Featured Five questions??

You are unable to adequately answer the question as to why some are willing and others are not.

 

You are unable to adequately answer the question as to why God is willing to save you and not another. To tell you WHY a free moral agent makes a choice would be conceding the point up for debate. You assume a deterministic response is necessary.

Why did a chooser make a choice? He is the chooser, so HE is the reason for the choice, period. To suggest something outside the chooser determined his choice makes that thing the chooser. You turn influences and desires into things that are greater than the determining agent.

Why did God create you or me or that ant or this leaf? You can keep asking why all day long but the answer is always come back to because HE chose to, period.

 

You answered this earlier. HE saved me for His Glory. Why does HE pass over some only Scripture can answer:

Romans 9:20-24
20* Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?
21. Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?
22. What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:
23. And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory,
24. Even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?

You are chasing your tail on this one Skandelon!

Revelation 4:11 Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

You are correct and Romans 9:20-24 tells us why: The potter has power over the clay!.

Now I have answered yoyr questions you answer mine!

 

You do understand that they were hiding from God and that their sin had separated them from God but because of his mercy he, God was seeking them. God initiated the conversation, and covered them. Covered their sin.
He did not take it away.

 

Thanks percho for explaining that to Skandelon.:laugh: I seem to be unable to do so!!:smilewinkgrin::tongue3::BangHead:

 

Do you believe the people in chapter 11 of Hebrews, singular or plural as in passing through the sea, did the things they did because of their faith?

OR

Do you think the people singular or plural did what they did because God called them to bring about the following concerning faith?

And before the coming of the faith, under law we were being kept, shut up to the faith about to be revealed, Gal 3:23

After all at least from Moses on those named and or alluded to were under the law shut up to the faith.

Just what faith did they die in? Their own, or faith that had not even as yet been revealed?

 

Possibly the most perfectly worded, Scripturally sound and utterly inarguable post I have seen on BB since I joined...Thank You Convicted....

You are decidedly correct with this observation here:

It's that taking the Word at "face-value" part that somehow seems to escape people....Our Almighty God did not decree the gospel to the wise...but to the simple....and one is a fool to make it more complicated than necessary. :applause::applause::jesus:

 

I know you do.:thumbsup:

I agree. The Word of God is the means whereby regeneration takes place. You may have thought that I was saying, as some do, that God gives life, then the Word, then there is repentance and salvation, and so on.

That is not what I think the Bible teaches. God gives life BY HIS WORD through his Spirit. "Speak to the dry bones the Word of the Lord and they shall live."

It is the Word of God that awakens the spirit which was born dead in sin. This life matures as the Spirit of God convicts. One man plants another waters but God gives the increase.

I hope I have answered this already.

He has to be alive to accept but he is made alive by the Word spoken to his dead spirit as the Spirit of God breathes that Word over his dead spirit.

For illustrative purpose, it is something like Adam into whom God BREATHED the breath of life and Adam became a living soul.

It is also something like Ezekiel who spoke the Word of God to the dry bones and they lived.

It is also like dead Lazarus to whom Jesus spoke and made alive by his words.

But it is a process.

There is first of all the man who is totally dead in his sins. He cares NOTHING for the things of God. He CANNOT receive (accept) the things of the Spirit of God. He is never subject to the law of God neither indeed can he be. Even his righteousness is as filthy rags. The plowing of this man is sin. The thoughts of his heart are evil only continually. He does not EVER seek after God. He WILL NOT, in his spiritually dead state, come to the light because he loves darkness rather than light.

Then, the Spirit of God blows over the dead spirit of this man with the Word of God. God's Spirit must do this. It is not enough that the Scripture is spoken in the man's presence. That is essential but not sufficient. The seed of the Word can fall on deaf ears. The Spirit of God, which is like the wind which blows whithersoever it will, must supernaturally take the Word and give the man, by it, spiritual ears that he may hear.

Then the seed of the Word, which, as you say, IS life, is planted. Now there is life where there was none. That Word is watered. God gives increase through conviction. All the while, keep in mind, that God is using means. He is using Christian friends and preachers, etc... throughout this whole process.

No. You are right here.

I think we are more clear about what each other understands here.

Absolutely. But it is not applied universally equally to all. This is clear in the fact that not all are not saved. (Romans 10)

The Word of God is powerful enough through the work of the Spirit to awaken the dead. Where there is no work of the Spirit, there is no life.

 

Willis, Willis. This is the same thing the Pentecostal says about Acts 2. It's the same thing the Jehovah's witness says about Revelation 3:14. It's the same thing the Mormon says about I Corinthians 15:29.

I am not saying you are a heretic here. But understand that this incessant, relentless pursuit for simplicity is an element that gives rise to many cults.

Bumper Sticker theology is almost always wrong.

The Gospel is simple enough for a child to understand but only so far as is necessary to be saved.

Beyond what it takes to be saved it is gloriously, beautifully complex. The problem is that some people have no desire to delve deeper and they lack the humility to admit that there is a TON of stuff that they OUGHT to have learned by now that they have not.

This is not the prettiest picture of the Gospel. The cross is.

This is, as anybody with half a semester of bible college will tell you, HORRIBLE exegesis.

More of the same. You can illustrate doctrine this way, but you cannot establish it. That is a terrible hermeneutic. You do not establish doctrine from types and shadows and pictures.

The problem is, Brother Willis, not that you believe these things. The problem is not that you base your beliefs on such terrible handling of the Scripture. The problem is that you promote this stuff when you ought to have the humility to learn proper hermeneutics before you ever even THINK about promoting it on a site such as this where thousands less knowledgeable than yourself could be influenced.

It is like a man hanging a shingle outside his office that says he is a brain surgeon whose only medical knowledge consists of his watching a season of the show "House."

To play with people's brains, knife in hand, when you have no real understanding of how to do so- that is not humility.

When you say stuff like "People aren't sinners until they actually commit sin," and when you say, "Regeneration is the result of every man's own choice because no one is really so sinful that they must be made alive by God's grace in order to believe,"- and then you support such notions on Scriptures you use as types and shadows- that's TERRIBLY presumptuous and dangerous.

It's OK to need to learn. We all do. But it is not OK for you to pretend that all the great doctrines of the faith are simple and can be established by simple proof texting and ESPECIALLY by proof texting passages as types and shadows.

Humility will drive you to say, "Could my brother be right? Maybe I am handling the nuclear power of heaven haphazardly. Maybe I do need to learn a great deal more about the science of Bible study and interpretation before I preach this stuff."

Pride will drive you to be embittered by my admonition and say something smart allek like, "*sigh* Maybe one day we will all be as wise as you."

God bless!

 

I hope you will humbly read post 90.

I honestly believe this demand for the Word of God to be simple in all its teachings is an insult to God.

 

There is milk and there is meat. The gospel is simple and God designed it that way for the sinner to come with the faith of a child. He rebuked the intellectuals of His day for making the kingdom hard to come into and for burdening people with the 613 laws that were impossible to keep.

On the other hand, the meat of the word is deep and requires diligent study and a mature Christian to comprehend it. I wouldn't call it complicated, instead I would call it intricate and detailed and only the mature (not the intellectual) will be able to digest it.

We should never be satisfied with milk, but yearn for meat. It's in this way that we learn who God is. Who it is that saved us, what we must do to please Him, and grow up into Christ.

 

"But Esaias is very bold, and saith, I was found of them that sought me not; I was made manifest unto them that asked not after me. But to Israel he saith, all day long I have stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people."—Romans 10:20-21.

DOUBTLESS THESE WORDS primarily refer to the casting away of the Jews, and to the choosing of the Gentiles. The Gentiles were a people who sought not after God, but lived in idolatry; nevertheless, Jehovah was pleased in these latter times to send the gospel of his grace to them: while the Jews who had long enjoyed the privileges of the Word of God, on account of their disobedience and rebellion were cast away. I believe, however, that while this is the primary object of the words of our text, yet, as Calvin says, the truth taught in the text is a type of a universal fact. As God did choose the people who knew him not, so hath he chosen, in the abundance of his grace, to manifest his salvation to men who are out of the way; while, on the other hand, the men who are lost, after having heard the Word, are lost because of their wilful sin; for God doth all the day long "stretch forth his hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people."
The system of truth is not one straight line, but two. No man will ever get a right view of the gospel until he knows how to look at the two lines at once. I am taught in one book to believe that what I sow I shall reap: I am taught in another place, that "it is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy." I see in one place, God presiding over all in providence; and yet I see, and I cannot help seeing, that man acts as he pleases, and that God has left his actions to his own will, in a great measure. Now, if I were to declare that man was so free to act, that there was no presidence of God over his actions, I should be driven very near to Atheism; and if, on the other hand, I declare that God so overrules all things, as that man is not free enough to be responsible, I am driven at once into Antinomianism or fatalism. That God predestines, and that man is responsible, are two things that few can see. They are believed to be inconsistent and contradictory; but they are not. It is just the fault of our weak judgment. Two truths cannot be contradictory to each other. If, then, I find taught in one place that everything is fore-ordained, that is true; and if I find in another place that man is responsible for all his actions, that is true; and it is my folly that leads me to imagine that two truths can ever contradict each other. These two truths, I do not believe, can ever be welded into one upon any human anvil, but one they shall be in eternity: they are two lines that are so nearly parallel, that the mind that shall pursue them farthest, will never discover that they converge; but they do converge, and they will meet somewhere in eternity, close to the throne of God, whence all truth doth spring.

C.H. Spurgeon

Satan, Lucifer was ordained to be a cherub a guardian, this is what he was anointed for until wickedness was found in him, he went against what he was ordained for and is responsible for his action.

Jesus called messengers to spread His message. It has not changed from the beginning, He ask us to do nothing but trust in Him and be saved.

If they would not of ate from the tree they would not need saving and they did nothing for it, because trust in God and His word isn't work. They wouldn't need saving for what they did not do, not for what they did. We do nothing it is what God does that saves.

Who am I to question God, that He will save those who trust in His Son.

God is very patient if it takes generation after generation perishing for us to spread the message that He sent us out with so be it.

Jeremiah 23 :
16 This is what the Lord Almighty says:

“Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you;
they fill you with false hopes.
They speak visions from their own minds,
not from the mouth of the Lord.
17 They keep saying to those who despise me,
‘The Lord says: You will have peace.’
And to all who follow the stubbornness of their hearts
they say, ‘No harm will come to you.’
18 But which of them has stood in the council of the Lord
to see or to hear his word?
Who has listened and heard his word?
19 See, the storm of the Lord
will burst out in wrath,
a whirlwind swirling down
on the heads of the wicked.
20 The anger of the Lord will not turn back
until he fully accomplishes
the purposes of his heart.
In days to come
you will understand it clearly.
21 I did not send these prophets,
yet they have run with their message;
I did not speak to them,
yet they have prophesied.
22 But if they had stood in my council,
they would have proclaimed my words to my people
and would have turned them from their evil ways
and from their evil deeds.

23 “Am I only a God nearby, ”
declares the Lord,
“and not a God far away?
24 Who can hide in secret places
so that I cannot see them?”
declares the Lord.
“Do not I fill heaven and earth?”
declares the Lord.

25 “I have heard what the prophets say who prophesy lies in my name. They say, ‘I had a dream! I had a dream!’ 26 How long will this continue in the hearts of these lying prophets, who prophesy the delusions of their own minds? 27 They think the dreams they tell one another will make my people forget my name, just as their ancestors forgot my name through Baal worship. 28 Let the prophet who has a dream recount the dream, but let the one who has my word speak it faithfully. For what has straw to do with grain?” declares the Lord. 29 “Is not my word like fire,” declares the Lord, “and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?


God drawn me with loving kindness, He didn't drag me.

 

God drew me with love as well, but He also got in my face, so in a way He dragged me because I did not want to see what a sinner I was.

 

It is your testimony, mine is He convicted me of my sins, but His loving kindness is what drawn me. That He would accept me the way I was and it wasn't me who can change me but His Son. That He loved the world me a sinner being a sinner that He sent His Son to save me. I praise God that you are one of His.

Sin is not an obstacle for His loving kindness for Jesus came to save sinners and I am the worst. I pray that our message does not hinder a sinner, but convict of them of their sins to come to the only one who can save them

 

I agree. Complicated may not be the right word- complex is. For example, the doctrine of the trinity is very complex.

 

Yes, and they responded.

You do understand that we were hiding from God and that our sin had separated us from God, but because of his mercy he, God was seeking us...he does so through his ambassadors who are making an appeal to all mankind to be reconciled to God.

Right. And he does the same for whosoever believes.

Can you explain this to OldRegular?

 

percho did not say anything that I did not say so your comment adds nothing!

 

So, you believe one is made alive through the preaching of the gospel and then they believe it? But, didn't you argue in another thread sometime ago that someone could be regenerated causing them to seek God, or go to church or ask 'seeker' questions. Don't many people ask these types of question and come under conviction before ever hearing the gospel?

You are kind of begging the question here. You conclude that all are not saved because you assume the 'universal application' would have to be effectual/irresistible. Truth is that we know the gospel is sent to EVERY creature and that "the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men."

Is it possible for the Holy Spirit wrought gospel message to be preached by one of His Spirit indwelled ambassadors and the Spirit NOT work? If so, how?