Understanding God’s election
- Thread starter dougcho
- Start date
-
Christian Chat is a moderated online Christian community allowing Christians around the world to fellowship with each other in real time chat via webcam, voice, and text, with the Christian Chat app. You can also start or participate in a Bible-based discussion here in the Christian Chat Forums, where members can also share with each other their own videos, pictures, or favorite Christian music.
If you are a Christian and need encouragement and fellowship, we're here for you! If you are not a Christian but interested in knowing more about Jesus our Lord, you're also welcome! Want to know what the Bible says, and how you can apply it to your life? Join us!
To make new Christian friends now around the world, click here to join Christian Chat.
Isaiah 63:9-10 describes the Holy Spirit as the "angel of His presence". Angel because the Holy Spirit can be sent, and where the Holy Spirit is, the Father is. God the Father is the invisible God that has all of those Godly attributes because our reality is in His mind. Time occurs in a dormant vacuum of space when an event happens which causes the existence of before, during, and after the event. In the Father's mind, which is our reality, He places a living, thinking, feeling, willful being in it and calls him His Son. The Father fills His Son with His Holy Spirit which is a method for the Father to indwell His Son's being in order to communicate His will and empower to fulfill it. The Father's Holy Spirit is a portal through which the Father can enter the being indwelled. The Father loves the Son and created our reality through His Son and for His Son. The Son is one with the Father because the Father resides in the Son and the Son, because of his love for the Father, obeys the Father and lives to do the Father's will. When Jesus went back to the Father to get glorified, he received a spiritual body made up of saved souls who he baptizes with the Father's Holy Spirit. Through this portal both Father and Son can indwell the being in order to influence his thoughts, motivation, and actions. You don't stop your existence in order to say a prayer in isolation. You communicate with God the Father directly through the Holy Spirit who Jesus baptizes us with. Eph 2: 18 "For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father." A true Christian is in constant communication with the Father and Son through the portal called the Holy Spirit.
You made the smart decision. It's wise to quit and pick up the very few poker chips you have left and run off into obscurity with something in your pocket. Beats bankruptcy. Just like the Synergism of FWT cannot pass the scrutiny of God's Holy Word, neither can you. I know how you despise those sovereignty verses. I get it.
BUT...maybe some GWH type of this world will come along and rescue you and pull your bacon out of the fire....
Maybe our wanna-be bible scholar himself will explain to us why man's ways are NOT and cannot be in himself. After all...there must be a reason (I suspect) for why sinners have the dubious honor of being referred to as the LOST throughout the bible! Maybe he'll tell us why sinners have been labeled as such...and what exactly it is that they have LOST!
BUT...maybe some GWH type of this world will come along and rescue you and pull your bacon out of the fire....
Maybe our wanna-be bible scholar himself will explain to us why man's ways are NOT and cannot be in himself. After all...there must be a reason (I suspect) for why sinners have the dubious honor of being referred to as the LOST throughout the bible! Maybe he'll tell us why sinners have been labeled as such...and what exactly it is that they have LOST!-
1
- Show all
You made the smart decision. It's wise to quit and pick up the very few poker chips you have left and run off into obscurity with something in your pocket. Beats bankruptcy. Just like the Synergism of FWT cannot pass the scrutiny of God's Holy Word, neither can you. I know how you despise those sovereignty verses. I get it.
BUT...maybe some GWH type of this world will come along and rescue you and pull your bacon out of the fire.... Maybe our wanna-be bible scholar himself will explain to us why man's ways are NOT and cannot be in himself. After all...there must be a reason (I suspect) for why sinners have the dubious honor of being referred to as the LOST throughout the bible! Maybe he'll tell us why sinners have been labeled as such...and what exactly it is that they have LOST!
BUT...maybe some GWH type of this world will come along and rescue you and pull your bacon out of the fire....
Maybe our wanna-be bible scholar himself will explain to us why man's ways are NOT and cannot be in himself. After all...there must be a reason (I suspect) for why sinners have the dubious honor of being referred to as the LOST throughout the bible! Maybe he'll tell us why sinners have been labeled as such...and what exactly it is that they have LOST!
My understanding from Scripture about why sinners lost heaven and the justness of hell is as follows:
{{{A person—even a theist—might think that God would not permit evil, suffering and hell to exist. People who are mystified by evil and repulsed by its punishment do not realize that the essential aspect of being a human rather than a robot or subhuman creature is moral free will (MFW), which is what enables a person to experience love and meaning. This is what makes humans different from animals, whose behavior is governed mainly by instinct. This is what it means to be created in God’s image (GN 1:26-27; robot or responsible)?
God could not force people to return His love without abrogating their humanity. If God were to zap ungodly or lost souls, it would be tantamount to forcing conversions at gunpoint, which would not be free and genuine. If God were to prevent people from being lost/behaving hatefully, then He would need to prevent them from thinking evilly, which would make human souls programmed automatons.
This, for reasons we may understand only sufficiently rather than completely, God designed reality so that experiencing His presence is less than compelling, so that even Jesus (God the Son) on the cross cried out “My God [the Father], why have you forsaken [taken God the Spirit from] me?” (MT 27:46, PS 51:11) This phenomenon is sometimes called “distanciation”, because we experience God as distant from us and “unknown” (ACTS 17:23), even though He is close or immanent, “for in Him we live and move and have our being” (ACTS 17:28). Distanciation is not forsaken.
God’s normative means of conversion is persuasion rather than coercion (MT 12:39, 24:24, 1CR 1:22-23). This is seen very clearly in Jesus’ lament over the obstinacy of Jerusalem (MT 23:37). Two unusual theophanies included when God appeared to Moses (in a burning bush per EX 3:2-6), whom God wanted to establish the Jewish lineage for the Messiah (OT), and to Saul/Paul (as the resurrected Jesus in ACTS 9:3-6), whom God chose to establish the NT church of Christ. Miracles are rare (not normative).
MFW only exists when there is the possibility of choosing between two qualitatively opposite moral options that we call good and evil. These options are opposites because of essentially different consequences for choosing them. Choosing good results in blessing, life and heaven; and choosing evil results in cursing, death and losing heaven/finding or deserving hell (DT 30:19). This is why hell as well as heaven exists. It is the just consequence for choosing evil rather than God. The Spirit of God is good: love, peace and joy (GL 5:22-23). Therefore, whoever rejects the Lord is spiritually lost or separated from Him (IS 59:2) and thereby chooses the evil or satanic spirit of hatred, strife and misery and reaps the just consequence called “hell” in the afterlife (GL 6:7-9, HB 9:27-28). These options were presented by Moses to the Israelites (DT 30:19), and Jesus referred to this fundamental choice in terms of a fish or egg versus a snake or scorpion (LK 11:11-13). Life… or Curse? (GN 3:24, RV 22:1-2)
God created theoretical evil or the possibility of rejecting Him and being lost as an option that actualizes MFW/free human personality. As such it is necessary and even good (GN 1:31). Of course, it was wrong for Satan (1JN 3:8) and humanity (RM 5:12) to make evil actual by choosing to Sin/stray or reject Faith in God’s Shepherdship. Sin: ignoring God/God’s Word. God loves a cheerful giver (2CR 9:7), which means He desires people to cooperate with Him happily because of love and gratitude for His grace rather than to cower before Him because of fear of hell. Love must be evoked; it cannot be coerced. And again, when souls sin or do NOT choose to love God freely and stay in the fold, it is perfectly just (loving and logical) for them to reap the appropriate consequence (GL 6:7-9) or hell.
Why would anyone choose to believe otherwise? Only God knows why people choose atheism/lostness. It is a mystery stated by Isaiah, which is cited by Jesus (in MT 13:14-15): “You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused.” Apparently, this callous attitude demands God to nullify faith/MFW and thereby abrogate the essence of humanness by performing miracles in order to prove He exists (MT 12:39, 24:24, JN 20:29 & 1CR 1:22). In other words, atheists presume to know better than God; they want to usurp divine authority to determine what is best or good, but they may one day (at the eschaton per RV 20:15) wish they had admitted the possibility that God has ordained this mortal life on earth for the purpose of people proving to Him who is worthy of (qualified for) eternal life in heaven (cf. RM 2:5-8 & 2CR 13:5; heart/mind: hard or open?).
Such evil people punish/torture themselves by experiencing delayed karma, just as those who experience appropriate justice during this earthly existence also punish themselves or reap what they have sown and send themselves to jail. This view makes souls responsible for breaking the rules rather than blaming evil on the judges (or Judge) who enforce the rules. The purpose of earthly punishment is to promote repentance, but the reason for retribution in hell is to attain justice. It is difficult to imagine, but somehow even someone as evil as Hitler will receive perfect justice, perhaps experiencing the agony of the millions of deaths he caused in accordance with the principal of “eye for eye” (MT 5:38), after which their souls are destroyed forever (per JN 17:12, RM 9:22, GL 6:8, PHP 3:19, 2THS 1:9, 2PT 3:7 & RV 20:13-14).}}}
(Sorry about the format of the citations; I need to change it on our website sometime.)
Evidently, you missed my post on the Parable of the Banguet (Lk 14:15-24) in my 15,000 which clearly contradicts the above.
Tell that to the people who were only invited to the feast, refused to go and will never taste the Master's banquet. And also try telling that to those who were brought or compelled to enter into the feast by the faithful Servant and will be forever in the Master's presence.
Also, you have a very shallow view of man's lostness. Yes, mankind lost heaven but that's because Adam lost the spiritual life he was endowed with at creation, hence he died on the day he sinned. When he lost his life, he LOST his WAY! He became spiritually deaf and blind. Because all of Adam's progeny have lost their way, God had no choice but to direct the steps of all mankind in order to effectually restrain evil in this world, which if He doesn't do would turn this planet into a living HELL! And if He did not control man's ways, no one would be saved since the world hates God, his Christ, His truth, his wisdom, his knowledge and his understanding.
There's a reason why Jesus is called The Way...and why His first century Church was named The Way.
Tell that to the people who were only invited to the feast, refused to go and will never taste the Master's banquet. And also try telling that to those who were brought or compelled to enter into the feast by the faithful Servant and will be forever in the Master's presence.
Also, you have a very shallow view of man's lostness. Yes, mankind lost heaven but that's because Adam lost the spiritual life he was endowed with at creation, hence he died on the day he sinned. When he lost his life, he LOST his WAY! He became spiritually deaf and blind. Because all of Adam's progeny have lost their way, God had no choice but to direct the steps of all mankind in order to effectually restrain evil in this world, which if He doesn't do would turn this planet into a living HELL! And if He did not control man's ways, no one would be saved since the world hates God, his Christ, His truth, his wisdom, his knowledge and his understanding.
There's a reason why Jesus is called The Way...and why His first century Church was named The Way.