How Free Will Destroys Faith in Christ (Continued)

A great theory and logical conclusion, but does the Bible actually say this?
(Not an attack, just a question.)

I know scripture says that things of the spirit are foolishness (1 Corinthians 2:14), but does it actually say that “People who choose to believe already believe (have eternal life).”

At what point in Acts 2 were the thousands given eternal life?

 

How faith launched the ministry of John Wesley....

John Wesley was almost in despair after a disasterous trip to America and loosing his dad. He did not have the faith to continue to preach. When death stared him in the face, he was fearful and found little comfort in his religion. To Peter Böhler, a Moravian friend, he confessed his growing misery and decision to give up the ministry. Böhler counseled otherwise. "Preach faith till you have it," he advised. "And then because you have it, you will preach faith." On May 24th, 1738 he opened his Bible at about five in the morning and came across these words, "There are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, even that ye should partakers of the divine nature." He read similar words in other places. That evening he reluctantly attended a meeting in Aldersgate. Someone read from Luther's Preface to the Epistle to Romans. About 8:45 p.m. "while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."

 

Excellent example with Wesley.

A heretic who used his 'free-will' to endure and continue on;
[2 Timothy 3:13 But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.]

only to end up polluting millions with his damnable, false gospel of personal 'Holiness'.
[1 John 1:8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.]

 

Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord: - Hebrews 12:14

 

You know, sometimes a man's words are so, unwise, as to require no reproof. They are their own damning witness.
Such is this post. Behold.

 

You know, sometimes George Antonios' words are so, unwise, as to require no reproof. They are their own damning witness.
Such is this post. Behold.

 

I'm not against 'holiness' given from God, in the slightest.
I am against the 'Holiness' movement which claims to rely on God for some near-perfection (?) and near-sinlessness-but not quite-almost-maybe, in this life.

'And I do not contend for the term sinless, though I do not object against it.'
-John Wesley, 'Plain Account of Christian Perfection'
(Plain Account of Christian Perfection -Christian Classics Ethereal Library)

But my apologies to 1689Dave for harping on about Wesley.

 

Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, 1 Peter 1:18-20

Before the foundation of the world, man, was going to need to be redeemed. And this was not according to man's own free will. Redemption was his hope.

for to vanity was the creation made subject -- not of its will, but because of Him who did subject it -- in hope, Rom 8:20

And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

God, created man, of flesh, gave him a spiritual law, thou shall not eat of it, thus, sold him under sin in order that he could redeem him.

Had man eaten of the tree of life would he have had free will? God would have been his life.
Man through being in the presence of the devil and communing with him, took, stole from God, free will. It was the plan of God.

Gen 3:22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

Free will is what you need to be delivered from.

O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Rom 7:24

Man is so proud of his free will. In his choosing to believe God, to be saved.

IMHO

 

I don't know of too many holiness folk these days.

 

The testimony of John Wesley....

John Wesley was almost in despair after a disastrous trip to America and loosing his dad. He did not have the faith to continue to preach. When death stared him in the face, he was fearful and found little comfort in his religion. To Peter Böhler, a Moravian friend, he confessed his growing misery and decision to give up the ministry. Böhler counseled otherwise. "Preach faith till you have it," he advised. "And then because you have it, you will preach faith." On May 24th, 1738 he opened his Bible at about five in the morning and came across these words, "There are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, even that ye should partakers of the divine nature." He read similar words in other places. That evening he reluctantly attended a meeting in Aldersgate. Someone read from Luther's Preface to the Epistle to Romans. About 8:45 p.m. "while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."

 

'Free-will' Baptists, Evangelicals, etc., are Pelagians in denial.
Any 'free-will' church at their core is bound to have Holiness ideas,
(regardless of what their hypocritical doctrine tries to explain away.)
With 'free-will', you choose God on your own; so then overcoming sin should be no problem.
Your 'free-will' apparently allowed you attain the Holy Spirit, what else could possibly stop you?

Inadvertently though, these 'free-will' Baptists have failed in that they have made sin to be the strongest of all in life;
as sin can be capitulated to, not fully resisted, and yet God can be resisted?
And in never bending the knee to God's authority, they enthrone pride within themselves.
Or better (or worse) yet, pride enthrones something else within them.
Reminds me of Lucifer:

Isaiah 14:13-15 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: 14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. 15 Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.​

 

Nothing about this post is true

 

As much as I like Luther, how did this passage convict Wesley to salvation and yet Scripture itself did not?
Wesley is full of strange gimmicks.

 

You are right.
Despite my best efforts to explain, in the most simplistic terms, several complex theologies,
your effort-less slander just woke me up to reality.
Thank-you.

 

I gave it what it deserved

 

Bob Jones University did a movie on my favorite Wesleyan Methodist saint, Robert Sayers Sheffey....

Sheffey (1977) - IMDb

And to describe the Wesleyan Methodist type saint a little more...

The salvation of the old Saint of the Wilderness Robert Sheffey came at a Wesley type revival meeting at an old store building. There were drunks there who wold pelt the preacher with corn cobs, but Robert and a few others went up front to make their profession of faith in Christ. Robert wanted to defend the meeting, but the preacher would not hear to it, and maintained the furtherance of the gospel must be non-violent. Which was the correct thing to do!

"I will certainly do my best to see that no rowdy crowd comes up here again and bothers you even if I have to knock them down the stairs with this poker." - Robert Sheffey

"That is not the way of the Savior, my young brother. You do want to be more like Him?" -asked the preacher

"Yes." - Replied Robert

"Then he who would be more like the Christ must study the Bible and learn of His life and works. Imitate Him in all your thoughts and deeds. You are not so foolish as to think that that will come easy?"- The preacher from the readings of "The Saint of the Wilderness" by Jess Carr



And to let George Clark Rankin describe the guy....

I passed my examinations and that year I was sent to the Wytheville Station and Circuit. That was adjoining my former charge. We reached the old parsonage on the pike just out of Wytheville as Rev. B. W. S. Bishop moved out. Charley Bishop was then a little tow-headed boy. He is now the learned Regent of Southwestern University. The parsonage was an old two-and-a-half-story structure with nine rooms and it looked a little like Hawthorne's house with the seven gables. It was the lonesomest-looking old house I ever saw. There was no one there to meet us, for we had not notified anybody of the time we would arrive.

Think of taking a young bride to that sort of a mansion! But she was brave and showed no sign of disappointment. That first night we felt like two whortleberries in a Virginia tobacco wagonbed. We had room and to spare, but it was scantily furnished with specimens as antique as those in Noah's ark. But in a week or so we were invited out to spend the day with a good family, and when we went back we found the doors fastened just as we had left them, but when we entered a bedroom was elegantly furnished with everything modern and the parlor was in fine shape. The ladies had been there and done the work. How much does the preacher owe to the good women of the Church!

The circuit was a large one, comprising seventeen appointments. They were practically scattered all over the county. I preached every other day, and never less than twice and generally three times on Sunday.

I had associated with me that year a young collegemate, Rev. W. B. Stradley. He was a bright, popular fellow, and we managed to give Wytheville regular Sunday preaching. Stradley became a great preacher and died a few years ago while pastor of Trinity Church, Atlanta, Georgia. We were true yokefellows and did a great work on that charge, held fine revivals and had large ingatherings.

The famous Cripple Creek Campground was on that work. They have kept up campmeetings there for more than a hundred years. It is still the great rallying point for the Methodists of all that section. I have never heard such singing and preaching and shouting anywhere else in my life. I met the Rev. John Boring there and heard him preach. He was a well-known preacher in the conference; original, peculiar, strikingly odd, but a great revival preacher.

One morning in the beginning of the service he was to preach and he called the people to prayer. He prayed loud and long and told the Lord just what sort of a meeting we were expecting and really exhorted the people as to their conduct on the grounds. Among other things, he said we wanted no horse- trading and then related that just before kneeling he had seen a man just outside the encampment looking into the mouth of a horse and he made such a peculiar sound as he described the incident that I lifted up my head to look at him, and he was holding his mouth open with his hands just as the man had done in looking into the horse's mouth! But he was a man of power and wrought well for the Church and for humanity.

The rarest character I ever met in my life I met at that campmeeting in the person of Rev. Robert Sheffy, known as "Bob" Sheffy. He was recognized all over Southwest Virginia as the most eccentric preacher of that country. He was a local preacher; crude, illiterate, queer and the oddest specimen known among preachers. But he was saintly in his life, devout in his experience and a man of unbounded faith. He wandered hither and thither over that section attending meetings, holding revivals and living among the people. He was great in prayer, and Cripple Creek campground was not complete without "Bob" Sheffy. They wanted him there to pray and work in the altar.

He was wonderful with penitents. And he was great in following up the sermon with his exhortations and appeals. He would sometimes spend nearly the whole night in the straw with mourners; and now and then if the meeting lagged he would go out on the mountain and spend the entire night in prayer, and the next morning he would come rushing into the service with his face all aglow shouting at the top of his voice. And then the meeting always broke loose with a floodtide.

He could say the oddest things, hold the most unique interviews with God, break forth in the most unexpected spasms of praise, use the homeliest illustrations, do the funniest things and go through with the most grotesque performances of any man born of woman.

It was just "Bob" Sheffy, and nobody thought anything of what he did and said, except to let him have his own way and do exactly as he pleased. In anybody else it would not have been tolerated for a moment. In fact, he acted more like a crazy man than otherwise, but he was wonderful in a meeting. He would stir the people, crowd the mourner's bench with crying penitents and have genuine conversions by the score. I doubt if any man in all that conference has as many souls to his credit in the Lamb's Book of Life as old "Bob" Sheffy.

At the close of that year in casting up my accounts I found that I had received three hundred and ninety dollars for my year's work, and the most of this had been contributed in everything except money. It required about the amount of cash contributed to pay my associate and the Presiding Elder. I got the chickens, the eggs, the butter, the ribs and backbones, the corn, the meat, and the Presiding Elder and Brother Stradley had helped us to eat our part of the quarterage. Well, we kept open house and had a royal time, even if we did not get much ready cash. We lived and had money enough to get a good suit of clothes and to pay our way to conference. What more does a young Methodist preacher need or want? We were satisfied and happy, and these experiences are not to be counted as unimportant assets in the life and work of a Methodist circuit rider. - George Clark Rankin