A strict 5-point Calvinist God is not worthy of worship...

[Ray Berrian]

pinobaptist,

We believe that the Spirit of God is active especially wherever and whenever the Gospel is preached as to the salvation of sinners. We know that at every turn of the road, God is actively reaching out toward all sinners. On the other hand, you and your Calvinist searchers after truth, outright toss the non-elect sinners to the 'wolves' telling us that the Spirit of God 'passes by them' unconcerned with their ultimate damnation. Now you tell me that we think that sinners merely accept Jesus all by themselves.

While you accept Calvinistic teaching coming from a newly converted Roman Catholic, John Calvin, you ignore the great theologians who demand adherence to the truths of the Attributes of God, meaning Jesus Christ. My guess is that 90% of you gentlemen have not read one chapter on this important subject.

Love and justice comes from God and He is ' . . . not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.' Notice, Jesus did not say that merely that the relative few of Christians should be saved but 'all.' [II Peter 3:9] This is not 'rocket science. Read and believe the truth; to do otherwise is to disgrace your God.

The true doctrines of grace is opened to all the sons and daughters of Adam including you and me. His ransom is for all persons. [I Timothy 2:6 & I John 2:2]

There is the factor not only that the Spirit calls sinners, but sinners are also in a search for the Lord God. Matthew 7:14d says, ' . . . and few there be who find it.' {Him}

 

[pinoybaptist]

Alot of words, without saying anything, Ray.
You're good at dodging the issue.
You still have to rise up to the challenge I posed of you proving that your God is the one that sends more people to heaven in contrast to your contention that the Calvinist God sends the majority to hell.

 

[Matt Black]

OK, Pinoy and Npetreley, a quick question for you. Both of you talk in terms of man being responsible for original sin/ total depravity/ whatever you want to call it (Pinoy by saying God is not the author of sin or the Fall - with which I do agree - and Npetreley by saying that we inherited that condition). Who created you and me, guys?

Yours in Christ

Matt

 

[pinoybaptist]

Dumb me (no sarcasm intended) but I don't see the point of your question.

Anyway, God created you and me.

 

[pinoybaptist]

Bob:

You, like your friend Ray, write a lot without really saying anything substantial.

Free will was true of man before the fall, when his nature was yet uncorrupted and bound by sin.

After the fall, the Bible says :

And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth:

Remember, this was Seth, an ancestor of Jesus Christ in the flesh.

Keep in mind, also, that, when God created everything, the Bible says 'and God saw that it was good ' and in some places, not only good, but, very good, but, at the fall, everything was corrupted.

Try hugging a wild bear and see if you survive.

Yet, God brought Adam every animal, before the fall, and he named it.

After the fall was the first murder.

After the fall, was the great flood of Noah's time.

After the fall was the first blood shed, and the first skin of the sacrificial animal made a covering for the nakedness of man.

There is no more pre-Fall free will in man. Man's will is bound to his fallen nature. There is no innate goodness and faith towards God in the natural man.

 

[Matt Black]

Originally posted by pinoybaptist:
Dumb me (no sarcasm intended) but I don't see the point of your question.

Anyway, God created you and me.

Right, so God created us with a nature that dooms us to Hell. He therefore, in your view, created us for eternal punishment. Please explain how such a being can be said to be 'good'.

Yours in Christ

Matt

 

[pinoybaptist]

Matt:

Wrong. He did not create us with a nature that dooms us to hell.

He created Adam, the father of all mankind, perfect, without sin or blemish, and it was Adam who violated the perfection of his nature by choosing to disobey and disbelieve God, and instead obey and believe another fallen creature, the serpent, a.k.a. the dragon, a.k.a.
Satan, a.k.a. the accuser of the brethren, a.k.a. the devil.

Romans 5:12 gives it all in a nutshell:

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that F18 all have sinned:

And Genesis 5:3 in the OT as well:

And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth:

Therefore, all men since Adam's sin, including Adam and Eve themselves, have this fallen nature.

God did not create man with this, to say He did, is to say He also authored sin.

This is why I have always said, and Terry Harrington, IFB Reformer, and company, gleefuly accuse me of heresy for saying this, God did not require faith first before any salvific effect can be had from Christ's death on the cross for His people, because man has already proven he is incapable of believing God for his benefit.

Eternal salvation is all a one way street. God planned, God chose, God executed, God saved, and God regenerated. All of God, none of man.

 

[Matt Black]

Ignore Adam. What about you and me? You have already said that God created both of us. Has He or has He not created us in a fallen state, doomed to Hell?

Yours in Christ

Matt

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by Ray Berrian:
[QB]The immutability of God's attributes of justice, love and mercy in the Bible, disallows any teaching of a pick and choose Lord, who affords some Heaven while denying the majority this eternal benefit.

Like others have said, this is not the definition of justice at all. God's attribute of Justice alone would put us all in hell. Mercy is, by definition, something one gives to another who does not deserve it. Mercy makes an exception to justice. So to apply your personal (and incorrect) definition of justice to force mercy to be made available to all contradicts the definitions of justice and mercy themselves.

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by Matt Black:
OK, Pinoy and Npetreley, a quick question for you. Both of you talk in terms of man being responsible for original sin/ total depravity/ whatever you want to call it (Pinoy by saying God is not the author of sin or the Fall - with which I do agree - and Npetreley by saying that we inherited that condition). Who created you and me, guys?

My mother and father created me. They did so because God foreordained it to happen, thus God is ultimately responsible for my existence. But God did not create me out of the dust of the ground. So God is my ultimate creator, but He did not grab a bunch of dust and create me as a sinful creature destined for hell. I inherited that condition through Adam. The Bible plainly says this in Romans.

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by Matt Black:
Ignore Adam. What about you and me? You have already said that God created both of us. Has He or has He not created us in a fallen state, doomed to Hell?

Yours in Christ

Matt

See the answer above. God did not create us from nothing as creatures destined for hell. God created Adam that way, and He created Adam in innocence. Adam fell, and passed on his spiritually dead condition to all his descendents. You can't "ignore Adam" because Adam was the only one God created from dust, which distinquishes him from the rest of us. We were not created from nothing as spiritually dead creatures. We were created through a biological process with inherited traits, including being spiritually dead. We got our condition from Adam, not from God.

 

[Ray Berrian]

pinobaptist,

' . . . your God is the one that sends more people to heaven.'

You have to read more carefully, my friend. We both agree that more people end up in Hell than in Heaven, as says, Matthew 7:13-14. ' . . . many there be who will go in the way of the broad gate that leads to destruction.' And to His elect, the saved, Jesus said, ' . . . few there be that find it.' There will be multi-millions of souls in Heaven but compared to the world population in all of time, these will still be the few people. Thank God we are in the faith.'

 

[Matt Black]

Npetreley, did God or did He not create you and me, yes or no?

Yours in Christ

Matt

 

[pinoybaptist]

Ray:

No. I do not agree that more people will be in hell than in heaven.
In the first place, the Scripture you quoted has nothing to do at all with eternal salvation or eternal damnation.
The narrow way is salvation in time, something which even some Primitive Baptists deny is taught in the Bible.
You can find references to this kind of salvation when Paul told Timothy to stay in the doctrine, thus saving himself and others.
You can find this kind of salvation in Peter's exhortation: save yourselves from this untoward generation.
You can find this kind of salvation in Christ's own words: Abide in me, for without me you can do nothing.

Second, I believe God is a God of mercy, and while there are those whom He has not chosen unto eternal life, those whom He ordained to eternal life will be far more in number than those whom He passed by.

Third, I believe more will be saved than damned because God's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, and when He covenanted with Himself in eternity past, there was nothing in that covenant He made with Himself that stated man must first hear and believe the gospel before they can even hope that His Son's death is indeed efficacious for them.

He Himself will be the source of faith and belief for them after he gives them hearts of flesh in place of their hearts of stone.

 

[pinoybaptist]

Originally posted by Matt Black:
Ignore Adam. What about you and me? You have already said that God created both of us. Has He or has He not created us in a fallen state, doomed to Hell?

Yours in Christ

Matt

Matt, if you believe that years ago God directly created you out of the dust of the earth, no mother and no father, then that is fine with me.

Be happy in what you believe, and don't let me spoil your fun (no sarcasm intended).

However, as for me, I believe it was Adam, and only Adam, who was a direct creation of God from the dust of the earth, and Eve taken from Adam.

God then gave Adam and Eve the power to procreate which is why He said, 'Go and replenish the earth'.

Sin, however, marred an otherwise perfect creation, and so you have death, and murder, and failures to procreate, and mutations (unless you want to say God created conjoined twins).

 

[Matt Black]

No, I don't believe that God created us from dust but I do believe that I am created by Him, in that no human life comes into existence without Him willing it. Do you not likewise believe?

Yours in Christ

Matt

 

[pinoybaptist]

I realize I am on slippery surface here, but, this is what I can say, Matt.

I think for God to will something into existence, as in our case after our first parents, will be quite different to Him just allowing what He originally created to run its course.

Indirectly, thru Adam and Eve, we can say He is mankind's Creator, but, every human being on this earth is now born thru the procreative process which He gave our first parents.

The reason I am careful in this matter is because I feel that to say God has a direct hand in the existence of every human being after Adam and Eve is to say also that He created some for punishment and some for glory, which is simply not the case.

 

[Matt Black]

Ah, there be the rub. If God does create human life (albeit in a different way than with Adam and Eve) then I believe you and I are in agreement that He creates - indeed wills - some for punishment.

The problem with your view of God as creator is that such a view of the Deity comes close to Deism (if that's not taking alliteration a little too far!): He starts things off but then, apart from the (very important) intervention of Calvary, leaves Mankind pretty much to their own mess. This contradicts the revelation of God in Scripture in particular the OT.

Yours in Christ

Matt

 

[ILUVLIGHT]

1 How can a man supposedly created for destruction be responsible for the direction he was created to go in?

Unless, it was up to Him. If we are infact predestined unalterably to righteousness or destruction we have nothing to do with it we were made that way.

Whether God see's us as guilty or not, Righteousness is about being right in all things This is the same in His mind as it is in ours. It is not right to claim a man is responsible, for what he has no control over.

May God Bless you all;
Mike

 

[Matt Black]

Flowing from the above, next question: am I or God responsible for my sinful state?

Yours in Christ

Matt