Featured Can Predestination and Free Will Coexist?

I am "extreme sovereignty view", and this is my opinion.

 

Can Predestination and Free Will Coexist?

150 years ago folks were a whoooole lot more tolerant, at least here in Ky. Old School and New School Baptists and Methodists would share the same meeting houses. It seems there is no 'coexisting' anymore, there's a sickness, the quacks are consumed with CDS.

 

There must be some middle ground. I notice that non-Calvinist Baptists tend to like Charles Spurgeon and John Bunyan, who were Calvinists. Why is that? I think there are several reasons.

One is that they both accepted the normal working of a human in hearing and receiving the gospel using their rational sense as sufficient from the standpoint of the individual. Even though they believed that no one can come to Christ without the Holy Spirit they were also aware that to the individual, it will appear simply as realizing one's lost condition and deciding to come to Christ.

The second thing is that although they both had a high view of God's sovereignty they viewed the starting point of man's condition as being self induced and based discussion of reprobation and the final lostness of unsaved individuals as them being left to their own free will and giving them over to their choice of sin - not as God using his sovereignty to actively influence a person in a negative way or to not have anything to say to him as a non elect one.

The third thing would be that they put a high level of importance on the experiential aspects of salvation and actually living the Christian life rather than emphasizing the theology. I think they would have been much happier hanging out with Wesley than a modern Calvinist.

 

Can Predestination and Free Will Coexist?

Of course not.

By definition, the type and brand of the "Free Will" idea
that is in contrast to the idea of The Salvation of the Soul,
would have to have the Moral ability
and aptitude to freely "Will" the same power
to Resurrect itself from the Dead,

into an Eternal state of Everlasting Life,
at "Will", on command.

Right. On command. Like this would be "a Command Performance".

Hey. Do this. Let's see you, or anyone else,
by the same equivalent Divine Power Jesus Obtained
by His Work of Salvation Accomplished in His Virgin Birth,
through to Jesus' crucifixion, death on the cross, burial
and Glorious Resurrection from the Dead,

to Resurrect themselves from being Dead
and having no existence in the Realm of the Spirit, at all,

into an Eternal State of Everlasting Life, at "Will",
just because they feel like it,
or want to, or 'decide' to, or 'make a choice to',
or 'have faith to', or 'believe to', etc.

The idea that I get from that kind of examination,
is that "Free Will from the utter moral State of Nature which has inability,
impotent, and with total incapability to "Take on an Existence"

which is now Reckoned and Judged AS IF THEY HAD NEVER SINNED,
FROM THE MOMENT of THEIR CONCEPTION IN THEIR MOTHER'S WOMB

until their PHYSICAL DEATH
(AND HOW ON EARTH WOULD THAT HAVE EVER COME ABOUT?)

into Eternal Salvation and NOW?
They are SUPERNATURALLY PARTAKING of the DIVINE NATURE"!(???)

WHAT?, WHAT?, WHAT?

How does something that is DEAD,
then suddenly generate ON ITS OWN,
A NOW AS IF THEY HAD ALWAYS BEEN SINLESS
AS WELL AS AN INFINITELY ETERNAL SALVATION?

NOW, THAT'S THE QUESTION.

And the Answer is:

"FREE WILLING ETERNAL SALVATION DOES NOT EXIST AND NEVER HAS!"

The author in the article likes to compare things to prove his points.

How about this one, now,

THE WAY IT IS AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN
AND THE ONLY WAY IT CAN AND HAS TO BE?:

RIDDLE ME THIS:

"Can Predestination and Free Will Coexist,
WHEN "FREE WILL" DOES NOT EXIST"?

Break out your logic on that one and try it on for size.

This is a very simple introductory article on the O.P.:
Do predestination
and free will contradict one another?
W. Robert Godfrey

"Early in his career, Augustine wrote a treatise called The Freedom Of The Will, and he never retracted that despite his strong teaching on predestination. When he talked about the freedom of the will, what he really meant was that you have a genuine will that operates according to the way you want it to operate. In that sense, you could call that will free. It’s a real, choosing will that has the freedom to do what it wants.

"The... Doctrine of Total Depravity is not that we don’t have a functioning will but that we have a will that always acts in accordance with our fallen, depraved nature."

(Alan's note: No different than

"Water is Free of its own will TO FLOAT UPHILL."

Got that?

And there are other laws in the Universe besides "Free Will".

"We always "freely will" against God until we are Regenerated",

BECAUSE THE SINNER HAS NTHER WILL THAN TO WILL to SIN.

And so, one other law in Operation is The Justice of God
which Executes Judgement on all unforgiven sin.

All sinners do practice and participate in sin
and NO SIN IS GOING TO HEAVEN!

AND GOD RUNS HEAVEN!!!)

"Instead, they mean that one is perfectly free
to choose for God or against God.

"In that sense, it conflicts with the Doctrine of Predestination."

And, if we think about it, any Lost person on the street
would probably tell us, that:
"one is perfectly free to choose for God, or against God."

So, that is not exactly a hard core teaching in The Word of God,

IN FACT;
that kind of teaching is entirely foreign to the Bible
and can't found in it.

I certainly do not know of any evidence that:
"one is perfectly free to choose for God, or against God"
and I do not believe that any evidence
of that man-made philosophy exists.

It is just a pure, in-stage, bonafide, Non-Biblical, Extra-Biblical heresy.

That's what it is.

The World's most common notion of the natural,
Spiritually Dead sinner is:
"one is perfectly free to choose for God, or against God"

and, NO, Jesus' Work of Eternal Salvation
DID NOT RECREATE THE GARDEN of EDEN.

Human beings in this life are not walking around
with the same STATE of SINLESS PERFECTION
that Adam had in The Garden of Eden!(???)

who are facing the inevitability of Heaven or Hell,
BY THEM DOING one two things:

Touch "The Tree of Life",
or "The Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil."

So, if you want something in The Bible on it, There it is. That's it.

"one is perfectly free to choose for God, or against God"
is a Ridiculously Absurd man-made "saying"/ "Old Wives Tailtail".

"The Doctrine of Predestination,
in response to that notion of the freedom of the will, says:

“You don’t have the freedom to choose for God
because your will is in rebellion against God.

"It’s only when God heals your rebellion—when He Regenerates your heart
and sovereignly turns you back to Himself—
that you can know Him and pursue Him.”

This transcript is from a live Ask Ligonier event with W. Robert Godfrey
and has been lightly edited for readability.

 

God is infinite, without beginning or end. All created beings are finite, and have beginnings. Nothingness never existed. There was always God.

God has given us two types of revelation. Creation and our Bible of 66 books.

 

Titus 1:2, In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began; . . .

1 John 5:9-13, If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater: for this is the witness of God which he hath testified of his Son. He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself: he that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son. And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.

The only way one can know one has eternal life is if it cannot be lost.

 

It's brought out in Ezekiel that he was perfect in all his ways until iniquity was found in him.