Casob wrote:
All you people will have the opportunity to explain to God one day when he judges you why you did not believe that God made the first step in salvation immediately after the first sin by providing a substitute, the innocent for the guilty.

You err in several ways; God did not take the first step, and He did not take the first step immediately after the first sin. You speak as though God was somewhat taken aback by sin and then had to act to remove it.

God acted before there was any sin, before there was any creation. The Triune God determined that sin would come into the world and that the Son would redeem His people from that sin.

God does not take the first step, He takes all the steps. Did you not read my previous posts about sin and how we are enslaved to it? What steps can you take outside of the prison of your sin unless God changes you first? What steps could Lazarus take out of the tomb without the mighty power of God's resurrection?

The primacy of man is the ultimate vice. Adam sought to dethrone God and to make himself captain of his own ship. The result of this was death, as God had promised. This death came upon all who were in Adam. This "all" literally means every person born since. No one can free themselves from this death any more than they could resurrect themselves after they died.

When Jesus called Lazarus from the tomb Lazarus came. But if Christ had not first raised him from the dead he would have remained in the tomb, unable to respond, unable to even hear the call.

Natural man's condition is the same. The call goes out, but the response cannot come until life is first given. To say that natural man can come to Christ without first being resurrected from death is to say that Lazarus could have responded to Jesus without first being made alive.

Sinners have no desire to glorify God. So in a moral sense, there can be no freedom until the Spirit creates it. So salvation cannot be the result of a cooperative effort between God and the sinner, it can only result from the unilateral act of God alone. Until God changes the sinner's heart, the sinner does not want true salvation.

Most if not all Christians believe that God acts according to His will and that He controls all things. But they baulk at the thought that God controls their free will.

To be a slave to sin is what it really means. You are bound and cannot free yourself. You are free to act, but you are not free to leave the prison of your sin. The key to the jail of your sin is not in your pocket.

When God converts you, you are no longer a slave to sin but you are now a slave to Christ. You are now His bondservant.

True faith is more than trust. It is total commitment, leaving one thing totally and clinging to something else totally. It begins with denying self, abandoning your own self like you would a sinking ship. And it means clinging to Christ with both arms, the way you would leave a ship and enter a lifeboat.

Israel was taken out of Egypt, but they never left it in their hearts and always wanted to go back. Likewise our conversion must be a total abandonment of the world and our old life. We die from one life and live to another.

So faith is found not just accepting in your mind, or believing in your heart but in living in your life. That is why people are judged according to their fruit. What they produce, Jesus said, is produced from their heart.

Our old heart could not produce any fruit for it was made out of stone. But God puts in you a heart of flesh and if that has truly happened to you it must produce good fruit.

Daddy wrote:
This is coming from someone who cannot find one verse that states the idea that God elects only a select few to go to heaven and the rest go to hell.
Maybe he thinks that his logical deductions from perverted interpretations has equal authority as the Scriptures themselves.

Daddy wrote:
Well he could've simply gone to the Scriptures and gotten his answer. But that's too easy.

This is quite clear for those that do not believe that "any" and "all" mean "elect," but rather believe that God means what he states.

Your own text answers its own question. God is longsuffering to who? To us! Who is us? Every one in the world? No! Us means those who are in Christ. Peter is re-affirming what Jesus said, "He who comes to Me I will in no wise cast out."

It is not the Father's will that we (us) should perish. Therefore He is longsuffering to us, not willing that any of us should perish but that all of us should have eternal life.
If it is really true, that God really wants that "us" to be every single individual, that He really truly with all His hear and might wants every single one to come to repentance, then there are only two possibilities. Either everyone will come to repentance and God is Almighty, or they don't and He is not.