Baptist but not a Calvinist?

I thank my God that I am neither a Calvinist nor a Baptist.

But that sounds like those self rightious pray'ers in the temple that thanked God they were not like those they were observing.

 

It is mine and so thankfully so.

 

I recently saw a presentation contrasting the Calvinist George Whitfield with the Methodist Arminian - John Wesley. Contemporaries who happened to be very good friends.

In the Contrast Whitfield was said to believe in OSAS as part of his Calvinist teaching whereas Wesley rejected OSAS as part of his Arminian views "by contrast".

So how is it that there are some non-Calvinist Baptists that hold to Whitfields Calvinist views on OSAS?

In Christ,

Bob

 

I ask the question above as one coming from the Arminian POV - but I would ask the same question of the Arminian Baptists (or non-Calvinist Baptists) if I were a Calvinist Baptist.

 

It is still not a decision made of His own accord, he would as you say have been coerced by the certain end of death. Of which God is carrying out. It is fear of death that causes the repentance and the question would remain is it TRUE repentance? That only comes from the quickening power of Christ.

 

What sense does it make to preach repentance and then in the next breath say you can't do it but maybe God will do it for you? Huh?

 

Blah blah blah that is all I hear from you Bob, you always twist words. I did not say God repents for you I said he gives us the ability to truly repent and mean it.

 

Blah blah blah (double talk) blah blah blah...

 

Well BD17, you don't want me to comment. I agree with them...

 

You all fail to realize that God uses people such as ourselves to set the heartstrings going in a person who does not believe, if you are preaching to someone you are the vessel through which God changes the person's heart. You all are so caught up in your own ability to do this or that, when you have none, scripture says you are DEAD those very words, I guess that would mean that Bob and all of you believe dead does not mean dead.

 

Read 1 Kings 18:37 here I will post it so you can not ignore the text....


"O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. 37Answer me, O LORD, answer me, that this people may know that you, O LORD, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back

Wait a minute... who turned their hearts back? Could it be... it was God. Not their free will. Praise be to Him!!

 

We are sinners whether we like or not whether you admit it or not there is nothing we can do to keep from being sinners. So the goo book says,


Psalm 58:3 "Even from birth the wiked go astray; from the womb they are wayward and speak lies."


Psalm 130:3 "If you, O Lord kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand?"

Prov. 20:9 "Who can say 'I have kept my heart pure; I am clean without sin'?"

Eccl. 7:20 "There is not a rightous man on earth who does what is right and never sins"

Eccl. 9:3 "The hearts of men, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live"

Isaiah 53:6 "We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way."

Isaiah 64:6 "All of us have become like one who is unlean, and all our rightous acts are like filthy rags."

Jer. 17:9 "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who an understand it?"

Matt. 7:21-23 "For from within, out of man's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander,arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man unlean."

Jn 3:19 "Men loved darkness instead of light.

Jn 8:34 "Jesus replied,'I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slve to sin."

Jn. 8:44 "You belong to you father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire."

Rom. 3:9-12 "What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. AS it is written:
"There is no one rightous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is o one who does good, not even one'"

Rom. 6:20 "You were slaves to sin."

Rom. 8:7-8 "the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. THose controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God."


1Cor. 2:14 "The man without the spiritdoes not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned."


Listen to the words used to describe our condition, SLAVE to sin, our hearts are FILLED with evil, from WITHIN, out of men's hearts. Ephesians says we are "dead in our transgressions and sins," do these sound like conditions we can get out of ourselves? Do you know any slaves that just decided to stop being a slave, know any one who raised themselves from the dead? No, because the whole idea is that we cannot do this without the freegift of grace in our lives from our Father through his Son Jesus.

 

Dead to God and alive to self humans are incapable of taking a single step towards God, not because of some internal defect or external pleasure, but due to the bondage of the unregenerated will. We really truly do not want to come to terms with God. We want to run from God, like Adam and Eve, and sew fig leaves into a shame concealing garment. "There is no one rightous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no on who seeks God... there is no one who seeks good, not even one" (Rom. 3 10-12). We depend entirely on God's mercy if we are going to live again and respond to him.

When our relationship with God was severed all of life went wrong. It was not just our religious and devotional lives that were affected. The sinful condition corrpts our relationships, our health. our happiness our careers, all of our activities, along with the social, political, and economic effects we see all around us. The Bible is a good deal more realistic about the human condition than is popular American culture.

Just because humanity declared independence from God does not mean that it became independent. We can no more live independently of God than fish can of water. "For in him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). How does it make sense that we are to rely on God for everything else except our salvation, that we can handle on our own? I would much rather place my salvation in his hands than rely on my own supossed free will. I would never have chosen God if it were up to that, I enjoyed my sinful life way to much. As we all do. We need to stop running from God and the guilt that we must all own. We cannot find God for the same reason a thief cannot find a police officer. If we find him, or if he catches up to us, he wil expose us or who we really are. This is why Pal repeated the psalmist in lamenting, "there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God"(Rom. 3:11) After Christ brought his disciples to the place where they despaired of their OWN EFFORTS before God, they asked, "Who then can be saved?" and Jesus answered with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible (Matt. 19:26).

I place my life and salvation souly in God's hands for that is where it belongs. I can do nothing aside from the power of Christ in me. Adam and eve decided to rely on their "choice" for what was right instead of God's and looked what happened to them. Had they listened to God and understood His way is the only way they would have lived. Jesus said himself in the garden before his crucifxion, "not for the world, but fr those you have given me, for they are yours"(John 17:9).

 

So, which is it, you or God that changes the heart of a dead man.

Calvinist don't realize what they are saying, that God creates man and then He recreates some of them to have a regenerate

heart. The regenerate is not the created man but the recreated man according to Calvinist. So, all the Scriptures are to

the whole world which is created man then which Scriptures are to the recreated man?

 

HP, I've been away from this thread for a while, sorry to delay my reply.

Just because no Bible writer specifically and directly makes the connection between raising the dead as a picture of regeneration does not mean the analogy does not exist. In fact, the analogy is so obvious that one can hardly avoid it. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Paul says Jesus quickened (made alive) us who were spiritually dead.

On this we agree. Most non-Calvinist Baptist are quite inconsistent, particularly Southern Baptists. Free-Will Baptists and General Baptists are reasonably consistent, since they hold that one may obtain salvation by the exercise of the will, and may also lose it in the same way. Non-Calvinist Southern Baptists hold the same view of human will as the Free-Willers and Generals, but deny the possibility of apostasy.

If I understand your point, it is that Calvinists who deny double predestination are also logically inconsistent. I see your point, but I also see the other view, that God simpliy leaves the non-elect alone. I've yet to come down on your side, but appreciate your view.

 

So Bob when the prophets spoke God's word's in the OT were they God's or the prophets. You are so mixed up it is ridiculous. Your argument does not fly. If you hold to that argument God does nothing because He uses man to carry out His will. According to you then the Bible was not written by God because He used man to do it.