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Forums / Theology Forum / Baptism By/of Holy Spirit: Same Or Not?
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on: November 29, 2006, 02:53:10 PM
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Bill i think this whole issue is what has been
at the center of the problems of the church and why the world
philosophy has been so prevalent in the organism of the body of Christ.
We have a history in this country of profound spiritual worship with the
balance of confessional standards being at the heart of the unity of
the organism of the church. We have had some of the best institutions to
give men the tools for exegisis. However here is where i think that God
has been working to confound the system of the religious establishment. On
the one hand God has exposed the spiritual faults of the mystic society
of churches. These churches are teaching false doctrine and using
mysticism as the life flow for a suedo worship. They are centers for all
kinds of false spirits and doctrines of man. Mysticism makes weak
minded people who are strickly attatched to the feeling of worship and
pay little attention to the intellectual aspects.The reason is because
in mysticism the whole end is to relenquish any dogmaticism in order to
acheive a state of love and uforia. So God is making this kind of
system more burdensome than any other form of worship that has ever
been propragated on the masses. This is a form of slavery. The cheiftons
are the mega pastors who live in oppulance and have very little self
detestation in the mode and spirit of the book of James and Timothy.
Mysticism is bondage not freedom. Bondage to ones emotions and a giving
up of all judgement and discenting is what mysticism produces. And
then there is the intellectual movement. It is the historical reformed
church movement. These are the educated pastors. The system of learning
has become faternalized to the point where higher learning is more of
the function of church instution than the actual church organism. What
happens is that all of the support emotionally and intellectually is
from within the higher learning colleges rather than within the organism
of the body. So that it actually competes with body being a breeding
ground for the higher critisism over the confessions of the church. It
is an intellectual approach to church institution. So that all of these
institutions of Higher learning are confounded by God and evenually end
in secularization. What is so interesting about the evolution
of degeneration of the church is that there are some central doctrines
that are being underminded in all of this confusion. This intellectual
degeneration has its roots in the intricate woven system of the view of
salvation that has been historically accepted as the Holy Spirits role
in the organism of the church. Let me explain. What is the role of
the Holy Spirit in regeneration with the agency of faith? Unless we
become clear at this point we will either degenerate into mysticism on
the one hand or we will degenerate into a will worship on the other
hand. Unless we are clear about this we will mis interprete the out
working of the Holy Spirits work and what the real evidences of
mysticism look like. What comes in salvation is a result of the
inability of man. And in defining this inability we must believe that
man cannot in any way believe or seek to believe pryor to man believing.
In other words in order for man to be unable he must be going in a
direction that is opposite to faith. He must be completely dead in
himself. With this as the fundemental tenet of pre salvation condition,
then and only then can we accept fully a supernatualistic view of all of
the work of salvation because the cause of salvation is in the realm of
the supernatural and the effect of that is supernatural. The
supernatural work of the Holy Spirit is regeneration. It is the beging
on new life where death existed as mans condition. Upon being given new
life man was given a light of the knowlege of God. That light is
originated from the Holy Spirit and not from faith in believing the
scripture. I will repeat this. The divine light was started by the
supernatural work of the Holy Spirit and not by a belief in man that God
exist or that saving faith is real. It was after the Holy Spirit taught
the man supernaturalism that a man then understood what faith is. Upon
this premise at the earliest stages of salvation if you want to look at
it in the intricate working salvation then becomes a revelation of more
light by the Holy Spirit. So that it is not faith in believing the
doctrines that save but it is the Holy Spirit teaching in the truth that
leads from one glory to another. He will guide you into all truth. He
is the divine teacher. Faith is the hand maden to the direct mystical
working of saving by the truth in a divine way.
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Forums / Main Forum / Judas
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on: November 28, 2006, 12:36:15 PM
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Patrick,
I honestly never thought of things that way ever before. It makes a lot of sense.
MBG,
I
don't disagree with a thing you have written. However, the theif
repented on the cross. Couldn't have Judas repented before he took his
own life? Think about what Patrick wrote too; why would Judas have
killed himself if not out of remorse? Everyone would agree that Saddam
is a heartless, cruel bastard, but you don't see him trying to kill
himself. Why not? maybe it is a lack of remorse.
I can give
Willis a witness too. I've been so miserable over some of the things
I've done in the past that I've wanted to take the noose as an option.
Joe
The narrative makes examples of characters in the bible as to what
their eternal end is. Saul was an example and so was judas. Perdition is
not heaven. I do not doubt that a believer can fall into wanting
to take his own life. And there are some who show a remorse for sin but
really do not repent of sin. Showing remorse for sin only leads to a
works righteousness. Judas was an example of a leader who was full of
dead mens bones on the inside and was a religious man on the outside.
Judas was an example of all of the false teachers who enter a city and
do the evil deeds of darkness at night and then are thankless and
complaining that there is not enough money to go around. These leaders
are never sastified. They are heartless. Their whole religiosity is
focused on their own adgenda rather than on Gods adgenda. They only like
the law and the outward conformity. That is why they are so unthankful.
Their religion is sitting in the front while the lesser needy and poor
sit in the back and are the people who are getting in the way. They prey
in the cities on the righteous. Those who are justified by grace. They
have no desire to fulfill the office of the leadership in the biblical
sense. They only want to see outward conformity . The weighter things of
God like faithfulness, love, longsuffering and gentileness are
incompatable with the progress of all of the outward things. Judas is
an example of that kind of leader whos end is destruction. He leaves a
wake of destruction behind him of the poor and the widow and the injured
and the people who are in pain. He does not understand true religion
because he does not have the Spirit of God.
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Forums / Main Forum / Judas
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Forums / Main Forum / Why Faith Is A Must
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on: November 27, 2006, 10:33:18 PM
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My problem witn NON-open theism is that if
God has decreed a future which is unchangeable then why do we pray or
witness? Why do we need to repent? How can God change His mind? Are we
just puppets? Of course, these are some of the biggest problems most
people have with Calvinism in general.No actually we believe
that God uses the means such as prayer and witnessing to acheive His
glory. He has chosen to us prayer and He has determined to answer it as
He decreed it. It is better to believe that if God purposes to use my
prayers for the advancement of His glory then i know that His purpose
will be accomplished inspite of my weak prayers. But yet He purposed to
use my feeble prayers to change circumstances. It gives me more
confidence because I know that i am going to a God that will act in
behalf of my prayers. And that He will accomplish His purpose through my
prayers. If i believed that it was my prayers that changed Gods
mind or it was my prayers that made God do something that was not
planned then God would be changing His purpose to meet my expectation.
If i believed that God was like this then i would be frustrated that He
was not giving me what i want. In that way He would be a weak God and I
would have no respect for Him. He would be like my big buddy in the sky.
When
i witness i know that no matter how feeble my words are that God will
save who He wants to save. I am just planting the seed, God gives the
increase. So salvation is all of God and it does not depend apoun what i
can bring to the table. It makes me more confident knowing that God
will save and use me. I will not feel guilty about whether a person goes
to hell since God chooses. So i am more wanting to witness.
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...
Because their god conforms perfectly to their system of logic, their
god is severely limited to what its worshippers themselves can
conceptualize. That is not our God. He is bigger even than our logic.
Yes, i agree there is much about God that i cannot comprehend. There is also much about Him that i can apprehend. For
example, that old Rolling Stones song that is true of us is also true
of Him, that is, the song that goes, "You can't always get what you
want." This is evident from Paul's words to Timothy: "God our
Savior ... wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the
truth." (1 Timothy 2:3-4) Yet the Bible is very clear that God
does not get what He wants, for Jesus Himself said: "'Enter through the
narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to
destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow
the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.'" (Matthew
7:13-14) If God does not get everything He wants, then how can He
control everything we do? He does not, for Jesus said to old saint
Nick (Nicodemus, not Santa Claus): "'For God so loved the world
that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall
not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the
world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever
believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands
condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one
and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but
men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.'" Jesus
does not get what He wants because so many love their sin more than
Him. If He as God does not get what He desires of us, then how can He be
to blame for what we do against His desires. Do you see what i mean?
Why would God allow sin to enter? Why would He have enter something He
hates? Obviously God and sin were here before us. And we did not choose
to have a sin nature. God imputed that sin to us because we were in
Adam. But we did not choose to be born nor to be sinners. That was an
arbitrary descision but we were culpible. If we are guilty and sin
deserves death as its punishment , Isnt it just for God to punish us all
in hell justly? The qestion is not where God is responsible for sin.
The question is why we are able to live and why are we not already
being punished in hell? The point i am making is that the decree to
have sin enter was a passive decree. Man was able not to sin. Man in
the garden had a free will and was under an obligation to keep the
covenant. Man failed by eating the fruit. Justice demands death to all
instantly! God decided to save some before eternity. The point is non of
us deserve to be saved. It depends apoun Gods choice. Isnt that really
what grace is? Nothing in us?
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8162
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Forums / Main Forum / Why Faith Is A Must
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on: November 27, 2006, 08:36:36 PM
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...Because
of God's utterly perfect and sovereign nature, when He decrees
something, it will happen. Though you had foreknowledge, still most
things that caused the future effect you saw were not subject to your
control. In fact, you are still just as subject to randomness as anyone
else. God is not. ...
I think what you are missing is that God does
not control anyone, though He does put boundaries or limitations around
everyone. To say that God knows what the future will be (perhaps
because He is, as Jeff suggested, already there) is not the same as saying that He caused everything (both good and evil) in the future to happen. If,
in fact, God does not cause people to sin (as the Bible states), then
how can He be held accountable for their sins? Let us say, for example,
that someone shot the President of the United States and claimed that
you made him do it. It would ludicrous to blame you for his crime.
Would it not be far more insane to blame God for the sins that people
commit in disobedience to Him? It seems to me that God can
control the final outcome of events without controlling the people who
are players in those events. In a very real sense God is subject to our
randomness. However, He is still in control because He knows all we
will do and how to react to what we do so that we can in no way thwart
His ultimate goal, which is to save as many of us from hell as He can.
A
person who is born begins to make choices. Probably the very first
choice that a person makes is putting one leg in front of another. Every
movement that a person makes is from a choice to make that movement. A
person goes to the store he puts one foot down on the ground and begins
to walk to the store. Every time his body moves he is making a choice to
move toward the store. When you get to the end of a persons life you
can see that he had a long line of choices making a history in time. Now
you look at all of the historical prophecies and you will see that
people move history by their choices. These choices are so interwoven
into the fabric of prophecy that unless you acknowlege that choices are
decreed by God then there is no way that it would happen as prophecied.
Now you go back to the first choice that a person makes. What is the cause of that choice?
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8163
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Forums / Main Forum / Why Faith Is A Must
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on: November 27, 2006, 08:30:59 PM
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...Because
of God's utterly perfect and sovereign nature, when He decrees
something, it will happen. Though you had foreknowledge, still most
things that caused the future effect you saw were not subject to your
control. In fact, you are still just as subject to randomness as anyone
else. God is not. ...
I think what you are missing is that God does
not control anyone, though He does put boundaries or limitations around
everyone. To say that God knows what the future will be (perhaps
because He is, as Jeff suggested, already there) is not the same as saying that He caused everything (both good and evil) in the future to happen. If,
in fact, God does not cause people to sin (as the Bible states), then
how can He be held accountable for their sins? Let us say, for example,
that someone shot the President of the United States and claimed that
you made him do it. It would ludicrous to blame you for his crime.
Would it not be far more insane to blame God for the sins that people
commit in disobedience to Him? It seems to me that God can
control the final outcome of events without controlling the people who
are players in those events. In a very real sense God is subject to our
randomness. However, He is still in control because He knows all we
will do and how to react to what we do so that we can in no way thwart
His ultimate goal, which is to save as many of us from hell as He can.
A person who is born begins to make choices. Probably the very first
choice that a person makes is putting one leg in front of another. Every
movement that a person makes is from a choice to make that movement. A
person goes to the store he puts one foot down on the ground and begins
to walk to the store. Every time his body moves he is making a choice to
move toward the store. When you get to the end of a persons life you
can see that he had a long line of choices making a history in time. Now
you look at all of the historical prophecies and you will see that
people move history by their choices. These choices are so interwoven
into the fabric of prophecy that unless you acknowlege that choices are
decreed by God then there is no way that it would happen as prophecied.
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8164
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Forums / Main Forum / Why Faith Is A Must
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on: November 27, 2006, 08:17:30 PM
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2 Samuel 24 1. Now again the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and it incited David against them to say, "Go, number Israel and Judah."
The word translated incited
in the New American Standard version of the Bible is the Hebrew word
pronounced "sooth", which can be translated as, entice or move or
persuade or provoke or stir up. The King James version, for example,
reads: "Again the anger of the LORD was aroused against Israel, and He moved David against them to say, 'Go, number Israel and Judah.'†That
God moved David to conduct the census is a fact. That it was a sin to
conduct the census is not. Did David sin? Yes. The question to
answer, then, is what exactly was David's sin? I do not think the sin
was to obey God who told him to do the census. How could it be a sin to
obey God? Furthermore, how could God ask David or anyone to do
anything that is wrong? for Jesus' brother James writes: "When tempted,
no one should say, 'God is tempting me.' For God cannot be tempted by
evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own
evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed." (James 1:13-14) No,
God could not ask David to sin. It is a sin to tempt someone to sin,
and God does not sin. When David says, "I have sinned greatly in what I
have done. Now, O LORD, I beg you, take away the guilt of your servant.
I have done a very foolish thing." (2 Samuel 24:10) he was not saying he was wrong to obey God. So,
what was he saying? I believe he was admitting to God that his own
motives were wrong. It is possible to do the right things for the wrong
reasons. Paul makes this clear when he writes: "If I speak in
the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a
resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and
can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that
can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I
possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not
love, I gain nothing." (1 Corinthians 13) Is it wrong to use the
time, talents and treasure God has given us to help others? No. The
wrong is in our motives. If we do things out of selfish ambition and
not out of love, for example, we have sinned. We have sinned even if
good results for those who benefit from our actions. This is why i
believe David's sin was not in obeying God but in his motives for
obeying God. What those motives were, we can only speculate, because
the Bible is not clear what they were. What is clear, from his
confession and the context of the passage, is that he did he right thing
(conducting the census) for the wrong reasons (probably some selfish
ambition of his own). Therefore, i believe 2 Samuel 24 is not an
example of God tempting someone to sin, either actively or passively.
What do you think, MBG? 
I
think a tiny detail that you guys are overlooking in that story is that
God's anger was kindled against Israel, so He moved upon David to
conduct a census. Is it possible that David, in his grief, was incorrect
in his assessment that he had sinned by obeying God and Scripture is
simply recording his words as opposed to confirming their truthfulness?
Or could it be that when David said he sinned, he meant it in a general
sense or that as Israel's leader, he was responsible for setting a godly
example and he'd failed to do so? The thing is, Scripture just doesn't
say precisely what the sins were of Israel and David.
The text
says that God moved in David to conduct a censes. Then David felt guilty
about what he had done. God then gave David three choices for the
punishment. This is really a slam dunk verdict here.
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8165
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Forums / Main Forum / Why Faith Is A Must
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on: November 27, 2006, 08:12:47 PM
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Open theist really deny the existence of God by not acknowleging God to be the cause of all things.
I
think you over-reach by declaring that people who don't see things like
you do are denying God. But if, as you say, God is the cause of all
things, then you must agree that God causes sin? "All" is a quite
inclusive word. And if God cannot change His mind, then how does He do
so. Or if He CAN change His mind, then which alternative did He
foreknow?
I agree that
God decrees sin. As i have statedGod has ordered everything in time
and eternity. If God only forknows events then and He reveals them
through prophecy then in order for those events to occur there are
secondary events that need to be in place for the prophecied event to
occur. In other words history has one event after another that is
determined by choices. History can be defined as a series of choices
that are absolutely necessary in order for the events in history to
occur. God causes all of these choices to work for His own glory. How
can God not control all things if He will raise up all of the dead
bodies that are scattered all over the earth. Some in sharks, peices all
over the earth and he will renew each body to its original pre fall
design. All of these bodies are located in the areas where there have
been moral choices involved.
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8166
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Forums / Main Forum / Why Faith Is A Must
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on: November 27, 2006, 08:01:26 PM
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Open theist really deny the existence of God by not acknowleging God to be the cause of all things.
I
think you over-reach by declaring that people who don't see things like
you do are denying God. But if, as you say, God is the cause of all
things, then you must agree that God causes sin? "All" is a quite
inclusive word. And if God cannot change His mind, then how does He do
so. Or if He CAN change His mind, then which alternative did He
foreknow?
Rom 8:28. And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. How much plainer can it get? Does the text limit God to just good things? ((((((((((((((ALL THINGS))))))))))))))))))) If
God causes all things to work, then the effect has the cause in it. If
you look back at your life you can see that God caused the evil and the
good so that it would be for your good. Col. 1:16. For by Him all
things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and
invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities--all
things have been created through Him and for Him. 17. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. Rom 10:36. For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.
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on: November 28, 2006, 11:57:20 AM
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Judas is an example of a heartless wicked
leader who is just like the pharisees of whom the Lord referred to as
dogs. He preyed on the helpless and the needy. Yes Judas was a traitor
and he was just as sneeky as the worse sinner. He was like a dog because
he did all his evil in the night while walking with the disciples in
the day. While walking with the Lord. He was a person who was self
sufficient and was not regenerated. He was a complainer and a beggar for
money. All of the funds that Judas took care of were not enough for
him. He wanted more and he would go to any extreme to extort the money
from the poor. He would even lap up the last penny that a widow had. He
would consider himself and his righteousness more important than the
weighter things of God like love, and graciousness, and forgiveness.
What was important to judas was the law and how he looked in the eyes of
the disciples. He was so cunning that even the 11 had no idea who would
be the one to deny Christ.
Judas was in the leadership for himself
only. He ignored the needs of the disciples and the poor and was milking
the funds for himself. He was only concerned about doing his real heart
deeds in the night. He would prowl around the cities trying to devour
the sheep by extorting money in the name of religion. He in his heart
was bitter and a complainer. He never had enough. His desire for more
just push him to run heartlessly over the poor. He was a ruthless
leader. Judas was prayerless and made sure that the religiousoty of
outward conformity was central to his religious hyprocisy. He was a
false teacher. He did not listen to the voice of Christ because his
goals were more important than even the pharisees religioisity. He was
competeing with the pharisees. What happened at the cross was what Jesus
did to deliver all the poor and the oppressed from this dog.
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8153
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Forums / Main Forum / Why Faith Is A Must
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on: November 28, 2006, 09:46:19 AM
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Last Wednesday night at my church we got to discussing prayer. It was a prayer meeting after all!
Anyway
a concensus we seemed to come to is we love to approach God in prayer
asking for him to tell us if we should do a partcular thing or not,
(take this job offer or not, choose this college or not, buy this house
or not), or we ask him for guidance between choice A and B, (should I
buy this house or that house, marry this person or that person, move to
this state or that state). Anyway, while those things in themselves are
not wrong, we should approach already yielded. Yielded to the point that
we are receptive to the fact that perhaps Gods desire is not one of the
choices we are putting before Him, but something we can't imagine yet.
In our prayer life we are going before a Soveriegn God. He has
put us on a path of truth, and He is leading us by His Good Spirit. When
we go before Him we are coming as sinners, with all of the baggage that
we have. In our looking forward into the future we are expereincing all
of the pain, insecurities, fears, uncertianties, and we are restless.
In our looking back we are seeing His hand in everything that has happen
to us and for us. But that backwards look doesnt always translate into
resting in Him as we look ahead at the obstacles. One reason we dont
always have a sense of comfort when we look back and see His hand
working in all of the situations that we have already been through is
that we are always in need of fellowship. The confidence of past
victories we have is mixed with all of the negative questions that
plague us in the present. We should be questioning God about the
future and certian things because we are not all knowing and He is. Our
questioning helps us when the outward circumstances seem insermountable
and inwardly we are weakened. We want to focus on Him but we are so
weak that we are struggling more than we are resting. So we begin to
question God so that we can have more knowlege of His will for us,
knowing that we will remain on the path He has determined for us, and
keeping us within that path so that we will not stumble into sin. Our
desires to remain with Him are spoken in questioning words like, Why,
How long, Where, etc. In questioning Him we are trying to move from
desires that are depressing, sorrowful, to desires that are joyful, and
rejoicing. In a sense prayer is like war. There is a war of
desires.\" Not my will but thine be done.\" The path of prayer is a path
of struggling for desiring God more and more. In entering prayer we are
entering as those who are burdened with alot of baggage. In the path of
praying we are unloading that burden to the point of tears sometimes.
Sometimes we are recieving very little in peace because our sorrowful
desires outway our joyful desires. But we still are unburdening our
souls before Him. At some point in all of the questions and all of the
peadings we begin to have deep desires for God alone. The more we desire
to unburden our souls to Him the deeper desires will be to have Him.
There is no limit to experiencing the desires of joy, and peace and
comfort. There is a time when we have been so often in prayer that the
desires of God are so on the shoulder of our souls that we walk in those
desires constantly. Prayer then is a praying always.
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