That's a dumb comment. Calvin himself said it. It's such a popular quote too. The source is all over the internet. That you are asking me what the source is shows you are really being dumb when you claim to know what he said. I have scores and scores of quotes of his murderous pursuits and verbeage. Take the quote and put it into a search engine and on the first page of Google you will see the source.Originally Posted by dejan2116
It's unjust to provide no grace because they were born that way. What you are teaching is gnosticism, that is, being created by an evil god. God is obligated to provide mercy and grace sufficient for us all, just as the verses I quoted you say. This is who God is. He is merciful and loving an would want none to perish. But you say He wants people to perish and gives them no way out. You are like Hitler towards the Jews with your god, after all your god is just a reflection of you. To round out your theory, see if you can find a specific verse that specifically says we are all condemned to Hell because we are born into sin rather than because we do sin and refuse His mercy. You don't believe in the time of recompense? What do you think Revelation 20.4 is talking about? Why are Christians called to overcometh if there are no consequences and commensurate rewards given in Revelation 2 & 3 if there is no age of accountability? I am sad to hear you reject the Jesus who will return to reign on earth for 1000 years. Perhaps you deny this because you are you think irresistibly selected like a robot.Just as Christ is the head of the Church and is its Saviour, so also Adam is the head of fallen humanity and is its condemnation, as Romans 5 teaches. Therefore, since Adam represented all humanity, all humanity is justly condemned for the sin of Adam, get it? So a person who is born a sinner is to blame because he is under Adam, even though he had nothing to do with the circumstances of his birth--this is headship theology. There's an age of accountability? That's news to me. Where did you get that from the Bible? Nobody deserves the right to be saved. Where did you get this from the Bible? In your analogy you assume that the person in quicksand is innocent. It actually looks more like this: Two sinners who hate God will all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, are drowning in quicksand. As the holy God walks by, the sinners spit at him and shake their fists because they cannot bear to look upon holiness. God looks at the two sinners who are equally condemned and decides to impart grace on the one and the leave the other to his own desires. So now that you really understand Calvinism from this biblical analogy, please show me how this is unjust, and why this God is Satan.
You got it backwards. The reason why God opened my eyes is because of the aforementioned sufficient grace and coming to God with an honest heart to see I need a Savior in Jesus by what He did for us; whereas others such as yourself do not. That's how God set it up. That's how He does this. He is relational. Think of it this way. If you had a choice to create God's way or the way you describe which would be better? Clearly it would be better to give us all the choice to interact and commune with free willed beings. That makes for a much more vibrant and lively creation and doesn't dumb it down like Calvinism does. You're giving your will all the glory because all you needed to do to be saved was pridefully assume you were irresistibly selected without repentance. I don't have a doublestandard like you when you claim you were irresistibly selected while accusing Christians of receiving what Jesus did for us. You can't see the conflict in that can you? You simply have a false faith one which you did not have to repent to the cross as a helpless sinner to be saved. Instead you boast of being irresistibly selected. John 3 doesn't agree with you, for we read that we are called to look upon that snake on the pole and whosoever is willing can be saved. Nothing about what you said about the unregenerated man being unable to receive what Jesus did for us.The only reason you have received the grace of God is because God opened your blind eyes and sin-captive heart. That's why you don't wallow in your sin. This is all Calvinism is, and when you call it "heresy" I have to laugh again. Give him the glory, not to your fallen human will. Your will was dead and you were a slave to sin, but Jesus set you free and gave you a new will by which you received his grace, through faith, and were justified by his grace alone. This is Calvinism. I think the Lord Jesus wants you to finally give him the credit for your salvation, rather than boasting in your decision, because your decision didn't come first; he first opend your dead heart first, and then afterwards imparted a new will within your by which you chose for Jesus. Your regeneration came before your choosing; John 3:16-20 teaches that the unregenerate heart doesn't even THINK about choosing God but loves evil, and first must be regenerated. This is biblical Calvinism, which you call heresy.
In God's realm, God created us all with free will. You do believe you are a robot because you said there is no free will in God's realm. Where does John 3.18-20 says man always chooses evil so that man can never choose what Jesus did for us on the cross? As you learn more about your Calvinism realize that the Calvinist must insert into the text that which is not there. If you take the plain text, you see God is pleading with us and that therefore we have a choice before us. What separates from receiving God is our own decision to be what we want to be. Our will is not replaced when we are born-again, it is rather, renewed. When you backtrack what is going on, you realize we are all made in God's image still, even though we are fallen, and by that image we have free will no matter how fallen it may be. God knows though the fallen will also needs His mercy and grace that is sufficient for us all. This is why none of us are "without excuse" towards His work, but under Calvinism a person would have an excuse because they were not given sufficient grace to have a genuine choice. God reveals His way of saving in the Bible. There are no verses for irresistible grace or preterition, but lots of verses for God's pleading, sufficient grace, and free will. Free will is mentioned over 4000 times in the Bible. What you have may make sense to you because that's what you want to be saved by the god you describe, but I would not. Calvinism is internally consistent, but the problem is it is false. It is evil to worship a God who doesn't provide sufficient grace to all. It is also lame to resort to claiming because God is infinite we can't understand His ways. He gives His word which obviously is so we can understand His plan and will.You have a skewed view of predestination and predetermination. Is God forcing me to write this message to you now? No. But he has decreed it, and this is why there's a purpose in it. Just because he decrees something does not mean he hasn't given me a genuine creaturely will that feels free in the human real and that concurs with his decree. All we Calvinists are saying is that this human will is NOT actually free in God's realm because God decreed time. How is this heresy? No Calvinist believes we are just robots, except maybe hyper-Calvinists. Free will means the ability to choose, and humans do have that ability to choose, but, as John 3:18-20 teaches, in ultimate issues like salvation they ALWAYS choose evil rather than good, and that's because their will is corrupt. I'm the one saying they need a new will in order to choose, but you are the one saying they can choose the truest good (that is, the gospel) by their old, corrupted will that is only "wooed" rather than "replaced" by God's Spirit. Which view is actually heresy? I think yours, and history backs me up on this point. You only think I'm using double talk because you are interpreting the unfathomable decree of God in predestination through limited human reason, so of course the majesty of God's decree doesn't fully make sense to you; even though it makes sense to me, it doesn't fully make sense to me either, but I still believe it because it's biblical.
Even "faith" is a gift of God that without we could never be saved either. We could not exist if He didn't create us in His image. We can all freely obtain this gift of faith if we search God out with all our hearts and souls. The reason you haven't found the God I have described to you in His word is because you have not searched Him out with all your heart and soul. You want a selfish salvation. Man truly is a sovereign being not a robot. You want to be an automaton, but God wants better than that. That's why He created you in His image. You're lifting up yourself when you exalt yourself to the world you are irresistibly selected without repentance. If a Christian were to engender that kind of thought we would feel ugly and grotesque inside, but you don't because you are not regenerated and you don't want to be. Not only are you lifting up yourself but you lift yourself up above all those others you think are going to Hell without any grace or mercy whatsoever. These two children of God in quicksand are just playing in the sand. They are kids. They are not even the age of accountability yet, but when they do reach the age of accountability even then still your god has no love. God does not predestinate and elect the way you want to Him. He can't, He won't. It goes totally against His nature. It's evil what you want. You're trying to be saved in your head, leaving your spirit unreachable by God.I'm not saying man merits salvation by receiving Christ. We receive the free gift of his grace by the MEANS of faith, not "because" of faith. Faith is only the instrument of that reception, not its cause. Thus, salvation is by grace alone. This is what "faith alone" means. It doesn't mean I'm saved because of the merits of my faith--faith has no merits here because it is not giving but receiving. The fact that you call fallen man a "sovereign being" says it all; it makes sense with your view to lift up man and put down God, which is why you lift up man's will but put down God's will (election, predestination), and this is what you call biblical???
God can't kill anyone anytime He wants to because that would be evil. You keep giving God evil attributes. Don't you realize you are talking about Satan not God? You have a child, you ought not to kill him, but you say you can because this life belongs to you. Yes, if it is evil for us to do something, it is evil for God to do it, since His standards are not less than our own. God wooed me, He did not have to make me a robot. When I look back upon how Go wooed me it is most wonderful all the little things He did and all the times I resisted yet finally came around. My Christian friends are wooed not irresistibly imposed upon by your evil tyrant, so you labor in vain in trying to make us like you. True Christians can never become what you are now. God didn't replace my will but renewed it. Regeneration takes place in the spirit, quickened with new life, given eternal life, for the Holy Spirit to indwell. We still keep our spirit, but it is quickened and we are given a new spirit of eternal life for the Holy Spirit to indwell. Satan has told you that your will has been replaced. What's really going on with you is that you are demonically possessed, since that is what Satan does is replace wills, so you have given your will over to Satan for him to control it. What else can Jesus say to you except you are "condemned already" (John 3.18). That's a major difference how God works. He never possess your will and takes it over. Your consent is always required. Whereas Satan tries to posses it and take it over without your consent. Whenever you encounter a situation, sense how the spirit is working; if he is acting like Satan just described you know it is not of God, but the spirit is working with your decision in mind, then you know it is of God. Think how impractical it is to carry around the pride of always thinking you were irresistibly selected that stems from this demonic possession you are under. I would get no holy energy from that yet you do feed off that evil.God can kill anyone at any time he wants because life belongs to him. I can't kill because life doesn't belong to me. This is why murder is prohibited FOR MEN in the OT. God can do things I can't, so it is not true that "if it is evil for us, it is evil for God", sorry. Fallen man won't accept the opportunity for salvation unless his fallen will is REPLACED (not wooed) by the Spirit of God, so you labor in vain by trying to safeguard this worthless doctrine of yours that didn't save you or anyone else on the planet. If you are saved, it's because God replaced your will, even though you stubbornly refuse to see this. It's sad how you forfeit the biblical doctrines of predestination and irresistible grace for the foolish and impractical doctrine of autonomous, fallen free will.
What Calvinists call repentance and faith, Christians don't consider true repentance and faith, because it is irresistibly imposed and assumed, whereas we received these gifts because God's grace is sufficient and therefore we have the choice to freely obtain them. In order to receive a new heart and a new spirit you would have to genuinely receive what God did for us all. To receive would require true repentance and true faith, not by the pedestal you are on to declare pridefully to the world you were irresistibly selected and there was nothing you could do to refuse it. To get repentance and faith you must come to God with an honest heart. God makes Himself beautiful to everyone but the many such as yourself who reject His beauty and replace with subterranean thoughts of irresistible grace. You claim you were irresistibly made to love the god of Calvinism but in reality that's not true. You just invoke this false faith unto yourself because selfishly you don't want to repent and believe in Christ to be regenerated. I suppose you feel you would have to give up too much or you're just so afraid to give up control of self. It can be scary there is no doubt about it, because you have clinged to your self life for so long you don't anything else. You want a selfish salvation that much is clear; it is selfish to us if we were saved the way you want to be but it is not selfish to you because you put up a wall between you and God. God can't fail to save the sinner. I am saved. How has He failed? You reject this God. Why is God a failure because your choice to want to go to Hell? If God's will is irresistibly beautiful to everyone then everyone would be saved, so you contradict yourself again.Ah, Gobbledygook! No Calvinist denies biblical repentance and faith. Read John Calvin's Institutes and read the truth of what he said. When the bible speaks of "repent and be converted" it doesn't mean "by your work of repentance, not God's grace, God will save you," as if it's a works alone salvation. Yet this is how you use this text. If it doesn't mean this, then it doesn't support your views. All we Calvinists are affirming is what Ezekiel affirmed about the old heart that is REPLACED (not wooed) by a NEW HEART (Ezekiel 36:26), yet if you want to keep that old heart and its corrupted will suit yourself. How is this Calvinist view heresy? Show me chapter and verse. You feel like you were doing the work of salvation because you are looking at your salvation through the limited eyes of man, and for reasons unknown to me, you deny to look at salvation through God's eyes. Do you even know what "irresistible grace" really means? It does NOT mean that I "cannot resist" God's grace because he forces it upon me. (To call god raising a sinner from the dead by his grace "forcing salvation" on him is nonsense, but that's another matter). No, rather it means "if he raises me from the dead, he wont fail to make himself so "irresistibly" beautiful to me that I will without fail accept him. Your view takes away the glory of God, because you say that God can fail to save a sinner. I say God cannot fail because his will is irresistibly beautiful, and if he desires to save me, I will be saved. Wake up and smell the coffee.
God is the "Savior of all men, specially those who believe" (1 Tim. 4.10) NOT "Savior of all men [to sustain men but not from Hell], specially those who believe". If God is the Savior of all men to sustain them, then certainly He is the Savior of all men from Hell "whosoever believeth" (John 3.16).
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks