Believing A work
I understand that belief is a work of God,man has nothing to boast about he believes through Grace Acts 18:27[ because his election is of Grace Romans 11:5 ] therefore it is not a work of man.God is omniscient anyone not believing that would not be orthodox Acts 15:18 "KNOWN UNTO GOD ARE ALL HIS WORKS FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD'' '' Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;... Psalms 139: 6 God knows. "He knoweth what is in the darkness" Dan 2:22 He knew back then, he knows now,"Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight:but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do" Heb 4:13 He knows our thoughts Ezek 11:5{even before they come in our mind} so says the prophets of old.His understanding is infinite Psalms 147:5 look at Jer 1:5 we could go on and on! for any man to try to rob God of one of his attributes and for an association to print such trash is abominble! That was my wake up call concerning the NNS.The ancient Regular Baptist would have excluded a man for advocating such, also the ideal that election is this ,that God cast a vote for you, the devil cast a vote against you and you cast the deciding vote, to make such a statement is to put Satan as a member of the God head and is blasphemy. I will not fellowship such things now nor ever if I have my right mind, My God is too precious to me,to be treated like that among those who claim to be his children.Man is sovereign but God is not? I would rather be called a hardshell and be true to the Bible than be esteemed highly among a group that would try to change God into fallible creature like man.Yet these people would fight and try to destroy churches for preaching free Grace or saying God knows them that are his.I may die outside that cluster but I am not homesick for my loved one to hear any of that, and they have plenty of it. Election by Grace is not the cause of decline among them, the fall away is, and it has been brought on by men and women not living by the Bible, the same for all the rest, while our correspondence has not left the doctrine, many churches have left the practice, but I do see some change among some in this, for that I am thankful.I am not opposed to trying to work on some issues with the other factions but they must put a stop to unorthodox preaching,I can and have worked with rational brothers, who may differ on points with me, but I can not work with people who say our God just doesn't know everything about his own works.They need to review their historical statements and boundries set concerning doctrine, I live and preach by them now.They need to come to agreement themselves about practice, it seems to change all the time, God does not change like that one year it is a sin, next year it is not.I feel the Indian Bottom has many gifted men among them, they have kept Regular Baptist singing but they do not keep the order they once did, their modifications have left to broad a road to travel ,while they have able leaders Bro.Elwood seems to be good at keeping peace,and I think he stands for more of the old time way in practice.The men with more than one living wife preaching issue is a very old one and some of those who threw the rocks had been doing the same thing for several years themselves.Note: I am not saying this because we have the same ,we do not, none of our churches ever used them knowingly, but they fellowshiped all those years under those conditions and then it became an offense, yes they did have sisters that cut their hair and wore make-up too excessive but the others needed to clean their house first. I am not afraid to speak my mind ,as far as I know they are not interested in correspondence with us nor is the other cluster.I do think we all could get together again and work on some of our issues and develop working relationships until full correspondence could be granted, but I will not go against the God of the Bible for the sake of peace. Elder Michael Slone