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41	Forums / Theology Forum / Re: "meeting together"	on: August 11, 2013, 01:27:41 PM
When we focus on deliverance as the fundamental agent for change it becomes our goal of receiving Gods counsel. Our salvation is only experienced when that spirit prevalent in community. Deliverance is given to us in a future hope not just a one time reception of our being saved. This is one desire. The desire is our view of the doctrines. So we have in us the dwelling of God in its fullness. We grow by deepening this desire which is experiencing deliverance that distinguishes between the flesh and the spirit. We have not been given a spirit of fear but of a sound mind. A sound mind is simply having access to desires that create deliverance. The Lord prayed let us not enter into temptation but to be delivered from the Evil One. Our saving desire that is created in us delivers us. Our desires come from patriarchal relationships that flourish from one generation to another. We now are already kings of our own realm. We are kings of a kingdom in a family sense. We are not part of a system of checks and balances. We are not a person who is plugged into a society in which we get our identity. But we have the kingdom of God living inside of us. To know ourselves is to be in touch with these patriarchal desires and goals. God has given us His name. Our name flourishes through the success of the future generation. We are only successful because we have desires of a king over his kingdom that is in a covenant motif. We flourish because we have the same deliverance as king David. All of our desires become His desires in which He creates a righteous offspring as we experience deliverance. Our spiritual desires cannot be thwarted. We overcome all opposition because we have the power to pronounce Gods kingdom authority over our kingdom. We have the cries that come out of the desires of a king that rules a kingdom. We cannot be thwarted.
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542  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: "meeting together" on: August 11, 2013, 12:46:24 PM This is the ideal. But we go through difficulties in this life. So i always fall on the side of grace. I am not alluding to anything personal in this post. Im simply speaking scripture. I believe that the church communities identity is in teaching alone. Relationships in the christian context are only close when there is an agreement on the doctrines. Its not just agreeing about a creed but its how the doctrine is applied as well. Because the application is the only way the doctrine is gonna go through the whole person and begin to create a desire of sharing what God has said as the basis of the relationship. So we need to focus on our personal devotion and how we are growing as to what we are getting out of "meeting together." Our primary responsibility in life is not for other people but for glorifying God in all things. We are always gonna find it more difficult in a setting where there are sinners together than in our personal worship. Its harder for us to express our spiritual gifts than to just get plugged in. The christian experience is doctrinal because it keeps us from forming habits were we create trouble by what we say. Our first application of salvation is to find a way to avoid conflict by learning how to bring all of our anger to God and to develop a spirit of blessing in the christian community context. But this is not always easy to work out. Because as I have been saying and what it looks like to me about your writing is this kind of 50  50 view of the practical with the spiritual. When i write i sit back and say did i write this in a way in which i applied this as a sequence that is healthy to myself and how i desire to grow.  The application of these doctrines are what we view as community. Our view of community is a spirit that we share even when we are not together. We are united in one spirit. So we grow individually. We should be people who feel a sense of helplessness because our private worship is far ahead of our public. We do not go to worship to find relationships, the use of the means , and the teaching as the primary way of receiving counsel.  We all are high priest and we have the Spirit and word in which we receive divine counsel with the additional advice of those people around us. But this additional advice is an option and not a mandate. We already are fully complete in our salvation. But we are also being delivered until we receive our full salvation. Salvation is simply living a life in which we experience deliverance. We go from one deliverance to another. In seeking a new deliverance we find God is a refuge and not really a wise counselor. So we are growing to rest in Christ work alone. This means that our desire is fundamental in how we are gonna be successful in using our gifts. Wisdom is simply growing in deliverance by silencing blame, trouble, hatred, and voices that prevent us from distinguishing between what is necessary and what is optional. It is absolutely necessary that our experience of counsel is finding this refuge. So real application of doctrine works itself out in unity from a personal understanding of God as our counselor. This is why we can be wise in what we avoid and what we embrace. The only reason there is declension in community is equal to the level of anger and fighting. But we know how to grow down so that we deal with it on a personal level before it goes outward. You learn how to grow down through blessing and cursing in order to purify the spirit of reformation. This is the practice of Gods counsel that create the culture in which the gifts will flourish. Reply Quote Notify

543  Forums / Politics Forum / Re: The US deficit must never be paid off or the budget balanced if the US is to... on: August 10, 2013, 03:38:44 PM Economies are based upon forces that cannot be turned around. For every decision there is a consequence. Money is simply an expression of the value life. All things belong to God. But mens hearts have gone astray. Life begins and ends in God. The flow of life is in the ideas of God that are represented by the value that we place on them. This is why the love of money is the root of all evil because when we place value on the money in itself then we create a deficit. We take what is rightfully Gods and that is anti social behavior. God has given us true value as a gift only but we do not give Him His rightful place. If we gave God the praise He deserves then He would create a world in which the blessings would out number the destruction or the deficit. Every country eventually over spends. When this happens God protects the poor at the expense of the destruction that the country suffers. God will not destroy the helpless and widows. He will turn the system of value upside down. God will destroy the destruction in order to save His people. God has set in place in His rules as process that cannot be reversed. When a country spirals down into corruption the level of that corruption sets in motion a process in which God protects the health of people over the destruction that will happen to reverse the corruption. The nation is really represented by balancing dept with health. The consequences are not developed in one generation. Stealing the wealth of individuals goes back two or three generations. So there is no ultimate justice on this earth. All nations die a slow death.   Reply Quote Notify

544  Forums / Break Room / Re: the swearing pact on: August 10, 2013, 03:06:15 PM Swearing is not just saying curse words. Swearing is simply thinking or saying things you believe that are not correct. Salvation is swearing to Gods rightful rule through His laws, statutes, decrees, and promises. When we swear to allegiance to these rules that fall out in God ordering all things we become an integral  part of His work. All of Gods work then begins to work for our good. "Those who swear by Gods name will praise Him." Now we are represented by the authority of God. Now in swearing to His name we are in a covenant in which God swears to His own hurt if He does not work it out for our good. Our swearing to His name is our acknowledgement that we are unable to achieve the success on our own. Now we are given a family purpose. We cannot be removed from this new relationship. So when we swear it is because we are marked by God in our relationship with Him as our Father. THis is what the Psalmist says when he has his ears pierced. He becomes a servant of God. In this servant hood the Psalmist will be delivered from all of his sins, and from all of his problems. Swearing by this name is speaking in a way in which the Psalmist desires are Gods desires. So its a servant hood in which we are no longer our own. In this sense all of our needs are met because our desires become His desires. Swearing to allegiance is being successful as we understand out identity in Christ. When we are saved we cannot un-swear what we are.  "Those who know Your name will trust in You." Its a confidence that we cannot fail. Reply Quote Notify

545  Forums / Main Forum / Re: Spam is improving -- next comes response times? on: August 10, 2013, 02:22:03 PM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGYggczgyo8 Reply Quote Notify

546  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Who Justifieth the Ungodly on: August 10, 2013, 01:38:41 PM But your arguing that God justifies the righteous while they are ungodly but there is never a time when they are ungodly because you seem to think their actions prior to their actually obtaining salvation are not ungodly because they are in Christ. But your arguing that they are reconciled while they are ungodly... it makes no sense whatsoever. Let me address this other argument against Gods particular redemption. There is no time where a christian addresses himself as being able to choose good for himself. But we always conclude that for the grace of God we cannot be accepted. So it is backwards. Our self confidence grows as we speak to ourselves that it is not in our own power of choices. It is not in our being able to deliver ourselves by our choices. A horse.. which is the human ability to achieve success , is a "vain hope for deliverance. " Our trust in our own ability is the seed of our seeking idols. We swear by God in that our ability is equal to our stealing good from God. In stealing good we take what is rightfully given to us and claim it for our own. We are seeking to take the glory for ourselves. But "God does not share His glory with any man." When we speak about events in our lives it is in the context of Gods glory in full view. The light of Gods has shined in our eyes the glory of God in our historical success. This denying our essential actions in this work of God is the basis by which we proclaim the works of God. Our approach to God for deliverance is through His action alone and does not depend upon our willing it to be. Our confidence in His acts is not based upon who we are but upon what He has promised. We declare the works of God in His success alone where there is no sharing. In this stout attitude we display our hate for idols. It is in this context by which we kill the flesh. Reply Quote Notify

547  Forums / Main Forum / Re: Jesus and OT God contradictions? on: August 10, 2013, 01:17:48 PM cont. The gift of grace is the foundation of this relationship. We must understand that God has gifted us in the same way that He created the world. He completed His creation in 6 days. There are not two worlds but only one. So all the words that are given to us are borrowed from God. All of the ways that we form our arguments are borrowed from His way of thinking. There is no man who can create a god that is able to successfully create life independently. This is why communication is not really good verses evil but natural verses unnatural. There is no such thing as a word that is evil in itself. But words are the expression of the heart of man. This means we must look at this difference between evil communication and good communication as the difference between possibility and impossibility. Communication is equal to the condition of the heart and not in the action itself. Communication is really the means by which God creates and recreates. Everything that exist is spoken into existence. The bible says that we are new creations of God. God begins this new communication by creating us completely new in light of His ordering all things in this world in perfect communication of His justice, righteousness, and faithfulness. We begin to grow in Him as we see all of the fruits of this communication as our hearts are enlarged to see that all things are gifted to us for His glory. Our desires are really our understanding of His communication as we understand ourselves as He has created us. So we see that we are questioning Him from a heart that already has perfect communication in the gift itself but instead of the gift being prevented from our understanding it is frustrated by our weakness. In light of this free way of coming to the communication of who we are, we grow in our questions as they are related to this frustration. But the wicked have no hope of understanding because of they have a wicked heart as their foundation.   Reply Quote Notify

548  Forums / Main Forum / Re: Jesus and OT God contradictions? on: August 10, 2013, 12:54:10 PM Thanks Kk that is very good insight.  So the question is if we are to be genuine before God because we have the freedom to choose for ourselves then how can we reconcile the difference between the righteous questions and the faithless questions? You see all throughout the scriptures that God teaches by asking questions. Questions begin this process of expanding our knowledge of the scripture. Questions are insinuations in our accusations that demand an answer. We are not directly accusing someone in a question but we are insinuating a miss understanding in the connection by our insignificant knowledge of that person. Is God who ask questions in teaching His people commanding us not to question or He will respond negatively as if we were accusing Him of wrong? You will see this seeming contradiction throughout the Psalms. The prophet or king will form the Psalm in such a way that in his approach to God he comes with the intention of arguing on behalf of himself and the righteous. This is why i do not like to take a doctrine out of the Psalms and try to prove that it is part of a process by which we approach God. Rather the Psalms teach that our Father in giving us communication as His children lowers Himself by seeing us as weak. In other words we see ourselves as we see how He wishes to hear us in our experience. This communication is defining our success as we are already completely righteous boldly approaching Him and presenting our case as to why we are already accepted but He does not meet these standards in this life. This life of struggle and hardship. The reality of this relationship is more and more experienced as we communicate to Him as He has already made us complete. The gift has already been given and He must bring it to reality or we will suffer many sorrows. So we come to Him on the basis of His work that we believe by faith and in desiring the gift we are delivered unto a new ability. We grow in our fellowship with Him of what He gifted us to be. Reply Quote Notify

549  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Israel / Christ parallels on: August 09, 2013, 02:28:29 PM Galatians 6 11 See what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand! 12 Those who want to impress people by means of the flesh are trying to compel you to be circumcised. The only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ. 13 Not even those who are circumcised keep the law, yet they want you to be circumcised that they may boast about your circumcision in the flesh. 14 May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which[a] the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. 15 Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation. 16 Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule—to the Israel of God. 17 From now on, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus. 18 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers and sisters. Amen. This is an interesting passage of scripture. The apostle is using Israel as a metaphor for our union with Christ. I think ive discussed this at some length but our christian life is not really designed for simply following a set of rules or laws. You see this kind of thinking with people who hold up these physical markers as the assurance they are saved. So they see the christian life through their compliance to the law and they judge other people with a more harsh standard. They want or desire as a focus to see other people comply to their rules. This is set off against the idea of putting to death. In other passages the apostle says that we put the flesh to death by the Spirit. But here the apostle is saying that the cross has taken his desire to be assured of being saved by some kind of physical marker. This is really interesting because Christ has actually saved the apostle from distinguishing the value of things according to the worlds standards. How can this happen? Because Christ has put to death the world in the apostles view. And the apostle has been so identified with Christ that he has been put to death to the world. Maybe this parallels his diminished value in the eyes of the world because he is advanced in years at this point. What drives the apostle? Its comparing the world to the new creation. How does the apostle really feel distanced in identifying value from the world? He feels it because more and more the cross of Christ has killed the desires of the flesh. How does Christ take away the former attraction that we had of the things of this world and our former image of importance in the eyes of the world? He kills our old way of thinking. How does Christ transform our minds in causing us to grow downward? He advances our cause by giving us trials in which we experience deliverance. He kills the world to us by giving us success as we are delivered and He kills our image to the world by giving us a view of the beauty of the foolish things of the world that we glory in. This is what the apostle means about the scars of Christ. These scars remind the apostle of Christ delivering him. And this is exactly the history of Israel. Let no one cause me trouble is really let no one stand my way of blessing. The ot desire to reality. Reply Quote Notify

550  Forums / Main Forum / Re: Jesus and OT God contradictions? on: August 09, 2013, 10:47:03 AM This is why they had the Psalms and the promise of using them to advance their cause. Because the war really is not who is pure and righteous but what is our trust and reliance on grace. The cheap grace is a half way grace. Because grace causes us to find mystery in using the means. So in grace we must practice coming to the point where we find the absolute difference between cursing and blessing so that we experience mystery. Grace doesnt have value in a scale but its value is in the effects of the gospel and the power it has in itself to reduce every thing to a view of the eternal.So we are always opposing the flesh in the world and in our relationships. This is why i have practiced blessing and cursing for 25 yrs. We find after our use of the means there is a more subtle enemy. That Satan is not really a person who appears in the corrupt and evil but in these different shades of grace. So we experience mystery and then we find there is a lot more opposition than we expected. In this struggle we gain illumination of the eternal in ways that we cannot explain. Reply Quote Notify

551  Forums / Main Forum / Re: Jesus and OT God contradictions? on: August 09, 2013, 10:22:46 AM I agree with Kk. Salvation has always been by grace , through faith, in Christ alone.  We miss understand the relationship that Israel had when we get bogged down in the description of the ceremonial laws. In some sense the worship of the ot church was not geared toward focusing on these daily sacrifices, or clean and unclean, or even the individual sins of the people. But worship was focused on reducing the trust in these things to focus on Gods relationship with the nation of Israel as He offered salvation that paralleled the physical part of their daily system which reminded them of His gifts rather than focusing on them by numbering their sins. Its easy for us to interpret these passages that talk about compliance of the law that reduces the christian life to a works oriented relationship with Christ. Some people think that our wanting to take the sting out of the full effects of the law speaking to Israel is cheap grace. But the power of the law is in cursing so that the covenant of grace really protects the elect from this neurotic paradigm of blame. Grace does not give the potential to live a righteous life but it prevents us from being cursed when we sin. This is why it was so easy for them to reduce worship to mans system of righteousness ... not necessarily going through the daily rituals that prevented them from approaching God but describing the covenant relationship they enjoyed with God without applying these types in an orthodox way. This is exactly what we find in the worship book. We find the daily grind to approach God taught in a way that denied the importance of these burdensome ceremonies by exalting God as He led them through the wilderness in leading them as a light by nite and a cloud by day. The relationship was not focused on their daily ceremonial adherence but upon the nation as a unity with God going out before them providing them with all they needed. You find this parallel between their human spirit to survive with their need to trust in grace alone in the works of God as a display and not a set of laws to gain acceptance. In this advancement as a national spirit of unity with God seen as eternal by His position in front of them they failed in meeting the requirements of the daily sacrifices but were only judged by how they focused on the Head. And so we find this distinction between the righteous and the wicked by the attitude the wicked failed to keep their eyes on Gods works. We see it as a blindness that showed itself in their complaining. But the righteous were led along by the simplicity of seeing the works of God.   Reply Quote Notify

552  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Who Justifieth the Ungodly on: August 08, 2013, 03:22:08 PM Sbg has a circular argument. If he argues that there are people who are reconciled while they are enemies but those same people never were part of the group that were enemies then why argue that they were actually the ones the text is talking about? Because he says these same people were never part of the enemies that he is arguing for their exclusivity.   We cannot control our desire to seek God. I know in my own life that the motive to love God is not really from the knowledge that I have of God but its a desire that grows from something that is applied to me. But the other side teaches that its my choice that determines my desire. They teach it backwards. So there is a sense in which our desire is never completely understandable. How do we get that desire? We get it from the Spirit applying the word. How does the spirit give us the understanding that He has about us? Obviously He knows more about us than we know. So we must conclude that just as God created something from nothing so our desires are a recreation from a predominately mysterious beyond our understanding ability. Why does one person believe and another person reject? Because God did not create the original life in that person. If we say that our will determines our desire then there is nothing that we can accept unless we understand it. Because in order for us to have a desire we must will it and to choose it we must understand it with our minds. This is why inability is the vacuum that draws us back to the grace of recreation. Our desires do more than help us choose but they create our health and our future. The Psalmist says that the heart of man is a deep well and who can understand it? The desire of man is mysterious because it acts beyond our understanding of how important it is in recreation.  How does God act through our prayers? He hears us but the Spirit takes them and makes them rite. So the Spirit takes orthodox prayers and He purify s the motives in working them into our lives. We pray the rite words but we do not understand the complete alignment of them with our motives. Gods word is said to be health to our bones. How does the word function if it is just a means that we understand and choose? Then our choice would be the determinate factor of it working. But the activity of the means of faith is more important than the activity of our faculties. We would never go to God if the word accused us to will the rite thing. But we go to God because He creates a desire in us by the Spirit that allows and constrains. Our war is in dividing the spirit and the flesh.    Reply Quote Notify

553  Forums / Main Forum / Re: Jesus and OT God contradictions? on: August 08, 2013, 02:04:28 PM Thanks Kk ...nice to see you back... we have a like style of expressing our beliefs... But in the OT narrative it is hard for people who come from a different way of thinking to understand exactly how to interpret these teachings. And the other problem is that it is easy for us to separate our greek interpretation of these words with how they were taught in Hebrew. This is why all of these stories were written in the context of the whole nation in describing the metaphysical progressiveness of evil. Even tho the kingdom of God is not taught in all the narratives it is interpreted as God over all of these different groups forming and defining redemption that He establishes as governor of the earth. So the words of the text are set in the order and symmetry as if they are on a string that is connected together that confronts the words of unfaithfulness to Gods established authority over all kingdoms from eternity past. This OT wisdom is very precise. It is essential to interpreting the narrative. Evil is not necessarily in the act itself as it is expressed in the text but it is the miss understanding of the theology as identified as being unfaithful to Gods governance. God dealt with the whole nation of Israel as if they were one voice of His statutes, decrees, commands and promises. This is why it is always "we" in the text and it is left up for us to distinguish the phrases taught in the wisdom books that are unfaithful words. Because faithfulness to God was not just a spiritual unity among the people. But it was national as well. How do you express the rite words if you distinguish those who are not faithful to the covenant but are part of the nation? The point of having Gods word is for thinking faithfully, speaking faithfully and doing faithfully. It is extremely important for Moses as the author to present Gods authority over the earth in its proper context presenting the Nation of Israel as a kind of expression of that authority and unity.   Reply Quote Notify

554  Forums / Main Forum / Re: Jesus and OT God contradictions? on: August 08, 2013, 12:56:24 PM If you notice all the people of Israel traveled to the Red Sea. But not all of them died from the snake bite. I do not believe the plot in this story was describing Gods people struggling with impatience but the difference between the wicked who curse God and the righteous who cry out to God. So Moses is showing how faithful God is by answering those who cry out to Him. The first reaction was to say the Lord was unfaithful to His covenant. In the covenant of grace the Lord promised to provide for their daily needs. The success of the covenant is that the righteous would believe God because they believed His promises. So when they confront difficulties their first reaction is to cry out to God. But the wicked do not consider Gods promises as important so they curse God. The questions that were asked in this story came from a heart of unbelief. The reason is because the wicked accuse God of evil. We know that people who worship idols worship dead things. In this way they embrace death by holding onto their idols and at the same time accuse God of wanting them to die. God responds by sending them what they want. They want to replace God with a created thing. This is dangerous to the unity of these sojourners. These people would bring into the nation all kinds of evil practices including the sacrificing of their own babies. In some ways the snakes are a metaphor for authority. Representing authority that cannot be constrained by God. This kind of authority is destructive and is compared to the kings in Ps 2 that warned about what would happen to them if they did not submit to Gods authority. So its like God is saying .. you trust in the authority of created things and you will get stung. What did the righteous do? They cried out to God... which going to Moses is a kind of metaphor for being in support in their prayers ...of legitimate authority.  Moses is a kind of go between possibly even saving righteous by instruction from getting bit by the snakes. When they cry out to God then God raises up His King. The only authority they can trust in. These ot accounts are written to teach theology. No just an account of the events.   Reply Quote Notify

555	Forums / Main Forum / Re: Conditional grace and forgiveness?	on: August 06, 2013, 02:41:56 PM
The reason that God is mean is because He made man as a social creature and gave him the authority to exercise his freedom in developing a peaceful society. God communicates in such a way that He has the best interest of the health of an individual. If an person in society wants the best for his fellow man then he will think and act as God has instructed. The law of love is to love others as we love ourselves. So in some ways we not only are the people who act but we receive the other persons actions of love. God always loves people as He loves Himself. But if the people act independent of Gods rules then they begin to scheme against the peaceful rule of God. So God must act or they will destroy other peoples lives. God has made it so that man can plan in his heart to carry out his purpose in society. If man thinks as God requires then the man will always bless others with his gifts and talents. But when man thinks his own thoughts then he begins to plot against his neighbor. When this happens in a nation...one man plotting his own way by taking advantage of another man then there are murders, rapes, thefts and disrespect to his fellow men. When this happens it is always the helpless, poor, fatherless, and widows who are attacked the most. So when God responds to these crimes we are always accusing Him of being mean and ruthless. But if God did not act then eventually there would be the dominate class and the peasants. So when you see God reacting to the crimes of His people it is always to bring peace back to them and save the poor.    556  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Israel / Christ parallels on: August 06, 2013, 01:45:36 PM I do not believe that faith defines our desire. So i have disagreements with both sides on this issue. If we could have ability because we consent to creeds then the Spirits work would be equal to the physical participation. But desire is both intellectual and mysterious. There are things that we do not understand that create an orthodox desire. So i do not believe that these physical markers are fundamental to granting personal ability. But the word applied by the Spirit is always successful. We can desire a word of deliverance and give it all kinds of metaphors but its more than a hope to understand what is truth. Its a desire to be given ability as success that grows to a new desire to be given ability that grows. Desire is personal in that we cannot define our need in the present when we are hoping for something in the future. But God surrounds us on every side. The surrounding is both something that we want as to what we call refuge and something that is too great for us to understand. A desire that is fulfilled is our knowing truth in His truth. So He not only illuminates us to the truth but He causes us to be satisfied in the desire that is both ability and mystery. If God created something from nothing then we have that desire that is fundamental to our persevering in this life. So our desire that is illuminated and speaks a new deliverance is that by which we create the future. Reply Quote Notify 557  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Who Justifieth the Ungodly on: August 06, 2013, 12:14:36 PM Jokers reasoning goes something like this. God gave a covenant to Israel that if they were faithful then He would bless them and save them. When you take this verse out of the context it looks like God is saying that their faith is a prerequisite to blessing. But when we put that promise in the context of the grace covenant that God made with Abraham and we observe in their worship book of how they worked this out in their view of salvation we find there is these two covenants are reconciled by two lines that come together in salvation only. When they come together in salvation then all of this reasoning falls under the teaching of the refuge theology. We need to study these truths in light of the personal psychology of the ot saint. This thought process is found in their worship book. It is a clear way of thinking and easily understood. This refuge theology puts all of the words of the ot narrative into its proper context. The words in the worship book are used in the rest of the ot narrative and teaching in the context of the worship book. Here is how it works out as self speech. God has written the narrative to show His works in history of Israel. The point of God saving Israel is to show that He alone deserves all the glory. How was God successful? If Israel rebelled and later on God gave them a letter of divorce then is God unsuccessful in saving His people? No because God always had a people chosen by grace within the nation of Israel. God was successful in that He worked His works through this remnant to bring salvation to the nations in the line of Christ. God never abandoned His elect. As God is God so His remnant are secure.  So why did God send Israel into exile and scatter them in 70 ad? Because Israel as a nation were unfaithful to God. The nation apostatized. What was the only reason that this did not really effect Gods success in His relationship with His elect remnant? It was God granting them salvation that prevented the remnant from being unfaithful when the rest of the nation apostatized. God gave them a covenant of grace.  This grace covenant was Gods declaration that His people would be faithful because God signed it in His own blood. God was swearing the success of His remnant to His own hurt. How did He accomplish this saving success? God gave them salvation according to His free grace. He not only gifted them with the foundation of salvation but He went out before them and provided the success from beginning to end in doing all the work necessary for them to be saved unto the end. This is why God went out before them in the wilderness as a fire by night and a cloud by day. This physical relationship of God providing a way for Israel as they traveled to the promise land is a metaphor for Gods covenant relationship that He gave to His elect. So God gave them everything and provided them with the ability to accomplish it by doing the work necessary in advance. The elect reasoned that all of their success was by Gods grace and they had no ability in themselves to accomplish good. When they called upon God they gave Him all the glory. The mystery is that in totally looking away from themselves they had more of a personal stake in it than the unbelievers in the nation. Reply Quote Notify 558  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Who Justifieth the Ungodly on: August 06, 2013, 11:40:55 AM  Since you havent responded to the obvious answer in Ephesians I won the argument a long time ago. Reply Quote Notify 559  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Who Justifieth the Ungodly on: August 06, 2013, 11:36:11 AM Quote from: savedbygrace on August 06, 2013, 10:50:10 AM mbg Quote This is why i do not like focusing on one verse. Seems like you also don't like focusing on my points in the these posts #15,18,19,24 since you have evaded them all ! If you go back to the verse that I gave that made your argument a moot point...you know ...God reconciled some men while they were enemies ...but ive already acknowledged that..so its a mute point to argue with me...my reasoning which must have gone over your head ...or didnt fit your theory was my question ..When does God reconcile the sinner? You know the logical questions your suppose to ask in presenting argument is why ,what ,when , and how. Of course this is logical but when i posed the question "when" and gave you the proof in Ephesians you just responded with "what" over and over again....lol Since you havent responded to the obvious answer in Ephesians I won the argument a long time ago. Reply Quote Notify 560  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Who Justifieth the Ungodly on: August 06, 2013, 10:37:18 AM Because of this we are dealing with a more subtle way of molding the mind through process thinking to be less able to communicate beauty out of mystery. There is a spiritual component here in the desire to remove all obstacles to seeking God for God. Our way of looking at life is through the mystery in ideas that have no explanation in the way things are recreated. We know grace by the power that is not drawn from our limited resources. This is what the apostle was saying that it was not him that accomplished his purpose but it was the grace that was in him. Our ability is in observing creation in which we were not present for the purpose of seeing Christ doing things in the future as the reason we are enabled to do them as trusting in His word of deliverance that we cannot understand.  Reply Quote Notify 561  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Who Justifieth the Ungodly on: August 06, 2013, 10:01:38 AM This is why i do not like focusing on one verse. This in my opinion is proof texting. We know that salvation is by grace alone. Even the faith to believe is a gift of God. The context of this gift is in a second birth. We are a new creation. How did God create the all things? He created them from nothing. There was no vehicle that He used to bring life from nothing. He simply spoke and it came to be. Creation is simply an evidence of Gods power and authority as the explanation of the cause of reality. When we look at how we received our salvation it always is in the context of God calling us from death to life. In this sense there is nothing that is identical. He created everything with its own characteristics for a particular purpose. His word is not a process by which we know it to be successful. But it is original in how it works to mold a person being different from other persons. We must conclude that the opposition to Gods work is in the words "He trust in God let God deliver him."  This means that in order for us to understand our purpose we must reduce every thing that is a means down to a word of life that we cannot completely explain. In order to guard the truth of the created word as a gift we are reduced in some ways to standing alone. We must distinguish any counsel whether good or bad to be lesser than God Himself communicating the word as original as the foundation of our confidence in the quality of the gift connected to the exalted position of the giver. Killing the flesh is reducing our confidence of other means to God himself. God must reduce all men from thinking they are gods to being just mere men. Everything is unified when men are just men. lol This created word is all of Gods purposes in showing Himself good through what we observe in the created thing. It all shows the beauty of Gods works. All of the attributes of God that go into creating a thing are put on display as His voice being spoken in a holistic way. One word of God defines and spirits all the other words of God. So we call this word the word of deliverance. Our reason for trusting in God alone we begin with the foundation of our confidence in Gods original creation that is mysterious as the our future trust that He will speak that word in our ongoing deliverance. In other words we are reduced to trusting in God in the future not knowing exactly what He is gonna do in us through the holistic created word. We look to this word of salvation because we believe that salvation is all of God. Reply Quote Notify 562  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Reconciled to God while enemies ! on: August 04, 2013, 05:32:51 PM Its difficult when we put so much emphasis on our power of choice. Obviously faith is required to possess salvation. But the believing is not in our ability. Its important to trust in Christ but it can be unhealthy as to how we view what the trust is. We could place our faith in the gospel but never rest in our trust of Christ. This is why it is like a mixture of the right ingredients. Because the gospel is like a seed that grows into a big tree. Faith is qualified. As Christ was saying that the gospel is a seed that falls on different types of surfaces. The quality of our faith determines how healthy our faith is. Obviously the gospel is a call to believe. But its not focused on our ability. So the vehicle as it is delivered is like painting a picture. The healthy view of faith is how we view God. God qualifies faith. Its easy to lower God and frustrate our faith. Its like a guy who goes to take the china cabinet to a different location but when he gets it to the location the china has been handled so roughly that its broken into pieces. His success was hindered by the broken china. This is why saving faith is only success within the context of the gospel of grace. The quality of grace is more important than the transaction of the faith. Because a person can have saving faith but be hindered by the way it is taught. This is why the bible focuses so much on answering the question of who is Christ as the foundation of faith. Because our faith is a view as it is taught by us. If the gospel is not accurately taught then the foundation of faith is not healthy. There are levels of faith as to the maturity of the teaching. And there is are different qualities of application according to the teaching. So when we talk about applying the faith we are describing how we are related to God -of what powers are involved and how we view our side of faith. Its funny because faith is as strong as our experience that comes out of our view of God. When we discuss any aspect of the gospel of grace we are always thinking it out in terms of the whole teaching. We are always reminded of the importance of describing parts of salvation in light of the whole teaching. So we are always talking about it to others and to ourselves as going in a direction that prevents us from trusting in lesser things or things that have no relevance to spiritual growth. Reply Quote Notify 563  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Who Justifieth the Ungodly on: August 04, 2013, 02:21:00 PM Hope is simply based upon finding redemption in all things. We enjoy all things to their fullest according to our experience of redemption. So salvation is not just winning the war but its overcoming in the battles. God through His work of redemption has given us a fail safe way. He has provided Himself freely to all who come. All of the work necessary for us in receiving salvation and in being delivered has been completed. We no longer are ruled by His law as a school master. Our way of thinking has been not only delivered from the power of the law but from the curse or the declaration of destructing that the law speaks. We are no longer ruled by guilt ,fear, and anxiety but we now have our anger contained in us in the righteous indignation of God. We stand with Christ as judges in His contained word. The saints no longer practice going to the world for judgments. Our hope is based upon Christ righteousness. God has redeemed a people for Himself. He has gone out and obtained victory over Satan and the world. He has provided redemption in His covenant. He has provided salvation as a gift to His people. This salvation is given because God is good and faithful. We have hope because through this salvation He has promised to provide us with all things to enjoy. Our success does not depend upon our goodness but upon His unfailing love. God has decided before the foundation of the world to love us freely. The language of love is redemptive because God is love. Whatever we experience in this life is consumed in the love of God. We go to God because everything in our lives become complete when we find Him. Our only plea for ongoing deliverance is His unfailing love. We learn to view our lives as being delivered from one glory to another as God gifts us. Our lives are a history of Gods work on our behalf. We are consumed by Gods history of redemption as He connects us to our forefathers in experiencing His unfailing love. We receive what we do not deserve so that our hearts are expanded to praise Him with greater desire. These gifts work to expand the heart of praise so that we are consumed in the love of God. Our full redemption is drawing closer and closer. More and more God comes to us an overwhelms us with His presence. We feel like we are being separated unto God. We have an experience of the arrows of destruction being destroyed by the fire of Gods redemptive protection. We pray that God will not lead us into temptation and we are saved from the destructive arrows of sin. God heals our bodies renewing the strength our our youth for the purpose of giving us new experiences of high praise. The destructive forces of the world are behind us and we experience the effects of our deliverance as being loved beyond our understanding. We are consumed in His love. Reply Quote Notify 564  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Who Justifieth the Ungodly on: August 04, 2013, 12:29:43 PM Every thought of man that was ever conceived from the beginning of sin is a scheme against the peaceful order that God has established in the Trinity. Men go astray from God in their thoughts from birth. The foundations of society are what God does in response to mans attempts to bring disorder in how man relates to God and man. Man is born with a desire to call good evil and evil good. God does not need to force man to go in the way of peace but He overturns all of mans destructive attempts. Mans view of success is very narrow and confined. But God has already determined His success over all men in the whole history of the world. Christ active and passive obedience is not just limited to one mans experience as an individual. But Christ who is the Lord of heaven and earth has changed the whole course of history in His life. Christ has not forced His life on man but He has come to bring the perfect Man to consume all attempts to replace that perfect Man. Our dependence is growing closer and closer to being consumed in His love. Whatever human experience we have on this earth cannot over power His real humanity. We are related to troubles in this life that are far lesser than what He experienced. We are as it were filled up with sorrow, anxiety, and troubles as a glass of liquid and we pour it out before Him to be consumed. We grow down with His hand under us. All thoughts from the beginning are necessary in the events of time. The worlds course is devised in the mind of man. One scheme is followed by another scheme. All the events that we face in life in the physical realm are how we experience the results of the metaphysical forces against the peaceful rule of Christ. The world is sinking deeper and deeper into depravity. We can only see the real condition of the world in how we hear God describe it. This means that God speaks in simple absolute language. His voice is greater than we could imagine and more fearful than we could handle. We are gifted with words that declare our success in His final future judgement that are given for us to speak now. The words of Gods judgement cannot be changed. They are the foundation of our only dependable metaphysical experiences. You tell me the way of God is already but not yet in identity and I apply it. lol  God creates success in His word.   Reply Quote Notify 565  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Who Justifieth the Ungodly on: August 04, 2013, 12:05:26 PM Justification of the ungodly is simply being declared righteous in the court of heaven. It gives us a position before God as being definitively holy. Its not focused on who is justified and who is not in our distinguishing between men but its simply giving us the basis of being accepted before God in living our lives in His presence. This means that our only confidence of being accepted is our being justified. In this way we are walking arguments for Gods mercy. We now are united to Christ in His substitutionary work on our behalf. We are declared righteous, made perfect, and we now do not belong to ourselves but Christ substitutes His life for ours in doing the work necessary to make us successful.  When we are justified we enjoy a new way of thinking and speaking. The bible does not say that we are obtaining salvation until we get to heaven. But we already attained our full salvation in Christ and we are obtaining it until we receive our final salvation. We have the perfect image of the Man who has already completed the work for His elect. Our way of speaking is contained in His active and passive obedience. We do not approach God in our own goodness, righteousness, faithfulness, and confidence. But we contain the blessed relationship in His blessed view of life. If we change the way we approach God then we will bring Christ down and lose our hope by rejecting the language of our future relationship that has been given to us in this time period in the vehicle that we can carry. Now listen to me...all of the language of this substitutionary relationship is focused on our foundation of standing in grace and ending in grace. We are carrying burdens but He is actually carrying us. How we distinguish between the reality of living on this earth and what we are receiving in the future cannot fully come together in this life. It is too great for us to imagine. Now we belong to Christ in His name or identity. We now have multiple identities according to the different occupations of life. These identities have been spoken by God in His declaring what is the truth about us. What God says about us is how the bible distinguishes between the reality of truth as opposed to lies. Our identity is no longer put up against the law of God. The christian life is very mysterious. Because it works in a way in which the foolish things of this world are put up against the successful attempts to replace Christ. We speak in a way that is upside down to the way the world is going. How can we be successful in this kind of opposition? Because we have the very words of God given to us to protect us, give us the way to God, and give us glimpses of the future world that break in upon our experience in this time period. We go from being dead in sins and trespassed to actually having the fullness of God dwelling in us. Reply Quote Notify 566  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Reconciled to God while enemies ! on: August 03, 2013, 01:09:04 PM I do not believe that we are just receiving messages from a divine source. But we are coming to a reflection of our image in His word. This means the word contains all of our experiences as a creation of God for our good. We experience love as we understand the necessary purposes of God as we become contained by His word. In this way our sorrows, fears, anxieties in the fullest experience of our humanity are swallowed up in Gods holistic creative goodness in the full expression of our inward experience. We breath out our reactions to our troubles with all the strength and serenity in our prayer and God creates the alignment of our faculties in our reacting to these real events. Denying self is not controlling our natural impulses but its pouring them out as a poison to our inward parts. There is a delayed effect in this exercise of sincere reaction. Breathing the poison of anger and sorrow out in our prayer is a gift of growing down in being human. The natural formation of Gods different creative personalities in this pouring out of our souls gives us more freedom of expression as we are recreated to our original image. Expelling the poison is growing down. There is a difference between settling in compromise and experiencing what we really desire. We seem to be drawn to the mystical experience as if we denied our humanity. But healing is uniting the spiritual with the physical in our need being met.     Reply Quote Notify 567  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Reconciled to God while enemies ! on: August 03, 2013, 12:43:39 PM God did not just create a group of people. I know we like to think of our view of groups as we seek to interpret progressive revelation. The temptation is to divide the segments of time and change how God defines relationships as His designs creation and recreation. But God from the beginning has established His throne over the earth that has never changed. In defining Gods purpose in bringing Himself glory it is easy for us to have a view of His work focusing on lesser truths at the expense of the greater truth. So we are always trying to describe the details of revelation in the holistic teaching of scripture. We seek to funnel all of the doctrines into God establishing His throne from heaven to earth in redemptive purposes. Our teaching is wholesome and healthy as we gain a greater understanding of Gods governance over the earth through funneling all of these lesser authorities as part of Gods creative realities into the plan of redemption. We should always create unity and symmetry that are essential in building faith in a sovereign God. This is why I do not get into the habit of describing these relational connections outside of the presuppositions of this foundation. The foundation can only be established as God ordering all things in eternity past for the purpose of bringing Himself glory by showing forth His goodness that is in Himself. There is nothing that transpires outside of God ruling all things as He creates and recreates them. All powers are working toward Gods ultimate purpose that He has established from eternity past. The question really is not how man can thwart Gods purposes but how we distinguish between Gods ability and mans ability. All truth is contained in Gods word. We have this word contained in us as we view reality. Our strength of purpose is rooted in funneling all of the ideas that we are exposed to and that we entertain about ourselves and our culture into this presupposition view of reality. When we see as God sees than we experience the unity of all all things.     Reply Quote Notify 568  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Everything begins and ends in God on: July 31, 2013, 03:37:33 PM Sing to the Lord a new song..play skillfully! For the Lord is good and He is faithful to all generations. We sought the Lord and He answered us ...He delivered us from all of our fears. His mercy endures forever, His kindness through all generations.May we praise His awesome and holy name...He is holy! My soul will boast in the Lord let the afflicted hear and rejoice. The Lord upholds all those who are bowed down ,He hears their prayer and He delivers them. The Lord is good to all ..to all those who call on His name...He fulfills the desires of those who fear Him and He remembers their prayers. The Lord foils the plans of the wicked but He fulfills the desires of the righteous..Praise the Name of the Lord! I cried out to God for help. I cried to God to save me...the Lord is a mighty shield. He trains our hands for battle. In the day of trouble we call on Him and He answers us. Part the heavens and come down..touch the mountains and they smoke ..send forth your lightening and scatter your enemies...shoot your arrows and route them .. reach down your hand from on high and deliver us. The Lord is mighty for battle. No king is saved by his mighty army ...You decree victories for Jacob ..no warrior escapes by his great strength..through your Name we trample our foes! The Lord lives praise by my rock ..exalted by God my Savior... I will give Him my high praise!   Remove Reply Quote Notify 569  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Everything begins and ends in God on: July 31, 2013, 03:01:00 PM We always give God all the praise because He leads us beside still waters. He keeps us from the strife of tongues. He sets our feet in spacious places. God leads us beside still waters. He blesses us with success because He showed His power through Jacob our forefather. We are led to the puddles of Baca. God provides us with a shield that surrounds us on every side. This is the place that we always return to. It is the place of  refuge and protection. God deserves all of our praise .We extol Him all day long. He deserves the praise that we did not give Him and the power of that praise that we did not have. Because He is the God who performs wonders on our behalf. Gods works are always wonderful. Our fore fathers have told us of the works of God. What God did in their day. With Gods hand He drove out the nations. God keeps us from the feet and hands of the wicked. We sing praises to Him for His wonders.  We will be glad and rejoice in Him. Praise the Lord! Praise Him in the sanctuary , praise Him with harp and lyre, sing praises to the Lord Most High! God upholds our right and our cause. He sits on His throne and judges rightly. God has established His rule over the earth in His covenants. He has provided redemption for His people. God works righteousness out of His faithfulness and love on behalf of His people. God speaks and it is accomplished. He commands salvation and we are saved. Oh God speak your salvation ... give the command to save us. Why do you sleep? Arise and come to our aid! Let us hear joy and gladness! In the day of trouble we call upon Him. He hears us in the dark clouds. Our cries come into His ears. The earth trembles and quakes. Dark clouds surround Him. Smoke rose from His nostrils and a consuming fire came from His mouth... He reaches down from on High and delivers us. He sets our feet on a rock..He gives us victories. God is faithful to His covenant with David and His descendents for ever and ever! He brings us to the daughters of zion. The place of innocence and peace. It is a place of beauty and comfort. It is the place where we are weaned from the world. We are not concerned for matters that are too great for us. He prepares a table for us in the presence of our enemies. We have still our souls like a wean child with its mother.. like a wean child is our soul within us. Oh put your Hope in the Lord! Remove Reply Quote Notify 570  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Everything begins and ends in God on: July 31, 2013, 02:32:34 PM Why is salvation so wonderful and imaginative? Because its foundations are on the free acts of God? Salvation is not really in the gift but in the Giver who acted faithfully and lovingly so that these become our companions. Salvation originates from unfailing love. It is only experienced in the free blessing of God. It is so simple and effective that we misunderstand just how good and free it is. God speaks and when we hear Him we draw near to His unfailing love. He promised to redeem a people for Himself. This redemption is experienced when we give Him the glory for acting to be the Savior, the Sacrifice and the Father who watches over us. This redemption has its foundations in the act of one man who produces in this finished work a sure salvation for His people. He causes us to see His work and to rejoice in it. He has gone before us and worked in behalf of us and blesses us because of His work. All things belong to Him and He takes whatever He wants and gives it to us. He fills us with the good things of His house and of His holy temple. Everything in our future is good because of His love and faithfulness. He provides redemption for His people and He remembers His covenant forever. Salvation is a free gift that is given from grace. Grace is Gods favor or goodness. Everything that God has created is to show the wonder of His goodness and faithfulness. When we think about receiving this gift it is rooted in the historical records of saving His people from their enemies. They simply exercised faith by crying out to Him on the day of trouble. The Lord heard their cries and He delivered them. It was not in their horses...nor did their arm bring them victory...but it was Gods rite hand and the light from His eyes. This light is growing brighter and brighter until the final judgement. The light of the glory of God that shines in our faces. This light is Gods favor given to us from His grace. It is our experience of being saved. We see this light and we are raised up above this world. He puts us on a rock that overlooks all of our troubles. The light illuminates us and we begin to glow with the power and effervescence of God. Planted in each one of us is the roots of His word. When He spreads His tent over us, that word speaks to us of His salvation. Our desire cannot be destroyed or miss applied. We long to hear His saving word. It is that word of deliverance that we hear loud and clear! When He speaks His deliverance it is in the context of His goodness, faithfulness and kindness towards us. We glory in His grace, that reminder of our first love. We feel such raptures of love and kindness that we cannot contain ourselves. We stand in the pure grace of God.