Differences... Regeneration/Conversion?

Yes, that was a rather harsh thing to say, but in my 5th decade of Christianity and bible study, I must stand by my statement. Sorry if you are offended!


Ditto on Acts 4:20

 

In your zeal to remove God from his Sovereign throne you now claim the authority to judge my calling to preach?

Stand all you will brother, standing strong on such statements doesn't reflect 5 decades of Bible Study, IMHO.

In my experience no one comes to God apart from being regenerated. And no person having been regenerated will refuse to come to the Lord.

The Bible says:

If in your fifty years you have gained more wisdom than the Scriptures, then may God judge between me and thee.

Bro. Dallas Eaton

 

Then by all means, consider what Paul wrote to the Galatians in Chapter 3 and 4. Consider how angry and direct Paul was with them. Paul called them "stupid people of Galatia" in order to get their attention and to correct their thinking and activities.

I do not deny your faith in Christ, nor did Paul deny the Galations theirs. However he did to them what I am attempting to do to you, and that is to correct your thinking relative to God! I have tried humor, parallel illustrations, direct reference to scripture, and now chiding you, but you refuse to listen. You refuse to accept how
God made you and that He made you "good", and that he gave you the power within you to believe of your own accord, to repent from sins, as he commands that you do of your own power and that it is your chosen faith in Jesus Christ that saves you, because everthing else is in place already completed by God.

Yes, God continues to put up the messages in front of you, but because someone has given you a "new vision" or a "reason" to believe a false doctrine you now deviate from the plain scriptures.

Get into Paul and see what He is really saying in his letters.

Now if that offends you, I am sorry for being the cause, but I am not sorry for standing up for the truth, and will never back down from it!

May the Holy Spirit take the shackles from your eyes so that you can see the truth.

 

Yelsew,

You should really learn to think before you hammer the keyboard.

You wrote - "......God made you and that He made you "good", and that he gave you the power within you to believe of your own accord, to repent from sins, as he commands that you do of your own power and that it is your chosen faith in Jesus Christ that saves you, because everthing else is in place already completed by God....."

Let me summarize your theology.

God made us "good".

And we have "Power" within us to believe unto salvation of our own accord.

It is our "chosen faith" that saves us.

And we do all of that prior to becoming regenerated.

You have elevated man much higher than he is portrayed by scriptures. You have made him controller of his own destiny and if not the author of his own salvation then at least he is by your view the co-facilitator.

Your pastor - if you have one - must really appreciate your views - but then again there are many pastors and many churches who have warped the scriptures to fit their own understanding.

I'm sure you have found one.

 

Once again hardsheller you have added to my meaning that which is not there. I said nothing about this happening before becoming regenerated.

God created man, the species, with the ability to believe, and the object of belief is not important to this discussion. When God finished creating man He declared that his creation is Good.

Sin existed prior to man! Remember that Lucifer sinned against God, rising up in rebellion to usurp the throne of God, and was cast down to the earth with 1/3rd of the Angels who followed him. The serpent who beguiled Eve existed before God created man. Remember, Man was the last of God's creation efforts.

With the power to believe "built-in" to man along with the power to hear, and to act, man, being made in the image of God had everything that God gave him, all the attributes of God except for eternal life, and the knowledge of good and evil.

Salvation is what? What must man be saved from and to? In Revelation it is revealed that there is a second death. It is also revealed throughout the scriptures that there is an eternal life. So salvation is the saving from the second death and the saving to eternity.

In eternal matters, that which is declared by God is a finality. That is, everything that is declared to be future for mankind is already an accomplished fact in eternity, it is just that man has not "experienced or gained it" yet.

God established that man's faith in HIM (3 person Godhead) is what saves man from the second death. The flip side of which is eternal life.

With the power to believe, and the power to choose, (Adam's choosing of the names of the animals, is the first example of man's ability to choose in the Bible), man made the wrong choice in the matter of life and death, man sinned, thus it is that "it is appointed unto man (ALL mankind) once to die, then the judgment". Sin altered nothing in man except mans destiny. God did not alter man from being what He called good, to what some call being "totally depraved". We are still in the image of God, still possessing all that God created us to have. BUT we have gained through, and because of the power of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the knowledge of sin that separates us spiritually from God the creator, our father in Heaven.

Another example of man's innate ability to choose for himself is this. God commanded Adam to not eat of the fruit of the trees in the center of the Garden (Genesis 2:16,17). If God had not made man with the ability to believe and choose, there never would have been a test of Free will (Genesis 2:5-25). So to say that man does not have these abilities is to belie the scriptures, denying how God created us, rendering the scriptures null and void! Is that what you would have us believe?

I have continuously and repeatedly declared that man is powerless to save himself, but man is not powerless to hear and believe, and thus accept the salvation that God has already established for man through mans faith in HIM (3 persons). OUR SALVATION IS AN ACCOMPLISHED FACT, OUR FAITH IS NOT! Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God! Believe it or not!

 

Sin did exist prior to man, man was not created in sin, but man after being created and declared good, fell from that position in his original creation and now is dead in sins.

This is a simple doctrine of Scripture. How else do believers move from death unto life if they are not first dead?

Bro. Dallas

 

Then we agree, but you still refuse to acknowledge that man retains ALL that God created man to have, and that man, the creation, is still 'good' in the manner that God said. Man remains complete as God made him, possessing all that God put into Adam. However, because man sinned, there is no holiness in man, for "holy and pure" cannot co-exist where sin and impurity, regardless of ratio, exist. Even the most miniscule impurity taints the whole. But does not render the whole completely or totally impure. Any impurity at all causes the whole to be less than pure. One would have to have the whole as impure as the miniscule impurity for the whole to be totally impure.

What we are is a blend of pure and impure that we by ourselves cannot correct, all we can do is suffer more and more impurity to be added to us. It takes the blood of Jesus, God's Son, to restore us to the state of purity that is acceptable to God the Father. Even with the Blood of Jesus being shed on that cruel cross for ALL, it remains that only those who believe in Jesus, (all are capable of believing), are saved from sin. If you do not believe in Jesus, you will not accept the atonement, therefore you are not covered by Jesus blood even though it was shed for you too!

Until you acknowledge that man is equipped with the capability to believe and accept what God has already done, you will not be able to see the truth of man's condition after sin. You will continue to believe that man is totally depraved and unable to respond to God's Holy Word, as God made man capable of doing. You will continue to believe that man must be regenerated before man can believe and thus have faith.

Believing in Jesus, God's Son, the Messiah, IS REGENERATION! Believing in Jesus is passing from unbelief into belief, from Death into life.

Being dead in sin means that we are sanctified to sin. That is, we are set apart by our inherited nature, "marked for the second death". But, because we have this natural life to live, and by God's grace we have the time and the ability to hear the good news and believe in His Son, we by believing have the "mark of death" removed from us and we are re-sanctified to life eternal with Jesus. It is our faith that saves us. It is our faith that saves us because God has already done everything else, from the foundation of the world. Salvation is established by God, but we must accept it.

The Rescue ship of "Salvation" is there with us already, to retrieve us from the sea of death. But we must lift up our eyes to see it and believe, in order to get on board.

We did nothing to build the ship, and we cannot climb aboard by ourselves we must be helped, and when we look up, the "crew of the ship" sees that we are now "alive in our faith" and we are pulled aboard by the ship's crew. It is not of ourselves, but without our belief and faith that "quickens" us, we will not be rescued. The "crew" is looking for those who show signs of life, and they "pass-over" those who show no signs. Faith is the only sign of life that we humans can show.

 

Don't think of it as 'good' but as righteousness. Man cannot perform righteousness. There is a difference in that which is good and that which is righteousness.

Bro. Dallas

 

Here's How man really is and really will be:

Pre-Fall Man: Able to Sin and Able to Not Sin
Post-Fall Man: Able to Sin and Unable to not Sin
Reborn Man: Able to Sin and Able to Not Sin
Glorified Man: Able to Not Sin and Unable to Sin

 

Why not? God did! If man is not capable of performing righteousness, then there is nothing worthwhile for God to redeem!

 

I agree, and you will notice that there is nothing in this that indicates "total depravity" of man, only that man is unable to not sin. There is nothing in this that says man is not able to perform righteousness.

 

Why not? God did! If man is not capable of performing righteousness, then there is nothing worthwhile for God to redeem! </font>[/QUOTE]Why did Christ come into the world? To do what we could have done?

And if we could have done this, then why did no man do this 'righteousness'?

Because our righteousness is like dirty rags. That which was able to reconcile man to God was the righteousness of God...Christ is the righteousness of God. Man is dead in sin until acted upon by the Holy Spirit. Even the 'good' works man is able to do does not resemble the holiness, the righteousness of God in and through Christ.

That is the difficulty you are having I suppose. You must understand, the argument is not that man cannot be moral, but that the capabilities of man's morality do not equal the holiness nor the righteousness that is God. Except that Christ came in the flesh, no man ever yet had lived up to this righteousness. Not one of the OT saints could or did, they all, even believing the promise of God fell through weak faith at different points in their experience.

What did God see worth redeeming? Not man. Man is not redeemed for his sake, but for the sake of God. In fact, the work of redemption has been planned and accomplished for the praise of the Glory of his {God} Grace. No portion of it has been completed for the sake of man. If it were for the sake of man the possibility of man accomplishing that righteousness would have been possible.

Bro. Dallas

 

To put the already established, from the foundation of the world, finish to the work of God!

Righteousness is not the Criteria for Salvation! Abraham had faith, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Doesn't it make sense to you that if Faith is equated to righteousness, that God is much more interested in our faith than he is our righteousness. As Paul said this does not give us an excuse to sin, but it does show us where God's priorities are.

Well I answered this above, but it is because in God's eyes, there is nothing man can do that is righteous enough to impress God. However, our faith in God really 'grabs' Him by the heart because it is with His heart that He loves us, and for us to have faith in him is a pleasant aroma to him.

In this we agree, but "Total Depravity" is not a factor, Sin and man's natural bent to sinning is the issue. Righteousness in mankind is not continuous, neither is "depravity". That is why FAITH and FAITH alone is the Criteria for Salvation.

Who do you think God is trying to impress by redeeming fallen man? God has no reason to redeem man other than His own will to do so. All of which was established before the foundation of the world.

Now regarding God's Grace. Where in scripture does it say we are to praise the glory of God's Grace? Where does it say anything about the Glory of God's Grace? ALL Glory and Honor belong to God, not his attributes.

 

Yelsew,
You keep say man has to use (his faith), or mans part is using his faith.

Saving faith is from God, Eph.2:8 it is a gift.

2 Thessalonians 3:2, And that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men: for all men have not faith.

To teach that all man have saving faith of himself is a false teaching.

Eph.2:1 And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.

These are the ones that receive the gift of faith.

It starts with God and it stayes with God.

by HIS GRACE
mike

 

When i heard the Good News... i reached out to receive; and God opened my heart to plant the truth deep in my spirit... at that time i received the Holy Spirit; was Converted, regenerated...I had new eyes to see and new ears to hear... then the new road i was on came into view and the race was on...

 

I do not say, and have not said, that man must "use" faith. I have been very consistant in saying that man must "HAVE" faith in order to be saved. Without faith there is no salvation! "For by grace are ye saved THROUGH FAITH...

Faith is not the Gift of God in Ephesians 2:8&9, Salvation is the Gift of God to those who have faith in Jesus, even on his name! "For by grace are ye save...not of yourselves, it is a gift of God. Now just what is God really giving? What is it that man cannot do? Man cannot save himself! God gives salvation as a free gift to those who have faith in His Son, even on his name.

 

Praise God for you Testimony Ellie777. You know the truth!

 

Please forgive me for saying this and i am not speaking to anyone here ...but All the Calvinists i have known personally have a terrible unrecognized pride and speak to me condicendingly... and some who have been so sure of their salvation have been saved at a later date... praise the Lord... remember the scripture in Rev. that starts with... I stand at the door and knock, anyone who hears my voice, etc... Our Lord doesn't just barge in uninvited... He patiently knocks...Also those who were first invited to the party did not come in... So He goes out and finds others who answer the call...

 

Eph. 1.5-8

Ephesians 1:5  Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,
6  To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.
7  In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace;
8  Wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence;

Ellie777, I am sorry that some Calvinists have treated you with this attitude. But if they are really Calvinists and believe there is an elect, they could not have failed to have been saved and then realized later they have not been saved. Salvation is not a work that we must realize in order that it is fulfilled.

Bro. Dallas

[ September 28, 2003, 09:20 AM: Message edited by: Frogman ]

 

Yelsew said,"giving man the ability to believe"

Jesus refutes this with very clear words.
John 6:44

"No man" = none

"can come" = has no ability to come

"to me" = Jesus

"except" = only one way

"the Father" = God

"which hath sent me" =Divine messenger

"draw him" = supernatual work of the spirit

Jesus is saying that only God can draw you to Him. No one has the ability to come to him.

by HIS GRACE
mike