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Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.
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CF has always been a site that welcomes people from different backgrounds and beliefs to participate in discussion and even debate. That is the nature of its ministry. In view of recent events emotions are running very high. We need to remind people of some basic principles in debating on this site. We need to be civil when we express differences in opinion. No personal attacks. Avoid you, your statements. Don't characterize an entire political party with comparisons to Fascism or Communism or other extreme movements that committed atrocities. CF is not the place for broad brush or blanket statements about groups and political parties. Put the broad brushes and blankets away when you come to CF, better yet, put them in the incinerator. Debate had no place for them. We need to remember that people that commit acts of violence represent themselves or a small extreme faction.
God’s command, not our curiosity, is the measure of our duty.
If I pray aright, God is graciously working out his purposes in me and through me, and the praying, though mine, is simultaneously the fruit of God’s powerful work in me through his Spirit. By this God-appointed means I become an...
The law will always be needed for three purposes: pedagogical, civil, moral/normative.
- The first is for the unbeliever to know how great their sin and misery is.
- The second is the application of the moral law to public or civil life.
- The third, contra Antinomianism, is whereby the moral...
Hold one another accountable to:
1. Worship God alone, living all of life to his glory, renouncing all idolatry and all inordinate loves that might lead us to trust in any other help;
2. Worship God in humility, being reticent in either describing or picturing God, recognizing that right...
Unconditional Election
An Interview with J. I. Packer
MR: Dr. Packer, what exactly do people mean by unconditional election?
Packer: It is a phrase which folk use to express this thought: that because we sinners are helpless, God has to take all the steps that are necessary in order to bring us...
I really don’t care to debate the topic of federal/corporate versus individual election. This is a commonly used tactic of the anti-Calvinist who is usually not thinking about things very deeply. I know that sounds harsh, but just sample any internet discussion site where Calvinists and...
God’s existence cannot be measured by time. The past, present, and future of God’s existence are possessed by Him in one indivisible equal vividness. He has no before or afterward, no earlier or later. In fact, God transcends all temporal limitations and is without beginning or end. As such God...
Let us never ascribe to God the idea that He is the author (the doer) of sin and evil...
Evil is not something sitting in the corner smoldering as in some substance or spiritual essence. Evil has no substantial, ontological existence.
Matthew Henry is helpful here:
The tree was not evil, nor...
The CoW is covenant of works, sometimes also called the covenant of life. CoG, sometimes called the covenant of redemption, is a covenant of grace, a pre-temporal covenantal in which the Father would glorify his Son by sending him as a Mediator of foreseen sin. Salvation has been God’s plan from...
As a pastor, I was sometimes asked to re-baptize another who felt he or she was not a believer when baptized. I am not one who advocates multiple baptisms. Why? It was the providence of God that your baptism occurred when it did. Now that you are sure you have saving faith, the contemplation of...
Some various facts and other things about the Bible I have collected over the years follow.
The 27th edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece has 138,020 words including those in double and single brackets. The NA28 has seven less words.
The electronic text of Westcott and Hort has...
Appeals to Judas as an example that refutes perseverance of the saints are often made by Pentecostals...
I would have to disagree that Judas or others like him qualify as believers. He possessed no saving faith and thus was never one of the elect of God. At best Judas was one of many that...
Three items that I have found to be very accurate and useful when it comes to choosing Bible commentaries that I want to pass along:
A Layman's Commentary Guide:
A Layman’s Commentary Guide
Commentaries for the Whole Bible:
Commentaries for the Whole Bible
Commentaries to Be Avoided...
Regularly we encounter the response to one of our firm answers to another calling attention to their error as but the sarcastic tongue-in-cheek "so nice to see the Christian love being demonstrated in your response". It is as if any clear denunciation of error, even blasphemy, is grounds for...
First, some background on the fall of Adam.
The Reformed view sees Adam sinning by his own free will, not by divine coercion.
Reformed, as well as other views, teaches that God’s predestining decree was made before the Fall, and in light of the Fall. This is important because the Reformed...
Notice the New Age conviction that all spiritual paths lead to the same goal. Even though these different paths may appear contradictory, they really are not. But no New Age disciple really believes that all paths are equal. All of them reject at least one spiritual path, that of biblical...
From The Collected Writings of James Henley Thornwell, Volume I - Theological, Lecture X - Man
Freedom of the Will
This is one of the most difficult questions in the whole compass of Metaphysical Philosophy or Christian Theology. Its inherent difficulties have been aggravated by the ambiguities...
Er, no. The author of Hebrews here makes no such claim that the believer needs evidence, rather the author asserts that the believer’s faith is the objective reality, the evidence, of what is to come.
Please study the passage and its surrounding context.
The “substance” in the passage is the...
Hebrews 6:4-6:
Heb 6:4 For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit,
Heb 6:5 and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come,
Heb 6:6 and then have fallen away, it is...
Heb. 9:27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment,
Heb. 9:28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. (ESV)
With these verses the...
26 For if we are willfully sinning after receiving the full knowledge of the truth, there remains no more sacrifice concerning sins,
27 but a certain fearful expectation of judgment and "zealous fire being about to consume the adversaries." (quoting from Isaiah 26:11)
28 If anyone did not regard...