In Reply to: Re: Link posted by mir on July 08, 2010 at 09:10:48:
The Calvinist–Arminian debate is not a debate that Christians can afford to ignore. It is vitally important. If you have been a Christian for any amount of time, you likely know people who are Arminian or who have been influenced by Arminian teaching. It is important to be ready to give an answer when challenged by such teaching. For those who want to be ready, Why I Am Not an Arminian is a good place to start.
Thanks for the link mir, nice, that you're back (where is OT2??????)...I have trouble posting and I don't know when it's going to be resolved...
Picking up on the above wording...I just say, it is vitally important to believe in Jesus...faith is in the present tense in the major salvation verses I came across.I believe in God's grace and His alone, atonement through the death/sacrifice of Christ my saviour.It is important to get a good grasp on verses in Mt 13, the crossreferences resp....John 15...Hebrews 6 and 10 and a host of others.I realised after TF it is not as easy as TF claimed and not as easy as some Calvinist claim nor do Calvinist seem to protect God's glory too much...I mean with it, that they make HIM the author of sin...I think it is Arthur Pink and others...this is the logical consequence and at some point I didn't want anything to do with it anymore...it bore bad fruits in me.I have to realise my own sinfulness or my getting sidetracked and deceived and I need the Lord's help to be guarded against that...
All that doesn't make me a 100% Arminian either....
Like I told you before...I now believe that I am foreordained in Christ...just by reading what e.g. Ephesians 1:4,5 really got to say: foreordained in HIM.He was foreordained and one could argue, HIM being the bridegroom, we were part of HIM through the rib...but really foreordained is HE...the prophecies are about HIM...so my focus is about HIM and not how I had such "pre-time-existence"...like some seem to "fabulate"...and I was long time inclined to believe myself...including in TF.
There are some verses which must "annoy" the Calvinist's take...like Jesus crying about Jerusalem...wanting to gather them, but it says, they will not...."Pretty heavy" in TF-lingo..
With dear OT2 I let it rest with the comment, that a) you weren't there, plus I argued, that in the time of undecidedness, one could be sure, that while one is still confessing Christ as saviour, refraining from sinning and even if asking for forgiveness/repenting...doing good deeds...both the Armenian and the Calvinist are "save"...
This is where I draw the line...not as in the above article: it leads again to sectarianism, instead of lifting up Christ...it is said in the internet, that Calvinists, instead of making own converts (why should they convert?, one could argue, people are irresistably drawn to Christ anyway)...they try to fish among the other Christians (that term is also in inflationary use, I think)...which is IMO not so nice of them...(them thinking, they got the superior theology)