HC and its beliefs, revisited

Quote:
Originally Posted by pinoybaptist
Tell me, brother, is this condition of being "saved" in the eternal sense ?
Yes and no.


Quote:
I mean (and I have asked this question several times on the board) does hearing the gospel by the elect result in the blood of Christ being applied to him and being effective for him, washing away his sin, and acquiring for him the eternal salvation that God in eternity past planned he should have ?
In the eternal work of God, Salvation is finished and was applied to only His people on the very day He died on the tree.

1) Christ is called "Jesus" because He shall save His people from their sins (Matt. 1:21).

2) He is called the Saviour of His body (Eph. 5:23).

3) The Good Shepherd lays down His life for "the sheep" (John 10:15)

4) and He lays down His life for "His friends" (John 15:13).

5) He is said to die" that He might gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad" (John 11:52).

6) It is said that Christ "hath purchased the church with His own blood" (Acts 20:28).

There is no substitute for the time-honored, God-exalting truth of substitutionary atonement -that Christ our Lord actually bore the sins of those for whom He died specifically. If all were on the cross, it is clear all would be saved because the sins were washed away. However, He stood in the place of the "many" who would actually experience complete deliverance from all their sins.

Isaiah 53:11
Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.


Matthew 20:28
even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

Matthew 26:28
for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

Hebrews 9:28
so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

John 10:11
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

Now I understand someone will follow this post with a few verses that say Christ died for all and claim this all means all of mankind. Both sets of verses cannot be right if taken that way. There is but only one way to make them fit together and believe all the verses of the Bible as true.

Ok..with this work of God being true it still does not negate the fact that ALL of the elect must believe.

1) We are not ashamed, of the Gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes (Rom. 1:16).

2) God uses the instrumentality of faith in Christ's sacrifice to bring the CONSCIOUSNESS of justification and salvation (Rom. 3:24, 25; 4:5). This is the passaged I preached on this morning.

3) Faith, is a gift of God, and that it is no more a work than is circumcision (Rom. 4:11, 16). If faith is not needed then the gift that comes from God is worthless.


My Lord Jesus Christ substituted for "sheep" given Him by the Father, and not for the devil's "goats!" However, the instrument God uses to bring the sheep to the consciousness of salvation, is faith so that they can believe.

John 3...
Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God..

So...the elect does believe. Why? well...the passage tells us why.

21But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God."

Gill says, the Persic version reads,
"that the work which is between God and him may be known"; that such deeds may be discovered, which are only known to God and himself.

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I have no objection about the gospel being preached to anyone who will listen wherever and whenever an opportunity to do so is presented but like the hyper-Calvinist I do not believe that just any man is obliged to repent
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All are not. But we have no idea who will and who will not. No one is "near" to salvation then the other. Therefore we preach to all.

Quote:
The obligation to repent and believe is to every elect child of God, who has already (as opposed to one who is to be) regenerate.
I disagree. Regeneration is the opening of eyes to believe. The elect will not always hear/understand their need for the gospel the 1st time they hear the gospel. It is when God pulls back the darkness that they can understand and believe.

Quote:
What both Arminians and Calvinists fail to realize, or refuse to accept (because it will go against orthodox teaching as well as seminary teaching) is that Paul in the above quoted text is speaking of regenerate and elect Jews who are still caught up in their religion for the simple reason that Christians of his era are so fearful of orthodox Jewry that these have not been reached with the good news of Christ's finished salvation. Therefore the question: how then shall they hear without a preacher ?

Your point matters little if it is indeed true. The fact remains that Paul is telling us to GO and Preach and we have no idea who the elect is. Even if as you believe, there be regenerated people that do not know it, which hardly makes sense to me, for with a new life, we see new life, which is not part of your idea here that I can see,.......any way, if we were to set that aside and believe as you have stated, you still must take Paul for his words and share the gospel for you do not know who the elect is.
__________________
Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world?
Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

 

Brother Arthur:

To the first question you answered, yes and no.
How is this so ?

Also, at the end of your reply you said that what I think matters not and that we still have to go by what Paul says which is to preach the gospel because we do not know who the elect are.

Now, you probably missed where I said I do not object to preaching the gospel where and when the opportunity presents itself, but my question has always been is the gospel necessary to be believed in before anyone (in the case of the whosoevers) or the particular child of God (in the case of those who hold to election) could be saved in the eternal sense ?

For you to understand where I am coming from, let me explain this.

You and I both believe that God has elected a particular number of people unto salvation in Christ Jesus, from eternity past, before the creation of the world. We both agree that we do not know who these elect are, and that only God knows who they are.

He knows, we don't. Those are the givens.

Now, since He knows who these elect are, and since He created the world and everything in it, including these elect, and since He is the one who is Omniscient and Omnipresent and not us, and since He is the One who loved these people before they loved Him, and knew them before they knew Him, and He is the One who put on the form of a slave that these who are indeed slaves should be free, how then can the non-Omniscient, non-Omnipresent, fallible, fallen elect children of God be the ones finally tasked with the completion and effectuality of the elect's eternal salvation thru their preaching of the gospel ?

I am basing this on the fact that the Bible says that those who were elect and who were seen in heaven in that chapter of the Book of Revelation were said to have come from all tongues, kindreds, nations and, ages (?).

If this is so, then the God of the Universe has His elect people from the beginning of time, North, East, South, West and every point in between of the compass, and if none of these are to be lost, why should none of these be lost ? Is it because of the work of God in Christ on their behalf ? Or is it because of the work of preachers of the gospel who live heart and hearth behind in sacrifice to the "great commission" ?

Please bear in mind that I am not protesting the preaching of the gospel.

I am protesting the reason for its preaching.

I will have to continue this with another post.

 

cont'd

Think of the context upon which this command to preach the gospel was given.

God creates man, sinless and perfect in Eden, man falls, sin comes in, man is banished from God's presence, man populates the earth, sometime in their history man begins to call upon the Name of the Lord.
Because of his now corrupted nature, the flood comes, God preserves one man, Noah, who replenishes the earth, but whose nature is just as corrupt, and his seed multiplies and the next step is Babel and the spread of a confused people.
With this spread goes false religions, idolatry, and wickedness all over the earth.
God then calls out Abram, an idolater, and Sarai, an idolater, and from this one man, creates a nation, Israel.

From hereon, God is dealing with Israel, but wickedness and sin abounds around His chosen national people who has by then gone into captivity under a Pharaoh who has not known the God of the Jews.

Question: Has He therefore stopped to be the God and Creator of ALL the earth and ALL its people ?

Maybe there are those who will say "yes", but I say NO. He is still the God to whom all men will one day answer, and He is still the God who has His elect in Christ scattered all over the earth in bondage to sin in this plane called time.

Brother Arthur, do you sincerely think He had no elect before the cross ?

I ask because if the elect MUST hear the gospel preached to them in order for them to be saved, then that is the implication. No elect until Christ's time.

But to continue.

At this point in time, God starts to deal with one people and one people only.

Israel.

Who by that time had become slaves. God calls out Moses. Moses leads Israel out of Egypt, but it was God who delivered them. Through Moses God introduces Himself to His created national people as Jehovah, the One true God, the only Holy God whose laws are perfect and must be obeyed. Moses teaches His people, and Moses is given the prophesy of a future Prophet who is to come.

Do we still not see what the gospel role is ?

God delivered Israel. Moses taught the gospel. The law and the sacrifices did not deliver Israel. Their knowledge of the Name Jehovah did not deliver Israel. Jehovah delivered Israel because He wanted them delivered for His word's and His Name's sake.

And God moved within His people. Disciplining, punishing, feeding, caring, shepherding them.

What about the people all around Israel ?

They were still steeped in their sins.

Did this mean God had no people in them ?

Yes the Bible did not say God had His people in them, yet God speaks of "strangers" who may want to cling themselves to Israel, and in the end we still have to deal with the language of the Bible when it says "all kindreds, and tongues, and nations".

 

cont'd

After Moses, Jonah, and then the judges. And at this stage of Biblical history, we see Israel deteriorating and then getting restored, all the way through their history until we come to the time of Jesus, when Israel was under Roman rule.

Now, surely, there were other nations, tongues, and kindreds around Israel at this point in time and at this point in their history ?

How fares Israel at this point in time, by the way.

Religious, yes. They looked at the Romans and call these people dogs because they are Gentiles, would not eat with them, would not mingle with them. They were, after all, God's chosen people.

They had God's laws, God's prophets, God's revelations.

We see an Israel divided by religious sectarianism. One believes in the resurrection, the other does not. Among its people, there are those who work for the Romans, and there are those who advocate revolt.

God's chosen national people.
In shambles. A spiritual shipwreck.

In the meantime, around this small spot of earth's geography, you have nations who are steeped in idolatry and superstitions and debauchery.

And in this context comes the Messiah.

You know the rest of the story.

And I submit to you that the reason he sent out His apostles to preach the gospel is not to get them saved in both the eternal and timely sense.

He wants His people, as many as can be reached by non-Omniscient, non-Omnipresent preachers to be told: their salvation is done. There is one Savior, one God, and His work is complete and cannot be added to, cannot be taken away from. He cannot be bribed, or paid, He cannot be enticed with favors, but He bestows favors.

There is a way in which He wants His people on earth to live.

He said "teach them, baptize them".

He has finished their eternal salvation, already secure in Him from eterntiy past, here in time.

All whom the Father wanted redeemed, He has redeemed ALREADY. Those who were born before His time, those who were born after His time, and those who will be born before He comes again.

What is needed is to educate as many of them as can be reached.
That is why the gospel must be preached.

 

In closing, since no one seems to want to discuss this further, I would like to say this:

We on this board like to throw labels around, and "dissect and analyze" each other.

Some on this board are just waiting for the slightest slip to be able to call somebody a heretic, or accuse somebody of twisting Scriptures, or whatever it is they fancy the other to be doing, whilst at the same time failing to look at the steadfastness and solidity of the doctrines and teaching that they themselves hold on to.

Many on this board are guilty of "double speak".

Take for example the matter of Divine Sovereignty.

None on this board will deny that God is an Absolute Sovereign, and proceed to explain away the limits or extensiveness of the "magnanimity" of His Sovereignty in accordance with his favorite thesis.

And then there is the matter of salvation.

None on this board, again, will deny that Jesus Christ alone is Savior, and that without Him, there is no one calling himself a child of the King who can even begin to imagine what that means.

Everybody on this board will agree that salvation is OF the Lord, and then hasten to add requirements to such salvation.

Such as the need to hear the gospel first, or the need to respond to the message of the gospel, or the need to repent or exercise faith or exercise belief.

The desire to serve the Lord through preaching the gospel of His salvation is definitely commendable, and should be emulated by all who name His Name as theirs but somewhere along the line we seem to have lost sight of the meaning of 'salvation is OF the Lord'.

Somewhere along the line, what with the proliferation of seminaries and graduates with Drs and Masters to their names, and the myriads of books that have been written and hailed as THE ultimate instruction manual, the Name that matters most has become dependent on His own creation.

We have lost sight of the fact that when our Lord went up that cross He was sealing in time what He has decreed in eternity for a people whom He had loved from before the foundation of the world.

A people whose downfall He foresaw, and whose redemption He promised and made good with His own blood. A complete, full, and final redemption from sin which was predicated on absolutely nothing but His mercy, will, and love.

He didn't ask for their faith BEFORE He finalizes the deal.
He didn't ask that they BELIEVE in Him first before He went up that cross, as a matter of fact, none of His apostles, His immediate friends, believed that He would rise up again. They were all of them in hiding when He rose from the dead. His friend Peter denied Him three times, Thomas demanded proof before He believes, and two from Emmaus had to be reprimanded by Him for their ignorance of what was written.

And these were people who walked and ate and slept with Him.

How then can He demand faith and repentance and belief on those who have not seen Him as those who walked with Him beheld Him ? And yet His word says many will believe on Him without their having seen Him, and is that why He saved them ? I wot not. They believed on Him because He saved them first.

What then is the purpose of gospel preaching ?

Without a doubt it must be preached. But its purpose is not to create an environment where the Holy Spirit can work His work of regeneration, for He can do that without men or means. He alone is able to be in China and in the North Pole at the same time as He is in Israel or in Utah. He alone is able to be at the bedside of a dying child of His, or in the womb of a mother bearing a child of His. He alone regenerates.

The preaching of the gospel, if you all will forgive my repetitiveness, is to teach His own, not those whom to Him are reprobates.

To say that the preaching of the gospel is in order for His elect to be saved in the eternal sense is just as false as to say that the preaching of the gospel is for whosoever will to exercise his inherent faith which he did not lose during the fall, in order to redound to his salvation.