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NASB | Revelation 13:8 All who dwell on the earth will worship him, everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slain. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Revelation 13:8 All the inhabitants of the earth will fall down and worship him, everyone whose name has not been written since the foundation of the world in the Book of Life of the Lamb who has been slain [as a willing sacrifice]. |
Subject: Our name erased or added to Book of Life |
Bible Note: "2) None of the verses you cite even use the word 'elect'! In fact, 2 Cor. 5:14-15 says that opposite, it says that He died for all! :-)" Here is the passage in question: "For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf." --1 Corinthians 5:14-15 On whose behalf did Christ die and rise again? For all human beings past, present, and future? Or for all "those that live"? "This has been my point my friend. A theological construction forces us to change the meaning of words so that simple declarative statements become complex theological constructs which must be interpreted differently than the normal language of the text would normally be read." This ties in to what I was saying to Ed about John 3:16 earlier. Simple declarative statements taken in isolation may be read a certain way, but understood completely differently when taken contextually. For example, stating "I love Tim Moran" would be understood very differently by different groups of people without any context. Am I homosexual? Am I stating that I love Tim's theological point of view and literary output? Do I love him like I love all human beings? Do I love him as a fellow laborer in Christ and a fellow partaker in a glorious future? That declarative statement needs more to grasp what I mean. Biblically speaking, "work out your salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil. 2:12) has a very different understanding when read along with the next verse, with the rest of chapter 2, with the rest of the epistle, with the rest of the New Testament, and with the rest of Scripture as a whole. Likewise, I grew up in churches where John 3:16 and Ephesians 2:8-9 were used to support an antinomian, "easy-believism," non-repentant salvation because biblical belief was presented as being roughly equivalent to believing that Mercury is the closest planet to the sun. A plain reading of those "simple, declarative statements" could legitimately lead someone to that conclusion, but books like Matthew and James and Hebrews and 1 John help us to understand more about what true, biblical belief is. 'Your a Spanish teacher Joe, if you read a sentence which translated as "Love all men", would you assume that it meant "love some men"?' No, but if I say, "Everyone turn in your homework," I am not expecting the entire student body to file in with papers for me (thanks be to God!). It is simply dishonest, in my view, to oversimplify the position of the Calvinist to "'all' means 'some'." People contextually use "all" and "everyone" regularly to refer to "all of a particular group" instead of "all of the human race." We may disagree with regard to whether the context qualifies the "all" or not, but the Reformed individual is not taking the magic marker to the instances of the word "all" and writing "some" in its place. We have biblically-supported reasons, both from the immediate context of the verses in question and from less ambiguous passages, for coming to the conclusions that we do. You may not be convinced, but it is far from the grasping at straws that the Arminian characterizes it to be. Peace in Christ to you! --Joe! |