Unprofitable Servant wrote: Chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth. So, if we ask an English teacher what is the direct object of the verb chosen, would he say it is the prepositional phrase or the pronoun. I believe the object of the verb has to be the word you and the prepositional phrase describes the method of salvation. So if you take out the prepositional phrases to get to the subject, verb, and direct object we have, God has chosen you I am not an English teacher, but pretty sure that would be correct grammar.
John for JESUS wrote: PROBLEMO...If I understand you correctly, Alex is wrong to believe we cannot be ordained to eternal life before it happens. Alex is right that we will not have eternal life until the appointed time.
Then we're agreed.
John for JESUS wrote: JOE LEE...The only thing I know is that those who do not believe do so because either they love the darkness rather than the Light and others do not believe because they don't want their evil worksÂ brought to light. Why did I not get tripped up by those things? Out of love for Him I obeyed and had faith. Seems like everyone would though.
Your last sentence should trouble you, and that's precisely the point that Joe is trying to make. Was there something special about you that didn't trip you up? You were wiser than the others, more knowledgeable, more discerning etc? What made the difference? Something in you or something God did?
John for JESUS wrote: No, that is why you have to ask yourself if they were ordained to eternal life, why? John 3:16 says, "whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." I'm just saying, there is a good possibility the Gentiles ordained to eternal life believed. If you want to believe they were ordained to eternal life without faith, go right ahead, but you are wrong. As far as you having never read Calvin, many people haven't. The problem is, they get taught his teachings in the pulpit.
Let's say JfJ that you have a dental problem and you need a root canal treatment. Your wife makes an appointment for you and you have your treatment.
You write in your journal that, as appointed for you, you had your teeth seen to.
Some smart Alec comes along and says, having read your journal entry, there is no way the appointment could have been made prior to the time of the treatment.
You point out that that is the whole point of appointment system.
But, this smart Alec insists that he is right because you had the treatment at the appointed time and not before (duh!!) and therefore he must know the dental system better than you!
Hopefully the parallel is not to difficult to grasp.
John for JESUS wrote: I am trying to remain scriptural. I believe the problem here is with brethren trying to impose the ideas they were taught by others (Calvin) and inserting them into the text because it seems to fit to them. Problem is, if you have to imply alot of your beliefs into scripture, you might want to recheck what you believe. Much of what they believe isn't implicitly taught in scripture. That is why they love to quote old dead guys and confessions of faith as justification for their beliefs. I believe those in Acts were on the rd to destruction but now are on the ordained path to eternal life.
For the record I have never read Calvin!
But unlike some I do not shun the obvious teaching of the Word of God just because Calvin may have taught the same!
Your attempt to avoid the plainest inference from the text is clear evidence that you are NOT concerned to be biblical, but to hold to a preconceived doctrine.
John for JESUS wrote: Eph 2:3 shows we were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. We were appointed to suffer God's wrath until He changed that appointment when we obeyed Him and had faith. For the sake of argument, if they were appointed prior to their faith, it only says they were appointed to eternal life. Not appointed to faith.
You know of another way to eternal life other than through faith in Christ?
John for JESUS wrote: 1) Yes believed does come after, but it isn't necessarily in chronological order. For example, I might say all those people buried in the cemetery died. I wouldn't be saying they were buried prior to their death. Or it could be said, all those who received a ticket sped. The people sped first. Or it could be said, all who came to the wedding drove. They drove to get there. 2)They glorified The Lord because of the preaching not before it
Do you have an appointment after the fact?
You are appointed to die. Will you deny that appointment until death occurs?!
These people were appointed to eternal life. The evidence of that appointment was that they believed.
How else would anyone have known that they had been appointed to eternal life except by them believing the gospel of Christ?
John for JESUS wrote: 2) Exactly, it doesn't mention their ordination until they trusted in Jesus.
They were ordained by God to eternal life. What? You want God to give you a list of those he has ordained to eternal life before you can bring yourself to believe that he planned it all and made it happen? Are you really are a stranger to the God of the Bible?
Read Ephesians 1 in conjunction with this and you might just get a flavor of what God planned and has done/is doing.
John for Jesus wrote: All those who believe in Him will not perish but have eternal life.E ternal life won't begin until death is swallowed up in victory.
Do you know God and do you know the one he sent? If not then you do not possess eternal life.
John for Jesus wrote: 3) He has revealed who receives salvation. The faithful!
Genuine believers possess eternal life already and will be kept by the power of God. That is why Luke had the confidence to mention the ordination of these Gentiles to eternal life! If it was still in the future how could he have made this statement?
John for JESUS wrote: PROBLEMO...We weren't arguing who ordained them to eternal life. I'm just saying all who were ordained believed already. They were believers in God who needed to hear the gospel truth. Funny how the bible doesn't mention that they were ordained until after they believed.
You have a real funny way of processing the Scriptures.
Its real simple. These people were proselytes to the Jewish religion! They were not saved. They may have been as you put it "God fearing gentiles", but that would not save them!
Given this, why would the passage mention their ordination to eternal life until it became evident to everyone by their believing the gospel of Christ that they were in possession of this eternal life?
We are not privy to the counsel of God as to who is and who is not ordained. All we know is that God has ordained/appointed some to eternal life. How will we know who these are? They will in God's plan be brought to believe the gospel!
John for JESUS wrote: I didn't really reverse the order! I only said it like that because of your accusation. However, had they came to believe as a result of being ordained to eternal life, it would have said that.
It does say that. Ordained is passive. IOW they did not do that themselves, someone else did that. Now who could appoint them to eternal life I wonder?
John for JESUS wrote: Those ordained were Gentiles who feared God (v26) and were religious proselytes (v43). They already believed in God, they were glad to hear the good news of the gospel and glorified the word of the Lord.
The may have been proselytes to the Jewish religion but they were not Christian! And this is why their believing was significant. In accordance with their appointment to eternal life some of them (those appointed to do so) believed the gospel for the first time!!
John for JESUS wrote: PROBLEMO...Is this why you reverse the order in Acts 13.48; so that it sits comfortably with what you believe? I reverse the order because I believe it is biblical to say so. It doesn't say all those who were ordained to eternal life came to believe, it says they believed (past tense).
Luke is narrating a history so of course he uses the past tense to describe what happened.
Big of you to correct the Word of God. Looking to teach the Holy Spirit how the word should have been written, eh?!
John for JESUS wrote: Rms 3:9-11 says Jews are no better than Gentiles. Pointing to a time when Israel went astray for an example.
You've missed the entire point in that case. This is the Holy Spirit proclaiming the state of all mankind- Jew and Gentile - before a Holy God.
If that is true, that none seek God, that unbelievers are at enmity with God, they are his enemies, then how do you suppose any unbeliever loves Jesus to come to him for salvation?
John for Jesus wrote: People can look back in scripture and see that the Messiah was to be born of a virgin. If you want to say He was born of a virgin for another reason then say so. I don't imply He was a sinner. However, if we all are guilty for Adam's sin then He would have been also. He became a man through Mary.
You clearly believe that everyone is born with a clean slate despite what Romans 5.19 tells us viz that by one man's disobedience we are made sinners! And this is why you can see no connection between Adam's sin and Christ's birth!
John for JESUS wrote: PROBLEMO...I believe people repent and believe out of love toward Jesus and that they only love Him because He first loved them.
How do you explain Romans 3.9-11?
John for Jesus wrote: I guess I been telling you why He became flesh, sorry. I know the virgin birth was prophesied about, so it could have been for a sign. His Father wasn't going to fornicate with Mary, so I don't know what other option there was.
The Lords miracles were a sign that the Jews expected the Messiah to perform. How would a virgin birth be a sign to the people? Even to this day, the fact that he was born out of wedlock proves a stumbling block to the Jews.
If Christ was born a sinner as you imply, then how can a Holy God accept the atonement he made?
Christopher000 wrote: Problemo, good point on your last sentence. The other thing that seals it for me, well, there are many things, but a main one is irreducible complexity The big bang: At first there was nothing, and then it exploded. Ha-ha. Oh boy.
Animate life from inanimate matter. An explosion producing matter. Unidentified mechanism for the evolutionary process as mutations always produce bad results etc etc
But for them their faith can stretch to believing all this nonsense cos it's in the name of intellectual science. But, the God of the Bible is a stretch too far. As you say Christopher ha-ha!!
John for JESUS wrote: 1) It doesn't. They already believed and then were ordained to eternal life.
Your theory of the order is plain incorrect. If you were right it would have read "such as believed were ordained to eternal life". But, it reads "such as were ordained to eternal life believed". How does that prove that ordination came after belief?!
John for Jesus wrote: 2) I explained why. To expand, if He wasn't in the likeness of our sinful flesh, He would not have been tempted like we are. If He came a spirit, they could not have killed Him. If He didn't become a Son of man, then His death and resurrection wouldn't have counted, just like the sacrifice of bulls and goats. I believe that's why He didn't just show up in the form of a man. He had to be of the same seed as Adam.
Still avoiding the question - Why the virgin birth?!!
Christopher000 wrote: I cringe whenever I see a vehicles bumper sticker with the image of a Christian fish, but says Darwin within it. Evolution, apes turning into men, etc. Foolishness. I always wanted to ask an evolutionist why we don't see 1/2 ape men running around today. They would probably say it takes billions of years for the metamorphosis to take place. The problem with that though is that it should be a never ending cycle so at any given time, they should be evolving all around us. Men, animal, birds, and amphibians alike.
Quite right Christopher. The so called missing link is in fact billions of missing links. IOW any evidence that it is true.
But also if monkeys evolved because from an evolutionary viewpoint they are a weaker life form then why are they still around?!!