Dear Marc:
I will make a few COMMENTS to your unscriptural assertions in your email.....
Mr. Smith -
After reading many of your articles I cannot help but to see the Gnostic flavorings in your teachings. Although you adhere to none of the so called "Gnostic sacred scriptures" you read and interpret the authorized canon in the same type of manner as do the Gnostics. Much is not taken literally and much is the "inner" personal Armageddon of man. This is not why I am writing to you though, the reason is Predestination vs freewill.
COMMENT: Do you have "one" example of what you say? I have read your papers on freewill and right off noticed that you have chosen one teaching in the scriptures (Predestination) over the other teaching (God holds man responsible due to his own will.)
COMMENT: "Predestination" is taught throughout the Scriptures. "Responsibility" is no where taught in the Scriptures--man is held "accountable" not responsible, and yes there is a difference in the two words. No where does the Bible teach or use the term "FREE" will, so why you? So what you are really accusing me of is this: "You, Ray, have chosen what the Bible teaches over what the Bible DOES NOT TEACH, and I [Marc] feel you are wrong for doing this--you are like the Gnostics!"
Me thinks that you are not accurate in your statements, neither fair. You, in my opinion, have failed to connect these two teachings in a satisfactory manner.
COMMENT: Are you crazy? How does one "connect properly" a Scriptural truth with a man-made falsehood? In the words of Rev Spurgeon
COMMENT: " He sent redemption unto His people: He hath commanded His covenant for ever: holy and REVEREND IS
H-I-S NAME" (Psalm 111:9), not heretic Spurgeon's name. reverend in which I believe he was being so very honest with himself, he stated: “The system of truth revealed in the Scriptures is not simply one straight line, but two; and no man will ever get a right view of the gospel until he knows how to look at the two lines at once. For instance, I read in one Book of the Bible, The Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him who hears say, Come. And let him who is athirst, Come. And whoever will, let him take the water of life freely [Rev. 22:17]. Yet I am taught, in another part of the same inspired Word, that it is not of he who wills, nor of he who runs, but of God Who shows mercy [Rom 9:16].
COMMENT: Spurgeon admits that these two two Scriptures are true, that is "straight lines," and then proceeds to to tell us that THEY ARE CONTRADICTIONS! "Freely" [Gk: 'dorean'] means gratuitously--without a COST, not by mans' "free will." That is unscriptural nonsnse to suggest that man's free is at work in this verse. WHO is the water of life? Is it not Jesus? Can anyone come to Jesus "by his own FREE will?" "No man CAN come to Me [Jesus] except the Father draw him [Gk: drag]...." (John 6:44). Of course what good is there in me quoting Scriptures to the great Spurgeon seeing that he believes these "straight line" truths of Scripture CONTRADICT? I see, in one place, God in providence presiding over all, and yet I see, and I cannot help seeing, that man acts as he pleases, and that God has left his actions, in a great measure, to his own free-will.
COMMENT: Spureon sees this in his own God-defying, God-rebelling, carnal MIND, not in the Scriptures (Rom. 8:7). Now, if I were to declare that man was so free to act that there was no control of God over his actions, I should be driven very near to atheism; and if, on the other hand, I should declare that God so over-rules all things that man is not free enough to be responsible, I should be driven at once into Antinomianism or fatalism. That God predestines, and yet that man is responsible, are two facts that few can see clearly.
COMMENT: What? What? WHAT?? Few people can see these contradictions "clearly" as Spurgeon does? Can you not recognize a lying, two-faced hypocrite when you are reading his damning contridictions right in front of your eyes? Man is not "responsible." Show me that word in the Scriptures? Man is accountable, and not because he could have done differently, but because he sins willingly from his own heart, and this is wrong; he must be corrected in judgment for this. They are believed to be inconsistent and contradictory, but they are not. The fault is in our weak judgment. Two truths cannot be contradictory to each other.
COMMENT: Excuse me, but where did he present "two truths" in his statement? He presented one "God predestinates" and then assumes a falsehood "man is responsible" to be the second truth. If, then, I find taught in one part of the Bible that everything is fore-ordained, that is true; and if I find, in another Scripture, that man is responsible for all his actions, that is true; and it is only my folly that leads me to imagine that these two truths can ever contradict each other� (Charles H. Spurgeon, Autobiography Vol. 1: The Early Years. pp. 173, 174).
COMMENT: You did not carefully read my paper on "free will." At the Cross Jesus asked His Father to forgive those who took part in His crucifixion. Why did He as this prayer? (Luke 23:34)--"Father forgive them for they KNOW NOT what they do...." Could these sinners have "resisted" by means of their fabled "free will," being partakers in this crucifixion? No, no they couldn't have, but do you believe the Scriptures?
Jer 13:23--" Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard l his spots ? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil."
Neither Spurgeon nor you apparently believe any of these dozens and dozens of Scriptures I presented in my paper. Your view of "Absolutes and Relative" verses in the scriptures hold no more water than the argument the free will believers put forth. You have both chosen one teaching over the other. The problem as I see it is how can you determine what is to be an absolute and what is to be considered relative. Like the Apostle Paul in many of his epistles states "Predestination" and then also in many of his epistles worries about being "cast away" by his own will/actions. Did he really not believe that he could be cast away as he put it? Did he write that just to fill space as he did in many other pIaces in his epistles? I mean out of anyone it was Paul who championed the issue of predestination the most in the scriptures.
COMMENT: Once again, you assume that there is a contradiction in Paul's thinking based on human carnal reasoning. YES, Paul believed that God Predestines all things. Therefore Paul absolutely knew that all whom God has predestined to be saved WILL BE SAVED. But God never told Paul that he was one predestined to be saved, and therefore could never, nohow fall away. In fact God has not told any of us that. That is why the Scriptures tell us that JESUS know those who are His. We don't. We hope. We believe. We never let down, because He has not told any of us for an absolute certainly that we will not fall or fail. There are those whom God will predestine to start out doing His will, but who will be predestined before the end of their lives to fail. That is why God has given us such Scriptures as Heb. 10:26-29 and I Cor. 9:27. Just one of the many paradoxes in the scriptures, like the ever favorite, our we saved by faith or by works?
COMMENT: How can one "study" the Scriptures and not know the answer to your invented "paradox?" Is there a Scripture that tells us how we are saved? Yes there is: "For by GRACE [not 'faith' as you state] are you saved THROUGH faith...." (Eph. 2:
. Now then, shoe me a Scripture that states "For by WORKS are you saved....?" Do you have one? Then HOW, pray tell, is this a "paradox" to you? Doe's God choose our destinies or do we?, our we saved by grace or by deeds/actions? Paradox after paradox.
COMMENT: I do not even know where to begin with such foolish and unscriptural assertions. GOD, of course, chooses the destiny of all humanity (I Cor. 15:28, and a hundred like it). There is no Scripture which says we are "saved by works," so why do you suggest it. James assures is that if we HAVE NO WORKS, it is proof that WE HAVE NO FAITH. He does not suggest that we are "saved BY WORKS!" You, nor Spurgeon, nor any of the false theologians of Christendom have a clue as to what "grace" is. "For the GRACE OF GOD...TEACHES [Gk: chastens, corrects, instructs, etc.] us that...we should live SOBERLY, RIGHTEOUSLY, AND GODLY, in this present age" (Titus 2:11-12).
If you are not living "SOBERLY, RIGHTEOUSLY, AND GODLY," then you are not being graced by the grace of God, plain and simple.
People fail to read verse 10 after reading Eph. 2:8. Verse 10 states: "For we are HIS workmanship [Gk: 'achievement'--we are not OUR OWN FREE WILL achievement]...H-I-S achievement, created in Christ Jesus UNTO GOOD WORKS, which God has before ordained ['before ordained' means 'PREDESTINATED'] THAT WE SHOULD WALK IN THEM." Walking in Good works is the result of being graced. If you are not walking in good words and godly living, then you are NOT being graced by God--James understood it and Paul understood it, but Spurgeon has not a clue. To the natural mind these issues contradict each other
COMMENT: The first and only true thing you have said so far. "For the carnal [natural] mind is ENMITY [hatred] toeard God, for it is not subject to the law of God neither is it able" (Rom. 8:7). Which only proves that Spurgeon and all who think that crooked lines are truths of God, are yet carnal.
and no matter how many "theories" that I have heard over the years to try to reconcile these seemingly contradictory teachings one (who is honest with himself) still walks away saying "Huh? I still just do not get it." How can we be "Predestined" (as the scriptures teach) and yet still be held responsible for our actions (also clearly taught in the scriptures). How can we be saved by faith (again as taught in the word) "apart from the law" when the scriptures also plainly teaches us that only those who are "overcomers" and keep the law will enter into life? How can both sides of these many paradoxes the scriptures put forth both be correct? One teaching, again to the natural mind, seems to nullify the other. These have as long as I can remember plagued me in my search for the truth. The above article offers a third view to these paradoxes that although I am no t fully convinced it is the right one, it doe's seem to make a little more sense than what I have heard in the past. I do know one thing, something is missing and to quote Mr. Spurgeon, "it is my own folly that prevents me from seeing it" for I know that the scriptures are indeed the very words of the Living God.
COMMENT: Clearly you don't "get it." I do, and I thank God for it. I dont know what else I can tell you. I gave you 120 pages of Scriptures in my paper on free will, and if you don't get, then you don't get it.
God be with you,
Ray Marc
