Yep; carts and horses.
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Let the unjust be unjust.
- Thread starter hobbs27
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Yep; carts and horses.
gordon 2
Senior Member
Yep, I'm not sure about carts and horses, but I have to wonder how the three balls of freewillers, predestination believers and preterists get in the same bingo cage? They seem not to be each of the same exact size from where I sit in the game room. But hey it's not my room and I don't need a big win here.
As to the roots of which generated which... I'm not certain. It is my view, a simple one I admit, that two in the list can be found well nested in certain denominations, and the other... other... well...
Simply one of these things seems not like the other, and i guess at which does not belong.
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hobbs27
Senior Member
Yep, I'm not sure about carts and horses, but I have to wonder how the three balls of freewillers, predestination believers and preterists get in the same bingo cage? They seem not to be each of the same exact size from where I sit in the game room. But hey it's not my room and I don't need a big win here.
Here is how. For the exception of one self described Calvinist, we seem to naturally read into scripture, as we naturally think how scripture should read, or that is what I think from observation anyway.
I can read a verse and it screams fulfilled to me, another can read the same verse and it sends them another message. While eschatology is my natural interest in scripture, I think we all need recognize our own biases when studying scripture and try to view it from others eyes also. I think this will help us tremendously. Maybe...
gordon 2
Senior Member
I agree... I thought we were doing this all along... but maybe not.
BTW generally your idea is also valid to the arts, especially poetry. The con side of the argument for this way of proceeding it that the bible really means anything and therefore nothing. But I am all for the pro side with caution for that what was good close reading for 2000 yrs by the faithful gets fully cast off for exciting, eccentric and personal revelation that changes the total dynamics of the faith.
To be honest when I read the bible in your shoes, I get sciatica.
I hope if you practice your words, I don't give you a head ache... or worse.. 
gemcgrew
Senior Member
I am not opposed to labels, but they tell us nothing about the man. They do provide a basic understanding as to where one stands theologically.Im just glad to know someone in here that's not offended by the term Calvinist.
BTW, most Calvinists offend me.
hobbs27
Senior Member
Are these things within man's power to change?...Or does God do the changing and then we walk in newness of life accordingly?
rjcruiser
Senior Member
This. Somewhat like what denomination you are.
BTW, most Calvinists offend me.
Why is that?
gemcgrew
Senior Member
They deny the very truths that they propose.
Artfuldodger
Senior Member
Do tell, this sounds interesting.
Israel
BANNED
Yep, I'm not sure about carts and horses, but I have to wonder how the three balls of freewillers, predestination believers and preterists get in the same bingo cage? They seem not to be each of the same exact size from where I sit in the game room. But hey it's not my room and I don't need a big win here.
As to the roots of which generated which... I'm not certain. It is my view, a simple one I admit, that two in the list can be found well nested in certain denominations, and the other... other... well...
Simply one of these things seems not like the other, and i guess at which does not belong.
I believe in free will. It is just not my own.
I believe in election and predestination, it's just not mine to decide.
I believe "If you continue in my word, than are you my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free".
Yet, though I believe this, I also believe "it does not yet appear what we shall be..."
How free is that free? I don't yet know. All that a man might be made...somehow, some way, in the despite of all that I would make "of myself" still comes through. In part.
To me, now, the scarceness of salvation is very precious, where once I may have despised it. I couldn't stomach being "scarcely saved". That was not to be on my plate.
I thank God for it, now, and can only gladly admit to it.
I see that God's scarce, even in the overwhelming presense of my pride, is enough.
Artfuldodger
Senior Member
As Christians we are all free from sin, both the free will and predestination believers.
gordon 2
Senior Member
I understand and agree with, "If you continue in my word, than are you my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free".
It is reported that this statement comes from Jesus and it concerns the teachings or the very teachings and words of Jesus to his disciples and possibly his followers... ( It does not mean the bible. )
I just don't see you or your faith in a tangle with the overwhelming pride you say...is yours?
What is " scarcely saved"? Who calls you such? I don't follow that salvation is scarce? Can you explain?
As to freedom, freed from the world even though it is still there to our next step, and tossed even by the seat of our pants into our kingdom is that not a mighty work to further freedom and justice?
Israel
BANNED
I am brought to this verse, not as "proof" at all, but perhaps in a meaning I never grasped. May not, still.
I suppose you have heard the expression, used often to reference those times of extreme...and most usually in matters of present danger...like: "Stuff got real...in a heart beat..."? Or that folks express those times when suddenly a thing unforseen presses upon them the imminence of a thing? I guess it's like being alive to a thing...suddenly.
Without getting much into any thoughts about our gift delivered that allows us to "be" in each moment, I nevertheless find myself as though stung, and immediately realize I have been living, to some extent, in a vanity. Call it getting shocked back, that bucket of cold water, that slap "wake up!". That there are varying degrees in severity of their delivery is also true. At such times, it's not unusual for me to consider...if left there, in that vanity, in that seemingly till woken, blissful ignorance, I am just a lost man. I will follow any rabbit trail.
The laughable expression of a thing so ridiculous till seen, and spoken, made "real" to me, palpable; is found in the sense "I am doing pretty well here".
But, someone doesn't leave me there...in that darkness that I mistake for light. That death, I mistake for life. I get woken. Woken from a thing I don't want to see, by a friend I need to see. And somehow they are very much related, that is, it is only in the acknowledgement of where I have been, now seen, that I receive the grace that assures me, now desperately known.
It doesn't matter that I may say "I don't like being in desperation". I don't know who does. But the waking to it, by whatever means, is of necessity (at least for me).
If I puzzle it out, think on it, how that I have absolutely nothing of myself to keep me from going back to sleep in death...well perhaps that is my own awkward step of faith...into a dependence I had not known prior.
But I know...even that step is not "my own"...something beckons me from the mere saying I depend, even hoping I might...to living as a dependent.
So, I do not find, in these times of desperation a hope to be despised, where I didn't know it (hope) was also placed. I find it in a place...perhaps to be found by those, like myself, so awfully sure of themselves, mostly.
"If the righteous be scarcely saved..."
Another translation allows for the Greek word "molis" to be translated as "with difficulty", so that "If the righteous be saved with difficulty..."
And I begin to appreciate the difficulty assumed by our Lord, on my behalf, for that work of His in my waking.
And it, I discover, is something I scarcely know. But suddenly...things get "real". And the difficulty I would shun, is now given me, forced upon me, as a gift I know I could have never sought. His death, wakes me up. His life now, is to continue that work.
Who is he that condemns? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.
That He does not stop...is all the life I know.
gordon 2
Senior Member
Ah! I understand more clearly now. Tell me if you can, is Christ to you different today than He was 10 yrs ago? I don't know why I'm asking this... but just that I should. Perhaps I recall when I first met you here, how Jesus was important and Christ was your every other word.
As for me there is this wall mural in my childhood church house where Jesus is sitting on a tree stump or a stone high on a hill overlooking Jerusalem. In his hands their is a lamb. And I suppose I had in my outlook this verse of scripture when I looked at it for the longest time:
[O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!]
Today added to this outlook is Jesus as a priest to His church. Not only mediator in heaven, but also alive in the Church to the faithful and as such still very present in the world.
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Israel
BANNED
Is Christ different to me?
And 10 years you ask.
That's an especially salient question, even as to the amount of time.
But yes, I do see Him differently.
Profoundly so, but that is only if I am recollecting the man I thought I knew 10 years ago...is me. And that somehow, my recollection, is in any way, true.
But, as pertaining then to the OP.
The righteousness that is of faith, that which has translated us from one kingdom into another (from the world, to the Lord's by His work of mercy and grace) is, found sustaining, irreducible, and miraculous. A thing dies to one place to be born into another...and, if both my understanding of the scripture can bear any test, and my experience has taught me, learns a peculiar thing; it really knows nothing about either...the world from which it came, nor the Kingdom into which it is born.
Oh, surely, it was puppet stringed while in the world, played the world's fool, but it really had no insight into the nature of the thing while in it. This only comes "in the light"...where matters are disclosed. The Spirit, Who knows all things, searches all things, even the deepest secrets of man's heart is now teaching us of Christ, His Kingdom, His (and our) place there...yet...all while we are "in the world"...(but no longer of it).
I think it is safe to say...we all know then of what oppositions are made against our apprehension of truth in light. We are fought at every turn for anything the Spirit makes known to us. But this is (should be?) of no wonder, has not our Lord told us? There is an enmity, a hostility of each to the other, truth cannot abide a lie, and lies are terrified of the truth, lest they be disclosed...and be shown as nothing.
Paul did not withhold when he tells us, "we are not ignorant of Satan's schemes". The liar from the beginning.
The battle is indeed the Lord's...but is not also ours to know in every hill granted us as conquered in that faith (in His work), the survey of weapons left, despoiled of our enemy..."this was the resistance here"...this, or these things erected here as battlements, sought to impede our progress. Yes, the believer knows victory, and victories, but also learns of what was arrayed against him of lies that sought to keep his survey from that hill. And, if you will, every bit of ground taken affords a dearer vision of home. (The enemy fights with back to it, refusing, we advance full faced toward it)
And now, then, also, that "dearer vision" is about to be tested. As so it must be.
I don't know on what hill in our progress precisely the revelation is made of "men who oppose themselves"...but maybe it is called "the hill of men who oppose themselves"?
It is both the opposing of the truth that a man may be set to, but also, it is learned, in that, such a man is also "opposing himself", his incongruity, unknown to himself, but now made plain by resistance to the truth, that will either bring about the foment of revolution within himself to repentance...or it will not. This is all in God's hand..."if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth;"
I believe some men have made that hill. They have come there in repentance. They have seen the deep disposition in themselves to not believe the truth, but resist it, and have learned, are learning, that the "glory to glory" of faith does not come apart from this knowing of themselves, aware now of a predilection to resist, to rebel, and in that knowing understand they can never again trust in themselves in matters of truth. They know, beyond doubt now, unless a thing is made real to them, shown them, given them by another, made true and real in "their own flesh" they do not know anything. Is this tested? Without doubt. With failings acknowledged? How else can it be?
He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.
The above means nothing to a man unless he believes it. But, if believed, what possible entrance can it give into the grace and knowledge of our Lord, and His Kingdom? The "letting" of a thing, that is, its allowance, as in:
But John tried to prevent Him, saying, “I need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?” “Let it be so now, Jesus replied. “It is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” in this way. Then John permitted Him.
How very odd it could seem to know this thing. The resistance shown to the One known, admitted to, as being the Better. (Do we admit Jesus is Lord?) Where then does the "tried to prevent Him"...come from? (Can a man oppose himself? You are Messiah, my better, and in confession "I need you more than you need me....BUT")
Training in the righteousness which is of faith seems most contrary. It always is.
Contrary to all our own sense of righteousness.
That coming to "nevertheless at thy word" is not unusually preceded by "but we have already fished all night".
I think until we are men who recognize and admit our innate resistance (admitted openly or acknowledged in truth to the Lord, is of no matter), there may well be things hidden from us. Do we want to be resistant...it seems not to matter against the truth that we are. And here is where a strange thing may also happen in the soul...do I care for truth more than I care for my own image of myself? My own desire for myself? If so, I have surely been set at odds, and God alone knows what will win, and surely knows which is greater. And he is not unaware of the battle...there.
This may be called "the beating of the dead horse".
Much stock is set, must be set in what Paul says is "all that matters...a new creation".
We draw lines...old vs new...pre resurrection, post resurrection, pre Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and thereafter...we want to "be assured we are in the right place", believing the right things, seeing the right things, hearing the right things, doing the right things.
And so, we find Peter hungry on a roof top. He goes and sees Cornelius. Wow! The gentiles are given to believe, too! (I didn't think I should go, kinda protested in my way with what I believed I was seeing in clean and unclean things...truth be told on me...) But God prevailed! I knew that when I was told to go see a gentile...that's what the whole of the vision was about, I just knew it...and went...and was (truth be told) wonderfully surprised and marvelled! Yes, this is marvellous. (How many of us are the fruit of that vision of correction?) Yes, it is wonderful!
Yet...
With no accusation toward Peter or any, for they are, as I am, just a man...what was spoken to them at the ascension? What were they all, already told? Someone spoke..."Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:"...but who heard?
Whence then the need..."of that vision"?
This is grace.
This is the grace of the Father who tells two sons to work in his field, and one says yes...and the Father bears the saying of "NO" by the other. But the one who said yes...doesn't go...and the one saying no, repents, and goes. And Jesus asks...which one did the will of the Father?
This...is man. Not willing till made willing, not able unless made able, not faithful until a faith is revealed...not his own.
No doubt there are many, I have met them, still do, who do so many gymnastics to reconcile things. Lived myself with one for many years. (if that was me, at all?)
Wanting to be a help. Needing to show oneself a help...precisely because the run down and utter shambles of the place I lived forced me to need to show myself different.
Funny how that works. That provoking to try and appear. I did not want to believe I could ever be "the one" most in need, the most wretched and poor. It always fit better...if I could believe it was "someone else"...who needed. To have help.
That joke if it can be called such, was on me.
This thing holding sway, such as it did...was "let" to run its course, allowed to do...what it needed to do. "We" (I believe I have met others) helpers used to run all over one another, tire tracks across our backs attesting to the mad rush to show who was the better helper. This is simply another hill discovered already taken by our Lord in conquest. The weapons found abandoned there by the enemy read things like "must show oneself as something"..."must be a something in the sight of others"
and "if you can teach no one will suspect you are the most rebellious of students"...and "others need you".
I do not accuse our brother Paul. How could I when his words, yet not his words, have been so much comfort and life to me? But those gymnastics that would invite themselves are Oh, so tiresome.
Where once a thing kinda sounded strange...I so much hoped there was an error in translation of a tense in light of all said before of being the very righteousness of God in Christ, the believer's distinctions in light, the elevation through the resurrection...to being a better man.
But, that's what I wanted to hear "better man"...when it was, and always is "new" man. But, being what I am, by the "letting" of someone (Oh, immeasurable grace! to be found there!) had to run a course to where a thing said was no longer a bother, nor irksome, nor...seemingly out of place. Nor mistranslated in tense.
This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.
From here I think something was battled for, and found. From here something was longed for with a greater desire than appearance of oneself...even to oneself. From here I hear an answer to "that I may know him!" (feel free to enter chronoligical matters)
From here I see a something spoken that takes as long as necessary to be heard and embraced.
And Jesus answering said unto them, They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick.
The presence of the physician, though it indicates one's estate...is far greater than anything else. And we are "let" as long as necessary...to learn this.
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gordon 2
Senior Member
Hum! Salt tossed behind one's back is a purifier of the past so says the old wife in her tale. Now to salt the present and the future I find no wife's tale on it, but an echo, " You are the salt of the earth" and "what good is salt if it has lost its kick... ( sometin like that)"... and "they that have ears hear" and "the truth shall set you free".
Blessed are the meek*: for they shall inherit the earth. ( New Testament)
And look, I will shake my fist over them, and they will become plunder for their *former slaves. (Old Testament. Zachariah 2:9)
(There is question as to who the former slaves are in this case. I take them to be the Israelites who have returned from exile. That is to say as slaves, or servants, they have been purified by God who has made them low from their previous station of arrogance. Now being formed as servants, they will inherit the earth itself which was in the hands of their oppressors for awhile. The Israelites will do this by returning to the homeland from exile and especially to Jerusalem.)
And so I find this a mirror of what must happen with Christians who cannot return to forms of arrogance to the extent as to justify injustice, but are formed through grace to be servants, meek, and the least; and as servants they will also inherit the earth and the booty of their oppressors who once had the world's claim on it.
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gordon 2
Senior Member
Israel,
When I was a boy I use to go next door to watch Bonanza reruns on TV. ( It was the only idiot box in the neighbourhood and owned by the poorest people in the neigbourhood also, ( Funny how that works.).
Usually it was after supper that I went when it was still daylight and when it came to walk back home, being afraid of my own shadow as it was night by now, my sweet heart cousin Sally, who was much older than me by maybe four yrs, would faithfully walk me back home day in and day out.
It occurred to me the other night as I walked my dog before bedtime by the light of the moon, that even the dog nosed along in my shadow as if it was nothing at all--as if it was not there. I must admit that at that point, I realized, Gordo your no longer afraid of your own shadow---50 yrs from when you were!
Brother, I have only met a similar view as yours regards the poles of belief and unbelief, understanding vs misunderstanding when someone pointed out that Martin Luther shot his ink well at his own shadow which he felt was haunting him and was possessed of the devil itself. And further that this little trick of shadows challenging correct course continues to cut swats in the souls of reformers.
It is perhaps that for some in the shadow we cast, the forms are bent out of shape or feature, a deformity of shape, that is alarming. A shadow is not unlike seeing one's back, it must come about with a play of light and when it challenges shape one must naturally be alarmed.
I'm not sure why but I don't seem to share your anxieties. My shadow is cast from the light of the kingdom and for some unknown reason, from it my shadow is always the same. So much so that even my dog goes right through it as if nothing at all was there and yet he is too cautious at any other thing that moves or is suddenly unfamiliar. ( Funny how that happens.)
When I was a boy I use to go next door to watch Bonanza reruns on TV. ( It was the only idiot box in the neighbourhood and owned by the poorest people in the neigbourhood also, ( Funny how that works.).
Usually it was after supper that I went when it was still daylight and when it came to walk back home, being afraid of my own shadow as it was night by now, my sweet heart cousin Sally, who was much older than me by maybe four yrs, would faithfully walk me back home day in and day out.
It occurred to me the other night as I walked my dog before bedtime by the light of the moon, that even the dog nosed along in my shadow as if it was nothing at all--as if it was not there. I must admit that at that point, I realized, Gordo your no longer afraid of your own shadow---50 yrs from when you were!
Brother, I have only met a similar view as yours regards the poles of belief and unbelief, understanding vs misunderstanding when someone pointed out that Martin Luther shot his ink well at his own shadow which he felt was haunting him and was possessed of the devil itself. And further that this little trick of shadows challenging correct course continues to cut swats in the souls of reformers.
It is perhaps that for some in the shadow we cast, the forms are bent out of shape or feature, a deformity of shape, that is alarming. A shadow is not unlike seeing one's back, it must come about with a play of light and when it challenges shape one must naturally be alarmed.
I'm not sure why but I don't seem to share your anxieties. My shadow is cast from the light of the kingdom and for some unknown reason, from it my shadow is always the same. So much so that even my dog goes right through it as if nothing at all was there and yet he is too cautious at any other thing that moves or is suddenly unfamiliar. ( Funny how that happens.)
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Hobbs,
What is your take on the parable of the wheat and tares ?How does it align with the great commission by your belief ?
hobbs27
Senior Member
The wheat and tares parable is fulfilled per 70ad. The righteous now shine, and the wicked were destroyed..Not only that but this wonderful parable destroys any idea of a rapture in which the righteous is taken first..for the wicked were dealt with first in this parable.
As for the great commission, it to is fulfilled. I think twice in the Epistles the claim is made that the Gospel has gone out to the entire world, and it has gone out to every creature.
This does not mean we are not to praise God and preach the Gospel.
