oatmeal
Well-known member
So I Timothy 2:4, in your self exalted opinion, is not scripture?
What a sad commentary on your conclusions and more importantly, your (lack of) respect for God's words
ECT What is Predestination?
- Thread starter nikolai_42
- Start date
So I Timothy 2:4, in your self exalted opinion, is not scripture?
What a sad commentary on your conclusions and more importantly, your (lack of) respect for God's words
what are we doing here
if
predestination means
it doesn't matter what we do?
if
predestination means
it doesn't matter what we do?
beloved57
Well-known member
Yeah that is scripture, but your comments aren't!
Come on B57...stop avoiding the answer. Does it say God wants all men to be saved or not?
does our life have meaning or purpose?
All things were meant by God and serves a purpose.
oatmeal
Well-known member
Good point!
so what it the purpose?
So you can post answers to your own questions
I can and will answer my own questions
but
I am amazed that you don't seem to need answers to what must be your own
can any calvinist tell us
what the meaning or purpose of life is?
what the meaning or purpose of life is?
Most answers are hidden in the elects heart. Information explodes after sudden enlightenment. That's when they dance, laugh, cry, blessed in joy, don't need food, walk on water, heal the blind and deaf and say, "ah ha!"
But you'll ask what just happend and I want that and I'll tell you to shut up and seal your noisy mouth and sit still and pray and meditate. I'll tell you when you mind is calm. As of now your not any where near mindfulness. That makes you the everyday person doing everyday things along with everybody else. Too busyminded to seek God . Instead, you do rituals of "I'm good enough" works in the mass.
nikolai_42
Well-known member
I would think the answer would be something like this popular quote from the Westminster Catechism :
Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.
nikolai_42
Well-known member
Because just that phrase doesn't give man any idea how that is to be accomplished. There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. And My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways saith the Lord. I would take it for granted that anyone worshipping anyone or anything might agree (more or less) with that statement.
how do you account for those differences?
nikolai_42
Well-known member
Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.
Ecclesiastes 7:29
Man is naturally bent - and with the fall there is an inborn repulsion of that which would do what God delights in. When Adam fell, what became natural was anything but what God desired. One could almost define what pleases God as that which a man simply will not do - but his blindness has shut out even the consideration of what God desires. It is so unnatural to Him that he is compelled to seek his own pleasure. And when he does what he assumes God wants, he is simply doing his own will - not God's.
Not to say that there aren't those who do God's will, but they only do so because of (and by) God's work in them.
why did God make them that way?
nikolai_42
Well-known member
I believe it is a direct result of the fall. I did a (rather poor) blog entry on how God hides Himself. The fall wasn't just man becoming corrupt, it was a separation between man and God that was not present at Creation. I believe that separation is - at least in part - a mercy on the part of God. Because of what Adam did, we inherit something naturally corrupt. Not that God decides to create every individual as fallen, but as a natural consequence of the fall. So since man no longer enjoys that direct fellowship, the consequence is (partly) that his own ways are before his face and not God's. That is why God's presence so terrorized Israel :
And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off.
And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die.
And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.
Exodus 20:18-20
Man cannot sin in God's presence (EDIT : I take this only from Exodus 20:20....but don't say it dogmatically - only that it seems like an awful state for the one who doesn't have the changed nature), but to the man who has not been changed, this is the way he is (will be) when in His presence. The thing is, because of the fall, this is a forced nearness. Man simply cannot dwell near God (implying walking in His ways) on his own. There is nothing in him to do so. But change the man (i.e. make him born again) and that new nature now loves what the natural man (as seen in Exodus 20) simply is unable to tolerate.
So God made Adam a certain way but we are not born in the same way Adam was created. We naturally are subject to the fall.