Featured The Sinners Ability to CHOOSE

Jeremiah 17:9

the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it

 

SBG. Where did you take Hebrew?

just curious

 

Charles Taze Russell was self-taught in greek and hebrew.

 

In your opinion how should anesh be translated there?

 

Hebrew, Greek, Latin AND theology, all self taught. You are focused on YOU and your theology reflects it.

Now we understand all the hatred for the doctrines of grace.

peace to you

 

It means you should be deferring to experts if there is disagreement, otherwise you might end up with a Bible translation similar to the Jehovah's Witnesses, which is panned by all scholars as a really bad translation.
Good on you for your efforts, but don't place your personal translation as the accurate translation if scholars provide a different translation.

 

I gave you counsel. Those who read both greek and hebrew have questioned you and your translations. I will leave them to continue that query. What I counsel is that you do not follow the folly of Charles Taze Russell who so admired his own translation work that he would not heed the counsel of true greek and hebrew scholars. Be very careful not to be puffed up with pride. Double and triple check your translation with experts who know much more than you.
I share this having good friends who have spent decades in translation work with Wycliffe. Even with their extensive knowledge, they have their work peer reviewed.
Be careful.

 

I think it is. The offer or general call is to everyone that hears the gospel and it is real. The means of preaching or scripture reading or reading a pamphlet or tract are actual means to help lead to salvation. It is not a fake offer if you are not elect. You have the promise of Jesus that if you come to Him he will not cast you out. If you believe, you will be saved. Period. If you choose not to believe of your own free will or you despise the Gospel and Jesus and prefer your own path of sin you will not be saved of your own free will. Now. If you do the above according to your own free will you are not only damned but you are also not elect. The Bible also teaches that our own free will tends to not value the Gospel, or Jesus, and we tend to like sin and not put value on the things of God. As a Calvinist, I believe that the Holy Spirit must involve Himself directly with me and create a tendency or an ability or a will in me or I will not be able to come to Christ in saving faith. And why? BECAUSE I DON"T WANT TO! The grace that was applied to me the Calvinists call effectual grace. That's better than irresistible but they needed something to begin with an "I". This grace enable me to have faith. It can also be called regeneration or being born again. I suppose I could say that it enabled me to choose to have faith but what would be the point. It was a gift to me and so I say faith was a gift. That's all there is to it. It turns out to be true that that part of the call, the effectual call, only happens to the elect. Now the question always comes up - if what you say is true I'm afraid I'm not of the elect. What if I can't come to Christ? They asked that of John Owen, a high Calvinist. He said if you are seeing Christ as your means of salvation and you want to throw yourself on His mercy without any merit of your own you have it on the word of Christ that you can come to Him and He will not cast you out. And guess what. That desire to come to Him means that you are elect.

 

SBG. Those points you bring up are fair enough. I would say that first of all when God decrees something it really and truly will be. So if you say only the elect get saved you have to remember that election is a decree of God - so it will and must come true. But that does not change whatever else God says about the subject. The elect have to come to Christ in faith and get forgiveness from their sins. But they will and do without fail. Yes, generally a Calvinist will say that regeneration or being born again precedes being saved or precedes belief but because one always follows the other you will find in religious literature people mixing up the order or putting them together because you always find one with the other. This especially might happen if the main subject was not the order of salvation but something else.

And with faith. I might say my faith was a gift but I don't mean that there is a thing called "faith" that is packaged up and given to me or that I'm hit with a magic wand and suddenly have faith. Calvinist theology teaches that our natural tendency is not to value Christ or the gospel enough to venture our eternal destiny on Him by faith. We may be vile and love sin too much, or we may consider the gospel a foolish method, or we may feel that we can do enough good to please God on our own. Everybody's different. But the bottom line is that the Bible teaches that we don't come to Christ in faith because we don't have the inclination or the moral ability to do so. All Christians believe that it is necessary for the Holy Spirit to convict or assist in some way in this but Calvinists think it's more - that it is an actual effectual calling or regeneration or quickening that occurs.

 

I will say this.
Everyone who is a part of the New Covenant has had their name in the Covenant since before the foundation of the world.
Thus, everyone written in that Covenant will believe in Christ Jesus and be saved.

 

I assume you are referencing this dialogue between Moses and God.

So Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Alas, this people has sinned a great sin. They have made for themselves gods of gold. But now, if you will forgive their sin—but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written.” But the Lord said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book. But now go, lead the people to the place about which I have spoken to you; behold, my angel shall go before you. Nevertheless, in the day when I visit, I will visit their sin upon them.”
~ Exodus 32:31-34

Are you thinking Moses is talking about the Book of Life, found in Revelation?

First, is it possible that Moses knows that God is recording the history of Israel through Moses and Moses is simply telling God to kill him as well? God's response is that He will only kill those who have sinned with no repentance. The book referred to here is not what John refers to in Revelation.
Second, the Bible is replete with passages showing us how false believers are weeded out by God. Read the book of Hebrews and have a healthy fear that you and I may not persevere in faith because we never knew God (meaning, He never knew us).
sbg, there is much here to digest, but none of it has anything to do with godless people having the ability to righteously choose a Holy God and it certainly has nothing to do with the New Covenant.