Pride of Calvinism

Re: http://www.youtube.com/user/CBALLEN

Quote:

Originally Posted by CBALLEN

No,you have misunderstood.I was lost 15 yo.After I became a Christian I started going to a Baptist Church who believed that you could chose to be saved,but you could not lose your salvation.This kind of teaching was all I knew for fourteen years.At many invitations the preacher said"you can't come unless the Father draws you,but you can tell Him no,but Jesus said"No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him,and I will raise him up on the last day.This bothered me deep down.Then as I was reading Rev.17:8 it stated that all the saved were written in the Lambs Book of Life before time,so I reasoned that if this was true,there were also those that were not written there,meaning no matter what, they would never be written there.Also Ravi Zacharius said something that made me really think.He said,"JESUS didn't come to make bad men good,He came to make dead men Live" and he was right,dead men can't choose Jesus,that's exactly what scripture says.Then I read Acts 13:48 and that blew me away! Just like scripture says,we were appointed to everlasting life by God Himself! It took me a year to study and now I see,it was God doing everything all my life.I now go to a church that preaches the TRUE GOSPEL!

"No one can come to me unless the Father draws him" does not mean everyone God draws comes, only that all those who do come, were drawn. As you misread now, that is what should be bothersome. Have you begun with the Spirit and now ending with the flesh? Or is it a case of you coming so close to the Lord these many years, but still refusing God's way of salvation (2 Pet. 2.21)? It sounds like you were a nominal Christian and now are getting worse with your Calvinism ideas-idol of Total depravity and pride of preselectionism ("stacking the deck"). Those who are not written in the book of life, the Bible says are blotted out, because the person chooses to. Everyone is in the book of life and one by one get blotted out by their own free will so God knows who is in the book of life from the foundations of the world.

I don't think Zacharius was referring to what you are thinking, your pet teaching and idol of Total depravity. "Dead" means loss of communication, so dead doesn't mean Total depravity whereby people can't even help an old lady across the street or receive what Jesus did for us on the cross. You are still made in God's image and God provides you and everyone else sufficient grace to have the choice. It would be evil of God if you were created and allowed to become Totally depraved (no longer in God's image) because then God would have to irresistibly cause some to believe and damn others from birth to Hell when it was not their fault for being born into sin. If you can't sense how this is evil, I can confidently say you are not born-again and never were those 14 or 15 years. God' image once given never ceases to exist and never becomes Totally depraved.

The Scriptures don't say dead man can't choose Christ, that's why you can't find one verse for your heady theory. Looks like you have found yourself a cult that matches your desire for a selfish salvation in which you can pride yourself over others by thinking you were selected and others were given right no grace and opportunity to be saved. Sorta like Hitler's Aryan race and Jews condemned from birth the gas chambers. What love this? Are you a Presbyterian? Watch my video on Acts 13.48 again. This verse does not say how they were ordained whether by foreknowing our free-choice or by your god irresistibly imposing salvation. Don't read into the text, but read the surrounding verses to get a clue. That's what I tried to do in the video. Stop inserting into the text your theory!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7rOmLZs4W8