USN2Pulpit said:
Pinoy, I appreciate your position...I suppose one that is not of the elect ought to have fun in this life, because that's all he's got.
Well, you certainly have the right to your opinion, seeing as you're in the service and one of those who might one day have to go to war and fight so I can have a right to my opinion.
But I sure won't preach that in the pulpit you know, if only for the reason that I have no idea who the elect are. The Spirit does not witness to my spirit that somebody is indeed elect. The Spirit witnesses to my spirit that I am a child of God.
Secondly, it is none of my business how a reprobate lives his life because if a reprobate conducts himself as a reprobate there is absolutely nothing I can do about it because he is dead in his sins and trespasses and the things of God are foolishness to him.
One thing I will not do, however, is to say of anyone, even after death that he is unsaved and have remained unsaved on account of his life, or his theology, or his creed, or his race, or his mental capacities.
Some of those in this board do that.
I don't.
The reason being that I trust God's power is able to reach out and quicken his own even at the last split second of his death, his regeneration and quickening not being dependent upon any of his mental or physical faculties or the ability of a preacher to be present. The preacher is not everywhere, the Spirit is.
USN2Pulpit said:
And all this time, I thought it was "for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. These words come from the Master Himself. The question I must now ask myself is this: do I believe Him?
That is a fair statement, I think. However, one must consider that just as not everytime the word
salvation is used in Scriptures, it pertains to eternal salvation, even so, not everytime the word
world is used, this necessarily means the entire world, North, East, South, West, and all points therein, including all its continents, sub-continents, countries, archipelagoes, and scattering of islands, even though one Greek word, "Kosmos", is said to have been used.
For example, by context we know that when the Scriptures said: "
And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also;(Acts 17:6)", we know that this "world" is the "world" as Jews and Romans and Greeks knew it at that time, which is basically, the Roman world, or those parts of the world where Rome rules.
This "world" turned upside down did not include Japan, or China, or the Philippines, or Vietnam, or India, where the Roman Empire was not in power.
Even then, we can see by close scrutiny that this "world" grows smaller if we consider that the turmoil caused by Paul and others, geographically, did not even include Egypt, but only Israel, parts of Syria, Cyprus, Greece, and Asia Minor.
Besides, if the world that God loved were the entire "kosmos", how are we to reconcile the following Scriptures, among some:
theKJV said:
Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. James 1:27 (why should we be told to think of the world God loves as a defiling world ?).
Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. James 4:4 (Again, here is the world in a negative statement. Is this the world God loves ?).
Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 1 John 2:15 (Again, we are told to love not the world, if we do, the love of the Father is not in him. Why ? Jesus said that if the Jews loved God, they would love Him, the connotation being that we love what or whom the Father loved. But if He loved the world so, by giving His only begotten Son, why then are we told not to love the world which He loves ?).
USN2Pulpit said:
Here's another passage I would have difficulty with:
Romans 10:8-10 - The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
In the version of the Roman Road taught to us at Bible College, we sometimes used this towards the "closing" part of the "sale" (oh, yes, I am being sarcastic, but not towards you, I am being sarcastic at the attempt to reduce my Savior to a commodity and His gracious salvation to a product being sold), you know, that part where we get to tell him to make his prayer so we can tell him he is saved if he truly believed what had happened, and we can chalk it up to another victory for Christ (as if Christ needed someone to get victory for Him), and give our testimony at church about how we got this guy saved and praise the Lord !
But, look at the verse, man.
Using it as a tool for evangelism is about as out of context as that part about Christ standing at the door of one's heart, knocking, begging to be let in, because Christ in the Bible was not knocking at the doors of anyone's heart, he was knocking at the doors of a cold church !
Whom was Paul referring to ? verse 1 answers that for you and me.
What did Paul say about those in Israel and caught up in Judaism ?
verse 2 says, "they have a zeal of God,
but not according to knowledge". We need to go verse by verse, phrase by phrase here to understand that Paul is in no way referring to the salvation of the soul here, to eternal salvation.
He was referring to salvation from error, from the false doctrines of Judaism (vers 3), which, to those who believe, culminates in the understanding of who Christ is (verses 4 and 5), or was, in their case,
which understanding, in turn, results in confession, proceeding from the heart, declared thru the mouth.
Remember "out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh" ?
And we have all around us, in many churches, people who were once strict religionists and who, because of faith given from God, because of ears opened by the Lord, hearts opened by the Lord, now confess not their former religions, but Christ !
They have been saved from erroneous doctrines and whatever lifestyles those doctrines generated for them, but their eternal salvation is and always will be OF the Lord who gave it to them, and had nothing at all to do with their theologies or earthly circumstances, then, now, or ever.
They confess Christ because they were born from above
by the will of God.