5341	Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Romans and the Flesh Monster.	on: March 14, 2009, 12:23:59 PM
Jesus is the Truth... everything centers around what He says.. and He has a purpose in all things working. Whether He has designed everything from before time or He has a purpose in a design that can only be acted upon in the existence of a thing....yet we say that He has decreed all things from eternity past. So that He is reveal as the radiance of the Fathers glory... the exact representation of His being. The truth about this life is found in Jesus. Because He purposes everything to work so that He is understood as who He is and not what we understand to be in these causes, means , and ends as they work out in our lives. Otherwise we would not need to depend upon Him as the source of all things. Satan is the Father of lies who comes as an angel of light. He is actively seeking to hold the truth in His lies. He is seeking to devour those who are identified with the Truth. We resist the lies in order to have a clear view of Christ. Because Satan works on the minds of believers and unbelievers in order to darken the understanding. Christ dwells in inapproachable light then... we are always seeing these things through a foggy glass. We are beholding the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. This is our protection... our privilege... and it is the reason that we know what is of real value in knowing how we are to live and think in this world. In our union with Christ we are being protected from the destroyer...that is the great Serpent who is trying to drag us away and into everlasting chains. The way He does this is through lies... He deceives... if He could the very elect. Satan would have us live moral lives in His clutches. By this process ...He literally takes a person and drags that person to hell. We who are identified with Christ are able to discern what is true and what is false. We do this by taking captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. We see the lies through the lens of scripture.... Gods revealing light that exposes the darkness. For He is a lamp unto our feet.. a light unto our path.He literally is the light of our Salvation... He destroys the works of the devil by His unapproachable light... the glory of His presence. That s His way of destroying the enemies of the Lords armies. He literally confuses the wicked so that they lose the pleasure in their sin. This is a "hard road to hoe" ... this old saying.... men seek pleasure in sin... Satan draws them in by the initial happiness of the experience... then He traps them in the sin and destroys them with His destroying power. They lose the joy in the sin and are filled with all kinds of evil spirits. We are involved in a spiritual battle of truth and lies. 5348  Forums / Steve Brown Etc. / Re: Comments welcomed....yet another "tricky" confusing situation. on: March 11, 2009, 01:03:50 PM The apostles were grouped together within the twelve. The reason that the apostle says to try and get along with men as much as possible is because it is impossible for us to get along with every man. I mean that there are some men who are controlled by Satan...by being under the dominion of sin... being in bondage to the course of the world... and finding that the real man Jesus is awfully condemning of their idols. When we represent Christ with all of our sins... we will suffer the reviling of men. So that life is extremely difficult. Sometimes its not going to get any better. There is a reason that we go through these kinds of situations. One is that we will learn that there is no man who is without tendencies to be very evil and hateful. We are commanded to love our enemies. But we are also not able to get along with all men. So that these things are determined by the wisdom of God in each situation. On the one hand we must protect ourselves from being overcome with evil. The way that Satan tries to overcome our confidence is to attack our faith. He attacks our faith through accusations. Now there is a natural hatred from the world... from the self righteous ... that comes at us in a subtle fashion that is meant to demoralize us.This is why it is so difficult to maintain a consistent dependence on God in all of life... worshiping Him as God in living before Him...maintaining a hope in His grace... and finding in Him all that we need. Because when we are demoralized then we are subject to be double minded. Satan tries to get us to be just happy enough to be close to the spirit of accusations without rejoicing in God. We must take our anger to God. The sun is going down and the morning is approaching. Gods love is always flowering to us as the sun comes up. When we feel demoralized then we do not want to get up for the day. So we are commanded to be angry.. in a self protective way...from being destroyed in faith...holding onto the hope of His grace. Thats why there is always a remedy even tho we do not have these physical protections in all of life. I mean there are ways we can protect ourselves... there is our horses in the battle... but we cannot trust in our own ability to control the choices and ways that we are confronted with in our escaping these traps. We must in our anger trust that God is the avenger of those who would do us harm. Our hope is not just in enduring a certain amount of hatred toward us... with God being far from our rescue. But we have a God who is all ... that is all we need in confronting the arrows from this world and from the forces of evil. W 5351  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Romans and the Flesh Monster. on: March 11, 2009, 12:12:05 PM There is a chain of authority in the world. Any company you work for has this component. And there may be some parallels to the church ... but this is like water and oil. In the world the name of the position determines the level of living. I mean every position has a performance standard. The measurement of the performance is based upon the goals met. The focus is on the production..otherwise there would be no lasting position. But in the church the definition of the position is the name. Because the defined paradigm is Christ.Because the position is one of love... being Christ to one another. Any thing outside this ...substituted by the production motive...ceases to be the defined position. For we are His body... not of our own. In other words authority is only in part on a human level... and is always without a witness as an existence in name. Think about this. 5353  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Free Will or Predestination on: March 11, 2009, 11:13:15 AM An observation cont. from the above post ; If your religion is of the Arminian freedom then you will focus on your ability to make choices that are good and the objects of your choice will need to be fenced in. Your past will be a regret over your foolish choices. Your wish will be a sorrowful regret of those circumstances you chose to be in and the power these outward things had on your life. Your present way of life will be focused on controlling your will by removing these things from your life. And your future will be without assurance. The next generation will be taught a self mutilation as a result of  your reaction to what you did and your present deception that you are able to change by your withdrawal from the world. Your doctrinal approach will be from a longing for self purification. This longing is to blame the things prior, to exalt the self or the right choices present, and to always remain in a mind set of wondering if it is enough in the future. 5355  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Free Will or Predestination on: March 10, 2009, 10:10:01 PM You miss represent the Calvinist position when you claim that we have a robotic theology. We too believe in free will. We say that freedom of choice is true liberty. But we do not believe that the will is not under a necessity. We believe that freedom of the will is expressed as an ability to choose for oneself what one wants. But we believe that there are other factors are involved prior to a choice. There are other faculties of the soul that function in order for there to be a choice. The reason we say that liberty and necessity are not averse to one another is because there is always a cause prior to any action. Before the world was created by God ... there was a reason that He did the actual creation. First it took thought prior to creating. If there are reasons for God to create prior to His actually creating then there is a cause of God creating. If there is a cause prior to the action then the will is under the necessary thought or motive prior to the actual doing. But the Arminians say that in order for the will to be free there most not be a prior cause ... or the will is forced. They represent freedom as having two equal objects of choice with out any prior reason to choose one or the other... this is their definition of freedom. But how can the will cause the will to choose? A scale  that has the same amount of weight on one side as on the other side displays no power one way or the other. In order for there to be one side going down the force would be greater. Freedom to move one side over another is expressed with a greater force than the other side. The equal weights is no expression of force at all. It is suspension. When the will is offered equal choices then that is no will at all. The will is choosing one thing over another. This is an idea that is just logical. All thinking comes from the rite usage of the english language. We express ideas according to the design of the meaning of words. There is no such freedom in the Arminian thinking of the will. For if the will cause the will to choose then the will being the cause would be the prior choice causing the next choice. But then you still do not have their notion of freedom. The will is still under a necessity by the prior choice. And if you line up all the choices of life in succession and you go back to the first choice... then the question is... what caused the first choice if the will cause the will to choose? But every choice is cause by a desire. The choice is one desire over another desire. Or a stronger desire and a weaker desire. Because every action has a cause. In every thing there is a cause a means and an end. In every meta physical action within our minds there is this succession. For the reality of a thing is the proof that there was a cause prior to the existence of a  thing. If there was no cause then there is no action. So we say that the will is under the obligation of the desire. For every choice is expressed exactly what the soul wants.. or desires. We say that a man wants something and he doesnt want the other thing is the expression of liberty of choice. 5358  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Romans and the Flesh Monster. on: March 09, 2009, 04:41:50 PM What does a word look like in suspension? There are a few observations. God has an immensity in His presence. We do not understand how these things of the unseen are communicated. But God inhabits every space in the universe in His being totally present in that space. Other wise He would not be omni present and a being. Now at the same time He speaks a word and it is done ... or He speaks and creates from nothing. Obviously there are physical elements to this universe... but under a more direct view these things are parts. So that we cannot fathom the smallest area of existence by our seeing all of these tiny communications to our senses.... but we look at the beauty and we see the outcome of the parts. We know that it goes even further than that... there are spirits and then there are elements of glory from His divine presence that are shining in the splendor of all that God has made. When we think of a brightness that is not visible to the physical eye... yet He lights up the world... then we know that His power is manifested in every space. All of these things both physical and meta physical are communications of Gods glory. So that He is dis positionally communicating before His word goes out. In this sense there is a pleasure that would swallow us up if we were ever exposed to some of the effects of this glory. Now how these realities are communicated to our understanding at the revealing may be the reality itself that has no words to define it. Obviously His physical creation is an effecting presence to us in all of the splendor of these elements and the glory in the communication of looking into that beauty. So that in a sense we are experiencing a taste of the full effects of a new sight... a new touch... a new voice. For we do not have the capacity to experience all that God communicates in all of these qualities. I will get to the other parts in a full explanation.