1. The Idol of Self-Assurance: Grounded in Christ or 75 Years of Human Effort?
You made a monumental admission. You stated:
"My will has stood for 75+ years, so I have no reason to doubt it will not persevere until death."
With those words, you have completely exposed the foundation of your theology. Your assurance does not rest upon the immutable, ironclad promise of Jesus Christ or the blood of the everlasting covenant. Your assurance rests upon
yourself. You are banking your eternity on the consistency of your own human will over 75 years.
Scripture explicitly warns against this precise brand of self-confidence in
Proverbs 28:26:
"He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool." Jerimiah 17:5 echoes this:
"Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm."
If your salvation depends on your human will remaining steadfast until your final breath, you cannot have biblical assurance; you have self-delusion. In contrast, the true believer's assurance looks away from self entirely and boasts only in Christ:
"He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ" (
Philippians 1:6).
2. The Greek Grammar of John 10:28 vs. Your Claim
You mentioned that someone who knows Greek should compile a list of scriptures regarding the present progressive tense. Let’s look exactly at how the Greek grammar of
John 10:27-28 functions, because it completely obliterates your system.
You argue that because the sheep are described as continuously "hearing" (
akouousin, present active indicative) and "following" (
akolouthousin, present active indicative), their security is conditional upon that continuous human action.
But you are completely missing the syntactic link to
verse 28. The main action verbs of verse 28 are
δίδωμι (
didōmi - "I give," present active indicative) and
οὐ μὴ ἀπόλωνται (
ou mē apōlōntai - "they shall never perish").
- As established, ou mē with the aorist subjunctive is the absolute strongest negation possible in Greek. It rules out even the possibility of the event occurring.
- John Gill masterfully noted that the continuous hearing and following are the character traits of those whom Christ has fast in His grip. The continuous action is the grammatical fruit of the giving of eternal life.
If a single sheep for whom Christ gives life breaks their continuous following and perishes, then the absolute negation
ou mē fails, and Christ’s declarative statement is rendered false. The grammar proves that the Shepherd’s hand is what guarantees the sheep's perseverance, not the sheep's perseverance guaranteeing the Shepherd’s hand.
3. Exposing the Great Commission Fallacy
You claim that because Jesus sent His disciples to evangelize the world, it "obviously implies" He prayed that the entire world wholesale would be saved, accusing John Gill of lacking "semantic logic."
Let's test your semantic logic against the literal words of the Son of God. In
John 17:9, Jesus says:
"I pray for them: I pray not for the world."
According to your logic, when Jesus says
"I pray NOT for the world," He actually means,
"I imply that I DO pray for the world because of the Great Commission." That is not semantic logic; that is flat-out rewriting the text to protect your system.
John Gill understood biblical semantics perfectly. The High Priest does not offer a failed intercession.
We evangelize the world because the elect are scattered throughout the world. As Jesus stated in John 10:16: "And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice." Evangelism is the voice of the Shepherd effectively gathering His chosen sheep out of every nation, tongue, and tribe (Revelation 5:9).
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Category D: Rejection of Grace and Hardening
(Matthew 13:14-15, Acts 28:26-27)
You argue that
Proverbs 21:1 (God turning the heart) must be harmonized with
Matthew 13:14-15, where people close their own eyes and harden their own ears. There is no contradiction here to harmonize.
- High-Calvinism fully affirms that sinners willingly, actively, and eagerly harden their own hearts against God because of their corrupt nature.
- The difference is that while the non-elect are justly left to their own self-willed blindness, God sovereignly intervenes in the hearts of the elect to take away the heart of stone and give a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26).
- Left to "MFW," everyone in Matthew 13 closes their eyes. Salvation only happens because God sovereignly opens the eyes of His sheep.
Every single text you threw at the page establishes the absolute necessity of sovereign grace. Your system forces you to
look at your 75 years of performance for your assurance. My theology forces me to look exclusively to the cross of Jesus Christ, where my salvation was fully finished, sealed, and eternally secured.
I have not ignored a single verse on your list. Now it is your turn: Answer
John 6:39. If Christ loses
nothing of what the Father gave Him, how can a true sheep perish?
If you want to counter this specific post on the forum or address the person directly, let me know if you would like me to:
