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I believe you’ve got It.

I thought you had it. Have you not seen, and have you not heard that God did choose them, but they had to agree to the covenant God made with them. His Word explains these things to us, for He foreknew this happening – Exodus 19.

We see in the New Testament Christ in heaven, reconciling the world unto himself, just as He purposed for Jesus Christ was foreordained for the elect’s sake.

If you have read my posts then you know I pointed this out, as this word was peculiar to Paul. You see when Christ taught Paul, Paul passed along these understandings to us.

I accept it for it is the purpose of God.

I don't dwell very long on what some call the "fathers', or "monks", or whatever, and then try to tag such beliefs on others? I just understand God in His grace purposed Christ Jesus for “sinful man”.

What do you think?

Are you saying we are not born anew? We can’t just scrub and wash ourselves, renewing our Old Adam.

God is all-powerful. His will, will be done, but we don’t always do His will. He foreknew this. I’m not into analyzing God; only presenting what I find in His Word.

Christian faith, ituttut

 

Matt 10:5-8 – 5 These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: 6 But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. 7 And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. 8 Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.

The command to go to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel” was to the twelve as they were preaching “the gospel of the kingdom” prior to the cross. Evident miracles accompanied their ministry. I do not see too many people raising the dead these days...

After the cross, Jesus clearly told them to preach the Gospel to every creature and all nations [ta ethna] (Mark 16:15; Matt 28:18-20).

The Biblical doctrine of election does not send anyone to Hell, it only guarantees that some will be saved. If we got what we deserved, we would all go to Hell for all eternity. Election is the sovereign choice of God whereby He assures that some will be saved.

I have been away from the board for a while, and only have a little bit of time to read and make a few comments, so I may have missed it, but I did not see where anyone quoted...

Acts 13:48 - “and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.”

Me4Him,
while I agree that the saved are eternally secure in Christ, where does the Word say

The passage you cited does not say that. I also agree that no one can be blotted out of the Lamb’s Book of Life. I do not agree that the “book of the living” (Psa 68:28) is the same as “the Lamb’s Book of Life”. On what Biblical basis do you equate the two?


Itutut,

I think you and I agree here, but His divine foreknowledge is much more than prescience, to have awareness of beforehand. For God, His divine foreknowledge is equal to divine foreordination. What He foreknew, He FOREORDAINED. He did not simply look ahead to see what man would do and then say, “OK, there it is. That is MY plan, whatever man chooses...”

NO! He determined before all worlds the ones that would believe in Him and by His grace He draws them through the preaching of the Word to all. All hear, but not all respond. The ones that do respond will be received. The ones that do not respond will be damned for their rejection of this “so great salvation”.

In HIS presence NNE will glory in their own self-will or self-effort for their salvation, He alone will receive all glory, honor, and praise. Were it not for His grace, none of us would have come. YET IT IS ALSO TRUE that the means of our coming is the preaching of the Word (Rom 10:14-17). Do we choose? Yes. Did God choose? Yes.

It has been suggested by one that God votes for me, the devil votes against me, but I cast the deciding vote. HOGWASH!!! God votes for me and it does matter what the devil may think, desire, or do! Yes, I must accept the free gift of salvation by an act of my will, but were it not for the grace of God drawing me and for the power of Christ sustaining me, I would most surely be lost for all eternity!!!

Election DOES NOT SAY, “You have not been chosen you may not be saved!” Election says, “Come and take of the water of life freely” (yes, I do know the context of this one) and “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink” (Rev 22:17; John 7:37). Yet, Jesus also plainly declared, “no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father” (John 6:65).

How do I balance out these two truths that are clearly and plainly declared in the Word of God? I don’t. It is not my duty to understand all that God has said. It is my duty to preach all that God has said, whether I understand it or not!

 

Good to have you back, rjprince. Nice to meet you, I'm relatively new to this blog. I like the way you've paralleled foreknowledge with foreordination. You may notice I started a thread on foreknowledge vs foresight.

I liken foreknowledge to the first step of any plan, that is the architectural design phase. Foreknowledge is simply God knowing what He wanted to do before he ever did it.

Make sense?

 

2Pe 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

Mt 7:13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:

Only if ya don't have any.

 

Me4, you hurt my feelings. Now I'm going to have to drag some personal tragedy into the conversation so everyone will feel sorry for me and hate you.

 

Me4Him,

When you quote 2Pet 3:9, you need to understand that there is a difference between God’s plan and God’s desire. God has “no pleasure in the death of the wicked” (Ezek 33:11), yet when He dashes them in pieces like a potters vessel and they perish from the way, He laughs at them in their derision (Psa 2:9,12,4, or laughs and mocks them NAS). Does He take pleasure or not? Yes and no. He does not desire that they perish, but their sure judgement is a positive demonstration of His righteousness.

He does not desire that the wicked perish in their sin, but He IS the architect of a plan that includes the death and final judgement of the wicked. God did not desire that Adam sin, but He was that architect of a plan that included Adam’s sin. Jesus did not want to go to the cross, but that was His plan from eternity past. We must note that there is a clear distinction between God’s desire and His plan at some points in order to accomplish His purpose in all of creation.

Interesting that you follow a verse which says that God is not willing that any should perish with a verse that plainly states that MANY will perish. Not sure I understand the point you were making???

 

Calvibaptist,
Do you remember the thread by TimToolMan about the third position aside from Calvinism and free will that he called a "mystery" that includes both concepts. Basically, the position was that we could choose or not choose after having been drawn by the Holy Spirit. You said in that thread that you at one time felt that way. It would be a big favor if you could explain the difference in how you believed then and now and explain the differences and why.


In Christ,

Mike

 

Mike,

I guess it all started when I first began studying Romans and got to chapter 9. I was deeply troubled. I had never heard about election or predestination before (except as a dirty word used by those evil Presbyterians that didn't believe in witnessing). And here was not only the concept, but the very words predestined and election right before my very eyes.

I had always been taught that everyone had a free will and had the ability and opportunity to choose or reject, so I had to figure out a way to fit this in with what I was reading in Romans 8-9. The way I decided to handle it, probably with some input from seminary professors at Dallas, was that the two were both taught in Scripture and the tension was only in our understanding because we didn't have all the answers.

I remember that one professor put it this way: As we come up to the door of salvation, it says, "Whosoever will may come." We have the option of entering the door or not entering the door which we choose on our own free will. If we choose to go through the door, when we see the other side of the door (from God's view) it says, "chosen before the foundation of the world."

This view, which it seems Tim is describing, holds that both truths exist and are not antithetical to each other. We just can't explain how they both work because we are not God. It seemed to me to be a good answer.

After a while, as I began studying what the Scripture had to say about the nature of man, I began to have problems with my own view. I began reading more from MacArthur and others who were espousing Calvinism. It was not because I even cared what Calvinists believed, I just respected the teaching of some of these preachers and wanted to see what they said about it.

I began to see that my "middle position" was really a cop-out. It did not really answer the questions that Romans 9 raised. It actually ignored them while clinging onto my humanist free-will position. It was a safe view, especially in the church I was in, where the pastor refused to even discuss predestination and would skip those parts when preaching through a book of the Bible (or emphasize something else from the verses).

So, I slowly moved from the middle position to a more Calvinistic position (still without really knowing anything about TULIP). I got my beliefs from my study of Scripture, not Calvinism. I saw the inability of man as being clearly taught in Scripture. Because of that, I could no longer see the free-will position. It is not that I don't believe that we make choices all the time. It is just that I see the Bible teaches that our choices, our very will, is in bondage to sin. We will always choose according to our nature, and it is our fault, not God's.

Because of this, and Romans 9, election could not be based on foreseen faith, which is what I used to believe. Election was unconditional. Salvation is conditional, based on faith, but election was not. This was a hard move for me, and took a few years of studying and praying. But I could no longer ignore what I was reading.

I eventually looked into Calvinism and figured I was about a 3-4 pointer. I still had a small problem with Irresistable Grace and definitely had a problem with Limited Atonement.

The I of Tulip was the next to fall. Again, this took a few years of studying the relevant Scripture. A key for me was Romans 8:28-30. I couldn't get around the fact that all those who are called are justified. If there was any way that someone could be "called" in the sense given in Romans 8 and not be justified, then I could ignore it. But it was impossible.

Limited Atonement was almost impossible for me. It was the last petal to fall off the Tulip tree! What it took was seeing that the Atonement in Scripture was not a possible atonement but something definite. Jesus died to save His people from their sins, not to make salvation possible. Whoever "His people" are, He died to save them.

We all limit the atonement in some way. Arminians (and middle viewers) limit the effectiveness of the atonement. It does not really atone for anyone. It only makes atonement possible. Calvinists limit the scope of the atonement. Jesus' atonement was meant for a specific group and accomplished everything it set out to do.

It has been about two years since that petal fell off the tree and I began considering myself a 5-point Calvinist. I said that I can respect the middle position (although I disagree with it) because they at least admit that the passages on predestination and election exist and try to deal with them. Some of the posts I have read on this board ignore those sections all together while bowing at the altar of man's free will and man's definition of God's fairness.

It has been a 10-year journey for me that, at times, I did not enjoy. Now that I am where I am, I shudder to think of the things I used to teach. I don't expect people to change views over night just because of one or two threads on this board. But I do hope that these discussions will spark people's interest in going to the passages that are discussed and studying them to try to understand God better. That is what this is all about - knowing God. I think both sides would agree on that.

I hope this answers your questions. Sorry for the long post!

Doug (Calvibaptist)

 

If God wasn't willing, he certainly didn't plan it to happen, and even if it did, his plan of redeemption was as complete for full restoration as the "fall" was to condemnation.

This is why Jesus wasn't send to condemn and died for all sins, but for an "obvious reason" the plan of salvation required us to believe in Jesus before God would redeem us, this belief/unbelief is the reason behind the "reason" we're saved/condemned.

God's GRACE, is just that, GRACE or "LOVE", we can't demand God's love because love can't be demanded from anyone, God or man,

God/Jesus made it possible for us "CHOSE" between continuing to love darkness (satan) or light, (God) but for it to be love, the choice must be our choice, we chose through "OUR" belief/unbelief, the reason "FAITH" was made part of the plan of salvation.

This of course denies "EVERYTHING" Calvins teaches, "OUR FAITH" doesn't matter if our futures are predestine, but then you can't explain why many perish when God wasn't willing and didn't send Jesus to condemn but to die for all sins.

Calvinist have no explanation for that, except "God's will" which contradict scripture, and fails to explain why so much emphasis is placed us having faith as a "precusor" to salvation,

"God's will" clearly isn't be done on earth, his will was for none to perish.

 

I think you and I agree here, but His divine foreknowledge is much more than prescience, to have awareness of beforehand. For God, His divine foreknowledge is equal to divine foreordination. What He foreknew, He FOREORDAINED. He did not simply look ahead to see what man would do and then say, “OK, there it is. That is MY plan, whatever man chooses...”

</font>[/QUOTE]Hello rjp. But isn't this what I said, i.e. God foreknew action taken? and to be fair shouldn’t you read and understand my post. In it is “We see in the New Testament Christ in heaven, reconciling the world unto himself, just as He purposed for Jesus Christ was foreordained for the elect’s sake.” Looks to be pretty close to what you are saying. See further down on “foreknew”

YES! YES! We do agree

YES! YES! We agree.

YES! YES! I agree with the exception of God voting. That puts Him on a level with others.

My quote above covers this I believe.

AMEN! But in your “duty” sounds as if you must do this work. Is that what you are saying?

For better understanding let's see what Christ revealed to Paul. Romans 8:28-30, ” And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
29. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
30. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.”

On this earth I am quite a bit older than you, but have you considered that we both are older than this earth? How so? God “foreknew” even before He created this world we would choose Him for He chose us. For He first loved us.

God cannot be fooled by events, or taken by surprise. He knows everything ahead of time. Tomorrow is already known by God. There are yet many things for man to do, but with God they are already done.

Christian faith, ituttut

 

Doug,
Thank you very much for the time you spent answering me, and, it actually helped me very much. A much better feeling about it.

God bless you and your minsitry,

Mike

 

"Every so often"? You must be new to this board.

 

USN,

I think you bring up a good point here that would be good to address. Why is it so important to debate Calvinism vs Arminianism? Is it important Biblically? And what effect does it have on evangelism and the kingdom of God? In other words, what are the practical implications of believing one doctrine and not the other?

I think I have at least two reasons why I think it is important, but I will wait and see what others have to say first.

Joseph Botwinick

 

Doug,

Thanks for sharing this with the board. To read this, was nearly reading my life story. I didn't read MacArthur, but other then that, about the same. Non-Calvinist some how think we are "tricked" or maybe read a book or two on Calvinism, or maybe study John Calvin himself, and have slipped into a blinding path away from the Bible. Yet You said it was the Bible that you read. It was the same for me. I had heard of Calvinism, but i had no idea what it was. I never heard the TULIP thing. I did not know any ponits....nor that there were points. I was raised in much the same teaching as you. I too started seeing something else in Gods Word about election. I had no idea this was called Calvinism. After I hold to Election..with my limited understanding, and the state of sinful man, I then read a book that said this was called Calvinism.

About 3 years ago, I took up a study of my own. I kept hear that one can not get Calvinist from the Bible alone. I knew that I had done so, so I wondered if I was just strange or did others come across this on there own studies as I. As I read other Calvinist of the past, I saw where most all of them found something in the Bible that made them 1st think about what they later called Cavinism and this is where they started. Yes...in the Bible.

Thanks again....

In Christ..James

 

I notice this pattern a lot amongst calvinists. They claim they become calvinists from study of the Scripture only....AFTER reading the works of other calvinists.

Mine is similar. I was saved non calvinist. After a good friend said he was a calvinist and listed the loooong line of godly, good preachers as who were also calvinists, I wanted to study TULIP and the "doctrines of grace". My friend is a very intelligent man, and I figured that if he believed this theology...and all of these great men of God believed this theology, it must be correct. I immediately began to pray that God would reveal the truth, as it can't be both, and even if I was wrong all of these years about God's love, grace, sovereignty and man's responsibility, to make the truth known. Every time I came across a "proof text", the explanation and molding of the Scripture left a sick and uneasy feeling within me. I tried to take it in with an open mind and heart, but would find that it would not rest easy in my soul. I even approached my friend who is a calvinist and asked him how he became a calvinist, how God revealed the "truth" to him. He recommended a slew of books by Pink, Macarthur, etc. It then dawned on me that he did not come across this theology from studying Scripture, but calvinists.

I wanted to know what someone who was once a calvinist, and then became non calvinist had to say in my quest for the truth. Here is his reply to me:

"Thanks for the email. I am sorry to hear about your friend, but it may be, as it was with me a phase of learning that he will emerge from.

First, let me say that there are many shades of Calvinism and many folks mean different things. A friend of mine called himself a Calvinist because he thought it meant believing in once saved, always saved. So, don't assume what he believes. Many "Calvinists" reject limited atonement but still believe they are Calvinists. I don't know how "hard" or "soft" your friend may be.

Second, let me explain how I think most Calvinists become Calvinists. It has a lot to do with personality.

1. If you are an analytical, rules driven person who loves to study and read, you are very susceptible. Engineers, programmers, etc.

2. I don't know anyone who is born again as a Calvinist. It is a system into which one is indoctrinated. I came to it by RC Sproul's radio ministry. His mission is not to evangelize, but to spread Calvinism. John Piper is also prominent now.

3. Calvinism is intellectually stimulating. The list of Calvinists is a list of the "best and the brightest." Who wouldn't want to believe the same as Spurgeon, or Whitefield, or Piper or MacArthur?
This is probably the hardest thing to let go of. How could all these smart people be wrong?

Unfortunately, the best comparison I can make is to the Pharisees. They loved to argue, to study, to have great titles, to have prominence and respectability. Don't doubt that is Jesus appeared today, it would be the Calvinists drilling him with trick questions.

My personal journey out was prompted by 2 incidents. One was a counselor training seminar prior to a Billy Graham crusade. The trainer spoke about visiting a believer who had a large theological library (as I do.) and complimenting the man, who responded "I love a good argument." That floored me. I thought "My love of arguing over Calvinism has displaced my love for Christ and a desire to reach the lost." Whenever I read the word, all I could think of was how I could use some verse to bash someone with in an argument. How pathetic.

The second incident was while reading a story by R A Torrey, an associate of DL Moody, the great evangelist. He told of a man who resisted the Spirit's prompting to witness to a particular man. He kept putting it off. Until one day, he finally visited the man's shop only to find that the man had killed himself the day before. As a Calvinist, I thought, "Doesn't matter, he must have been predestined to hell anyway." Then it struck me what an awful thought I had just had. I realized how calloused Calvinism had made me to the plight of the lost.

Most Calvinist ridicule, but never read, the other side of the argument. There are a number of good books: Robert Lightner's The Death Christ Died, Robert Shank's Elect in the Son, and Marston's God's Strategy in Human History. And though it has some flaws, and Calvinists absolutely go rabid over it, Dave Hunt's What Love is This is a good non-academic book.

Calvinism is not terminal. I believe that many have a true heart for Christ and for evangelism. Even though Piper is probably the most extreme poluarizer of it now, he and his church are very evangelistic and mission minded. Fortunately, not all Calvinists are consistent with the implications of Calvinism."

 

I love it - Calvinism is not terminal - as if we have some kind of disease to be cured of.

Reading the Scriptures is what did it for me - realizing that God is sovereign over my salvation.