Programmed or not?

Just consider it my gift to you to be understood in whatever manner is most profitable.

 

Q , your nonresponse makes me question why you said it in the first place . You are mysterious .

 

Well the gift was not to you so...let that person open their gift.

 

Your graciousness is exceeded only by your pomposity .

 

Well that makes me very gracious indeed!:laugh:

 

God determines

God determines where we go by His word. God placed two road before us to believe and be saved or not and be condemned.

It does not infringe on God's sovreignty, for He placed the roads before us and made us the messeger of these roads. Men always try to use the sovreignty card, since what God word say's happens He is still sovreign. If one believes and trust not in themselves but in Jesus to save them and is condemned then God is not sovreign. So whosoever believes shall be saved.

So what we do is on not our free will, but we do is being lead by the word of God.

If we believe we will be saved if not we will be condemned. Either way we are not walking by our free will but by the word of God.

We are saved by grace through faith.

We are graced based because we didn't pay our debt for our salvation, Jesus did.

Any man who tries to say they saved themselves by thier choice, is a liar and don't know the truth. Your belief didn't save you, Jesus death on the cross did.

Now if you die for your own sins then you can say what you did paid your debt, but that is not salvation but death.

We will always be saved by grace, because we didn't have to pay our own debt.

 

I am a hypocrite AND gracious, wow. Well, now that you have gotten your petty name calling issue dealt with, let's get back to the OP, eh?

 

And, gentlemen, this exchange shows Christ's character to which readers?

 

Ah the needed segue to return to the topic at hand, thanks Helen.

 

I think you better review your recipe, friend.

Your words contradict themselves.

It is either we are saved (eternally) apart from any action from us, or we are saved because we believe.

Christ plus nothing. Period. No amount of semantics can contradict that truth.

Christ PLUS ZERO.

No prerequisites to eternal salvation. No belief BEFORE salvation, no faith BEFORE salvation.

Either Christ secured the eternal salvation of all His people from day one of age one to last day of last age, north, east, west, and south, and every point of the compass in this world, OR, He secured the eternal salvation of SOME of His people only because those who have not been saved (1) do not know His Name, (2) they were not in the Biblical areas, (3) they had no opportunity to exercise FAITH and BELIEF and all the other things you require to which you also add the word grace.

Oh, one last point: If I trusted Christ and Christ only, for my salvation, and at my deathbed found myself to be cast into hell, then guess what ?

GOD IS STILL SOVEREIGN and GOD IS STILL JUST, because neither you nor I deserve heaven but for the eternal mercy of God.

 

Amen, Psalms 109. Good post.

Umm, you should probably know that the term "freewiller" no longer refers to those who attend a Freewill Baptist church like it did when I was a kid. It also doesn't refer to the doctrine that some of such churches hold too that man can turn away from his salvation the same as he turned to it and therefore lose it.

"Freewiller" here refers only to those of us who believe that man must make the choice to accept the gift of salvation and refute the idea that God and God alone choses/forces/bestows salvation on those he desires with no responsibility on man's part whatsoever.

You can count me as a freewiller according to what I have defined above.

Did I see an invite to testify as to why I'm still a freewiller? Hope so cause that's what I'm about to do.

I've told some of this story here before, but I'm not sure this current group has heard it.

My parents both claim salvation from a young age. My father led me to the Lord at age 7. I was well and truely saved and knew exactly what I was doing. That said, my childhood became increasingly abusive the older I became.

My mother suffered/suffers from schizophrenia. Because of the stigma attached to mental illness back then and the lack of knowledge in how to treat such, my Dad refused to recognize the problem and often excused her behavior.

I won't go into everything my brother and I suffered at their hands as children (it would take a book) or that they attempted to make us suffer as adults (another book). It's enough to know that odd things happened as long as I can remember and real abuse began about the time I was 9 or 10 and got worse from there. This at the hands of my Christian parents.

Now, our parents are our greatest influence.

Sorry guys, I somehow hit the submit button.

Anyhow. My parent were 'freewillers' and we went to church with likeminded individuals who either didn't recognize the abuse that was going on or chose to ignore it (this second I know is true for there was a time when I plainly asked for help and was denied it).

You think I was going to believe those folk about anything? No, I wanted to know why God allowed the things that were happening to me. I wanted to know for myself and I searched the scriptures for myself, for years, to find the answers. Most of those answers didn't come immediately.

I am not non Cal because I was influenced by others. I believe what I believe because I searched out and studied for myself, prayfully, tearfully even and often. There weren't any others I trusted but myself and the Holy Spirit who was often my only companion in those days.

I believe what I believe through my own experiences and my beliefs have held me fast through the years.

Ya'll Calvies don't have a monopoly on searching the scripture.

 

At no point will you be able to find any post by me objecting to the suggestion that non-calvinists are programmed. You might be "interpreting" something I said that way but I certainly never said that...and we of course know what misrepresenting what someone else has said is. But enough of this.

Time to go back to the OP, unless you wish to prolong this conflict and histrionic complaint and if so you can do it on your own.
Q

 

That is where people misunderstand the scripture we are saved by grace through faith, in faith in what Jesus did on the cross.

Being saved has nothing to do with us because we don't have to pay or work the price of our sin which is death.
We still have to have faith that is very scriptual. You want to get rid of the faith part, but acording to scripture we are saved by grace through faith which is not our self, but of Christ when He did the work and paid our debt on the cross.

Romans 10:17
Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.

The scripture is not contradictory we are saved by grace through faith.

 

Faith

Did we one day wake up and have faith?

No it didn't, so our faith did not come from ourselves.

Where did our faith come from?

It came from God through the words of Jesus.

So who we going to boast in Jesus the one who saved us.

 

Then you're missing some great reading.

 

Well...

What I've read so far is that 4 Calvinists started out free will and thought one or more Calvinists to be "wise. And so they started studying grace from that perspective.

#1 This is exactly what Paul saw in the Corinthians! "The preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness." I suppose there are many who have only heard the preaching of Calvinism and think free will is foolishness, don't you? They go to their smug little "we're elect" churches and marvel that just anyone is invited "over there" to walk the aisle and demand salvation from God. "What fools!" "What a waste!" I suppose they are saying --- even some here, no doubt.

Just be advised, you are putting yourselves among the WORLDLY wise.

#2 Calvinism has to speculate on things that are not in direct scriptural evidence. Where is the man or woman in scripture that is regenerated before the believe? Who doesn't receive the "Gift" of the Holy Spirit (because he/she already has Him.)? Who doesn't repent before being saved?

See, Acts 2:38, etal in Acts, is pretty clear that a person hears, is convicted, believes, repents, and receives the indwelling Spirit. That they ask the operative question "What must we DO?" (Indeed, I wonder what would a Calvinist repent from when he finds himself to already be "elect?")

I'm sorry, friends, but (programmed or not) you are "dividing Christ." And your "gospel" sounds like another gospel to me -- the gospel to tell the saved that they are saved, not to tell the unsaved that they need to be saved.

skypair

 

Which is the best name to have on a church of the two below.

Baptist Church
or
Church of Jesus Christ

Now going by your last post, please tell why.

 

All means all.