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Total Depravity or Free Will in this tract?

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PreachTony

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Earth said:
James....I for one understand & appreciate your directness......I wont always agree with you now but....I respect your directness. Rare these days.
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I'll agree to that. Directness is a virtue these days.

JamesL said:
I think you've misunderstood what I was getting at. I don't give my own experience more authority than yours. If you go back and read what I wrote, I said on its own your experience had zero weight. Same goes for my experience(s). They only have as much authority as granted by scripture.

And I wasn't attempting to cast doubt on your faith. One thing you should know about me and the things I write. You don't need to try to read between the lines. I don't work through insinuations and innuendos. If that's what I mean, you'll be able to quote me exactly saying it.

And if what you get out of my post is not word-for-word what I wrote, you've probably misinterpreted what I wrote.
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I will own up to the high probability that I misread you. One thing to know about me, James, is that I will ardently defend my own faith, and often I'll let that ardent defense cloud more reasonable discussion. It's one of the negatives of being passionate about something.

I'm sorry if I was offensive, which I'm sure I was. Truthfully, I do put weight on the experience, though the experience is not the foundation. Christ is the foundation our faith is built upon. He is the Rock our houses should be set upon; the cornerstone...you know the titles...

But I give weight to experience, because I see those things as (as Jeremiah put it) waymarks and high heaps, milestones along the highway, if you will. Does that provide a better sense of my point of view on the topic?
 
Earth Wind and Fire

Earth Wind and Fire

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You know though....while I got you James, you posted at one time that Arminians & Calvinists are much alike. I now believe them both to be 2 sides of the same coin. So, in short you were right.:thumbs:
 
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JamesL

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Earth said:
You know though....while I got you James, you posted at one time that Arminians & Calvinists are much alike. I now believe them both to be 2 sides of the same coin. So, in short you were right.:thumbs:
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Thanks again. And knowing that makes me shake my head when I see them have such volatile debates.
 
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JamesL

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PreachTony said:
I'm sorry if I was offensive, which I'm sure I was.
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Man, if you thought you were being offensive, you might not last long around here - lol

That read like someone who was just having a hard time keeping his composure. I honestly didn't mean to cast doubt on your standing with Christ. I apologize, too, for my tone.

All I'm trying to convey is that scripture makes several declarations, and that our experience must be weighed against them.

We are justified through faith
Faith comes by hearing the word of God
We are born again through the word of God which is preached
Forgiveness is to those who believe in Christ.
He who believes in Christ has passed from death to life.

There are others, too. But the gist of it is that we hear (or read) the gospel of Christ. The Holy Spirit convinces us of the truth of that promise from God. We come to rely upon Christ and His death, blood, and resurrection alone.

But what we don't see is any admonition to ask Jesus into our heart, nor do we find any scriptural example for that. And our truth must be derived from scripture.

Suppose someone says this prayer, and they also are hoping only in Christ. Which comes first? Faith or the prayer? It is my contention that one or the other had to come first.

Now, let's put some time between to two. Maybe 5 years.

Suppose I hope in Christ alone in 2005, but I don't ask Jesus to save me until 2010

Or suppose I ask Jesus to save me in 2005, but I don't hope in Christ alone until 2010

Does God look at the prayer we said, or faith in His promise? Some try to act like it's not a big deal, like God will just take whichever comes first.

But scripture simply doesn't bear that out. Faith is the biblical access into God's grace. Regardless of our desire for eternal life, or our desire to obey God, or a perceived act of humility by saying a prayer.....

Scripture is clear. If you do not believe the gospel, you will die in your sins. And that righteousness is credited on account of faith. Not a decision, but faith.
 
Earth Wind and Fire

Earth Wind and Fire

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JamesL said:
That's exactly what it is.

They're so hung up on certain details, they can't see that the end result is the same either way.
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WARNING.....NEVER dare to have any other conclusion but their own.....then you will get labeled any number of pejoratives in the arsenal:laugh: Now if you got moxie, that's another story. :laugh:
 
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JamesL

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Earth said:
WARNING.....NEVER dare to have any other conclusion but their own.....then you will get labeled any number of pejoratives in the arsenal:laugh: Now if you got moxie, that's another story. :laugh:
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Couldn't have said it better myself.

:laugh:
 
salzer mtn

salzer mtn

Well-Known Member
PreachTony said:
I greatly appreciate you casting doubt upon my salvation, James. My experience, which you seem to denigrate, is, in essence, the on-ramp of my life as a believer. It's the moment I came to the knowledge of Christ. You say later on that you didn't believe until you were 28. I believed at 10. Why is my experience somehow cheaper than yours?



I'm sorry this happened to you. There is a plague of pastors and preachers across the land doing this, because it makes the church and the numbers look better, but they're toying with peoples' salvation. God is not pleased with it.



Agreed, though some people take your last sentence here as evidence that people have absolutely no input on the state of their soul, which scripture does not bear out. As I said, why would Paul tell his readers to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling if they had no input in the matter to begin with? Was Paul wrong?



Please note that I'm not saying someone can get saved without praying. I cannot speak to the mind of God concerning how He saves the lost. I just know how it worked for me. I get the sense that my salvation isn't up to par for you.

Here's the deal, James...I don't rely on the prayer I prayed. My hope is not in the fact that I knelt beside my grandfather's recliner. My hope is in Jesus Christ, crucified, resurrected, leaving behind an empty grave, showing His victory, and ascended to the right hand of the Father, making intercession for us. That's my hope. Again, the prayer was a vehicle for me.



Apologies for the confusion. I guess I'll stop taking the Bible as a whole. If we're commanded to pray in our faith, why is it wrong to pray at your entry to that faith. Perhaps realization of your lost state and recognition of the need to talk to God proves out a person's "conversion." If so, then perhaps the prayer is a means of assurance from God. Of course, per what I've gathered from your comments, you can't even speak to God without being "converted" first.



In your experience, does everyone come to belief the same way you did? They don't in mine. Some people are humbled to the point of recognizing and believing. Others come to belief in their youth. The same free gift of God is offered to all, but not everyone comes to it the same. This is why I would never question someone else's experience. That's between them and God. If they stand in need of the Lord, then I believe the Lord will work it out.



I appreciate you making a tenuous connection between my experience of grace and a false religion. I wish I had the backbone to say that everyone who doesn't agree with my interpretation of things was wrong.



While you're right that there is no saving grace impart through baptism (one of the few things I think we're agreeing on), I greatly disapprove of your means of questioning my faith, James. I've not once said that anyone had to pray some rote "sinner's prayer," or that they had to answer questions from their preacher.

I've given you my experience. Instead of gladly welcoming a 'brother' in Christ, you've chosen to question my faith because it's not exactly like yours. Why does it matter to you if I prayed at the moment of my 'conversion?' I still rest in the faith, as mentioned above.

I know this will probably be taken as offensive. I'm hurt at the things you said. I don't mind debating theological issues and doctrines, James. But to have a fellow board member question my experience simply because they don't believe in prayer at conversion stings.
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Tony I to prayed when the Lord converted me. A few days previous to this I was in a church service when the Holy Spirit smote me and brought heavy conviction in my heart. The evening when the Lord revealed his salvation in me I was all by myself with a great burden on my soul. I did pray as also the publican did when he said, God be merciful to me, a sinner. But actually after I had prayed and was still in despair I looked up into heaven and said, Lord I know you can save me, if You will. This is when his Spirit bore witness with my spirit that I was a child of God. He sent forth his Spirit into my heart crying Abba Father. The easy believism crowed cannot stand this but I was there and no one led me down a Romans road.
 
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PreachTony

Active Member
salzer mtn said:
Tony I to prayed when the Lord converted me. A few days previous to this I was in a church service when the Holy Spirit smote me and brought heavy conviction in my heart. The evening when the Lord revealed his salvation in me I was all by myself with a great burden on my soul. I did pray as also the publican did when he said, God be merciful to me, a sinner. But actually after I had prayed and was still in despair I looked up into heaven and said, Lord I know you can save me, if You will. This is when his Spirit bore witness with my spirit that I was a child of God. He sent forth his Spirit into my heart crying Abba Father. The easy believism crowed cannot stand this but I was there and no one led me down a Romans road.
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I stand by my experience, though as I tried to relate, the experience is just one part of the journey. I truly believe Jeremiah wrote it best when he wrote that we should set up waymarks. These experiences we have, regardless the impact we allow them in our lives, can serve as waymarks and milestones to us.

In no way am I equating my experience with the notion of "easy believism." If you had been in my shoes that night, you'd know there was nothing "easy" about it. Like you, I was not led through some rote prayer or anything of the sort. Everyone in the room was praying on their own accord. I know for a fact that during my prayer the peace of God came upon me. Within me, the turmoil was settled. I knew where I stood, even if I wasn't old enough or well-spoken enough to lay out line upon line and precept upon precept. It was, and still is, a matter of faith.
 
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Rippon

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Earth said:
Which ones Heads & which one is tails?
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To those who say the truth lies somewhere between Calvinism and Arminianism: "It does not. There is nothing between them but a barren wilderness." C.H. Spurgeon
 
Earth Wind and Fire

Earth Wind and Fire

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Rippon said:
To those who say the truth lies somewhere between Calvinism and Arminianism: "It does not. There is nothing between them but a barren wilderness." C.H. Spurgeon
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So the church is either of the two? That statement should upset most non Calvinists....including Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists etc.
 
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