R Sauter

Take a look at the full context. No insult, just plain, hard biblical truth! We brought NOTHING to the table regarding our salvation! This was my point! Disagree with it and you are a heretic! Not an insult, this is the whole of scripture from Genesis to Revelation in the book you are waving around and claiming to believe! If I insulted Jerry, then I also insulted myself and all of humanity! If you want to believe anything else, then I'll let you stand before God to answer for your own horrible theology. I started out respectful here. You made me otherwise. Please delete this account or at least let me change my username to something more abstract so it does not reflect my given name. Goodbye.

Sir, I am actually surprised at you that you would condone such foolishness! Disagree with a position and I can accept it but to intentionally slander and mischaracterize good men who actually hold to the historical views is absolute foolishness and idiocy! And I'll beat you to the punch here. This is an "Independent Baptist Forum" and you hold to Independent Baptist views blah, blah... Yes, you should expect respect and courtesy. If I trash-talked the "IFB world" the way some of you knuckleheads here are trash-talking Calvinism, I am certain you would give me the left-foot of disfellowship would you not? Please delete my account here so I may exercise secondary separation from all this foolishness.

If you want to debate then let's go bud! But let's debate the actual historical view, not the inane nonsensical garbage you are spewing! You and everyone else here are being dishonest, disingenuous, and wise in your own conceits. I am not here to push Calvinism or anything else! I'd like to have intelligent, fruitful, and intelligent discussion and I have tried to be respectful here.

Perhaps you misunderstood me and I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt. You brought nothing to the table regarding your salvation! If you disagree with this then you are the heretic and there is nothing more to say. Aside from this, I think I will remember what an old friend used to say - "A dog can whoop a skunk anytime but sometimes it just isn't worth the trouble!" I really could care less about whether you agree or disagree with the historic doctrines of grace but you and everyone else here are intentionally misrepresenting and slandering the position and making complete donkeys of yourselves as a result. There is literally no room for honest and intelligent discussion or debate! And no, I do not make the bible fit anything! I simply became the "Bible Believer" I claimed to be in the IFB world and studied the scriptures for what they have to say and from there, came to my own conclusion! It is you who are stuck in the "Groupthink" of your bankrupt brand of "Funny-Mental-ism" and I am content to leave you to it. Go back to circling the wagons and throwing rocks at your "Straw Man."

Take a closer look at the verse you are citing and note the phrase that says: "and that not of yourselves..." You brought nothing to the table! A dead man can do nothing aside from emitting a foul stench! Read Ephesians 2 in its entirety. Compare this with John 1:13 as understood within its full context.

1 Cor 14:38

Five seconds after our Lord's return, we will all have perfect a perfect eschatological view! An eternity of eternities will pass and we will not have even begun to scratch the surface regarding the magnitude of God's love towards us! Think about it.

The question to ask is where does the faith come from whereby one believes? Some reduce this down to mere mental assent (head knowledge) of which I think everyone here would agree that such would be a false conversion. Eph 2:8-9 (which everyone here could likely quote from memory) has the phrase "and that not of yourselves" which is a key part that should not be neglected. John says we are not born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God (Jn 1:13). Calvinism becomes divisive when it is misrepresented and one's only perception of this historical view is the distorted straw man that is illogial and absurd. The argument has raged on for close to 2000 years now, you actually think you can settle the matter by whipping out a few verses (and often out of context)? Some claim to be neither Calvinist or Arminian but then go full "Pelagian" or "Open Theist" in their attempts to stay as far away from Calvinism as they can! I would rather stick to the scriptures and not fall into such heresy. A member asked last Saturday about our church's "official position" regarding Calvinism. I told him "We do not have one nor will we have one any time in the near future! Those who teach on a regular basis have differing views that span both sides of the argument and we are all mature enough to discuss without being divisive or intentionally offensive!" I was having a small group study at our house discussing Romans which we had recently read through. One of the ladies had quite a few questions regarding all of the passages regarding "election" and we had a wonderful Christ-honoring time of discussion! Our head deacon spoke of his own salvation and I acknowledged the fact that although he was "Chosen from the foundation of the world," there was a time in his life when he realized he was dead in sin and was made alive in Christ! Both are essential soteriological truths!

Thanks for the clarification and I can fully appreciate this. We get into a lot of semantics over whether repentance is necessary for salvation but the principle error here is our focus upon "What a man must do" in order to be saved. The correct answer here is that there is nothing that a man can do because he is dead and is incapable of being anything other than dead! God chooses the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe and faith comes by hearing of the word of God. Therefore, repentance and faith are two sides of the same coin and are evidence of, not conditions for our salvation! On this note, I would say that the core of theologial liberalism and apostacy stems from trying to be "Nicer than Jesus" and either outright deny or downplay the fundamental doctrine of Man's Total Depravity and a refusal to confront our world and warn of God's imminent judgment for sin! Campus Crusade is the epitome of the "easy believism" which has made the cross of Christ of none effect and such ministries are always the first to slide into theological apostacy! Because the doctrine of total depravity is cast aside, liberal theologians can therefore make the case that "God made me this way" and that we need to just "Be what God made us to be!" If I can get back on track with my seminary degree, this will be the basis for my Master's Thesis and I feel more and more compelled that such is a necessary thing to do!

I would also defend the "free will" position against those who misrepresent it. Far too many Calvinists automatically categorize anyone who is not of the Calvinist persuasion to be "Semi-Pelagian" and I have written about this ad-nauseum during my studies in seminary (that happens to be non-Calvinistic). We most definitely have a "free will" but left to our own free will, we will always choose darkness rather than light and will always run from God, never towards him! Both Calvinists and Classic Arminians agree on this as do I.

Someone implied it and I guess this is where Calvinism came into the discussion. If you know anything at all about Campus Crusade (CRU - whatever this means), you understand it is anything but Calvinist. LOL I agree that our salvation is not dependent upon whether we "Endure to the end." This is what all the "Jesus Only Apostolic" types teach and believe - that you can "lose your salvation" pretty much every time you sin and for ridiculous things like leaving your top collar button unbuttoned or watching a television show. Catholics teach pretty much the same thing that they must maintain a "State of Grace" in order to avoid any time in purgatory. Such positions are very much unscriptural. Yes, Mt 10:22 is certainly talking about tribulation and persecution but how do we make this just about end times? This passage was very much a reality for early Christians who were fed to the lions ans suffered other horrible deaths because they would not renounce their faith in Christ! Such goes on today in Communistic and Islamic countries. Are we so arrogant to think such may not take place here in the U.S before our Lord's return? We therefore have to ask the question "Saved from what?" do we not? Are they going to be saved or delivered from being tortured or killed? I think the answer to this is quite obvious! I believe it has everything to do with being "Faithful unto Death" and let's get perfectly real here! Only those who possess a genuine saving faith in Christ would have such an ability because they are supernaturally empowered by God to do so! For the most part, all one has to do is renounce their faith and they would walk away a free man! If you are truly in Christ, such a thought would never enter your mind! I am not sure what you are getting at regarding "when your commitment fails." It seems you are answering your own question with the next line you wrote? Yes, it is Christ who keeps us and we are secure in him, not our "commitment" whatever this may be.

Tony, you know me better than this! There are Baptists (far too many, truth be known) who hang everything upon some "decision" they made for Christ years back in 5th Grade Sunday School or whatever. This is further compounded by the fact that many are taught they are sinning when they are doubting God regarding their salvation so they learn not to question things, This very much a thing with the "Free Grace" crowd and is quite heretical and wrong. They are also rabid anti-Calvinist for good reason - because Calvinism exposes the nonsense of their man-centered Gospel! I tried to clarify the actual view of preseverence to Mike Watson and I believe he gets it. The doctrine of eternal security is very much the biblically correct position although I sympathize with certain of the Arminian persuasion that are repulsed with so many "Carnal" Baptists who live like the Devil but claim to be saved because of some "prayer" they prayed in Vacation Bible School as a child or whatever! And to make it perfectly clear, this is every bit as much of a SBC thing as it is an IFB thing! Nope, I'm not about to be "nice" about this! You do not have to go full "Calvie" but every ministry would do well to temper their position on eternal security with the historic view of perserverence. It is very much a biblical thing (actually a scriptural mandate) to "warn those who are unruly."

I will gladly take the Calvinist position of perserverence over the sloppy "Once Saved Always Saved" nonsense promulgated by so many biblically illiterate Baptists! Firstly, you are misrepresenting the position but I also understand this is likely how you have been taught. It is not that Christians "Must" endure to the end in order to be saved (the position of Pentecostals, Catholics, and others on the extreme end of Arminianism) but that if you are a genuine Christian, you WILL endure to the end! You possess something that will withstand the tests of temptation and tribulation that would make others who have nothing but an empty profession fall away and forsake that which they had initially professed! This is what the Parable of the Sower is all about. I have nothing but the utmost contempt for certain Baptists who spout "Cheap Grace" where they base their salvation upon some "event" in their life where they pray a prayer, fill out a decision card and get baptized but nothing has taken place in their lives since this event. Their life never changes and they go on living like the Devil but the Baptist Church counts them as "saved" because they "prayed a prayer" with the pastor! Also, what about all of these "Professing Christians" who later "Deconstruct" their faith and ultimately renounce that which they have previously professed? Would you dare to say that these are "still saved" because of their original profession? I have met far too many "OSAS Baptists" who would say just that and preachers who say such things behind their pulpits will one day have to give account to God for promoting such horrible theology! 1 John 2:19 makes it quite clear that those who ultimately renounce their faith never actually had faith to begin with. I like what RC Sproul had to say about this matter. He acknowledges that "Perserverence of the Saints" is often misunderstood and that he personally does not like how this is worded. He said it is actually the "Perseverence of God" that it is God who preserves and keeps us from falling and it is by the power of God that the faith which we profess withstands the test of time, trials, and temptations of this life.

Campus Crusade for Christ has been anything but Calvinistic. They have always had a decisionist and pragmatic approach to personal evangelism which Calvinists would object to and rightfully so.

Get ready for all of the "YA-HOOS" to start popping out of the woods!