John of Japan...
Your points???
John, I'm still waiting for you to adress my points in posts 66, 67, and 68.
What points? All you did was quote Scripture, ostensibly to disprove something I did not mean to imply when I wrote Benjamin. You didn't tell how those verses were supposed to prove your position.
In the meantime, what I would still like you to answer is, do you still cling to your notion that John 1:9 is talking about "spiritual influence"? Or do you admit that the verse is specifically talking about Christ and nothing else?
But as long as we are talking about the verse, let's look at the Greek of John 1:9. The verb there for "lighteth" is the Greek
photizo, meaning of course "to shine light onto" (my definition). In this case the form of the verb is present active indicative, 3rd person singular. The tense means that it is not an accomplished action (normally, the perfect or aorist tense would show that), but rather linear action in present time, the durative or progressive present.
What this grammar means is that Christ is always giving light to people, not that at this instant every single person in the world has the light of Christ. It is a continuous project for Christ. But it is only light, not salvation. They themselves must begin to seek God.
One of my mentors, Dr. Monroe Parker, had a sermon in which he described the barriers to Hell Christ puts in front of every single person: sickness, injury, death of loved ones and friends, disaster, etc. People crawl over the barriers on their self-centered way because they don't care about God. It is not that He doesn't want to save them, they ignore Him. We are seeing this in Japan right now, where multitudes continue to ignore God in spite of the huge disaster in March. God has no responsibility to save wicked people like this who constantly ignore Him. They go to Hell on their own--God doesn't capriciously decide to send them there. They do not seek Him, do not try to find the truth. And God will not save them outside of the truth of Jesus Christ and His death for sins and His resurrection. "The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not" (v. 5).
However, there are always people who heeds God's warnings, and turn to seek the truth. As my grandfather used to say, "You can't win everyone, but you can always win someone." We have a lady in our church who got saved, and I baptized this summer who started coming back to church after the disaster. But she had to hear the Gospel from us. She did not get saved outside of that.
