Featured Universalism a strawman argument.

Of course it doesn't. Yet Universalists use 1 John 2:2 and 2 Peter 3:9 as their proofs.

 

They use your verses including 1 Timothy 2:3-5.
As the Amish are related to the Mennonites, so General Redemption is related to universalism.

 

Just like General Redemption. Both use verses as prooftexts out of context and create a false construct.
The difference is that universalism is less contradictory in its argument than your General Redemption theory. Your theory is chalk full of contradictions that fight against each other. I've shown you this and you just keep denying it without ever attempting to look at your contradictions.

 

Only in your mind, not in scripture. In scripture God particularly redeems each person He has chosen from before the foundation of the world.
You desire an unspecific God who ransomed every sinner, from Adam onward, yet couldn't save all of them, despite purchasing them all out of slavery. You put the power of redemption in the hands of men and remove it from God. Such a philosophy of redemption is incompatible with God's word which shows us a God who has very specific plans that He always accomplishes without fail. Your redemption is precisely because God chose you and redeemed you.

 

Definitive? You cannot even define what General Redemption is. You have never clearly defined it in all the posts you have made.
Instead, you teach Universal Atonement, that Jesus ransomed all humanity, having paid for all sins. Then, you deny that Jesus payment was enough. Instead, you declare that human choice is the key to whether or not Jesus payment was enough. It is the human that decides his own fate by accepting the payment or rejecting it. You ignore scripture when you read "But God..." You, instead, insist on "but man..."
There is no general redemption taught anywhere in scripture. The redemption is particular. There is, however, a general call to all humanity to be reconciled with God. God uses the call of His children to speak individually to the people in this world whom He elected to save before the foundation of the world. God is not willing that any of His children should perish. Those whom God has chosen will believe because God will save them by grace and seat them in the heavenlies with Christ (Ephesians 2). God has written them into His will (New Covenant) as inheritors of His grace (Hebrews 9). This is all biblical truth. Why do you run toward a man-centered gospel?

 

Indeed, I was dead in my sins. I had no reason to believe. The gospel was foolishness and utterly of no value.
But God...

Will you please acknowledge God as the one who speaks into our deadness and makes us alive!

Here are 31 verses stating "But God."

Genesis 8:1
But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded.

Genesis 31:42
If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had not been with me, you would surely have sent me away empty-handed. But God has seen my hardship and the toil of my hands, and last night he rebuked you.

Genesis 31:7
Yet your father has cheated me and changed my wages ten times. But God did not permit him to harm me.

Genesis 31:23-24
. . .he took his kinsmen with him and pursued him for seven days and followed close after him into the hill country of Gilead. But God came to Laban the Aramean in a dream by night and said to him, “Be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad.

Genesis 48:21
Then Israel said to Joseph, “Behold, I am about to die, but God will be with you and will bring you again to the land of your fathers

Genesis 50:20
You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.

Deuteronomy 7:7-8
he LORD did not love you and choose you because you outnumbered other peoples; you were the smallest nation on earth. But the LORD loved you and wanted to keep the promise that he made to your ancestors. That is why he saved you by his great might and set you free from slavery to the king of Egypt.

1 Samuel 23:14
David stayed in the desert strongholds and in the hills of the Desert of Ziph. Day after day Saul searched for him, but God did not give David into his hands.

1 Kings 5:4
But now the LORD my God has given me rest on every side, and there is no adversary or disaster.

2 Chronicles 20:15
And he said, “Listen, all you of Judah and you inhabitants of Jerusalem, and you, King Jehoshaphat! Thus says the Lord to you: ‘Do not be afraid nor dismayed because of this great multitude, for the battle is not yours, but God’s.

Psalm 49:14-15
They are like sheep and are destined to die. . . .But God will redeem me from the realm of the dead; he will surely take me to himself.

Psalm 73:26
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Psalm 86:15
But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.

Hosea 1:7
Yet I will have compassion on the house of Judah, and I will deliver them—not by bow or sword or war, not by horses and cavalry, but by the LORD their God.

Jonah 2:6
To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you, LORD my God, brought my life up from the pit.

Matthew 19:26
Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.

John 1:18
No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.

Acts 2:24
But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.

Acts 3:15
You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead.

Acts 7:9
And the patriarchs, jealous of Joseph, sold him into Egypt; but God was with him

Acts 10:28
He said to them: “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean.

Acts 13:29-30
When they had carried out all that was written about him, they took him down from the cross and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead . . .

Romans 5:8
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 6:23
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

1 Corinthians 1:27
But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

1 Corinthians 2:10
Eye has not seen, nor ear heard . . . the things which God has prepared for those who love Him . . . But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit.

1 Corinthians 3:6
I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.

1 Corinthians 10:13
No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able . . .

Galatians 1:15-16
You also heard how I was far ahead of other Jews in my age group in following the Jewish religion. I had become that fanatical for the traditions of my ancestors. But God, who appointed me before I was born and who called me by his kindness, was pleased to show me his Son. . .

Galatians 3:18
For if the inheritance is of the law, it is no longer of promise; but God gave it to Abraham by promise.

2 Timothy 2:9
. . .for which I am suffering even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But God’s word is not chained.

Ephesians 2:1,3;4-5
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins. . . and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved . . .

 

*Ephesians 2:4-9*
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

You keep thinking there had to be an intellectual reason for me to believe. There was none. In fact, the gospel was foolishness. The only reason why anyone believes is precisely because God chooses to make them alive, even when they were still dead, by grace alone.

If you imagine people are saved because of their own intellectual reasoning, you are sorely mistaken and it is that mistake that trips you up.

 

A little tighter than that, Jon.

 

Do you imagine that God cannot save if a person cannot reason his own salvation out and choose God?
Honestly, do you throw God causing you to believe into the trash bin and only consider that you caused God to save you by your intellectual capacity to reason?
Come on, is it not God's gracious gift of faith that causes you to believe or is it your capacity to reason that causes you to believe. Let's get down to the very core of what is bothering you.