Do Calvinists act like Arminians?

Kiffen,
How can one human wreck that which is God ordained? Is not evangelism (the cause of evangelicalism) ordained by God?

Do you think God would sit quietly by and allow one man to destroy HIS work of building HIS church?

I think you have a total misunderstanding of what Finney's work was and did! Look at it from God's point of view...you'll see!

 

And the problem with you Calvinists, is that you forget the names of John Wesley and Charles Finney. Both of whom were used to a greater extent than Whitfield or Edwards. The Revival under Wesley in the UK and USA, has not been equalled by any other preacher. </font>[/QUOTE]icthus,

I respect the work of Wesley, but not Finney. Finney was just about a heretic. His ideas of justification were not biblical. His evangelism was man centered. It is because of Finneyism that their is a problem with many modern day evangelists. Don't even get started with Finney..

Whitfield and Edwards were the front men in the Great Awakening here in the US. You can not deny that though you would like to because they were Calvinists. Historically almost all of the early church planting efforst in early America were done by Calvinists.

 

Since Calvinists believe God preordains who will be chosen for heaven and who will be damned to hell, then why hold revivials, do outreach of any sort? I'm honestly confused! I don't even understand why a Calvinist would bother to pray for the salvation of those around them.... guidance and growth in Christ maybe, but not salvation.

This is NOT a flame but an HONEST question and I would be very interested in an explanation.

 

God not only elects men to salvations but has also ordained the means that they will recieve that Salvation and it is through the proclamation of His Word.

We can't hold revivals, they can't be schedualed, God sends them as He chooses to do so.

 

4His_glory...yer right, we can't schedule revivals? Shouldn't every day be a revival?

"God sends them as He chooses to do so." Yet you would say He's not responsible for anything bad that happens...that He chose to ordain, right?

 

Since Calvinists believe God preordains who will be chosen for heaven and who will be damned to hell, then why hold revivials, do outreach of any sort? I'm honestly confused! I don't even understand why a Calvinist would bother to pray for the salvation of those around them.... guidance and growth in Christ maybe, but not salvation.

This is NOT a flame but an HONEST question and I would be very interested in an explanation. </font>[/QUOTE]Diane,

A good book to read would be Timothy George's book entitled "Amazing Grace". He's a Southern Baptist and the book was published as the Doctrinal Study by Lifeway. You can find the book at the following link.

Lifeway Link for Amazing Grace

Or if you wish I could simply mail you a copy - We had some left over in our church from that year's Doctrinal Study.

 

We pray to God to save because God alone is able to save. My question is similiar: Why would a non-calvinist pray for the salvation of those around them... if in fact God is unable to save them apart from their cooperation?

 

Don't think you've got it quite right 4His_glory, God elects those to salvation who receive and accept his Word.

The means of our Salvation is our Faith in the Savior.

Proclamation of the Word of God is the works that we who have faith in Him do so that others who do not yet have faith may come to have faith. It is not our work that saves us, it is our faith!

There is no such thing as general election to salvation...meaning 'elected' prior to faith! The doorway to Salvation is open to ALL! The admission price is FAITH alone! Anyone who will can have faith!

Simple message isn't it!

 

Monergist,

Non-Calvinists pray for all because we believe that we are praying for God's will that NONE should perish be accomplished. We are, in our collective spirit, attempting to influence their spirit through our prayers for them. That is why we do not have any trepidations about some being elect and others not! We believe that NONE are elect until they become elect through faith!

Let me revise that just a bit! There are the elect of God from the foundation of the world, and the Apostles are the clearest example of them...the scriptures are full of their names and deeds. However, consider all of those whose names do not appear in scripture, the countless millions who do have faith, and who died because of their faith, and those who lived in their faith, and continue to do so today who are not playing key roles in God's plan of Man's redemption other than to become redeemed. They have no key role such as King David, Abraham's Covenant, Noah's Salvation from the flood, Ruth's faithfulness, and the Prophets of old, the Priests, etc. They are not elected to any role other than as a recipient of God's redemption. Their names do not go down in history, they only get written in the Lambs book of life, the book from the foundation of the world where names are recorded for everlasting life! No, I do not believe that all the names of every person who ever lived, is living and will live this natural life were written before the foundation of the world. I believe they are written as they acquire faith in God into the book that began before the foundation of the world. Come Judgment, those whose names are found therein, are spared from the second death of the lake of fire, and do indeed enter into everlasting life with the Christ!

General election is a myth!

 

Don't think you've got it quite right 4His_glory, God elects those to salvation who receive and accept his Word.

The means of our Salvation is our Faith in the Savior.

Proclamation of the Word of God is the works that we who have faith in Him do so that others who do not yet have faith may come to have faith. It is not our work that saves us, it is our faith!

There is no such thing as general election to salvation...meaning 'elected' prior to faith! The doorway to Salvation is open to ALL! The admission price is FAITH alone! Anyone who will can have faith!

Simple message isn't it! </font>[/QUOTE]Salvation is by grace through faith wes.

Are you saying that God elects us after we are saved? If you are you have it wrong wes.

 

4His_glory,
If you would take the time to study the term grace, find its root essence, and stick with that, you will find that Grace has no power to save! It is a behavioral attribute of the one possessing it. We call that one's demeanor. God's demeanor toward mankind is that of Grace. He is keeping his hands off of us lest he kill us for sinning.

When raising children, and those children don't do as they've been told, You the parent have the option to either explode and kill you kid, or you have the option of being gracious and correcting your kid's behavior. Where did you learn that? If you are a bible believer, you learned that from God's word, because that is how he treats you! THAT IS GRACE! If you are not a bible believer, you learned it from watching your parents and other parents who are all made in the image of God.

No matter how much you love your child, you know innately that your child does indeed have a mind of his/her own, and that at some point in time you must release that child to make his/her own way. It is then that your relationship with your child changes from one of 'parent' to one of friend, trusted confidant, baby sitter, etc. Yes, of course you are always the parent, but you are no longer in control, or responsible for the behavior, or the spiritual growth of your child. From that point on the child is in control! If you have brought up your child in the way he should go, he will not soon depart from it.

God nurtures us in a parenting manner too! And it is because He is gracious toward mankind that we have time to "grow up" spiritually, and of course hopefully, in the nurture and admonition of the LORD! It is during that time of Grace that we learn to have faith in God, And it is that FAITH that God expects us to have that causes Him to save us. He saves only those who have FAITH, so it cannot be Grace that Saves, because the same parent gives the same grace to all the children equally! As a parent God has no favorites in His human children. Even so, when it becomes time, and God changes from Gracious parent to Judge, His leniency will be extended only to those who have FAITH in Him, not to all, because all had the same time of Grace in which to come to faith in Him. His judgment is going to be in favor of those who have faith in him ONLY.

It is not Grace that saves! Ephesians 2:8,9, For while God is in his grace, we are saved through faith, and not of ourselves, being saved is a gift of God, not something we earn through works lest any man should boast. If you could earn salvation by works, and I could not do the same works that you do, You most certainly would boast about how good your works are that earned you salvation!

No Sir, It is FAITH and FAITH ALONE whereby we are saved....While God is being Gracious toward us.

 

NOTHING would convince me Calvinism is a correct doctrine. My question was to try and understand WHY Calvinists would 'bother' if their prayers are useless.

Diane

 

This question has been asked many many times. The answer is simple: 1) We do it because God commands us to. 2) We do it because God's election leads to salvation through belief in the word. In other words, the decree of election includes hte preaching of the gospel and the response of faith and repentance.

This whole thread is humorous to me. I laugh when Bob says that Calvinists evangelize like Arminians. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is actually the opposite. Were Calvinism not true, no one would ever get saved. It is the arminians who evangelize using the Calvinistic teaching of Scripture. The great thing about God is that he works through our weakness, so that even the rankest arminians can be fruitful in evangelism. He honors his word. Someone pointed out the absurdity of Arminian prayers. When an arminian prays for someone's salvation, they are praying for God to do the very thing they don't want him to ... to intervene in people's free will, to affect their decision making. In addition, they are asking God to be a respecter of persons, by virtue of the work that he would do for people with "praying friends" that he won't do for people without them. Chance of salvation all of hte sudden becomes tied to who one's friends are. That is a serious problem that has never been adequately dealt with.

There is no way to handle Scripture correctly without being at the very least Calvinistic. When you say that "nothing" can convince you that Calvinism is correct, that is an unfortunate statement. It seems to show an unwillingness to wrestle with the truths of Scripture. This is certainly not an easy issue. I have been on both sides of it. But when I began to wrestle with Scripture about 10 years ago, it made me really uncomfortable because I didn't like what it said. I had been a Christian for 20 years, and had heard preaching and teaching but had never really wrestled with the text of Scripture itself. When I began too, I became convinced that God had elected individuals to salvation from before hte foundation of hte world. There was simply no other legitimate way to deal with Scripture. I was embarrassed to say what I believed. I was directly asked by my pastor at the time, and I waffled. I tried to avoid it, but I could not. Honesty and integrity compelled me to surrender my own ideas ot the revelation of God.

If someone else in good conscience can hold a different view, that is between them and God. But it is a dangerous thing to say that nothing can change your mind.

I have found over the years that we have a tremendously biblically illiterate church. People simply do not know what God says. The Bible has become a wagon on which they pile all their baggage and then pretend that God said it. I long for an increase in biblical literacy, to see people love and honor God's word for what it says, no matter where it takes them. It was funny last week to see Icthus accuse me of being inconsistent. I willingly admitted it. I am not worried about being inconsistent. Logic doesn't drive me. I worry about not saying what the Bible says. I would hope we would all be more cautious of that.

 

Will you finally be willing to provide Scriptural proof for this? Many have made this claim, but so far all have failed to show where God said this.

 

Will you finally be willing to provide Scriptural proof for this? Many have made this claim, but so far all have failed to show where God said this. </font>[/QUOTE]Clearly, there are three scriptural examples of "regeneration", they are: Jacob wrestling with God (gen 32:29), King Saul (1 Sam 10:9), and Saul of Tarsus (Acts 9:3-18). There are no further examples of regeneration in Scripture, though there are other scriptures relating to regeneration.

I will cite one scripture that includes "thousands of examples" of persons who in this order, first heard the Word of God then believed unto faith in God which is known throughout Christendom as SPIRITUAL REBIRTH!

Let me restate it clearly:
'Regeneration' = 3 instances in the Whole bible.
'Conversions' through hearing and believing! = 3000 in but one of the many instances throughout just the New testament! In Acts alone there are many many instances of Conversion by hearing and believing! With no mention of regeneration first!

 

Wes, the passages you give do nothing to prove your statement that Larry questioned. Your statement was "God elects those to salvation who recieve His Word." Where in these passages do you even find election?

Clearly you don't understand garce wes, time and time again on this board your unorthodox (even for many Arminians) views have been exposed.

I refuse to get bogged down in one sided debate with you about it.

 

Wes,

You are confusing the issue. Go back, read what you said and what I asked, and then answer that. Don't change the subject.

You said that faith precedes election. I asked you to prove it. But for some strange reason, you start talking about regeneration. THat wasn't the subject. We are talking about two things: faith and election.

None of what you cited addresses that issue. Please do not dodge the issue simply because you don't have an answer. I know for a fact that you have no answer becasue hte Bible never teaches that election is the result of faith. You konw that. I can't figure out why you don't change your theology to be scriptural.

 

Because you have nothing to debate with!

 

Will you finally be willing to provide Scriptural proof for this? Many have made this claim, but so far all have failed to show where God said this. </font>[/QUOTE]I have given you biblical proof by stating that there are but three examples of regeneration provided in the whole of Scriptures. And of those three, two of them are suspect regarding regeneration first, believing second, Because there were circumstances and conditions that occured before the person was regenerated that indicate the person heard and believed first. Even so, these are examples of a human person being regenerated by a power outside of themselves, and they are the ONLY examples in scripture that are reliable enough to make the claim of regeneration valid.

Now for Election, God does not vote for people!
He established the criteria for man's salvation to be faith in Him, in all of his persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Those who meet that Criteria are by default elected to God's purpose in that God purposed to redeem man, and establish his church in man. Therefore, those who meet God's criteria of FAITH are elected by God to Salvation, which was God's purpose.

Do the scriptures individually say that? Not in words, but to those who read the scriptures intent on gaining the whole meaning, they do say that through their meaning when placed in the context of God's plan of redemption for man.

Now Larry, you may never see the truth of what I'm saying because you are truly steeped in Calvinism to the point where you do not listen to what the scriptures are telling you without first passing them through the Calvin filter. I cannot help you with that problem, it is something you alone must deal with. I suppose we will always be at odds on the subject.

 

Then is this not saying God's 'pre-election' was ineffectual without the help of man AND by response.... the FREE WILL of said man?

I'm sorry guys. Calvinism is a load of ifs and buts that add up to too many contradictions of what Calvinist claim to believe.

I believe God foreknew but foreknew the decision I freely made.

NNE has been able to show me IN THE BIBLE where Calvinism is true. No mere man's opinion can change my mind and no mere man's explanation of 'God so love the world' meaning God sent billions to hell just because He felt like it will change my mind. You have NOT and you CANNOT prove to me in scripture that John Calvin nor any Calvinist is correct.