Are you among the few or many?

Well, you're on the right track. These are both talking about Christians. Many take the easy way and enter at the wide gate; some (the few) are obedient and enter at the narrow gate.

These passages are talking about an entrance into the Kingdom, not spiritual salvation. Although you can never lose your spiritual salvation, you can be cast out of the Kingdom.

Verse 23 tells us which ones those are: Those who are lawless. ("Iniquity" is lawlessness.) Those who do what is right in their own eyes.

 

You remind me of the Jehovah's Witnesses and travel on a similar road..one track, regardless..Do you knock on doors also?

Cheers,

Jim

 

That's like saying that someone who is pro-life reminds you of a Catholic.

 

Indeed - a little more substance less "feeling".

(Less smoke - more fire)

What Matt 7 is saying is that FEW on the INSIDE of the church are really saved and MANY are lost. (Christ is not addressing the pagan in Matt 7 but rather the people of God in the one true church of God - established sovereignly by God at Sinai).

Those who pretend that God merely "arbitrarily selects out the FEW to be saved while caring nothing about the lost state of the MANY" make him out to be a monster in that He CLAIMS to love "the WORLD" and by that He simply means the "FEW".

Those who cling to OSAS while rejecting Matt 7 when it points to the inconvenient fact that "NOT everyone who SAYS Lord Lord - but he who DOES .." (4 Point Calvinists and some Arminians as it turns out) - have rejected not only Matt 7 but all texts on perseverance (texts which even 3 and 5 point Calvinists seem to get folks!!)

There is no sense in clinging to OSAS "no matter WHAT the Bible says"!

(But on more personnal note - there is no sense in Arminians joining with 4 Point calvinists on this rejectiong of perseverance. That is truly the limit!)

In Christ,

Bob

 

Where do you get the church was established at Sinai?

 

The persons in Matthew 7 were never saved in the first place, so OSAS does not apply in that passage.

If they had been saved, Christ would not say, 'I never knew you' or He would be lying. Christ knows His sheep (John 10) and when a sheep strays, the shepherd goes looking for that sheep until He finds it, chastens it and brings it back to the fold. Christ will not lose one of those whom the Father has given into His hand.

 

The "church" is merely the body of Christ (believers) on Earth. Christ HIMSELF is the Rock of the OT (see 1 Cor 10:4) under the ONE Gospel of salvaton active in ALL ages!!

*BTW - there has only ever been ONE Gospel Gal 1:6-9).

For that reason we are ALL grafted into ONE and are ONE church both OT and NT both Jews and Geniles (See Romans 11 as the point is made clearly with the Jews and Gentiles grafted into the SAME place into the vine of Christ).

Christ Himself (God the Son) is the one speaking at Sinai. In 1Thess 4 we see "The Dead in CHRIST are all raised" at the return of Christ. This includes the saints of Heb 11 as well as others post cross!!

One church - and in Christ's day that church was the one HE setup at Sinai!

 

This is the 5 point Calvinist view on OSAS that holds to perseverance but in a way that is somewhat incorrect.

I like it because it is certainly more correct than the 4 point Calivnist view of OSAS that says "saved no matter what level of rebellion against God that you continue to embrace".

The 4 point view makes God out to be a monster in Eden since that was the ONE place we REALLY could have used the 4 point rule of "IN no matter what you do"!!

In Christ,

Bob

 

For those 3 and 5 point Calvinists holding to perseverance - your only problem is "assurance" because you will claim "you never were saved to start with" when it is seen that you "Fail to persever ten years from today".

In Christ,

Bob

 

There is only one view that holds to the Bible teaching on Perseverance of the saints, and the Bible teaching on assurance of salvation (given TODAY regardless of whether you persevere 10 years from today or not) - and that is the Arminian view that rejects the tradition called OSAS in favor of both Bible truths listed above.

 

If you are referring to the story of Moses being told to speak to the rock and water would come forth, and that rock is Christ, that rock was in the wilderness of Zin (Numbers 20), not on Mount Sinai. So if you are using the water from the rock to show that is where the church was set up, then it would be set up in a wilderness of Zin (sin) rather than the mountain.

 

Hmm - I thought I already referenced 1Cor 10 -- I suggest you read it and then exegete your point if you can - because a it stands "in scripture" the statement is that "they were ALL" included in this relationship to "The Rock".

The "spiritual food" the "spiritual drink" was Christ in EVERY age!

See Heb 11 for the list of saints. See Romans 11 as it claims that we are BOTH in the SAME vine as the church in ALL ages see Rev 12 as the SAME view of "The church" pre-cross and post cross is given in the example of "The WOMAN" pure and holy.


1 Corinthians 10

So "obviously" Christ read HIS WORD during His Life and spoke from it authorotatively. Obviously that Word directed God's people to weekly church services in the local synagogue.

What is "not to get"??

In Christ,

Bob

 

Clearly this is individuals rejected (as Paul was certainly NOT rejected though a Jew). And it is INDIVIDUAL Gentiles accepted (as ALL pagans were NOT considered Saints by Paul in any sense at all). There are all being grafted “into” the vine of Christ – and as such form “ the church” they come in based on faith and they remain based on faith.

Just stating the “obvious” here but some have been avoiding this points in desperate attempts to spare the OSAS assumptions that are exposed by Romans 11 while others reject the idea of the ONE Gospel active in the church of God in all ages – grafting all the saints into the SAME vine of Christ.

Rom 11:17-23 - WE are grafted in to the place from which some of those who rebelled fell (as we note in Romans 11). WE are in the same place as THEY - under the ONE Gospel. (Gal 1:6)

Romans 11 points out that we are grafted into the SAME place from which the Jews fell AND that God wants to put the Jews BACK into the place from which they fell.
Not only is this a denial of OSAS it is also a denial that once you fall you can not be re-instated.

 

Wide Gate - All other Religions...

Narrow gate - Relationship with Christ - No Other Name but Jesus - Taking up ones **OWN** Cross

To make this a Proof Text to exclude all those that Name the Name of Christ after the order of Romans 10:9-10, but don't "toe the line" by some sects narrow interpretation, is not Grace Filled, nor Unifying to the *Real* Body of Christ...

In short this type of teaching makes Jesus' Prayer in John 17 of non-effect...

Mike Sr.

 

All the Arminian viewpoint leaves is the most impotent god possible. Puny man can thwart the very plans and will of God. I would much rather understand my sovereign God and bow to his beneficence to humankind in that he saves some, let alone any.

If I want a tin soldier as a god, I shall find the best man on earth and follow him.

You all tend to confuse daily living with spiritual rebirth. I agree that osas is bad terminology and it does not replace perseverance of the saints, which permeates every part of scripture. Even Job, prolly the oldest book in the Bible, shows us that a man has the full knowledge that He (Job) will see his God in his flesh on the last day.

Cheers,

Jim

 

Jim,

Where did *this* come from?

What elicited it?

Mike Sr.

 

My wife saw this and she wanted me to ask:

Are you pro-life? Have you bombed any abortion clinics lately?

That's the same kind of question.

Scriptures talk at great length about the Kingdom, but little about spiritual salvation. There is very little in Scriptures about the time after the Kingdom. The Kingdom is the central view of the Scriptures from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21.

The Children of Israel were already in the Promised Land while they were in Egypt. (They were promised the land from the Nile to the Euphrates.) But, their journeys through the wilderness were toward the Kingdom; the better part of the inheritance; the Land Flowing with Milk and Honey.

All cults, such as the JW's, have a grain of truth at their center. Just because they cling to one truth does not make that truth untrue, does it?

Many are called (saved); few are called-out (ruling and reigning in the Kingdom).

 

This could be what Jim was thinking of when he flashed that last post instead of addressing these points listed here.

He admits to the existence of the Bible truths on "perseverance" and then proceeds to ignore the difficulty that this places on a 5 point Calvinist when trying to get to "Assurance" as opposed to the beauty of the inclusion of BOTH truths when viewed in the Arminian model.

In Christ,

Bob

 

Thanks!

Seems like "we've" diverged a bit from the original thread?

Mike Sr.