The Gospels and the Mystery
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Christ is life, The Life.
therefore the Bible defines death as not having Him, being without Him, separated from Him.
John 11:25-26
I AM the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?
I agree with that, but only by being saved does Christ indwell us. Unsaved man cannot truly comprehend the spiritual. For that to happen, spiritual life must be first imparted by God. Just as the physically dead cannot intellectually comprehend the physical, neither can the spiritually dead intellectually comprehend the spiritual; therefore, it is impossible the spiritually dead can bestow upon themselves spiritual life, just as it is impossible for the physically dead to bestow upon themselves physical life, nor give themselves the genuine faith and belief in Christ that accompanies spiritual life: these are bestowed solely by God as gifts to us through salvation. God didn't lightly choose to use the word "dead" in those verses.
[1Co 2:14 KJV] 14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned.
Already have dozens of times. Hundreds probably. Just scan thru the thread. Calvinists got wrecked.
https://christianchat.com/threads/gods-will-vs-mans-free-will.216406/post-5376643
Abraham gave not one indication that he understood the totality of what scripture reveals to us today about Jesus. Your fantasies about what you THINK Abraham knew is nothing more than an injection into the text what clearly is not there.
You are, of course entitled to believe whatever you want. Some of my other acquaintances also dabble in the practice of injecting their own fantasies into scripture as to what was in the minds of men in the Bible they have never met.
Enjoy.
MM
Augustine was a pathetic sot just like so many today and generations in between. His hatred of us Jews marked him as the scumbag that he was, along with Luther and others of their ilk.
MM
What we are told that He definitely believed on that road is that Yahshuah was/is indeed the risen Messiah. All that Paul knew up to that point paled in the revelation of that fact that Jesus was/is indeed LORD. That along was more than sufficient for him to realize that the saints he was persecuting had a handle on a truth of which he was unaware up to the moment, in that Christ Jesus is LORD rather than some vagabond on the loose who had been dispatched from this life.
The weakness in your argument, while using those verses, that causes your house of cards to collapse is this:
1 Corinthians 9:22 To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all [men], that I might by all means save some.
Most here completely side-step the fact that Paul's Gospel was indeed radical, even to the eleven. It was shock enough that Gentiles were brought into the fold of salvation without having to become Jews, but that Gentiles were being saved without becoming zealous for the Mosaic Law, and that Paul was actively teaching acceptance for turning away from zealotry for the Mosaic Law, and that he did not teach the necessity of water baptism for the remission of sins, which was big in the Gospel Peter preached in Acts 2 after Pentecost. Filled with Holy Spirit, Peter preached water baptism as a central tenet for remission of sins. Paul, on the other hand, preached only Christ, His crucifixion, burial and resurrection.
So, if people want to believe it's all one Gospel on the basis of Christ being the center of it all, that's cool. However, when they teach that water baptism is a part of what provides remission for their sins, that's another Gospel...
MM
Except they are not dead. Not yet anyways. But they will be FUTURE DEAD. In the lake of fire. If they DO NOT REPENT AND BELIEVE. A critical aspect that you utterly fail to comprehend.
Both Adam and Eve survived the eating of the tree of death to be ultimately SAVED.
And both were saved in precisely the same way as everyone else does.
Gen 2:17
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
Did they keel over instantly? No. Why?
And I've read hundreds of times if the claim that one position or the other has been thoroughly rebutted.. Yet when you read the argumemt they tend to be disappointing and fail miserably to achieve their stated aim.
Sadly, especially in the Calvinist/Arminian debate most who shout the loudest do not have a grasp of the opposition position, and quite iften they don't even have a good underatanding if their own stated position.
Somehow, Rahab the doomed Canaanite, the doomed Gibeonite Hivites, Naaman the Syrian, the widow of Zarephath, the Ninevites, and the Samaritan woman at the well ALL sprang back to life, despite your best efforts and condemning them to utter hopelessness.
How?
This is how. Yes, the wretched doomed "necros" gentile Ninevites SOMEHOW possessed the same saving faith of Abraham. NO DIFFERENCE.
Gal 3:6
Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.
Jon 3:5
So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.
And YES these Ninevites were undoubtedly saved, AND WILL BE A PART OF THE FIRST RESURRECTION.
Mat 12:41
The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.
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The absurd (and evil) pretentions of the hyper-Calvinist are effortlessly eliminated by HARMONIZING SCRIPTURE.
Just as a quick note: when Paul was called by Christ on the road to damascus, remember that he was already well versed in the scriptures (OT), probably more so than most if his peers. Remember what Jesus said about the OT scripure:-
And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into m his glory?” 27And n beginning with Moses and p all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. Luke 24:25-27.
After pauls encounter with the risen Lord I am sure he would have had his eyes open just like those on the road in Luke (post cross).
Anyhow,
It certainly was a shock that gentiles are now included without 'works of the law'. As we know this was God's plan all along. The 'mystery' of the one new man (one gospel for jew and gentile) in Christ has now been revealed in christs advent, life, death and resurrection.
No matter what which way you frame your position it still falls flat at the first hurdle. There is only one way to salvation, one gospel for all people. There is only one salvation offered for both Jew and gentile, and just as impirtant, only one way to appropiate that salvation offered.
As Jesus stated:-
I am,
The way (he himself is the way and as the Word made flesh, teaches us his word).
The truth - not inly does the Word speak the truhful word, he is the word.
The life - The Word made flesh, not only shows the one true way, proclaiming the truth, but is life itself.
Not only that, no one can come to the Father except through Jesus. As Paul says 'in Christ'. Paul labours on this one point.. Table felliwship for the Jew and the gentile.. They are one now, united by faith in Christ. And again the there is no other gospel than that which the entire NT teaches.
Hyper dispensationalism/ Paul onlyism is a radical distortion of Jesus himself, for he is the good news for all mankind.
The warning for you and anyone entertaining hyoer disoensationalism is as above, don't distort the person and work of Christ. These a new ( modern) novel distortions of the truth itself.
There were untold thousands of Gentiles saved before Christ. And obviously before Abraham, as there were only gentiles to be had. And there were tons of gentiles saved during Jesus' ministry. Why is it such a big deal that gentiles are being saved in the Church age? Cuz I cannot think of why.
BTW......a deep dive study of the supposedly doomed Gibeonites is really quite thrilling. Let me know and I will provide links.
I don't disagree with you that there is only one Gospel that is valid today, but Jesus Himself pointed out that the tribulation period, just like before the Gospel of Grace, they did then, and will have to in the future, "endure unto the end."
We today who are in Christ are sealed by Holy Spirit, and born again, and therefore saved unto the uttermost by His Power and His finished work. The Gospel of Grace will end at the rapture, with those people having to endure to the end so that they shall be saved on that basis. We are not under that, and we are not under the requirement to be water baptized for the remission of sins as was the case before the dispensation of grace.
It's no more complicated than that, whether others feel that such is not the case. Peter spoke what was valid to them at that time, in that they had to be water baptized for the remission of their sins. Placing some label that alleged "hyper" doesn't make your case when we can read the words Peter spoke in Acts 2 and plainly understand them without the spiritualization of the words recorded of Peter's speech to the Jews, and thus warping and twisting it into whatever meaning fits the bill of wishful thinking of some. I'm not saying you are doing this, but there are those here who do.
MM
Good points. There were indeed many Gentile coverts into Judaism before Christ, which was the only way to salvation. After the cross, for a time, Israel was still meant to be the salt and light to the world with the Blood fulfillment of the prophecies about Christ, coupled with zealotry for the Law, Gentiles still had a path to salvation since salvation was of the Jews. However, as you know, they failed by way of continuing their rejection of Christ, as the parable revealed to us from the very Lips of Christ Himself.
So, the Lord had in Himself another plan to mitigate Israel's failure so that Jews and Gentiles alike could attain unto salvation without Israel as the conduit (so to speak).
Good stuff.
MM
No. You are not honest in what you're saying. Please quote precisely what I said IN CONTXT rather than to spin these webs of deceit! Speak EXACTLY what it is I said!
MM
Until the Church age ends. Which is soon. And THEN Israel is RECOMMISSIONED to service after the New Covenant is fulfilled in them.
This only occurs after the tribulation, after Israel finally recognizes their Messiah.