Results 1 - 7 of 7
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Results from: Answered Bible Questions, Answers, Unanswered Bible Questions, Notes Ordered by Verse | ||||||
Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
1 | How do I make sense of the context? | Acts 8:13 | EdB | 70006 | ||
Joe I read both those passages you wanted me to read and I'm fairly familiar with these writings. If you will note in the my profile I say I’m a student of the reformation and much of the teaching generated by it. As I said in a earlier post I see much of the predestination explanation as the finite, using finite reasoning, based on finite logic attempting to explain an infinite God. Case in point in Prayerful’s example of light coming from the Sun. His point was the seemly immutable theory that generates light and therefore since the Sun emits light there had to be fire. However there is a theory that light in not generated but rather the result of darkness absorption. Light is being looked at entirely differently at this time since the E equals MC squared theory says as something approaches the speed of light it’s mass become infinite. Then they found something faster than light. Once again God shows us the flaw of man’s “flawless” logic. There is some mystery to the real origination of light since the Word plainly teaches there was light in the first day and wasn’t until the fourth day when God made the Sun. Does this prove anything about predestination? Absolutely not, but it does speak volumes about man proclaiming how salvation works. Prayerful’s example of Lydia’s salvation in Acts 16:14 A woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshiper of God, was listening; and the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul. Certainly doesn’t say God ordained her to accept what Paul said but on pay attention to what Paul said. I still and probably will always believe our life is mapped out. On that path God has placed forks or junctions. At each we must make a decision, how we chose is based on our relationship with God. God knows each choice before we make them and steers that fork once again to the place he would have us meet an new and different fork. Once again how we react to the choice is left to us with God knowing our answer. I believe that continues until one of two things happens one we “Believe” in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior or we allow ourselves to become so callous our hearts are seared and we blaspheme the Holy Spirit by refusing to drawn to Him. Each fork makes us growth either more in the knowledge of God and our need for salvation or allows us to step even further away. Some forks are nothing more than honoring our parents, or who we date, to some that try us as if by fire. God knows the beginning of the that path and He knows the end. Our prayers many times become aids or hindrances to our decisions at those forks. God allowed man to make those choices not so he would be forced to chose God and worship Him. There are much easier ways to accomplish that. But rather to allow man to respond to God himself and chose Him contrary to the lies of the adversary. Are we dead to sin yes we think we are in control and that sin is what we call it. However I do believe God enlightens us to sin within us and makes us seek for a solution. Notice the religious customs in most any other culture. The people are attempting to atone and worship an unknown god. Paul even saw this in the Athens and the statue to the unknown god. If they were so lost that they were unable to know they needed forgiveness what were they doing worshiping and sacrificing to the all these gods. Human nature longs for a God he just has to be presented. What causes a Muslim to repent, to pray for forgiveness, to seek entrance into heaven. If they are dead to their sin what are they repenting of? EdB Ps still haven't gotten your email |
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2 | How do I make sense of the context? | Acts 8:13 | Reformer Joe | 70040 | ||
You wrote: "As I said in a earlier post I see much of the predestination explanation as the finite, using finite reasoning, based on finite logic attempting to explain an infinite God." How is logic finite or infinite? You use logic all the time to put God into categories. For example, we both believe that God is infinitely wise. By the use of logic, we determine that, according to the law of non-contradiction, that God cannot and will not do anything UNwise. There is logic applied to God? Is that a faulty conclusion? Logic is not something invented by humanity to DETERMINE the way things are; it is the tool to RECOGNIZE the way things are. Unless you can show me how God is shown to defy logic (and by this I mean to act or to be differently than He has clerly revealed Himself to be), there is no reason to throw the God-given and biblically assumed logical order out the window. As far as your light example, I think you missed the point of the imaginary conversation (by the way, what has been shown to move faster than light?). God has not ordained that the sunlight that warms us and causes our crops to grow should just come from nowhere. Do we have sunlight because the sun is a reactor or because God gives us the sunlight? The answer is that BOTH are true. We could apply that to any situation. Do we have our Bible because God revealed Himself to us or because men took time to write down that revelation? Are you an American because God made you one or because your mother out of her own choice gave birth to you here? Do we have our daily bread because God gives it to us or because we go out and work and use the wages to purchase bread that comes from the labor of agricultural workers? All of these situations can be summed up in one of Prayerful's statements: "God never ordains an event without a cause." If you can show me an example to the contrary in your own life or in the Bible, I would welcome discussing it. Now, the problem I have is that you would probably agree with all of the examples I have given above that God accomplish his purposes largely through visible causes. However, if I were to ask, "Are you a Christian because God caused you to be one or because someone at some point preached the gospel to you and you were convinced of its truth and freely embraced Jesus Christ?" your answer would NOT be "both." Or if I asked, "Did God ordain my friend's salvation as an answer to prayer or did he willingly come to the Cross?" The first option is unthinkable to you, but the second we would both agree would describe reality. This is the other important point Prayerful makes: "God has established the universe so that in larger measure it runs by prayer, the same way he has established brightness so that in larger measure it happens by fire." This is not to say that God is limited to working through answering prayer any more than light MUST exist because there is a source of fire. That is why Piper uses the term "in large measure." It is the way God has NORMALLY chosen to work. People do not come to faith in Christ without hearing the Gospel, which usually requires the free choice of a human being to share it with them. Yet we are perfectly comfortable in saying God sends the Gospel to the unreached person. Was it the missionary's decision or God's decision that the unreached person hear the Gospel? The answer again is "both." And that is also why when I am asked, "Did my prayer make a difference?" I can say YES. When I am asked, "Was God's work in part an answer to my prayer?" YES. "Did I choose to pray?" YES. "Did God ordain both my prayer and the outcome of the prayer?" YES. --Joe! |
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3 | How do I make sense of the context? | Acts 8:13 | EdB | 70043 | ||
Joe If the Calvin's tulip is right and we are in total depravity, explain to me Mormons, JW, Islam all of these false religions have memebers that realize a need for forgiveness yet are looking in the wrong place. If the are totally depraved how did the come to seek forgiveness? You missed my point of the with the sun and light. I was trying to show how our reasoning is based on only the facts as we know them. When new facts are revealed many times what we believe must be changed. We do not know know or understand the salvation process, we know it to be true, we can rest in the fact that we are saved, but how that process actually took place in out lives is unclear. You say you know that God offered irresistable grace and we naturally accepted. I say I don't think it works like that I think God reveals a need for salvation, offers salvation and we can chose to act or not to act. Again explain mormons in the light of the tulip EdB |
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4 | How do I make sense of the context? | Acts 8:13 | Reformer Joe | 70048 | ||
"Again explain mormons in the light of the tulip" How about in the light of Scripture? "For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools" --Romans 1:21-22 "For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus." --Romans 2:14-16 Mormonism also commits the same works-based righteousness error of the Jews: 'What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, attained righteousness, even the righteousness which is by faith; but Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, did not arrive at that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as though it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone, just as it is written, "BEHOLD, I LAY IN ZION A STONE OF STUMBLING AND A ROCK OF OFFENSE, AND HE WHO BELIEVES IN HIM WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED."'--Romans 9:30-33 Mormons, JW's, and Muslims all believe in their own power to attain the righteousness of God. They pursue salvation by their own efforts, thanks to their depraved natures which suggest that they will be saved if their good outweighs their bad or that Jesus' sacrifice saves them after they "do all that they can do" (the particular belief of the Mormons). Total Depravity/Radical Depravity: "The term _total depravity_, as distinguished from _utter depravity_, refers to the effect of sin and corruption on the whole person. To be totally depraved is to suffer from the corruption that pervades the whole person. Sin affects every aspect of our being: the body, the soul, the mind, the will, and so forth. The total or whole person is corrupted by sin. No vestigial 'island of righteousness' escapes the influence of the fall. Sin reaches into every aspect of our lives, finding no shelter of isolated virtue."--R.C. Sproul, _Grace Unknown_ "Our fall was complete. Every area of human life was affected, and nothing created by God was left untouched. Consequently, the stain of sin corrupts us physically, emotionally, psychologically, mentally, morally, and spiritually. That doesn't mean, of course, that we are brute savages who always carry out every possible evil; it does mean that each one of us is capable of doing so. Further, it means that there is no hope for human beings to recover themselves or to make amends. God demands a perfection of the qualities with which he endowed us, and we are corrupt in every chamber. No part of us can recue or heal the rest of us." --Michael Horton, _Putting Amazing Back into Grace_ "This teaching is the first of the famous 'Five Points of Calvinism,' commonly called 'total depravity.' But that wording of the point, like the wording of most of the others, is a bit misleading. To most persons, 'total' means 'utterly,' and utter depravity would mean that people are as bad as thet can possibly be. That is not true, of course. Given the finite circumstances of our lives, civil laws, and various social and religious restraints, each of us could undoubtedly be much worse than we are. What total depravity is meant to convey is the idea that sin has affected the whole person down to the very core of hisor her being. That is why many writers prefer the words 'radical depravity' or 'radical corruption' instead." --James Mongomery Boice and Philip Graham Ryken, _The Doctrines of Grace_ "Therefore, all people are covceived in sin and are born children of wrath, unfit for any saving good, inclined to evil, dead in their sins, and slaves to sin; without the grace of the regenerating Holy Spirit they are neither willing nor able to return to God, to reform their distorted nature, or even to dispose themselves to such reform." --Canons of Dort, Third and Fourth Points, Article 3 What here is unbiblical? --Joe! |
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5 | How do I make sense of the context? | Acts 8:13 | EdB | 70062 | ||
Joe Now wait a minute, the whole thrust of Calvinism is we are so lost in our sin we can not seek forgiveness on our own. Only those elected by God can seek forgiveness and then are offered irresistible grace, which by definition removes any choice, that brings them into salvation. Now your saying Mormons can know they are in sin, can seek to find God, but that God allows them to get deceived because they are not elected. Your saying God will allow people to know they need forgiveness, to even seek for it but will not reveal the truth to them because they are not elected? Where is the love? Where is the justice? Joe believe it or not I have read most of those books you quoted from. I find Michael Horton to be awful. I know some most excellent Calvinist that disagree with much of what he says. In fact MacArthur calls what he is preaching "cheap grace". I find Boice and Sproul to be most excellent, just a little off the mark. One thing I do find interesting is there is so little writing from the other side issue. I rarely pick up a book committed to disproving Calvinism, but the bookstores are filled with ones proclaiming it. Something as obvious as you claim it to be should need no further support outside the Bible. Yet that is exactly what it seems to need. I wonder why? EdB |
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6 | How do I make sense of the context? | Acts 8:13 | Reformer Joe | 70069 | ||
See Post #70063 for my reply regarding what the Bible says about the conscience in every human being. That alone does not spur the quest for forgiveness. I also think you are somewhat off the mark in suggesting that everyone who is involved in a religion is in search of forgiveness. That is not the prime motivation for the typical Muslim to follow Islam, for example. What part of "No one seeks after God" in Romans 3 is so difficult here? Was Paul just exagerrating? That is the nature of the unregenerate person. One may claim to be a seeker, but unless she is called by God, all of her seeking is a flight FROM the truth, not toward it. I would like to see a citation for the comment you made regarding MacArthur's assessment of Horton. Since Horton, Boice, and Sproul are in exact agreement regarding Ye Olde 5 Pointes (and just about everything else, theologically), I fail to see how MacArthur would feel so comfortable showing up to speak at Sproul's national conference year after year. Check your names, because I would hate for MacArthur to be misrepresented on this Forum as has happened before. "One thing I do find interesting is there is so little writing from the other side issue. I rarely pick up a book committed to disproving Calvinism, but the bookstores are filled with ones proclaiming it." Wow...I wish we had the bookstores here that you do in your area. I have crawl over books like _The Prayer of Jabez for Your Pet_ and Thomas Kinkade everything and sanctified bumper stickers just to find a book without pictures! :) "Something as obvious as you claim it to be should need no further support outside the Bible." You will realize how silly that statement is when you replace "Calvinism" with ant other doctrine. Why are there so many books on prayer, Christian stewardship, evangelism, getting along with our brothers and sisters in Christ, spiritual gifts, Bible prophecy, the doctrine of the Trinity, and the gospel itself, along with Bible commentaries I am sure that you have used? The good books that offer such teaching do not provide support "outside the Bible," but rather FROM the Bible. "I wonder why?" Probably because of people who keep getting things mixed up about the doctrines of grace and then broadcast their misconceptions...know what I mean? The fact that modern evangelicalism is characterized by poor theology all the way around (does WOF ring a bell?), it shouldn't surprise us that God is raising people up to call the evangelical church back to its Reformational roots. --Joe! |
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7 | How do I make sense of the context? | Acts 8:13 | EdB | 70102 | ||
Joe As for MacArthur you read into what I said. I said what Horton describes in his book is what MacArthur calls cheap grace. I didn't say MacArthur evaluated his book and this was his comment. I don't even know if MacArthur ever read the book. I mentioned the number of books sort of tongue in cheek. But none of the books you used to repute what I said are birthed in Arminianism but rather in the pit. Probably because of people who keep getting things mixed up about the doctrines of grace and then broadcast their misconceptions...know what I mean? The fact that modern evangelicalism is characterized by poor theology all the way around (does WOF ring a bell?), it shouldn't surprise us that God is raising people up to call the evangelical church back to its Reformational roots. Now you have hit the nail on the head. If the church doesn't rid itself of this false teaching I suspect Jesus will spits it out. See we can agree sometimes :-) EdB |
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