The Lone Wolf wrote:
Romans 10:10 tells us that belief comes from the heart, not in the head. One can only come to a heart belief when the heart is changed. The natural heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. Something has to happen to that heart to turn it around. God literally has to break it, plow it up, till it and prepare it to receive the seed, which is the word of God.
That is what JD and his group reject, the inner working of God's power to change the heart of the sinner to bring him to repentance and faith in the gospel. When God changes the condition of the heart, the sinner will see his sins in a new light and hate the sin. He will see his utter depravity and see he has no ability to save himself and will see that Christ was his only subsitute and then saving faith comes in to play.
That is the difference in mental assent and heart belief.

Michael Hranek wrote:
The Lone Wolf
Why LF you had better be careful quoting verses where Jesus speaks of repentance and not perishing or you might be accused of talking like a Baptist or even a Dispy.
And if you keep on heading in this direction you might end up telling people about Jesus Christ
That He really is God our Creator and that they were created by Him and for Him
That He is GOOD, that He knows them by name and cares about them
That He is worthy to be loved and believed in and served and obeyed and trusted
That He is Holy that His very being commands absolute adoration reverence and worship
That they and we have frightfully sinned against Him and are sinners by nature and by choice and cannot save ourselves
That He alone can save them and make them different
That He is willing to save them no matter who they are or how much they have sinned or how terrible it was (I know only not the blasphemy of the Holy Ghost) and that He is willing to save them NOW
Telling them, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved!

As for JD's comment about Romans 10:10, has he not read what condition the heart of man is before regeneration? With the heart man believes, but the heart is desperately wicked, it is a heart of stone, it is uncircumcised.

Why do I bother - it is like trying to bring opposing planets into allignment. They might both profess to be planets, but they are on irreconcilable courses.

John Calvin must have been some person. Copious writings (witn quill and ink) preaching 10 times a week, teaching, catechising, pastoring and yet a notorious persecutor.

JD wrote:
no one was a child of God before the Spirit was given to birth men and indwell them.

So Seth, Job, Shem, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joshua, David, Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah etc were not children of God because they lived and died before Pentecost?

God elects those who are born again!

Which text did you get that from Casob?

I got mine from Mat 11:27; John 15:16; Acts 13:48; Rom 8:28,29; Rom 9:16,18; Eph 1:4,11; 2:10; Phil 1:29; I Thes 5:9; II Thes 2:13 - to name just a few.

Yet you said that no one had given you a single text to show that election was unconditional.

Where does it say that God elects those who are born again JD?

Jesus said a man must be born again first. Paul said in Romans that a man is chosen or elected first according to God's eternal decree.

How can God elect after regeneration? Does that mean we elect ourselves?

Michael Hranek wrote:
"Philosopher"
What a truly horrific view of the sovereignity of God some preach.
To some God has so predestined and foreordained the lives of men that this "god" has willed that some are to be born only that He can hate them and damn them to hell.

My statement stands; either God is Almighty and Sovereign over all creation or He is not. Either God has determined the end from the beginning or He has not.

If God had left men to their own devices we all would be in hell. Left to our own sinful self to make our own sinful choices none of us would be saved.

Redemption - is to redeem what was yours to begin with.

Regeneration - is to bring back to life.

Adoption - is to choose whom you want to take as your own.

Justification - is to declare someone as righteous when they are not.

Grace - is to grant good to those who only deserve bad.

These are all God's choices. You make them man's choices and they all lose their meaning.

"Our God is in heaven; HE DOES WHATEVER HE PLEASES", not what man pleases.

We must be tolerant of their choices and lifestyle, but they do not have to be tolerant of ours!

JD wrote:
I want to be kind here minnow but you cannot fake wisdom and understanding. That means your attempt at exposition in your last post was, er.. I don't want to use the term silly, so I will just say it was uh ...revealing. It does however boggle my mind that language makes no more sense to you and your tribe than it does.
Not that I think it will help but the Israel who is blinded, while a remnant of Israel is elected along with gentiles, is said to later be saved when the fullness of the gentiles be come in. This is what proves God has not cast away his people whom he forknew, which are Israelites.
Hint.
Go find out what is the meaning of the fullness of the gentiles and learn to comprehend the English language and come on back and lets talk some.

dcp wrote:
I would question whether God's Law is Biblically taught at all anymore.

These days we barely hear the Word of God expounded, let alone the law. Church has become a religious social club, sermons are now "Bible talks" and worship is whatever attracts the people and makes them feel good.

The first main ordinary means of grace - the preaching of the Word - has been more and more neglected. There is a famine of the Word of God in the church of the Western world, but the majority of church goers wouldn't know what a sermon was, because they have never heard one.

Michael Hranek wrote:
Preacher
What I am seeing is that some confuse God's sovereignity as if for a lost a man under the preaching of the word of God and the conviction of the Holy Spirit who believes God and calls upon His name to be saved from his sins is out of the will of God.
As to praying the will of God have you forgotten Jesus told His disciples to pray, 'Thy kingdom come, They will be done on earth as it is in heaven' and since in other passages we are told God desires all men to be saved and for none to perish but for all to come to repentance, etc. we would be disobedient and unbelieving if such praying was not part of our lives as children of God. btw There is joy in the presence of the angels in heaven over one sinner who REPENTS

Michael Hranek wrote:
btw I learned later that for 2 years people in New York State and in Tennessee were praying essentially that God would make Himself real to me, that He would have witnesses in my path who would tell me of His Son Jesus Christ and that He would communicate to me to call upon His name to be saved. God so mercifully and graciously brought about His wonderful answer to their praying, in which I have to think He Himself gave them the desire to pray for this (at that time) Christian hating wretch they had never met. I have to think a false view of God's sovereignity and predestination is poisonous to prayer.

JD wrote:
I have understanding of the kingdom and will share my knowledge if you will allow it.
I am not your enemy unless you reject the saviour and attempt to establish Satan's counterfeit kingdom, which you have been doing so far.

Like most of your kind, you see anyone who does not agree with you as "an enemy, trying to establish Satan's counterfeit kingdom."

JD wrote:
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1) you cannot reject something you have no opportunity to receive. This makes your theology inconsistent.
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If men were being born again before the Spirit fot 4000 years, don't you think they would have known it?

Secondly, you admit Nicodemus should have known. WHY should he have known? Jesus answers that question; Nicodemus was the teacher of Israel. He knew the OT in which all the prophets foretold Christ's suffering. He knew all the OT which spoke clearly about man's inability and God's sovereign grace. He know all the OT which speaks about regeneration, justification and sanctification.

You still think that OT saints were saved in a different way than NT saints. You are patently and totally wrong, my friend. There has always and only been one way of salvation, one way back to God, and that is through faith in the Saviour. Man is as unable to produce that faith as he is to regenerate himself, or justify himself, or sanctify himself.

JD wrote:
Nathan spoke:
It is clearly obvious Preacher thinks it is good news since he has heard the call of God unto the righteousness Christ death and resurrection.
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How about letting preacher say it then?
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Preacher opined
JD quotes Ezekiel regarding God's revealed desire for all to repent.
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Where?

Going back into that passage of John 3, does Jesus not clearly say that unless one is born again, (regenerated, raised from the dead, born from above, born of God) he cannot see the kingdom of God?