Featured "Personal Savior"

A sentimental thought without biblical support.
God can do anything, but his character will not do anything. Because God is Holy, God's character will not allow himself to be unholy. Nowhere do we find Jesus gently knocking on the prison cell doors in Sins dungeon saying "pretty please let me in."

 

He does this for the Christians in Laodicea and thus we can say for all Christians. It is false to apply that verse to those who are still bound and imprisoned by sin. For you to tell that to a non-Christian is for you to lie to them.

 

Except the Bible doesn't teach what you wrote here.

Provide one verse that says "Invite Jesus to be your Lord and Savior." Any verse that says humans invite God into their impenetrable fortress is also welcome.

You have a cultural teaching that you are holding to, which has no biblical merit.

 

You're being dishonest.
You desire to interpret the verse, out of context, and apply it to something that the author does not apply it to.
Within the context of the scripture, I absolutely believe this verse. Every Christian should know that God knocks at their door, desiring deep fellowship.

What you have never done is show us how the context of the letter to the Laodicean church is addressed to unsaved and unregenerate humans. I await your exegesis of the letter to show me my error.

 

Question: what is the church? Is it a building or is it the person. Christ says He will build His church, was He speaking of His carpentry skills here or of drawing people to Himself through the gospel message?

While the church of Laodicea as an institution may have become complacent that does not mean all the members had. When Christ comes and convicts people it is the individual that is convicted not the building or even the whole assembly necessarily. Although the church, as a whole, may ignore his request, those individuals who open their lives to him will know fellowship with him.

 

Here's the text. Show me where he speaks to people outside of the church.

*Revelation 3:14-22*
“And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: ‘The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation. “‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’”

 

"The first application of these words is an application to the Christian church; but, with a fine sense of appropriateness, the Christian consciousness has taken the principle involved, and made personal application of it. For while in the letter to the Church at Laodicea these words spoken by the Lord outside the church had application to that church and those within it's doors, we do no violence to the principle involved, but indeed come to understand it more perfectly, when, in all simplicity we listen to these words of Christ as addressed to the individual. The door at which he stood knocking was the door of the church, yet it was to one man that he made His appeal. If we make our application to the Church we must remember that the call of Christ was to an individual within that church, and that the way back for the excluded Christ for fellowship with those who bore His name and wore His sign was through an individual life. Therefore the two applications are not only permissible, but important."
G. Campbell Morgan

This is from a sermon on Revelation 3:20. He goes on to discuss how these people in the church may not have been saved, even though they had all the external trappings, ceremonies, and more scary - doctrine, down pat. I was wondering about this because MacArthur seems to think they were unsaved, at least in 2 sermons I saw, one as late as 2015.

Bottom line. No one disagrees with the exegesis of Revelation 3:20 that it was addressed to the people in a specific church. But the more I look into it, the more it appears to me that the application as found in the children's song is correct to use. It was clearly to individuals. Even though it was to a specific church in context, we cannot be sure all the individuals in there were true Christians so the application to the lost is even more solid. We have a list of Calvinistic Puritans who used it that way, most modern evangelicals of Arminian persuasion and as above, G. Campbell Morgan, who was Arminian but remember was the boss and mentor of the Calvinist Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones.

Another thing that concerns me is the Calvinist tendency to almost make fun of a meek, merciful Christ who gently knocks at the door of someone's heart. Martin I think it was, earlier in this thread, took me to task for quoting a Puritan who emphasized that Jesus may just stop knocking. Martin was right, he is much more gentle and merciful than we would be. He preferred the name "Son of Man" and lived among very common, ignorant people. All these scriptures help point out the general nature of Christ, and actually, of the Father too. They are great blessings and I would gladly throw the Calvinism away if it truly represented God the way I seem Him presented on this site. But I hope I have shown that some of the guys need to take a closer look at how they represent Calvinism.

 

I am not here to represent Calvinism. I am here to represent Christ and discern His word correctly. You are free to take God's word out of context and tell me that the ends justify the means. I'm not a big G Campbell Morgan fan nor a John MacArthur fan so appealing to those two men won't do you much good. In some areas I would find agreement, but in this text, I see Morgan saying, Jesus knocks on the door of the church, but we can say it's for the unsaved even though nothing in the text actually supports that position.

 

This may explain it all. If you mean here, on this forum, then you have a huge ego. Did the founders of this forum ask you to be the one who comes here to represent Christ? But if you just mean in general, as a Christian individual, then fine. Let's use these forums to bounce ideas around and sharpen each other. We can all learn.

 

I learn about you with every post you provide, Dave.
You are overthinking my statement. My point is to say that "calvinism" isn't terribly important to me when someone brings it up generically, like you did. My focus is on rightly dividing the word of God. You have this tendency to try divide God's word, not by personal exegesis, but by referencing other Christians you have read. It is similar to a Rabbi who references the Talmudic commentaries, but doesn't actually reference the Talmud.

 

@AustinC . That's a fair assessment and I don't mind. Let me explain. I see on here a lot of us throw scriptures at each other continuously, sometimes in lengthy sections. We are ALL looking at the same scripture. Your conviction about how you read a scripture is important to you and I respect that. But who in the world are you? Why should anyone listen to your exegesis of anything. And the same goes for me. So like happened with Revelation 3:20 I start bringing in others who have high stature in the Christian world for backup. I think it is very useful for amateurs at our level to do this rather than keep repeating our own exegesis.