7672	Forums / Theology Forum / The Donkey Messenger	on: March 28, 2007, 08:30:35 PM
Quote SInce when is the only word out of your mouth Christ? You've got doctrine after doctrine and you explain them endlessly. You lament other peoples doctrine. You quote more theologians than  anyone here and your guys are no self disparaging uneducated donkeys. They were relatively great intellects. Going out of your way to create the pretense of being a donkey is merely the 'work' of orthodoxy. Meanwhile a whole array, an ark if you will of animals, some funny, some skillful, some crazy, some brilliant all using God given gifts to reach people. Not waiting for the elect to show up to church or worrying whether the Grace Nazis are gonna come offer them. Yes you call us grace nazis but you do not accept the substitutionary atonement, nor to you accept the doctrine of justification by faith. You do not like the anger of God poured out on Christ for the salvation of the elect. So in your theology God is a mealy mouth little weak person who cannot take justice on sin and sinners. So if there is no just recompense then there is no grace. The stuff you love to talk about. What person can stand before God and claim one righteous act as acceptable. Or what person can talk up his witnessing ability before God. See its all just talk. Yea, really good arnt we until in the end when it really counts. Donkeys i say , unable donkeys!
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7673  Forums / Theology Forum / The Donkey Messenger on: March 28, 2007, 08:04:10 PM Heres how small your theology is. No one knows who is saved until we all stand before the throne. No one knows how a person was saved or by what prayers were heard. The prayers of a person may be more instrumental than a word spoken. It may be that the saints up in heaven being of a more pure nature are more responsible for the salvation of the souls of men in the imprecatory prayers than any other source. So God does stoop down to us in this whole thing we call spreading the gospel. We are the last thing he needs to save men. Be careful in all of this flattery emergence because you may be like Anias. Remove Reply Quote Notify

7674	Forums / Theology Forum / The Donkey Messenger	on: March 28, 2007, 07:41:30 PM
Here is the real witnessing theology. I was once blind, and in darkness, without hope, and unable. God came to me and saved me by sending his donkey to give me on word, Christ. It is so simple it needs no other human design. It cant have another design because the donkey is unable to use the method to save. A donkey just says one thing Christ. The message is automatically designed for a donkey because if the donkey got any of the glory then he would have something to boast about. But the donkey is unable to speak on His own, the donkey needs the rite words for the rite situation so that if he tries to speak on his own then he gets in the way and then God does a work inspite of the donkey. The donkey is trained by love. He has no other object of his affection. He goes alone in silence. The donkey can make noise like a donkey and the Lord will use that noise to save. The donkey is so unable that he hates methods and human inventions. He hates his own ability to speak. He hates himself for not being able to speak. He feels totally helpless. He offers a message that is already in print. He offers a message that is beyond his ability. When the donkey delivers the message he gets out of the way. You dont here about too many donkeys because they are not attractive. Yes donkeys are totally depraved helpless sinners that fumble and him and how. They have nothing to do with salvation. 7681  Forums / Theology Forum / Perseverence on: March 28, 2007, 05:43:25 PM Quote MBG... I just wanted to add, I appreciate your heart man, really. I have friends who are members of a number of different "denoms" if you will. It seems that in these churches, there are a few individuals within every Church (meaning any particular body of believers) who are really starting to shed convention where Christianity is concerned and thinking on a much deeper metaphysical and spiritual level. What you are conveying here is what I am hearing from most of these people, and along the same lines I have been thinking for the last several months. 3Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. 7In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace 8that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. 9And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ. 26the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. 27To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.  28We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. I think what you are hitting on here, self determinism, is the original sin. Paul addresses this in fact in 1 corinthians: 2Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. 3I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. 4My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. Paul gets it. God tells us what we were designed to be, and it is rebellion of the highest degree to try to replace his desires, or even  with our own. At the end of the book of Job, God strongly reminds Job who he is. Then you see Job telling God, again, what he is or is not going to do, with an implication on Job's part of:"I am just a worm." Which then sends God into another strong and rebuking dissertation reminding Job who he (God) is. Anyway, good work man, I will continue to pray for you. just one request, will you do the same for me? God Bless... Eric Thanks man, you are really encouraging. We cant work up the desires nor can we make them come by our moral ability. Our desires are the cause of all choices. There are inordinate desires, when men are given over to their own lust. Men cannot help being depraved , only God can prevent as well as sustain and cause by the strongest desire. We are dependent on Gods sovereign work as we work out our salvation. The problem is we have stronger desires to sin sometimes and then we have stronger desires to do good at other times. So we are in a battle to mortify the deeds of the flesh by the word and the Spirit. These desires come as a result of the Spirits work in regeneration and in His work in sanctification. We are sanctified definitively at salvation, and we are becoming sanctified on a daily basis. We look to Christ who is our righteousness and we grow in the grace and the knowledge of Him. The scripture defines our inward man, it renews our inward man, it keeps us from thinking that we are righteous in our own strength. We are not the ones who demand that the doctrines be dumb down so that we can understand them. No God declares in His revelation by a command that we believe and He commands us to be careful how we listen. In listening we are under a constant constraint from His love to long for Him, morn over our own sin, and cut the chords of pride. When we are under His closing in on us we feel claustrophobic. This is a natural growth sense. What God does is He keeps us from going down the wrong path by hemming us in and causing us to look only on Him for the remedy of our phobic narrow experience. When we cry out to Him our cries do not fall on deaf ears. He designs the body to be the healing agent for our phobias by causing the gifts to be manifested by our union in Christ and a concerted effort to mortify the flesh in community. Unless we grow in our understanding of suffering in His death we will not be prepared to partake of the fellowship of that death with the healing gifts. The church must not be led astray from the simplicity that is in Christ. The intellectual attempts to start discussions and arguments about senseless things like emergent only slow the process of a deepening sanctification in the body of Christ. Preach the word in season and out! 7684  Forums / Theology Forum / Perseverence on: March 27, 2007, 12:53:14 PM As i have been struggling with more grief than i have in the past i have been meditating on the Psalms. And i know the people have a distaste for the imprecatory psalms and that there is an loneliness that is felt by my expressing my anger. But there is really not in between ground in the Christian life. You either love God and hate evil or you love evil and hate God. And really i am not talking about pharisee ism. I have an affinity with Patrick in that there really is a spirit of institutional ism in the church of God. I am not trying to brag but from much meditation in the spiritual world of the psalms now being under the grievous spirit of His hand i am now able to write about because of the freedom on Key Life and because there is a certain warning in all of this as Patrick has been giving to the organized church. And although we are not in agreement as to staying put in a church we do see i to i on the experiential aspects of the body of Christ which order is not from a source of institution but from the very Trinitarian activity of Gods sovereign control over the members through the means of the word and the Spirit under the leadership of Christ. As i have said that there are unsaved people in the body who are really more dangerous than the most wicked people who scoff at Christ and christians. You know who you are. Because when the first sign of grief over comes you then you are looking down the street at your legalistic brothers and not on the mortification of the soul in a spiritual journey through the word and in deepening your desires as a result of that grief. So you have the job friends syndrome. And you add nothing to a grievous soul. Because you are more interested in how you look to others than you are interested in getting your nose in the word and prayer and deepening your desires of praise and sorrows. You are not in tune with the Father Son and Holy Spirit in the workings of the organism but you are more interested in trying to point out sin in others and blaming them for the predicament they are in. And really if one is a saint and under the weight of some trial then there is only one remedy and being in grief may be more of a judgement on the pseudo believer who is trusting in his semiplagenism programs rather than having serious meetings with the head of the Church. And the is a spirit of healing in all organism. When one part suffers all suffer by understanding that it is not in changing the outward but in self examination and supernatural rejoicing in all of the members in which God only commands there is no middle ground. We are all either faking the process of the organism or we are trusting in some kind of self inflicted rule that has nothing to do with growing inward in the organism by the Spirit and the word. It really is when one gets the grief from the pharisees that they are their judgements because they stand in the way of supernatural healing because they are not focusing on the things of heaven but they are more interested in a program, or a public display of prayer, they are not tapped into the \"spirit of organism but are so full of legalism that they are self flattered to cut the heart out of the most helpless saint. I used to worry about being in a state of depression. But i have come to see that it is a natural outflow of Gods judgement on the self reliant. It is when i am buffed by the pharisees in the church is when i am most used by God to be a fire to cleanse the church. Praise God that if we simply go to Him there will be a very spiritual power that transcends any of our tendencies to trust in semi plagenism knowing that God will judge the hypocrite. Thank you Patrick.  7690  Forums / Theology Forum / Neo-platonism on: March 24, 2007, 02:04:32 PM Things i don't understand that you just wrote: There is no cause in self -determination. Self-determination is the same thing in english to say i choose my choice or my choice is the cause of my choice. Then the only cause of a choice would be a prior choice. And if you go back in the line of choices to the first choice- What caused that choice. So that there is no cause in self determination. And the will would have attributable qualities that are not natural, the mind would not be a prior cause and the desire would not be a cause since the cause of choice is a prior choice. If the powers of the soul are not given their logical designs then in the confusion choice would be according to the power of the object in the choice. Since the soul has no desire as the cause of choice then the desire or power would come from the object. This is the definition of pragmatism.   7694  Members Only / Purgatory / Postitive/negative, Grace/judgement, God/satan on: March 24, 2007, 11:48:11 AM In the last days there are going to be strong delusions. And the last days have been defined from the time of the early church. These delusions are mostly of a spiritual nature but they carry an evolution of yrs of false  teaching and scientific discoveries along with the spiritual deception that is an all out assualt on desire theology through regeneration. It does start at its early stages in the paradigm of self determinism. The delusion forms its evolved power in the democratic in which it leaks into the national leadership in a fashion in which the truth as it is in scripture and its evolving over time in the historical apologetic mixed with scientific dominance to intermengal scripture with philosophy that sophisticates by that evolving to give a remedy as an alternative to historical reformed theology. So that the color of historical reformed theology has so much intertangle variations that it takes a very savy and studied christian to tell the difference in the slight variation of the deluded color. Delusions are not just an intellectual paradigm but they taste and smell different. There is a sense in which these variations have the grass is greener on the other side mentality. What passes as reformed theology and true worship beings with deluded intentions by the evolved intertwined philotheology and ends up with a departure from orthodoxy and a departure from desire theology. When the spiritual vision has been darkened the minds acceptance of appostic principles then there is a massive cancer that sets in a generation that will effect the desire theology so that what looked green was actually the stench of the valley of gehena. There is no doubt that self determinism degenerates into the spirit of totalitarionism and leaves men as the ultimate judges of what is truth and what is moral acceptance.   Reply Quote Notify 7695  Forums / Theology Forum / C.s. Lewis Question on: March 24, 2007, 08:39:29 AM MBG..... I'm don't know what your saying. Do you mean the more we know God, the more we see ourselves as we really are? God is very big and awesome. He is bigger than we think and He is very powerful. I do not doubt that there may be some psychological and physiological problems that play a part of how much pain we experience and our inability to reason normally under those circumstances, but every thing personal to us and every situation is order by God for our good. So even tho there are these second causes i.e genetics, family sins like acolholisim, physical abuse, abandonment and all of the other situations that cause a person to be deeply wounded, we still live before an all knowing, all seeing , and eternal God. He has already seen everything in the history of the world in a present sense. So even the hairs on our heads have been numbered by Him and there is nothing new He learns, that is we are not His teachers, and we are really not the punishers of wrong doing since God can punish nations He certianly can punish an individual. I do not believe that any of us should go through enough emotional and psychological pain that it begins to effect our brains and debilitates our bodies. This is why we have doctors. They relieve the pain. As well as medication we have been given these means, ie scripture,prayer,and church. God is always near and He has sent His Spirit as our comforter. But this is not automatic. The problems of depression cause us to be isolated, to much sleep, and spiritually lethargic. Resting in Christ is being fully engaged so that we experience the good desires over the bad sorrows. In other words we should be joyful and then have sorrows that are there but they are not felt like the joys feel. So there is a difference between fleeing from our present circumstances and resting in Christ. Flight is a temptation that goes along with depression. It is that spiraling down effect. It is the opposite of faith. There is nothing wrong with having a desire to flee and yet wanting to remain under the weight of the trial. But it is when we begin to withdraw and loose our sense of purpose that it becomes different from resting in Christ. The illustration is not of one laying back on his bed resting in Christ. Although we need physical rest and the older we get the more we are going to sleep. But the illustration of resting is a boxing match. We are in a struggle of faith. We are laying hold of those promises. We are not shadow boxing but we want to hit the target every time. Thats why we have the means of faith. We are not only fighting with the world and the devil but we are fighting with our own flesh. Retreating in defense in the ring is not the way we fight. We beat on the opponent until he falls. In other words this is a paradigm of fighting in a realm where there are real enemies even tho love should be supreme. But if we love our sin, and our idols more than we love God then our love for others will not be out of a sincere heart. We need to begin in the ring and win the battle by using the means. Christ spent long nights in prayer. The psalms are the place to go for building a strong offense against the foe. The psalms answer all of faiths enemies. The psalms are the gloves we wear for our boxing match with the enemies. We use the prayers, songs and praises to beat the enemy senseless. We cant fight the enemy with our own resources. He is too crafty and we are too weak. Being weak does not mean we need to be sucombing to desires of sorrow, but being weak means that we are using the word of God to fight for us. We are placing our confidence in His ability to concour all our enemies by His power in His word and Spirit. We are finite boxers with infinite resources.