Kk
"mybigGod, would you agree that God (all 3 persons) were/are fully
aware of the outcome of mankind's history, including the fall, before He
created anything? And that Christ is the Lamb slain from the
foundations of the world, meaning His role in Redemption was
predetermined before Creation? And that God empowered and allowed Adam
and Eve to sin yet in no way can be accused of having caused them to
rebel?"
"Since nature works for a determinate end under the
direction of a higher agent, whatever is done by nature must needs be
traced back to God, as to its first cause. So also whatever is done
voluntarily must also be traced back to some higher cause other than
human reason or will, since these can change or fail; for all things
that are changeable and capable of defect must be traced back to an
immovable and self-necessary first principle, as was shown in the body
of the Article." Austin
| 3894
|
Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Verse - Saved, remain?
|
on: February 22, 2010, 12:04:06 PM
|
mbG,
i am amazed at the combination of clarity and opaqueness that i seem to
get from some your messages. (No criticism, necessarily, could just be
my own immature perspective or dimmed vision...) Like i really got the
first half of the above, but lost much of your second half.
You
did warn that it would be kind of metaphysical. Yup. Can you clarify
your thought some? I sense there is worthwhile understanding which
looks garbled to a rigid overly-analytical mind such as mine.
Thanks,
brother. And i won't apologize for calling you that. I'm in the
family too, according to Our Dad, and nobody can kick me out. So
there! :-)
But back to the original topic, i like the attitude
of the late J. Vernon McGee, who always acted like he wanted to stay
here just as long as he could, by God's grace, to "get the whole Word
out to the whole world". I'm sure glad Our Dad knows exactly when to
"take us out", right?
Thanks brother... its a pleasure to
explain to you. If you look at the Edwards down load on Freedom of the
Will.. that is about as difficult as it gets. If you can tread through
that i mean..it took me a couple of times of reading to become familiar
with meta physical arguments. It changed my sensibleness to other
paradigms of truth. But from personal experience about the
above statement. That actually was brought to my attention by Austin in
his confessions. I love reading Austin. A bit too catholic for me but
non the less a real honest assessment of the conflict with guilt. A lot
of pain there. But over the last 30 yrs it has become my habit
to determine to get lost in meditation. So that it was something that
became a part of my daily experience. Dont get me wrong... i think that
systematic theo ... and dogma are essential as part of this development
of the christian world view. A view from the personal and active
senses.... i mean.. how we look at everything. We are what we think..
we imagine something to be what it is and that is why there is always
tendency in our struggling of our world view... that which we determine
by our physical eyes and our ears and our feeling sensations. In other
words we are a world within ourselves and we view the exterior world as
we experience our personal world. Our view of the world is never
really a present. That is why the nature of transparency is in the power
of the act itself and not the determination to choose something. In
other words our view from this inner world has passed and will never be
revisited and our view of the future on this earth is like a dream... a
still born child... compared to eternity. So that reality is never
present.... its a state of consciousness... its our identification or
dependence on God from one moment to the next that determines reality.
Our choices are all determined.. they are necessary because they are
caused to be as they are. We determine things as we view them because of
the condition of our souls and not the exposure to the present. You can
see how easy it is for us to waste a moment in something that really
has no bearing on reality. Jesus said that worry is being under the
power of the present circumstance. If we could escape the identity of
that present bondage it would be outside of the time continuum. Did it
ever accrue to you that since the present is not available to us as a
matter of forming some kind of identity ... that we imagine that
importance of the present as depending on its existence that really is
like water flowing through our hands. You cant grasp the present. I
am really not saying that the objects and the images we have in this
physical relationship are not necessary.. i am simply saying that our
view of them is our reality. So you got to ask about what a man
understands about reality is what he knows in this meta physical sense.
Because the connections to what transpire are things that cannot be seen
with the physical eye. These things have a subjective influence toward
and objective reality. Everything is connected because of Gods flow of
life as if all of time was present before God. So that our experience in
this world ... i mean.. the personal views of that experience... that
which we cannot see with our eyes is timeless. A past event and a future
reality that are presented to us have a connection that has no duration
or space as we look into these spiritual things. We can revisit an
experience of joy.. sorrow... peace... love... etc in all of life as it
is timeless. This is why living in an eternal mindset all of our lives
is living in the reality of this world. This is how we can experience
the glory of God in the enjoyment of these physical things.
|
 Reply
 Quote
 Notify
|
|
3897
|
Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Reformed Doctrine
|
on: February 21, 2010, 01:34:30 PM
|
Kk
"Here's
a start. I am thinking that God doesn't cause evil, but rather
empowers it. Neither satan nor demons nor angels nor man have any power
that doesn't come from Him. Still, by empowering beings to do evil,
God does no evil Himself since His intentions are pure and His ultimate
plan/outcome is perfect in every way."
MbG Ok... this is a
very sensitive subject. There is no evil in God. God hates evil.
Everything that God does is because of He is good alone. God does not
tempt any man... but He will test men. In a test there is a temptation.
Now God determines whatsoever comes to pass. Because if things happened
as a matter of existing just by human agency then there is no cause of
them existing. If a man is to face some form of destruction then at some
point ...whether it is directly related to his will or the will of
another man ... yet it is an evil in itself. So that if God determines
these disasters they could be caused to be evil in the personal
relationship to them if there was no evil experience in the outcome of
them. My point being that there is a correlation between the evil
circumstances and the evil choices just as there is a connection to the
evil that exist and a mans personal evil. If God hates evil ...obviously
its going to be directed in a just way. That includes his rejection of
the evil person as well. This is why the world is blind. I mean...
they really do not consider the amount of evil that God is personally
acquainted about them. This is just foolishness to think that God does
not understand every evil that come into existence... i mean... some
use that verse that God does not look upon evil... that means in
pleasure. God knows evil from all eternity... He decreed it to come into
existence in the very first sin. We call this a passive decree. Why
would God decree evil? The same reason that He decrees anything. For
His glory. If God decreed it then He works to bring it about even tho He
does not tempt a man. This is why we cannot take these doctrines of
sin and temptation and make them sound as if there is some kind of
balance in the way we deal with temptation. God made man righteous and
upright. But God also made man with a mutable will. First it is near
impossible to explain how a man had no prior inclination to sin and then
perform the act of sin. That is the great mystery of the universe. If
we try to explain that then we will begin to accuse God of injustice by
accusing the first man of having a susceptible relationship to sin
because of the beauty that God created in the garden. If God would not
have made things attractive... more attractive than any kind of paradigm
post fall ...we basically are accusing God of the sin and we are
excusing ourselves in saying that about the first man. We are basically
saying that man needed grace and did not have enough grace pre fall...
God is not good post fall. But man was completely responsible in the sin
because man was able in himself ..being righteous. God was completely
just in decreeing sin.. since mans will was mutable. God is good all the
time. To say that God did not decree whatsoever comes to pass
including all of the evils of this world... then we are presenting a
divided God. We are saying that God has two wills. The will that is
determined and the will that is subject to the evils of this world.
There fore since God did not determine evil then He did not know
intimately something that exist in this world in eternity. There fore
God does not know all things. If God only new the good then there
really is nothing on this earth that He could be acquainted with because
this world is a bastion of corruption. There are some very important
epistemology questions that need to be explored as this relates to us in
how we live out our inner experience . These balance of dispositions
and these general tendencies to take on more than we are required. Hope
to get deeper into this. |
 Remove
Reply
Quote
Notify
|
|
|
3900
|
Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Reformed Doctrine
|
on: February 20, 2010, 10:44:22 PM
|
Big
topic, mbG! Didn't know you were a RT expert - should have guessed
it. So, perhaps you can clean up some of my sloppy reasoning.
Here's
a start. I am thinking that God doesn't cause evil, but rather
empowers it. Neither satan nor demons nor angels nor man have any power
that doesn't come from Him. Still, by empowering beings to do evil,
God does no evil Himself since His intentions are pure and His ultimate
plan/outcome is perfect in every way.
====
You cite the following Scripture: (King James Version)
"Isa 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things."
But i suggest this is probably not an accurate translation of the phrase regarding evil. Here are some other possibilities:
====
New
King James: Isa 45:7 I form the light and create darkness, I make peace
and create calamity; I, the LORD, do all these things.
New
International: Isa 45:7 I form the light and create darkness, I bring
prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things.
Amplified
Bible: Isa 45:7 I form the light and create darkness, I make peace
[national well-being] and I create [physical] evil (calamity); I am the
Lord, Who does all these things.
====
Thus, although God
causes calamities and disasters, He never creates them as evil since His
righteousness is being revealed in circumstances that man's limited
perspective might see as "bad", and yet He weaves all the seeming good
and bad events into a final pattern of supreme beauty. See any fallacy
in this reasoning?
I havent forgotten you... i
got the whole week off so i will be able to spend some quality time in
meditation and writing this week.
|
3903
|
Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Romans and the Flesh Monster.
|
on: February 18, 2010, 12:14:22 PM
|
Still
browsing through the prior stack of messages here, and mybigGod you've
shared some great insights. So many to quote but here's one section
that especially caught my attention (from page 4):
If
we focus on our believing and our resting then we will be most
miserable. Any time we focus on ourselves we should feel inadequate and
totally depraved. And in believing we have a sense that He is doing
these things in us , to make us like Christ. So that when we look at
Christ we feel our own weight of sin and we know that everything around
us is centered on His glory. The problem is that we struggle so much
with sin and temptation, which takes some of the power away from the
single mindedness and the pleasure of knowing Him.
Everything
that we experience in our bodies, and outside of us in those
relationships and those trials are directly from His loving hand. There
is no such thing as our percentage and His percentage. But there is an
absoluteness in knowing that He is in control so that our resting will
always be available in the worse inward experience. "He opens His hand
and every creature is fed". "Call upon Me in the day of trouble and I
will deliver you and you will honor me." So that He is creating honor in
us by making us fully aware that He is in an ongoing process of saving
us. Thats why we are always calling upon Him.
When we feel
burdened by temptation and sin in His presence, we sense a weight
keeping us anxious and wavering. If we never felt this way then we could
not feel like we need Him, and so we would not know His voice in this
way. And the only absolute truth is that He is working in us to will and
to do. Because all other determinations made by men about what is going
on inside of us, is their limited definition and falls short of meeting
Gods view of us in the process of healing. No man has ever read one
heart, the motives, the reasons, as to these paradigms of the meta
physical, so that in order for us to be made whole we must have such a
communication from the object of our faith that we are convinced that He
is determined all of these things for our good and for His glory.
Where do you stand on this now? Thanks.
Yes
..... there is a multitude of different angles we can take on this.
When we are talking about struggling with sin we are identifying
ourselves as we are. My personal application is never to trust a general
tendency in all of this opposition of this battle in how we view our
sins.. His application of forgiveness to them.. and our incorporating
these things to our personal satisfaction. In other words we may find
this life to end with more struggles than we thought that we would grow
out of. This is why i want to say this at this time. The focus is on the
fighting and not necessarily on the victory. Let me say this
that there is a general tendency in all of us to make some rash
judgments at different times of our weakest points in life. It is my
experience that salvation is a state of completeness that we experience
and then we are led along by grace in our failures. Lets get real
here... most of the time we dont think transparency before God involves
our personal sorrows and anguishes. We think that self denial is to
forget about these things and so we become self righteous in our self
denial. When i was young ... i had this imagination that i was
going to get away for a time and really deal with my sin before God. Let
me say that i had some apprehensions about this. First of all.. i
thought that my burdens were real weights and that there was no
possibility that my view of these things of salvation by grace
determined my reactions as imaginations due to my lack of knowledge
through experience. I was a bit of an emotional baggage of sensitiveness
to everything. So if we are talking about this kind of confusion of a
sensitive conscience then i can help many people in this area. So in a
sense i am explaining this from a personal war.. and then drawing some
parallels and some applications to this awful experience of confusion. A
lot of us draw inferences from experience as a matter of voices. I
mean.. there is a difference between following a general tendency of
experience or on the other hand .. knowing something is true by a sense
of intellectually being satisfied that a person learned something
through illumination and then we draw our applications from that
paradigm . We are most miserable creatures because most of our
applications come from being caught up in our sense of things and not
really the illumination of these different applications to our
experience. I can tell most of the time when someone is being led around
by his particular experience. A lower form of self examination. It
comes because our prayers are very wordy with a design to create the
experience rather than really being transparent before God in how we
really feel. Ok .. i am going to say this because of how i think the
paradigm of the carrot teaching has this circular aspect to a spirit
that is very soulish in producing the most miserable state of christian
experience. Believe it or not our words in our prayers lead us to some
very wrong applications. One of the most important mantras of christian
health is that we begin by knowing who God is... we lead off with a God
centered wordiness and then we are able to apply this spiritual
illumination to ourselves. When we get this wrong ... we make things
worse for ourselves than a person who gets enjoyment out of all the
things in this world ... i mean... who worships pleasure. And it doesnt
help us when we make that effort to present our own arguments to our
Father. We got to understand the when we ascend to high
thoughts of God then we begin to find the reality of who we are as we
become mesmerized with a sense of this holistic idea of reacting to
things without that evil weight of self concern. The reason i say these
words like mesmerized or artistic or some other application is purely
for the connection to ideas of philosophy in this day. When we are
talking about experience these words are not evil in themselves. You
know i am going to present my case to you... He taught me this... His
way of growing us. So that we are not required to force our own
ideas of what we think is the rite things to say but we are required to
open our souls before our God so that He might fill them with the free
holistic connections to the realism of dealing with this fallen world
but not being molded by its sorrows or its general direction to self
fulfillment. In a way when we ascend to our God then we know that He is
killing self before we can do it by our own effort. Grace precedes
ability. And there is a sense in which illumination is accompanied by
this tendency to mourn confused and angry paradigms out of our reality. I
will continue to speak about this rolling things over to God. Or
stilling the soul. Oh.. i got off track.. was going to write the
experience that i had in the old days.
|
|
Reply
Quote
Notify
|
|
|
3907
|
Forums / Main Forum / Re: Church: Over-promise and under-deliver
|
on: February 16, 2010, 11:36:26 AM
|
Well, we are well into the new year, so Carolina/the G man/Greg has been gone a while.
Ah,
but you might sneak back for a peek, my unknown friend. You might get
"prompted" by a slightly invisible Hand to read this. Then, again,
maybe not. But someone else might.
Our perfect Dad is wildly,
passionately in love with you, don't you know (and with the rest of us
too, of course). He loves you more than you can understand or believe.
And He well knows how much difficulty you have accepting that.
So
He will arrange circumstances and people in your life to awaken you.
It may take some serious pain, physical / emotional / spiritual, to get
your attention, as it did for me, but don't worry - He never wants to
hurt you, just draw you closer.
Though you can't see it at this
point, He has a plan for your life that couldn't be improved upon. And
the time will come when you are filled to overflowing with thanksgiving
for His kindness and goodness toward you. Often.
We're talking
about a new version of you. Frequently laughing and crying at the same
time. Overjoyed to have found the One who was missing so long from your
mind and experience. Grateful that you will never be alone again
without your very best Friend, for time without end.
Sounds silly
to you, doesn't it? Yet, magnetically drawing you at the same time,
true? He is that magnet, you are the iron-heart to be melted and molded
and put to supreme use for His glory and intense pleasure.
Well i just ran out of steam so i must be done. Hope we meet, now or in the Kingdom.
Ever hear this definition of Faith? (You're beginning to feel it, perhaps?)
to hear with my heart,
to see with my soul,
to be guided by a Hand
that i cannot hold,
to trust in a Way
that i cannot see -
that's what faith must be.
Kk
thanks for sharing this with us. If there is one thing we all need to
learn it is that God is who He says He is at all times and He breaks the
barriers of cultural religious bias of all the webs weaved in the
history of this complex design in church orthodoxy. His ways are not our
ways. And so there is a holistic experience that we learn in as a
matter of this connection we have in this mind will and action. When we
open our mouths we expose our understanding of this practice we make in
this progression. In this way we are never what men say we are... nor
are we progressively becoming something that we are determined to be.
God is other and He is outside of all systems of society and thought. In
this day of scientific discovery we have a tendency to spiral down into
some kind of arbitrary interaction in this mind will and action
scenario. The greatest expression of unity is how we live with one
another in how we speak to one another. And in this sense we are all
free.. that is the ultimate expression of freedom is this holistic
ability that we know ourselves by the nature that we experience. We live
in a time of the freedom to express ourselves in many different ways
and with a whole history in a progressive fashion in that molding. The
"professional" voices that we are confronted with on a daily basis of
that knowledge of the progression experience are these different
moldings to our view of reality. In this way we are trained in the art
of the skeptic in this incorporation of our natural thinking process to
incorporate all of these incomplete explanations. May i say that we have
become molded in this philosophical experience. Whether we like it
or not this kind of dogma is not just a temptation but it forces its way
on us as a deterministic mold. We just settle down in that kind of
identity. This is the ultimate lie of the evil one. Because God is not
like we are. In other words the free expression of the mind will and
action is our ability to step back in this fashion as given the
spiritual ability as being above every form as an idea in this spiritual
transforming way that God is saying "You thought i was like you".Gods
objective way of producing in us this objective ability to discern is by
what He hears from our tongues. The truth of what is going on in the
inside is revealed about us by what we say. God has made us a
society that does not have any barriers as a matter of our real
identity.. no distinction.. whether its the amount of knowledge.. our
cultural back ground... our education... our particular likes and
dislikes etc... our foibles... or addictions. But objectively from our
view this "professional voice" is our real experience. Because as i have
said that it really is a war of attrition on the mind. I mean... this
society is upside down. If you had an objective look at the 60s view
there was a distinct difference as these two societies clashed. Now we
have this mixture... its the witches brew. Let me say this to
shorten it up. God has made us to be completely free even with this
onslaught of determinism from both the religious professionals or the
myriad of other professional deterministic voices. Let me give you this
connective freedom. The language determines the way of thinking that
determines the kind of society. We must first see that we live in a
totally different way of communication in order to know real freedom.
|
|
Reply
Quote
Notify
|
|
|
3908
|
Forums / Main Forum / Re: A thought outside of the box
|
on: February 16, 2010, 10:23:55 AM
|
mybigGod, i found more of your testimony in the Romans thread. Thanks for sharing your life. We do have much in common.
hey
Kk ... i get kind of tired these days.. get going in work and then just
crash ... so be patient... i will try to respond... thanks.
|
|
Reply
Quote
Notify
|
|
|
3912
|
Forums / Main Forum / Re: Hey, what's for lunch ??
|
on: February 14, 2010, 09:54:35 AM
|
Can
i assume (make a donkey out of u and me) that you "buy the Key-Life
party line"? Namely that God loves us just exactly the same whether or
not we eat what He specified. And once we understand that very clearly
then we are free to eat less of what He prefers we avoid? Without
self-righteousness and incrimination of others, of course.
Do you
feel you have been especially blessed for the regimen, in addition to
the health benefit? What about the visions Peter had with the unclean
creatures being declared acceptable - only apply to previously
to-be-avoided Gentiles?
Also, if you believe in keeping Kosher, what about the Biblical holy days/festivals versus our pagan-originated holidays?
And how the heck-place do you avoid being legalistic about such stuff?
I
agree Kk.... If you look at the history of Gods covenant people in the
OT you will find that salvation was always by faith alone ... through
grace alone in Christ alone. Instead of finding some kind of middle
ground between us and God in our sanctification we are required as a
matter of looking at ourselves and our own works to consider ourselves
dead to ourselves so that we might be alive to Christ. That is we view
all of our past achievements as rubbish... to be burned up in the
judgment so that Christ righteousness alone is exalted. I do not see how
anyone can believe that the scriptures support this "moving on" concept
in this warped view of grace representing one line and works
representing the other parallel line. The bible exalts grace at the
expense of our own achievements. This is called real total depravity.
Other wise in our quest to be good we might compete with Christ and that
would be abusive from both sides. We hate the sin in each other more
than we stand as a defense for one another. That is the war is against
the great Accuser. "The cruelty of the powerful wishes to be feared;
but who is to be feared but God only" Austin There is nothing of
power in the eating according to Gods requirements in the OT. Christ
called that cleaning the outside of the cup while there were all kinds
of adulteries... fornication's... and murders in the heart. While there
was a personal protection to the ot church in these laws they were never
part of the covenant of grace. The problems did not come from the
disobedience to these laws... the problems came in the continual
observance of these laws and at the same time offering the kosher
products to their false gods... hehe. And yet even in this abuse of the
requirement there was always a remedy in the covenant of grace.
Sacrifice and offerings you did desire... but my ears have you pierced.
For every animal of the forest is mine ... i know every bird on the
mountain...in other words God is saying salvation is in God alone and
the worth of these sacrifices did not meet the requirements for
atonement. Sacrifice your thank offerings to God! In other words go
through the rituals but do not trust in them... for worship has always
been from the heart. It was in the sacrifice of praise and it was always
in God alone! The expression of this kind of denial of the
ritual was the reality of the difference between the covenant keeping
community and the Pharisee. Those who come to God for worship are
reduced to trusting in the simplicity of the gospel. Worship is for
those who are fainting and struggling under the weakness of the troubles
of this world. They put no... now listen... no confidence in the flesh!
Lets throw off the weight of sin and misery by the simple trust in
grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone!
|
|
Reply
Quote
Notify
|
|
|
3913
|
Forums / Main Forum / Re: A thought outside of the box
|
on: February 12, 2010, 11:20:54 AM
|
mybigGod:
Not only in terms of the honesty displayed in the ongoing maturing of
that miss understanding we have in our own applications to ourselves...
K_k: Sometimes Miss understanding is very attractive (especially in heels).
----------
mybigGod:
The body of Christ functions as a human body.. the head being Christ
who not only sustains that life but the flow is fully active to each
member. So we can say that a person is free to not take himself too
seriously because of his understanding of this application ... i mean..
with a knowledge that he fits in accepting his own short coming and his
personal enjoyment in the connection.
K-k: Yes, the Head should
determine how the body feels. Under normal conditions: active, joyful,
open and growing, like a young kid. But when there is illness or
self-induced-stress, more subdued, slowed-down, introspective, hungry
for positive change. And the underlying confidence that the Head rules
the body, and cannot ever be severed, frees the body to sing even in the
shadows, so to speak. Seriously blessed, indeed!
------
mybigGod:
In a sense freedom has these balance of inner experiential powers as
the mode to express oneself under the proper influence of that free
spirit.
My attempt to create the paradigm out of the application, may be a bit confusing. Well at least its an attempt.
K_k:
Thus, the teeter-totter in our spiritual kindergarten levels out. And a
sound of one hand clapping applauds our efforts to dance out meaning in
words twirling on spirit-toes. And the barely invisible smiling Face
showers love-tears on the child-ran.
Well, poetry eludes me, but tryin' tickles.
Thank
you Kking for that artistic application.... i had a good laugh in the
beginning about her... and that last statement is worth repeating. K_k:
Thus, the teeter-totter in our spiritual kindergarten levels out. And a
sound of one hand clapping applauds our efforts to dance out meaning in
words twirling on spirit-toes. And the barely invisible smiling Face
showers love-tears on the child-ran.
|
|
Reply
Quote
Notify
|
|
|
3915
|
Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Prayers
|
on: February 09, 2010, 04:31:27 PM
|
|
Father we really do stand before you as Kings
and Priest when we come together to worship you. So that we live in a
society that is very rich and special. We are encouraged to express how
we really feel as members of your church who have your ear for all
eternity. This makes us want to rise in our hearts to you because we
know how your voice rings in our spirits rite down to the very things
that we enjoy. But Father unless you give us an extra measure of that
revival then our prayers are not very effective. For you have in times
past displayed your displeasure at the hard hardheartedness of this
nation.
Father in this time you have enlarged our hearts once again!
You have visited us so that we have rejoiced with joy unspeakable and
full of glory. We have been drawn out in our worship to you so that we
have lost a sense of this world for a short time. Father we long to be
revived in this way. This is our cry to you in our worship Because when
you have come to revive your church then you cause us to be so unified
in spirit that we begin to see your salvation manifested among us in
this community. Oh.. Father just a drop of cold water to a thirsty soul
is the life that floods in our hearts and into the lives of others. May
the stream of your encouragement bring us out of our selves so that we
might experience a freedom to live above this worlds sorrows and
temptations. Father bring you love amongst us so that we so that we
might know how to carry each others burdens. Father your ears are always
available to us and we live before you as desiring to live as
worshiping you and longing for you as if we were thirsty for a cold
drink. We will wear out your throne until we see your hand in our
worship. We will long for the revival of your church.
|
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment