An Article on free will

[GodsGrace]

Carbon dating has been proven wrong as demonstrated with Mt St Helens dating.

doesn't matter to me Civic.
I'm not having this convo.
sorry.

 

[praise_yeshua]

Carbon dating has been proven wrong as demonstrated with Mt St Helens dating.

Agreed. Somewhere in between is where I'm at. We need more evidence. Physics is stuck right now. I'm with Eric Weinstein on this.

I am concerned with the modern concept of leaving this planet without the assistance of God. I personally believe that might be where Babel got to at the time..... just rambling a bit...

 

[civic]

doesn't matter to me Civic.
I'm not having this convo.
sorry.

No worries I’m fine with that my friend

 

[Kermos]

So there's a quickening of the spirit by the Holy Spirit-regeneration preceded faith, correct?

J.

With the indwelling Holy Spirit, which is the work of God (John 3:3), arrives belief/faith, which is the work of God (John 3:21).

 

[praise_yeshua]

With the indwelling Holy Spirit, which is the work of God (John 3:3), arrives belief/faith, which is the work of God (John 3:21).

Nonsense. The Gospel contains the remedy. The Gospel tells everyone what to do.

 

[Johann]

Nonsense. The Gospel contains the remedy. The Gospel tells everyone what to do.

You're storming through the conversation with force but no direction-breaking things without building anything.

J.

 

[Kermos]

So christ saved you against your will.

Whatever

Who has given to Me that I should repay him? Everything under heaven is Mine (Job 41:11).

So, you believe you gave God your consenting free-will choice to accept God.

You hold to a transaction where your free-will choosing of God purchases forgiveness of sin from God, and you would not have forgiveness of sin without your free-will choosing of God because you did not free-will choose to purchase forgiveness of sin from God.

My God holds me in His Covenant where my Benefactor Jesus Christ delivers forgiveness of sin to me, and I receive forgiveness of my sin for I am secured by the Lord God Almighty in the New Covenant in Christ's Blood wherein “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent” (John 6:29).

Christ overcame my will because HE IS GOD! And, I have joyously thanked Him!

 

[ProDeo]

Here is something to consider. God created Adam on day 6 as an full grown adult- with age.

Could God have created the universe the same way with age to confound the wise ?

That's a great one.

Me, I reconciled creation vs evolution in the following way, for what's it worth....

Paradise obviously was a heavenly supernatural place where A&E lived in the presence of God, there was no death, every living creature (including lions, tigers, wolfs etc.) only ate vegetables and fruit, no flesh. A&E were expelled from Paradise and landed on the evolved Earth, a total different place, away from the presence of the Lord. Death ruled on Earth, eat or be eaten, the horrible food chain. Lions and tigers on earth have big killing teeth hunting to kill in order to survive. I can't watch those animal nature documentaries any longer, it's only about death, creatures killing each other.

On the new Earth it will be the same again, the lion, the wolf will no longer kill.

Isa 65:25 The wolf and the lamb shall graze together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent's food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain,” says the LORD.

 

[Johann]

Who has given to Me that I should repay him? Everything under heaven is Mine (Job 41:11).

So, you believe you gave God your consenting free-will choice to accept God.

You hold to a transaction where your free-will choosing of God purchases forgiveness of sin from God, and you would not have forgiveness of sin without your free-will choosing of God because you did not free-will choose to purchase forgiveness of sin from God.

My God holds me in His Covenant where my Benefactor Jesus Christ delivers forgiveness of sin to me, and I receive forgiveness of my sin for I am secured by the Lord God Almighty in the New Covenant in Christ's Blood wherein “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent” (John 6:29).

Christ overcame my will because HE IS GOD! And, I have joyously thanked Him!

It seems that easy believism and the recitation of a so-called 'sinner's prayer' have become the prevailing norm, @Kermos.

J.

 

[GodsGrace]

My first x86 was an IBM machine that only ran a word processing program that took 8 flops to boot to. You couldn't even save it on the MBs sized hard drive. It took 10 mins or more to boot and all I had was some IBM word processor they used in some colleges back then.

I said the late 90s for the DOS...it was the late 80's!
Time flies by when you're having fun!
This was an American Airlines system...I forget what it was called.
Now everybody books their own flights.
yes...I remember the booting.
I also proudly owned the very first ping pong game...
from that to disliking all games!

Agreed. Them old "dot matrix" printers were something else. I worked professional among Unisys mainframes for several years. 1100... 2200s and then A-Series before PC shared computing took over. Networking was 10 base T half duplex with millions of packet collisions everywhere.... but they worked at the time. I believe I had $1500 in that old IBM word processer with like a 10 inch "green screen". I miss some of that myself.

It was a problem when I went from a typewriter to a computer.
No paper to move around.
It was really frustrating.
Hard to believe now.

Strongs is good to a point. It allows quick cross referencing across languages. Especially if you combine the ABP+ edition that correlations Strong's #s to the Greek OT.

Yes. The cross-referencing is good.
But it's like trying to learn a language by using a dictionary.
I just trust the translators. Although that has its problems too....
depends WHOSE bible one buys.
Jimmy Swaggarts commented bible will be different from John MacArthur's commented bible.

We can do better with the Greek OT. We can trace common words at least back to the time where the sins of Israel "caught up with them". Such caused a division among those dispersed throughout all nations and the egomaniacs that stayed around in Israel. It is impossible to do this with the 9th century MT.

Don't know about tis PY.
And I'm sorry I don't.

I once was strong against them. I still am relative to the priestly order and grace they teach gets transferred in infant baptism. I see nothing wrong with infant baptism itself.

Infant baptism was for a very good reason in the early church.
Good ole' Augustine of Hippo changed all that with his teaching that babies are born GUILTY of Adam's sin.
His teaching was accepted at the time but now even the CC states that infants are in the hands of God.

Got it. I for the most part, believe in if saved always saved. I do think some people believe they are saved and are not. I do also believe that I've meet people that I believe were once saved given what they believed, and have totally abandoned any sense of faith in Christ. I have hope for them but abandonment of God can become a disqualifying event. I once rejected this but I do believe this now.

Right. That's my understanding too.
Abandonment of God is what causes the loss of saving faith...
no more saving faith....this is the problem.

That is my assessment of PSA. The more PSA teaches damnation based upon the guilt of sin, the more they condemn themselves and turn their sin into the requirements of Christ's deeper sufferings.



Agreed. Paradoxical. I just don't place this at Genesis 1:1. I see no need to.

OK.
We can't really now the timing or what happened BEFORE the beginning....OUR beginning.

The expansion of the "fabric" of elements involves a "canvas" of some sort. I don't really believe in the "big bang" so to speak. I reject the concept of having the ability to "see back in time" relative to teachings of Einstein in relativity of time and space.

Interesting. I'm not a believer of having to choose between faith and science. I believe we can have both.
It does seem that it's accepted now that the big bang did happen...that everything was compressed and it exploded and turned into what we see.
The universe is expanding and this cannot be denied.
But still a lot we don't know which is why I tend not to discuss the beginning in Genesis..it wasn't meant to be scientific.

If you think of time as nothing more than sequence or progression of any sort, then I think you will understand where I'm at. What is ....as it is now ......or at any "time" in history is predicated upon prior events. The experience of time is different for some. 1000 years as one day for example. Not saying that time passes by faster. Just saying being Eternal/Immortal creates a different perspective to God. Longsuffering has a more profound meaning relative to God than it does to us.

I agree that we don't really know what time is.
We also don't really know what gravity is.
We know what it does but that's about it.
We also don't understand consciousness.

That he is. I read once somewhere, and I can't find it again, that Augustine read the book of Romans every day of his life. (might be an exaggeration). It caused me to really want to know Romans. I started digging and I believe God lead me to see things there that most people don't. Not calling "God" into my potential delusion....

Right. I believe Romans to be a much more difficult book than we even think.
Paul is all over the place on Romans.
Did you ever see the talk on Romans by David Bercot?
It's very good...you might enjoy it.
There's a lot on YouTube: David Bercot on Romans

Just saying I've given it much thought over the years. I don't see a single weakness at the moment in my position on the subject. It is an extraordinary book/epistle. Add the book of Hebrews and I'm blown away with the profoundness of Truth that comes from the Revelation of God to poor needy men such as ourselves.

 

[praise_yeshua]

You're storming through the conversation with force but no direction-breaking things without building anything.

J.

He and I have history. He usually ignores me. He can. From time to time... I poke him to see if he will respond.

 

[GodsGrace]

That's a great one.

Me, I reconciled creation vs evolution in the following way, for what's it worth....

Paradise obviously was a heavenly supernatural place where A&E lived in the presence of God, there was no death, every living creature (including lions, tigers, wolfs etc.) only ate vegetables and fruit, no flesh. A&E were expelled from Paradise and landed on the evolved Earth, a total different place, away from the presence of the Lord. Death ruled on Earth, eat or be eaten, the horrible food chain. Lions and tigers on earth have big killing teeth hunting to kill in order to survive. I can't watch those animal nature documentaries any longer, it's only about death, creatures killing each other.

On the new Earth it will be the same again, the lion, the wolf will no longer kill.

Isa 65:25 The wolf and the lamb shall graze together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent's food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain,” says the LORD.

I agree with you.
It would also explain where Cain got his wife.
But I've been told this is not biblical.
I don't think about it too much actually.
Soteriology is very important to me.

 

[ProDeo]

I agree with you.
It would also explain where Cain got his wife.
But I've been told this is not biblical.
I don't think about it too much actually.
Soteriology is very important to me.

Exactly, I spend too much time on the issue in the past.

 

[ProDeo]

Carbon dating has been proven wrong as demonstrated with Mt St Helens dating.

Carbon dating makes no sense on dead material (rocks), only on once alive stuff, plants, wood, animals, humans, etc.

 

[Selah]

"For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy" (Exodus 20:11) is so important that the Lord God Almighty wrote this as part of the Ten Commandments with His Own Finger (Exodus 31:18).

That's not "billions and billions of years old", but six days are enshrined in the Ten Commandments for the creation account recorded in Genesis chapter 1 to chapter 3.

And, Adam's son Seth was born when Adam was 130 years old, so that is not "3.5 billion years old".

These facts establish the full beginning, and when combined with genealogy and historical events recorded in the Bible, then 6,000 years old-ish for Earth is revealed up to today.

Dinosaurs were largely destroyed at the time of the flood during Noah's lifetime (the exception would be dinosaurs on the ark - think baby dinosaurs), just like all people with the exception of 8 persons per Holy Spirit inspired Apostle Peter "the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water" (1 Peter 3:20).

God is awesomely powerful, beyond man's understanding, yet God lovingly delivers understanding and life everlasting into God's children through God's Mighty Right Hand. Praise be to Lord and God Jesus Christ!!!

I wonder when this happened …

"For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy" (Exodus 20:11) is so important that the Lord God Almighty wrote this as part of the Ten Commandments with His Own Finger (Exodus 31:18).

That's not "billions and billions of years old", but six days are enshrined in the Ten Commandments for the creation account recorded in Genesis chapter 1 to chapter 3.

And, Adam's son Seth was born when Adam was 130 years old, so that is not "3.5 billion years old".

These facts establish the full beginning, and when combined with genealogy and historical events recorded in the Bible, then 6,000 years old-ish for Earth is revealed up to today.

Dinosaurs were largely destroyed at the time of the flood during Noah's lifetime (the exception would be dinosaurs on the ark - think baby dinosaurs), just like all people with the exception of 8 persons per Holy Spirit inspired Apostle Peter "the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water" (1 Peter 3:20).

God is awesomely powerful, beyond man's understanding, yet God lovingly delivers understanding and life everlasting into God's children through God's Mighty Right Hand. Praise be to Lord and God Jesus Christ!!!

Hello, @Kermos …
When did this happen?
Ezekiel 28:12-19 (NKJV) 12 “Son of man, take up a lamentation for the king of Tyre, and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD: “You [were] the seal of perfection, Full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. 13 You were in Eden, the garden of God; Every precious stone [was] your covering: The sardius, topaz, and diamond, Beryl, onyx, and jasper, Sapphire, turquoise, and emerald with gold. The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes Was prepared for you on the day you were created. 14 “You [were] the anointed cherub who covers; I established you; You were on the holy mountain of God; You walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones. 15 You [were] perfect in your ways from the day you were created, Till iniquity was found in you. 16 “By the abundance of your trading You became filled with violence within, And you sinned; Therefore I cast you as a profane thing Out of the mountain of God; And I destroyed you, O covering cherub, From the midst of the fiery stones. 17 “Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor; I cast you to the ground, I laid you before kings, That they might gaze at you. 18 “You defiled your sanctuaries By the multitude of your iniquities, By the iniquity of your trading; Therefore I brought fire from your midst; It devoured you, And I turned you to ashes upon the earth In the sight of all who saw you. 19 All who knew you among the peoples are astonished at you; You have become a horror, And [shall be] no more forever.” ’ ”

 

[praise_yeshua]

I agree with you.
It would also explain where Cain got his wife.
But I've been told this is not biblical.
I don't think about it too much actually.
Soteriology is very important to me.

My penny. Cain married his sister. There is no context of how many children that Adam and Eve actually had in their lives. Humanity in the context of a fleshly body were more vibrant and "healthy" then today. Mankind has devolved. Not evolved.

 

[praise_yeshua]

Carbon dating makes no sense on dead material (rocks), only on once alive stuff, plants, wood, animals, humans, etc.

Even then we know there are variable conditions relative to gamma radiation throughout the Universe that affects such measurements. The idea we know everything there is to know about such things is really a farce to me.

I'm reminded of the words God said to Job...

Job 38:3 Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.
Job 38:4 Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.
Job 38:5 Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?
Job 38:6 Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof;

I defer to the Almighty. I'm not His counselor. I do think some of the narratives that many hold about the circumstances are contrary to what has been revealed in Scriptures.

 

[praise_yeshua]

Exactly, I spend too much time on the issue in the past.

I might have too. Everyone should have a working model for what they believe about it relative to the need of the Atonement and the work of God for and in humanity. Details are often few and far between. Sometimes your guess is just as good as mine.

 

[praise_yeshua]

I said the late 90s for the DOS...it was the late 80's!
Time flies by when you're having fun!

Yep!

This was an American Airlines system...I forget what it was called.
Now everybody books their own flights.
yes...I remember the booting.
I also proudly owned the very first ping pong game...
from that to disliking all games!

Commadore 64s and the beginnings of Atari. It amazes me that you get all of those games running now on a raspberry. I did it years ago for my kids and they cared about it for about two days at most.

It was a problem when I went from a typewriter to a computer.
No paper to move around.
It was really frustrating.
Hard to believe now.

I took a typing class to get better on the typewriter. I still have to have a keyboard that has a real "bounce back" the keys. I can't stand flat..... lifeless keys myself. I'll almost fight over keeping an old keyboard.

Yes. The cross-referencing is good.
But it's like trying to learn a language by using a dictionary.
I just trust the translators. Although that has its problems too....
depends WHOSE bible one buys.
Jimmy Swaggarts commented bible will be different from John MacArthur's commented bible.

True. We do have the languages and reason of the Scriptures to help guide us in understanding. This where you get into defining the sematic overlap of words throughout languages. The Scriptures themselves are largely self attesting in such studies. I very seldom consider external references to such ancient languages. Anyone can "spin" the context of such things. You can probably tell I'm too difficult to deal with when comes to these things. I'm a skeptic of most methods.

Don't know about tis PY.
And I'm sorry I don't.

No worries. I've enjoyed our conversation. I usually do. Thank you!

Infant baptism was for a very good reason in the early church.
Good ole' Augustine of Hippo changed all that with his teaching that babies are born GUILTY of Adam's sin.
His teaching was accepted at the time but now even the CC states that infants are in the hands of God.

Which I can respect. I'm not that difficult when it comes to the Grace of Redemption. While I hold a meaningful construct of how that all fits together.... Some times, love is more important than getting it "just right". It is the bond of perfection. It is where God often overlooks our guilt and patient and kind to us even when we don't deserve it. I do battle the tendency to not be as gracious. Sometimes such is necessary. Peacemakers are important to God but sometimes peace isn't the answer. I hate it when it isn't.

Right. That's my understanding too.
Abandonment of God is what causes the loss of saving faith...
no more saving faith....this is the problem.

Good. Thanks

Interesting. I'm not a believer of having to choose between faith and science. I believe we can have both.
It does seem that it's accepted now that the big bang did happen...that everything was compressed and it exploded and turned into what we see.
The universe is expanding and this cannot be denied.
But still a lot we don't know which is why I tend not to discuss the beginning in Genesis..it wasn't meant to be scientific.

I agree with you. I just don't think science is currently an absolute. Where science fails to establish anything, that is where faith is necessary. Science is reason. I was taught by science to be a natural skeptic. I still am. I want more than just conjecture.

Life isn't confined to a "beaker" or a "test tube". Nature teaches us, it just takes time and effort to know what it has always been saying to us.

I agree that we don't really know what time is.
We also don't really know what gravity is.
We know what it does but that's about it.
We also don't understand consciousness.

Right. I believe Romans to be a much more difficult book than we even think.
Paul is all over the place on Romans.
Did you ever see the talk on Romans by David Bercot?
It's very good...you might enjoy it.
There's a lot on YouTube: David Bercot on Romans

Agreed. I'll check out the youtube video. Thanks for sharing.

 

[GodsGrace]

My penny. Cain married his sister. There is no context of how many children that Adam and Eve actually had in their lives. Humanity in the context of a fleshly body were more vibrant and "healthy" then today. Mankind has devolved. Not evolved.

Yes. This is what is taught.
I don't see how we could be sure since it does not state anything regarding this.