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I will watch the videos.got some vids that will fix the problem of election, the problem of free will, the problem of thinking it's all so unfair.... but it's not for the faint of heart
That is the way God uses to bring in the harvest of His elect.That's the first half...God already knows your future life.
The second half is that evidently people have free will.
If not, then why bother to evangelize?
15 And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned
No worries.I'm afraid I have nothing more to give .
It comes down to God's freedom to choose or man's freedom to choose. If God is not allowed to choose whom He will save, then He is not sovereign nor is He loving and that makes man sovereign.
And for someone to say that if God has the freedom to choose, that makes Him and unloving God, I would say they have a corrupt view of love.
What is love? Do you love your own children? How about those who by their very instinct always try to harm your children?
The situation is that you can't love both. That's why God is portrayed as a Shepherd. A Shepherd loves only His sheep but not those wolves by their very instinct always try to harm His sheep. For the same reason, there is an end distinction between the weeds and wheat. Not every seed in the field will turn out to be the wheat, some of them will turn out of be the weeds and to be burnt. This is the Bible teaching.
His Elect refers to His sheep or the wheat but not wannabe wolves and weeds. It shows that God knows who is who even before the creation. However it's not lawful or legitimate to bring anyone to Heaven or condemn anyone to hell simply because God knows who is who.
An analogy is if your mayor know for a fact that you are a criminal, is it ok for him to bring you to jail right away? It's not ok in a nation ruled of law. You need to stand an open trial with a defending lawyer and a group of juries. You will be judged by law instead of by the knowledge of your mayor. Or otherwise, it is a lawless realm.
Earth is thus for everyone to show up as who he is, then he will be judged openly and under witnessing. Moreover why do we even need to believe in Jesus Christ if everyone of us will in the end be saved?!
The doctrine of election presents God as extremely cruel and unjust. Now there are those who have no problem calling God cruel and unjust. Just means that attributing moral evil to God doesn’t affect them since they are assured they are going to Heaven. What it does to God is immaterial for them.I do not have a problem with God's Election. I have been debating with another poster. She does have a problem with Election. So we are starting this new thread to get everyone's take on it.
"The big problem I have with election is that it changes the nature of a loving God." by GodsGrace101
Never said OSAS. That's not even a valid theological term. It's a made up term by Arminians.YOU said OSAS and predestination was taught in the early church.
Did you mean to post this here. Instead of Justification by Faith Defended?On Cheap Grace (this is a bit long for this thread, but well worth considering).
Some people (a lot of people these days) are into a dangerous theology---what has been called “cheap grace.” They want to acknowledge that God is a loving, merciful God but do not want to accept that He is also a just and holy God who will not abide sin and imperfection forever.
I have written about this elsewhere but let me explain a bit on this thread using some famous quotes.
The love and grace of God in Christ for forgiveness and all the other spiritual blessings must continue to be a primary source of praise to God. However, both grace and love have been misinterpreted. "Instead of being an incentive for living a life of holiness, God's love has become an excuse for indulging every base human desire." (Miguel Grave de Peralta)
Cheap grace is that which liberal, nominal Christians espouse. Such people are glad to receive a free pass from condemnation and willingly accept a salvation that does not require repentance or a change in their lifestyles. They are not willing to truly give themselves to the Lord for transformation; they just want off the hook.
But if faith in Jesus Christ is real, it will change a person’s heart and he/she will want to change, will want to please God. However free salvation is, walking with Christ requires everything from us (see Luke 9:23-25 Matthew 10:38-3
According to Holy Writ, Judgment Day, separation of the wheat from the weeds, and the destruction of the weeds will indeed occur. Hell, perdition, the Lake of Fire and eternal separation from God are states of being which actually exist. (Matthew 5:22, 5:29, 10:28, 18:9, 23:15, 23:33).
To deny these truths is to deny and pervert the nature of God, who is not only gracious and loving but also just and holy-- perfect. His ultimate kingdom will be perfect. He will not tolerate sin forever and Satan and his human children will never repent and submit to Christ, indeed they cannot. It is the nature of reality.
Liberal theologians want no possibility that they will be so judged and punished, so they make God over in their own sin-tolerant image. As H. Richard Niebuhr wrote in “The Kingdom of God in America”: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.”
From <i>“The Cost of Discipleship”</i> by the martyred Dietrich Bonhoeffer write this about the liberal idea of “cheap grace”:.
“In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin. Cheap grace therefore amounts to a denial of the living Word of God, in fact, a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God. (pages 45-46)... Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything they say, and so everything can remain as it was before. 'All for sin could not atone.' Well, then, let the Christian live like the rest of the world, let him model himself on the world's standards in every sphere of life, and not presumptuously aspire to live a different life under grace from his old life under sin.... Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” (page 47) This kind of deceptive ‘cheap’ grace can send you to hell.
As Luther always insisted: conviction of sin and awareness of the reality of judgment must come first, and then salvation becomes possible through surrender to the Lordship of Christ. Any “cheap grace” short cut prevents true conversion.
I don't understand...Love always protects?
I read the bible as written. I could not see predestination there.Calvinism and Arminianism seem to be the result of people reading and interpreting scriptures to match a pre-existing philosophy posited by man, instead of simply reading the Bible as written.
2 Peter 3:8-9 New King James Version (NKJV)
8 But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 9 The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward [a]us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
This verse many people mangle saying God waits patiently for all people to believe. Peter though is writing to a group of elect persons, that is the audience of the 'us'.
Your election by God comes before your believing.
US is not the unbelieving world who God knows will never believe, it is written to the elect of God who will believe. Why would God wait patiently for those He knows will never believe. See it is not logical. God is longsuffering towards His elect, not willing that any of 'us' elect perish. And this agrees with Christ.
Here Christ tells us about the elect of God, He is not willing that any of them perish, it is the same as what Peter is saying. God has the 99 sheep, and if one wanders gets lost, He goes after that sheep and saves it.
God owns the sheep , they are His, the belong to Him. The elect are His possession, a people He has taken out of all the population of the world to be His
Matthew 18:12-14 New King James Version (NKJV)
12 “What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them goes astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine and go to the mountains to seek the one that is straying? 13 And if he should find it, assuredly, I say to you, he rejoices more over that sheep than over the ninety-nine that did not go astray. 14 Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.
LOLNever said OSAS. That's not even a valid theological term. It's a made up term by Arminians.
I said Predestination is not only in the early church but the Bible. I guess you missed all those "predestination" statements in Ephesians 1 and Romans 8?
The doctrine of election presents God as extremely cruel and unjust. Now there are those who have no problem calling God cruel and unjust. Just means that attributing moral evil to God doesn’t affect them since they are assured they are going to Heaven. What it does to God is immaterial for them.
Now many cover this up by diverting attention to his grace to save them. It’s a smoke screen.
Others simply shut down their minds and commit intellectual suicide when it comes to God. They don’t know and have decided they or we cannot know and they don’t care. They no longer want to understand God.
Now I’ve read the repeated defense of this and it is hollow. One can point to all the people God “wonderfully” predetermined for Heaven before they were born but this NEVER changes the fact that this means He predestined some for hell cruelly and unjustly.
What is more, none of the passages they take out of context say that. I know the alternative, that our eternal destiny will be because of our choices is scary, but it’s the only view that lives God.
And make no mistake, no one loves God and is OK with calling Him cruel.
I beg to differ. We as Christians must read & study God's Word, so that we are not deceived. Its okay to take questions or doubts Christians have and address them together. Not to, leaves doubts!Getting a "take" on "Election" is just looking for an argument. It will lead to disunity rather than unity among believers. I can imagine that there are unbelievers out there that just want to stir up trouble between Christians by posting such a post as this. Proverbs 6:19
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