Predestination is misunderstood...

To imply that man has the moral will to choose God is to contradict the Scriptures which make it very plain that no one seeks God (Rom 3:11) because man loves the darkness and hates the light (John 3:19) that man's heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked (Jer 17:9) and does only evil continually (Gen 6:5) which is why it is impossible for man to choose God to be saved (Mark 10:26-27) and it is only be grace that God has chosen His people to be saved who choose Him only because He first chose them.

Therefore do not ask yourself whether you have chosen God but whether He has chosen you!

Psa 65:4a Blessed is the man You choose, And cause to approach You,

Joh 15:16 You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit,

Eph 1:4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love,

2Th_2:13 But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth,

and here you have proven that you do not yet understand grace for you have made salvation ultimately conditional upon what a person does and not who Christ is and what He has done to secure salvation for His people. He did not come to make salvation possible for spiritually dead men to somehow choose Him and by doing so you are perverting the Gospel and unless God grants you repentance you will remain under the curse trusting in your choice (Jer 17:5) and not His grace.

Rom 11:6 And if by grace, then it is no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace. But if it is of works, it is no longer grace; otherwise work is no longer work.

I was not claiming that you specifically are mentally ill. Yet, too many Christians do become that way.

Few find this...


Everyone is equally saved. No one is "abundantly saved."

Jesus said that few find LIFE more abundantly....

Why?

Not every believer is willing to sacrifice all to fight the good fight . The fight for finding all the truth they require for them to be able to find themselves experiencing the Life that Jesus came to give.

Many settle into some church where they are like minded according to their flesh..







Broad is the road = too many denominations, even a thousand denominations that will contradict one another.

Why do so many fail to find it?

2 Timothy 4:3


That great number of teachers?

Are the "broad and wide" road to destruction.

Pray to find good pastor teacher.


grace and peace ................

If you think man is not spiritually dead because of the Fall then you are making God out to be a liar for Adam ended up living to the ripe old age of 930!

Gen 2:17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."

those who see the Son and believe are only those to whom it is granted by Him to do so.

Joh 6:65 And He said, "Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father."

Luk 10:22 All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him."

a song for those who trust in their supposed free will to be saved.

Why would I read from the kjv when it is not a translation of the "original koine Greek" written in the New Testament?
If I did as you do I would be as erroneous as you are.

And yet we still sin daily and seek forgiveness for it.

That was my point....

That is why the concept of the age of ACCOUNTABILITY comes into play with young children and infants that die..

Of course there was sin. But he specifically says that where there is no law, sin is not imputed. So while these verses do say sin was taking place, you haven't established that any law existed to impute sin by. Thus, it was the sin of Adam accrued to them that led to death....Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned...Romans 5:12.

Paul never said that God chose only some of you in Him.

To be the Bride is to be like Adam's bride. Eve was bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh.
Likewise, the Church will receive and identical glorious body like that of the Lord's.

What you were pointing towards was that not all in the church will live as to receive rewards.
They will still have a glorious resurrection body just the same!

Not everyone in the Church will reign with Christ for that reason. They produced too much wood, hay, and straw.
But, the Church, all the church, is the Bride!


Not just some. All will receive a body just like his own, just like Eve received a body just like Adam's.
That is why we are the Bride of Christ. Same glorious body.

grace and peace ................

You're the one seeing a contradiction, not me. Those who see and believe accept Him, not hard to understand. Those who believe, God saves. This is what He promised to do.

Was he predestined or was he prophesied to betray Jesus?

Context. The works Paul is speaking of here are works of the Law. There is a work to which God calls all of us.

John 6:29
Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.”

If you have to have at least two of everything (e.g. death = physical death or it could be that death + spirtual death) to explain your philosophy of soteriology, you are making things way too complicated and are probably back-filling holes in your theory with ad hoc rationalisations. If we are dead in our trespasses and sins, it is like saying I am dead in/with my multiple sclerosis. I have a degree of physical disability due to my MS, and I am headed for complete disability in physical death, if I am not cured. You don't put to death a dead person. Does the Bible ever call satan "dead"?

Your stating confidently, "One is definitely dead before salvation, meaning therefore since they are physically alive, this must mean spiritually dead," does not make it so. We are quickened AFTER we die with Christ through faith in His death and resurrection, and re quickened from THAT death imposed by THAT faith. Being quickened at some point in time, does not mean I was always dead before that point in time. A man has a heart attack at 2:35. He is dead. They jump start his heart electrically, and he has now been quickened. We would be quite wrong to argue he was always dead, otherwise why would they need to quicken him.

I believe the scriptures teach that if a person believes and worships God, they are born again, but have no knowledge of Christ's doctrine. these are the ones that enter into the wide gate. You are correct in saying that they teach false doctrines, due to their lack of knowledge. They are born again children of God, that are disobedient.

Spiritual Israel, when they turned away from God, and began to worship idols, God blinded their eyes to the knowledge of the doctrine, but he left in the midst of them a remnant that trust in the Lord (Zeph 3:11-13).

Those that enter the strait gate and narrow way, that leads to an abundant and peaceful life as they sojourn here on earth, are the remnant

I believe the wheel within a wheel harmonizes with this; The outer larger wheel being the wide gate, and the inner smaller wheel being the remnant (Ezk 10, especially verse 10)

It says death passed to all men because of Adam's sin. It does not say that sin or guilt passed to all men because of Adam's sin. It says all men sinned because they became mortal. "death passed to all on the basis of which, or because of which (eph hoi) all sinned."

It does not say "sin passed upon all men on the basis of which, or because of which (eph' hOi) all died."

"That" is "hina" which means "so that", and introduces a purpose clause, not a relative clause. The text is not identifying "believing in Him whom He sent" as the work of God referred to by "this" (houto). It says "This is the work of God, so that you may believe in Him whom He sent."
"This" refers to an earlier statement in the text - "Labour... for that meat which endures forever, which the Son of Man will give to you." i.e. "Put your effort into getting to hear the word of God.... so that you may believe in Him whom He has sent."

Put your effort into getting to hear the word of God. is the work of God, the work God requires of you.

Yes, Judas has a choice. God chose Judas to fulfil the prophecy because Judas had made himself the kind of person who would betray a would-be Messiah preaching Jesus' message and thwarting Judas' political plans. Had Judas taken a different path God could have fulfilled the prophecies in other ways using other people, who had prepared themselves for carrying out the treachery.