johnn 14:6 or the post cross Acts 4:12? Apparently not? Man has always had the same sinful condition and God has always had the same remedy - the same gospel (Heb. 4:2) for pre and post cross sinners. The same Savior for pre and post cross Sinners and the absolute proof is that Abraham is the example for both - justificaiton by faith without works.

Do you know that "Messiah" is the Hebrew equivilent to the Greek "Christ" and that all the pre-cross saints were believers in Messiah - Acts 10:43 and therefore "Christians" or "Messianics"????

Do you know the Law was NEVER given to save, redeem, justifiy, sanctify or obtain eternal life but only to reveal the knowledge of sin and righteousness???

You obviously do not understand the difference between the old and new covenants in regard to PUBLIC ADMINISTRATIONS rather than "old" versus "new" covenant salvation distinctions - as there is no such distinction as the same gospel, same savior, same justification by faith in Christ is from Genesis to REvelation as there is no other name given to men under heaven, no other gospel, no other Savior, no other salvation. They looked forward by faith and we look back but the same faith, the same justification, the same regeneration before the cross (Jn. 3) as aftwards but before it is called "circumcison of the heart" and "quickened" and "born again" but after it is called regeneration, quidkend, new creation, etc.

So the passages in Deuteronomy and Ezekiel speak of the same salvation experience of sinners then as now and the absolute proof is that such passages as Jeremiah 31:34 are quoted in hebrew 8 and 10 as the same new covenant salvation we are saved under.

You need to learn the basics before you start trying to correct someone else.

 

Oops, Dr. Ache, you took that passage out of context too. The elect obey... because it is the fruit of God’s election.

We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers, remembering without ceasing your work of faith, labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of our God and Father, knowing, beloved brethren, your election by God. For our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit and in much assurance, as you know what kind of men we were among you for your sake. And you became followers of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became examples to all in Macedonia and Achaia who believe. For from you the word of the Lord has sounded forth, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place. Your faith toward God has gone out, so that we do not need to say anything. For they themselves declare concerning us what manner of entry we had to you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.

You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you.

 

In the very next reply:

It appears we need to start with the basic here. You are obviously ignorant of simple logical principles that draw conclusions upon that something cannot be true and not true at the same time.

Let me put it this way: People (even Calvinist) who are using double talk, talking out both sides of your mouth, trying to have it both ways, are either ignorantly or disingenuously avoiding coming to conclusions that are damaging to their argument, which is it?

Let’s try a another one:

Either the Gospel has the power to draw all men, some men or no men. Once you pick one of those you can’t change your next premise to be another and still come to a “true” conclusion from those two premises. Discerning the truth or not about what the opponent is arguing can really be that simple.

As well, I have no doubt you’re trying to appear as a very sincere fella, but you don’t have a very good grasp of scripture if you’re trying to draw conclusions after force fitting systematic interpretations from those scriptures that can easily be demonstrated to be said to be both true and not true and you simply can’t understand what you are talking about if you continually demonstrate that you fail to recognize these simple principles. You obviously do not understand the differences…

Let’s take a look at a few more simple arguments that you seem to be having problems with:

God cannot require faith from “your” heart if “your” heart needs to be replaced with “another” heart before it can have faith. You see, that would mean God, which we should be able to agree on that He is Truth, would be requiring something (faith) that is not possible for one to do, or IOWs God’s requirement would be false. God cannot be both True and false. Get it?

God cannot judge someone, or "anyone" in truth if that person cannot be held responsible for their own actions in truth. So, if God pre-determined someone, anyone, by design from before creation to choose a certain way then His judgment of “their” would really be the judgment of “His” actions. That would not be true and righteous judgment, but God IS Truth!

See, truth needs to be maintained if God is to be maintained as Truth. Otherwise…well, we shouldn’t have to go there…but there’s this little thing called “theological fatalism” that has to do with not maintaining God as Truth.

Same thing goes when you can’t maintain in an argument that God’s being is Only Good; you see if something evil comes out of something that is said to be “Only Good”, such as when He creates something which one concludes that He has deterministic sovereign control over through some funny business with proof-texting it still doesn’t make it true that something evil can come out of something that is Only Good. See how that “theological fatalism” works???

See, the problem that you Calvinist have in saying this ALL THE TIME is that you’re all in the same camp of being too wrapped up in a manmade system in which all points (TULIP) vitally hinge on "Determinism" if they were to come to a logically “true” a conclusion. So what you Calvinist do is go through the Bible looking for half-truths that you say prove the “truth” of Deterministic Sovereign Control.

You boys love to proof-text and say, “look the scripture says blah, blah, blah, and you don’t have a choice” while being all excited and stuff to show others how wise you are in “fitting” it all together with your manmade system. BTW, you guys like to say you “only” use scriptures, but did you know that the Devil uses that type of persuasion too...and he was a liar and not the truth???

Anyway, you should have listened to you friend Dr. Rogers when he said:

“If you take part of the truth, and try to make that part of the truth, all of the truth, then that part of the truth becomes an untruth.” ~ Adrian Rogers



Once more, because I know having to maintain a “truth” must be confusing to you, but when you use scripture like, “Jn. 15:5 "without me ye can do NOTHING." (one of my first 100 verses committed to memory BTW) you assume that to support your systematic view of Deterministic sovereignty which still leads to the aforementioned non-truth problem you have. Further, you assume my position cannot allow for doing nothing without Christ, but we don’t deny that we need the influences of Christ to do anything but rather than force fitting Determinism into it we might call it something like God’s “Providential Sovereign Control” whereby He maintains “true” judgment, and we maintain true responsibility (Rom 1:20 spells this out clearly), and all that maintains that God is Only Good in “everything” He does AND all this maintains the logical truth, example: T + T = T.

So, you see, I do understand your Calvinist system very well and over and over and over again I witness you guys trying to proof-text that, T + F = T, (let’s call that double talk for simplicity because I know how you guys stereotypically struggle with that logical conclusion stuff.) but since I know God IS Truth and thereby can Only be True I know that all the obvious simple conclusions you guys come to that that turn out to “really” be “false” are just that = non-truth.

What YOU don’t seem to understand is that my theology also believes that God is Omnipotent, Omniscient, ...and the one you guys seem to conveniently forget... “Omnibenevolent” as well as “Truth” and THETEFORE it is VERY important to maintain ALL of His Divine attributes in TRUTH!


Finally, the bottom line is NOT making the Determinist system fit when interpreting the scriptures. You always got to come to the Truth when interpreting scriptures or you “should” see something is wrong, unless maybe you don’t think is wrong to try to make a non-truth or a half-truth, a Truth. But we won’t go into what lies are, who uses them, and why, for now…

Keep working on it, I’m confident that if you really WANT TO you will eventually come to the Truth in the matter!

 

I have no idea what you are talking about!

None are true! The gospel has no power in and of itself. In and of itself it is merely words. The power is when its is empowered by the Holy Spirit - 1 Thes. 1;4-5; James 1:18; 1 Pet. 1:23-25, 2 Cor. 3:3, 4:6; etc. etc.

Again, I have no idea what you are talking about!

Let me break this down so you will understand that responsibility does not mean you have ability. For example, you are responsible to keep God's commandments, correct? Try this, "Be ye perfect EVEN AS your Father in heaven is Perfect" - Mt. 5:46. God has never sinned in his past, present or future and never needed forgiveness. You are responsible to be Perfect EVEN AS the Father is perfect but you have already goofed up and have no ability to be perfect EVEN AS the Father is Perfect. You need forgiveness which proves you cannot be perfect EVEN AS God is perfect. Get the point? Responsiblity does not mean you have ability. In addition, you are responsible for your inability to be perfect even as the Father is perfect because it was YOUR SIN that wrought YOUR inability.

You are forgetting one itsy bitsy detail. God can judge them in righteousness IF their inability is their own fault! - Bingo! Guess whose fault your inability to be perfect even as your father in heaven is Perfect? Want to guess who is the blame? (1) God - no; (2) Satan - no (3) You - yes!

You need to go back to the abc's of logic. Did God create EVERYTHING good? Answer - yes! Hence, from whence did sin originate from if EVERYTHING is good? Answer - from the good as there are no other alternatives to choose from.

Was it "good" for God to create a being with potential for evil as long as that being is made responsible for choosing evil? Answer - Yes it is good. Is God responsible for the potential of evil? Yes! Is He responsible for the actual choice for evil? Answer - No! Because he made the being a responsible being for his choices. Is God the author of sin? In regard to its potential - yes, but in regard to bringing it into existence - no!

God is a God of purpose and He is sovereign over all things and that is why he can restrain evil that does not glorify him (Psa. 76:10) and that is why he works "all things" not some things, for the good of His elect and for his glory - even sin! Sin is by Divine permission not an object of divine delight.

It is tempting to stoop to your level but I will resist that kind of child like behavior for your sake. You simply do not know what you are talking about and it is quite evident to anyone reading this discussion. Your over your head.

Actually, as all can see this fits you and the kind of rationale you have displayed in this post.

Learning to quote it does not mean you understand it, and that is obvious to the readers. This is an elementary experiential truth to anyone who lives the Christian life for any period of time. You have no will power over the flesh (Rom. 7:18) and Philippians 2:13 demonstrates where the power of will over the flesh really comes from. You obviously don't even understand the basics of Christian warefare with the fleshly nature and what it means to walk in the Spirit or be filled with the Spirit or you wouldn't respond to John 15:5 in the way you do. You need someone to teach you the abc's of the Christian life as anyone who responds to John 15:5 the way you have has some serious spiritual problems in your experiential walk with the Lord.

Again, you obviously do not understand our position at all. We do not deny responsibility by teaching complete dependency upon the power of the Lord to live the Christian life. We simply assert that the ability for responsibility is found in the power of the Spirit and not in us or our will.

if you want to believe that delusion - fine! However, don't ever suggest or tell anyone else you understand what I believe because that would be devious and simply a lie, because you obviously do not. All one has to do is read this post to know that is true.

Try adding "just" and "holy" to your list as well because without them all you have is a sloppy agape.

Look, go practice on someone and then maybe we can talk again. It is obvious you no objectivity and it is a waste of my time to further this discussion.

 

Truth...

Not surprised.

 

What.....how could you miss it???lol... here is benjamins view of scripture;

Then he wants you to know this;


1]You are obviously ignorant of simple logical principles...lol

2] IOWs God’s requirement would be false. God cannot be both True and false. Get it?

3]See, truth needs to be maintained if God is to be maintained as Truth.

4]such as when He creates something which one concludes that He has deterministic sovereign control over through some funny business with proof-texting it still doesn’t make it true that something evil can come out of something that is Only Good. See how that “theological fatalism” works???

5]but did you know that the Devil uses that type of persuasion too...and he was a liar and not the truth???

6]Once more, because I know having to maintain a “truth” must be confusing to you

7]and all that maintains that God is Only Good in “everything” He does AND all this maintains the logical truth, example: T + T = T.

8] do understand your Calvinist system very well and over and over and over again I witness you guys trying to proof-text that, T + F = T

9](let’s call that double talk for simplicity because I know how you guys stereotypically struggle with that logical conclusion stuff.

10] I know that all the obvious simple conclusions you guys come to that that turn out to “really” be “false” are just that = non-truth.

11]or you “should” see something is wrong, unless maybe you don’t think is wrong to try to make a non-truth or a half-truth, a Truth. But we won’t go into what lies are, who uses them, and why, for now…


Do you see biblicist , you thought this was a bible based discussion....but you got this instead...lol

 

P.S.

A. God is Only Good, there is no evil in Him or that can come out of Him, in Truth (Deut 32:4)

B. God determined EVERYTHING that is, ...sin, although evil, exists

C. Therefore, sin, which is evil, came from good.

Must hold to determinism! Sin is both evil and good. Got it…:laugh:

"Determined "EVERYTHING!" ..."no alternative", sin from the Only Good God is good...got it! :laugh:



Next, we go into "potentials":

Back to "EVERYTHING" determined:

God "potentially" - absolutely "predetermined" all things, "He is * Deterministically * Sovereign"...got it...:laugh:

 

You taking Dr. Bob on head to head, now that is rich.



Sorry to paraphrase, but all of your posts together sound something like this: "It is 7 am. The sky is blue, the birds are chirping, it's going to be a great day. Think I will skip to my lou down to the local Baptist Church and get saved."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LdIL5WCso8

 

SN, do you honestly believe that this is what he and many of us other "non-cals" believe to be true?