John UK wrote:
you wish to teach me something, you will need to be teaching me something with a gracious and loving spirit, because if you hate me without a cause, I will, most certainly, not listen to anything you say.

John UK wrote:
Acts 17:26-31 KJV
(26)  And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;
(27)  That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:
(28)  For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
(29)  Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device.
(30)  And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:
(31)  Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.
v26...all men
v27...they should seek the Lord; every one of us
v28...in him we (all of us) live
v29...we (all of us)
v30...all men everywhere (every creature)
v31...the world (everyone); unto all men (everyone)
God is clear. Men are cloudy. That is, all men are cloudy.

John UK wrote:
The apostles never had any problem with calling on all men to repent.

Explain to me how proclaiming the gospel in this way is indicative of my trying to prevent the reprobate from hearing it?

John UK wrote:
Dr Peter Masters

John UK wrote:
Mike, as you know, I do not accept double predestination. I can show you scripture where God talks about his election; but you can't show me scripture where God talks about his non-election. It is a figment in the imagination.

John UK wrote:
If you don't individualise it, you will get few converts.

John UK wrote:
2. There is grace, and there is saving grace. The grace of God given to all men does not guarantee he will also save them. The problem you have in practical outworking of all this, namely in evangelistic work, is that you have to preach to sinners (every sinner) the good news of the gospel which, by its very nature, expresses the love of God for sinners, and his willingness to save all that come to Christ for pardon and peace. Herein lies your particular difficulty. I have no such problem.

And that is the problem with speaking of the saving love of God to an individual apart from obedience when they may be one of the one's that God may have predetermined to pass over.

It is better to speak of God's love to sinners as a class rather than individualize it and in the process potentially lie to the hearer. If individualizing then fetter it to obedience to the call to repent and believe.

John UK wrote:
if you would care to give the answer to your own rhetorical question, I will look in later and see if you have got it right. It is not a difficult question,

Unless one believes that God is capable of an ineffectual saving love (which frankly is an oxymoron because it wouldn't be a saving love) then the only proper answer is that God does not savingly love those that he passes over.

If this analysis is correct, then one wonders what saving love there is that one should proclaim to those who will perish because they will be passed over?

I hope that that was plain enough for you.

Now I shall look forward to being corrected by you since you consider the question easy.

I do hope that you will restrict your consideration to God's 'saving love' which is what is being declared in the gospel. If you still maintain that God savingly loves those that will yet be passed over (because the utter contradiction passes you by) then the question is why are they not saved?

John UK wrote:
There can be no greater motivation for evangelism than the love of God for sinners, and the surety of success of the gospel of God's grace, which thing is immensely powerful, being attended by none other than the Holy Ghost, who applies redemption to whomever God chooses.

James Thomas wrote:
It is difficult for sure but I like your analysis earlier regarding starting with a clan slate. Being open to being wrong about our preconceived notions is a good thing.
I think Mike gave some good insight on working through the verse John 3:16. Here's a start...
"For God so loved the world...."
In looking at the "so", we see it is from the Greek word houto and is an adverb meaning "after this manner".
One other example we see the same usage is 1 John 4:10-11.
And We see that God's love for the world is conditioned on what follows:
"that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
To sum it up I think John 3:16 speaks of God's conditional love for the world only in a positive sense to whosoever believeth in Him.

John Lee wrote:
Let's think about how Jesus does this, when he attends a synagogue, even a synagogue where he is unknown. Let's think of him in Horeb Synagogue, for example. Is there a paid teacher there? Just one who teaches and the others just listen? And this one takes the entire 'service', announcing psalms, reading scriptures, teaching the word, and so on?
Not in my reading of the Bible, it never happened like that. And it never happened like that when the converted apostles attended the synagogues for many, many years after Pentecost.
Think about it.

John Lee wrote:
Can I take it then, that you disagree with Connor on this? If he = Taught and Johnny Mac = Teacher, he reserves the right to analyse Johnny's teaching (and correct him) and proclaim himself higher in knowledge than Johnny, because he as Connor knows far more than Johnny Mac and ought himself (Connor) to be in the Teaching position and Johnny Mac can be in the Taught position.
Do you see the problem?
And then, you can take two highly respected Teachers of the Bible, and they can hold opposite views on certain subjects, which they will teach to their adherents, and at least one of the groups will be hearing something untrue.
Would you like some examples of this?

John Lee wrote:
Hi Connor, are you also saying that pulpit/pew or teacher/taught is somewhat fundamentally wrong? I would be interested to know how you go about telling Johnny Mac he is wrong, in order to edify the body, in what I call a clergy/laity divide system.