Originally posted by Joseph_Botwinick:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by tragic_pizza:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Joseph_Botwinick:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by tragic_pizza:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Joseph_Botwinick:
Wrong. It is their sin which keeps them from God. If God wanted to save them, nothing I could will stop that. God is sovereign and nothing will thwart the will of God.
Joseph, who does God use to bring His message of salvation to sinners?
He's done it Himself, through Jesus, and also when He appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus.
Aside from that, He expects you and I to be His hands and feet. If we, through unfaithfulness in any area (including but not limited to hatred, bigotry, and Pharaisical judgmentalism), cloud His message to a dying world, the blood of that dying world is on our hands, and cries against us.
We cannot cloud the message in either extreme, be it selling out to universalism or relativism or building theological walls to keep sinners out and the "righteous" in. Sadly, one of the bricks in the walls we Christians insist on building is blaming. AIDS and homosexuality is but one example. </font>[/QUOTE]TP,
Christians are not perfect. We may very well mess up every now and then, and indeed we all do. However, we cannot and will not ever thwart the will of God. He is sovereign, and will have his way one way or the other, with or without our cooperation.
We are commanded by God to preach the Word to the lost and show them the love of God. If we refuse to do so and it is God's will that a certain lost person be saved, he will work it out himself, with or without us.</font>[/QUOTE]How? </font>[/QUOTE]If I were a sovereign God, I am sure I could come up with some very clever answer to how I don't have any human limitations like you do. But I am not. You do believe that God is sovereign, and can accomplish his will with or without you, don't you?
Joseph Botwinick </font>[/QUOTE]This is like asking "do you still beat your wife?"
Yes, I beleive God can do whatever He wants to,
but I also understand the Scriptures to be quite clear in this: You and I are His
chosen method of accomplishing His will.
I don't see a divine "Plan B" in Scripture
anywhere. Thus I return, emphatically and yet I am sure pointlessly, to the fact that how we act and how we conduct ourselves to nonbelievers
matters in how and if they are going to respond to the Gospel. I know far too many people who have been turned off by "religious people" and thus have no interest in the Gospel. This isn't God's fault, is it? It isn't the
person's fault, either, that some religious nut with an agenda screamed at them about going to Hell, is it? That leaves only one person at fault, my friend.