Basically Paul is telling the Ephesians in this passage that God has chosen before time to include the gentiles in his blessing; it is not only the Jews who are elect. Now the wild olive branches have been grafted into the tree; wonderful news for us non-Jewish folk! That's a great way to start a letter of encouragement and assurance to some Gentile believers in the early church.
The passage doesn't say we are saved as individuals before birth or any such nonsense.
Note also that believers are called to holiness and love. True faith is faithful, not once saved then do as you please yet remain 'secure'.
So cbc you believe - as Calvin did - that an elect person is saved before birth and only becomeas aware of this fact later in life at the time of conversion?
Calvin believed conversion was more of a spiritual awakening rather than a change from death to life; I think this was his later opinion (with most of his doctrines his view shifted considerably throughout his life, hence conflicting quotes can be found).
I agree. But a true Augustinian Calvinist would say that a person has to be first elected before Christs' sarifice was of any benefit to them.
My comment about Calvin is correct, I can dig out the quote if you like. If you believe - as Calvin did - that God himself leads some men into a false hope of salvation then you cannot possibly know if you are one of those people or not.
Thus, sorry to say, but you cannot have full assurance of salvation in this life my friend. You can try to convince yourself but fact is you will never be 100% sure and a true Calvinist at the same time.
Lurker thinks the Holy Spirit tells him / her but what if the Calvinist God is telling the Holy Spirit to instill a false hope in Lurker? You aren't going to know till you die unfortunately Lurker.
William, as a rule I tend not to carry conversation with mockers like yourself.
Your absurd arguments against scripture below reveal a delusional attitude so there is little point in attempting to reason. There are some excellent preachings on S-A by Greg Barkman which deal with your problems on alcohol.
On the actual topic of this thread I thought cbc's last post was good.
"A Calvinist would never declare, as Rome, that perseverance of the saints is the grounds of salvation."
No, election is his grounds of salvation.
John Calvin spoke of God misleading some men - allowing them to think they were saved when they never were. If you don't know who is truly elected to salvation then you won't know if you are one of the above deceived also.
So the Calvinist has no complete assurance of salvation until they die.
I like the MAD Magazine cartoon of Charles Manson doing his own '666' tatoo on his forehead in the mirror...... except he forgot the effect of the mirror and it came out as '999'.
That's fair enough, I agee that it should be banned.
Youtube does it's own censoring in that it allows anything pro-Islamic (including full Jihad proaganda videos of Americans being beheaded and blown up), yet bans anything even slighly critical of Islam.
I heard they recently banned a video clip which showed the nature of Islam by simply quoting about 500 violent verses from the Quran with no comentary. They didn't just restrict it, they completely removed it and it was only listing Quran verses. Weird mob.
Eze 18v24 "And when the righteous turneth from his righteousness and practiseth what is wrong, and doeth according to all the abominations that the wicked doeth, shall he live? None of his righteous acts which he hath done shall be remembered: in his unfaithfulness which he hath wrought, and in his sin which he hath sinned, in them shall he die."
2/19/07 9:01 PM
2/19/07 6:10 PM
