Featured The Freewill Invitation system is a False Gospel

So any type of God who is capable of working all things together to accomplish his purpose is fatalism in your book? - Rom. 8:28

Hence, your type of God is unable to have a divine purpose that is inclusive of other creatures because free will loses all freedom if it can be directed or determined by any design or purpose of another even it that "another" is God?

 

God draws us with lovingkindness (Jeremiah 31:3). God is kind to all, even the wicked and ungrateful, see Luke 6:35. The following are scriptures that show a loving God, and that God calls and some do not answer. They resist God.

But concerning Israel he says, "All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people." Romans 10:21. God held his hands out. The people were obstinate to God holding his hands out. Isaiah 65:2 All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people, who walk in ways not good, pursuing their own imaginations--

Does it make sense that God would hold out His hands to people if He made it impossible for them to come to Him? Pagans CHOOSE to do that in which they do. 1 Peter 4:3 For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do--living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry.

God held out His hands to disobedient and obstinate people. They rejected God. It is their sin, their sin of rejecting God. They rejected God on their own and will be judged and punished for that. When God judges them and punishes them, it will be the sin of rejecting God. If God made them without the capability to believe, then they would be innocent.

Many people say God created all people with the inability to choose Him, yet in these next scriptures, it shows that God wants the wicked to turn from their ways. Why would God plead with them to turn from their ways if they cannot choose to?

"But as for you who forsake the LORD and forget my holy mountain, who spread a table for Fortune and fill bowls of mixed wine for Destiny, I will destine you for the sword, and you will all bend down for the slaughter; for I called but you did not answer, I spoke but you did not listen. You did evil in my sight and chose what displeases me." Isaiah 65:11-12.
Here God says about being forsaken and His holy mountain being forgot. Also, this passage tells us that God called the people, and the people did not answer; He spoke but the people did not listen. We also see that they CHOSE what displeases God. God’s Word is what God says. God says they "chose" what displeases Him. Who is anyone to say now that they have no choice?

Ezekiel 18:23 Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign LORD. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?

Ezekiel 18:32 For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign LORD. Repent and live!

Ezekiel 33:11 Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?'

John 3:17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

Romans 11:14 in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them.
How could Paul ever think that he could save some by arousing them to envy if God saves us by the Holy Spirit enabling us to believe?

God wants all to come to Him, but many love darkness instead of the light, see John 3:19.

 

Amen Moriah. An excellent response to Biblicist's remarks and a sound presentation of truth. :thumbs:

2Pe 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

 

Amen! Excellent response! :thumbs::thumbs:

 

HP: This sounds real good on the surface, but if faith is as you present it, and has nothing to do with an act of the will, man is not involved in faith. If man is not involved in faith, then all is predetermined by God, and those He grants faith to, i.e., the elect, will be saved regardless of any and all efforts by man. Again, if you despise necessitated fatalism, you are going to have to align your ideas of faith up in such a way as not to necessitate fatalism by your notions on faith.

 

I am not your resident Calvinist. I keep telling you that. The Calvinist believes that faith is a gift given after regeneration. I certainly don't believe that. I believe man has faith inherent in him from his youth up. It is the ability to choose from right and wrong. The choice to receive or reject Christ. If one receives Christ he receives a gift. But he has had that ability for a long time. God does not give spiritual gifts to unsaved people. The Calvinist may believe that, but I don't.

 

HP: Never said you were. I simply show forth when the ends of your arguments are in lock step with the necessitated fatalistic ends of Calvinism.

HP: Notice carefully how the only choice of right or wrong according to you, involves only ONE CHOICE of either accepting or rejecting Christ which does not come to all, neither does it come to all from their youth up. If it does, you can stop your evangelism without any appreciable effect upon the outcome of one solitary soul.

HP: You just said you do believe that, but you don't believe that as I read you. You say that one has a gift of the ability of faith from their youth to accept Christ, but then you say God does not give spiritual gifts to unsaved persons.

Who grants to man, apart from any action of their own whatsoever, the ability to exercise faith in Him? Why is that ability not precisely a gift, in the strictest terms you place upon what is and what is not a gift?

Is the gift of faith a spiritual gift from God or is it not, and in what sense is faith a spiritual gift and in what sense is it NOT a spiritual gift?

 

I have made bold letters to what you say that makes you as the Calvinists. You sound like a very confused person when you say anyone can be saved if they believe, but then you say only the saved can believe. Is that not what you teach? Please explain to me better if that is not what you say.

Furthermore, what do you mean the Calvinists may believe that, but you do not? Calvinists believe that they are saved before the creation of the world.

 

Maybe DHK believes abilities to have faith is NOT a gift from God, and rather comes by works? Who knows?

 

Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.
How complicated is that statement? Anyone can be saved. Believe and be saved. It is that simple. If you believe you can be saved. Simple enough?

NO, they don't. They believe they are elect before the foundation of the earth. That is not the same as saved. The elect still must be regenerated so that they may receive the gift of faith, and then they will have the ability to be saved.

 

DHK, before I answer, give us once again your definition of what constitutes a gift, and define what it means for something to be 'spiritual'. Thank you.