The Institutes Book 1, Chapter 1

This raises an interesting question. Did the Old Testament saints have the same adoption experience which we experience? A good case can be made that they did not.

But they were regenerate. 1 Corinthians 2:14 proves that.

My point is that regeneration and the experience of adoption are not the same thing. Regeneration is secretive. The Spirit crying "Abba, Father" is not.

If John is actually making a peculiarly dispensational point associated with the First ADVENT of the Messiah, then it is not contradicting the Calvinistic Order and Causes of Salvation at all. In other words, John is not necessarily talking about regeneration, but about Christian conversion</b and the Christian experience of adoption.

This is the way I have always read the text, anyway. It works for me. This is because I read the first chapter of John as presenting what is NEW as a result of Christ's appearance among the people of God.

That does not answer who will come, does it? Why some come and others do not? It's the same cement wall the Arminians keep banging their heads against. If we are agreed that all men are fallen, then what is it that causes one person to "respond to the Light of the Gospel," and others to "choose the darkness," as FTD asked. The Arminians would have us believe some men are capable of choosing God on their own; they're not quite as "fallen" as others. Like the ruling-class pigs in "Animal Farm," some animals are "more equal" than others. But Calvin was a true egalitarian who wrote that only after we acknowledge all men to be fallen and utterly lost, can we begin to perceive the true and vast nature of God; that all salvation, like everything else, comes from He who created it.

It is not about 'equality' it is about desire.

You start with an unproved premise, total inability and then build your theology around that.

Scripture teaches that men can desire God even though they can do nothing to reach Him.

That is why He has given nature and a conscience to man

That they should seek the Lord,if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from everyone of us. (Acts.17:27)

Thus, though man is blind, he can cry out to the Lord 'Lord that I may see'.

The Calvinist notion of 'equality' is laughable and is fact the same as the 'animal house' that you depict.

For some unknown reason, (even though all deserve to be damned) some were picked and others rejected.

It is in Calvinism with its limited Atonement and Unconditional election that you find the true inequality, after all, that is why you call yourselves, the 'elect'! LOL!

All men can respond to the Light of the Gospel if they will, but they choose the Darkness instead (Jn.3:19) That does not answer who will come does it? Why some come or anothers do not This chapter of the Institutes is about the character of God and how we can not know ourselves untill we know Him..and how we can not know Him untill we know ourselves ....I think that might come under the heading of "revelation" of God to a man about who He is ...that is the whosoever..the one with eyes to see and ears to hear.. It is not a matter of who is in the right place at the right time or who is smarter or more holy...

What do you think, it is not God's will to get all men the message of the Gospel?

Does not even nature reveal God to man so that he will begin to grope towards God ( Psa.19,Rom.1,Acts 17)

Now, here is the amazing thing, you talk about the 'mystery' of God in election and yet, there can be no mystery in God calling all men to salvation?

Since you cannot understand how it would work and even though Scripture speaks of it, you reject it because you cannot understand why some would respond and some would reject the free gift.

It is not for you to understand the how only the fact that it does occur since God throughout His Scriptures says 'whosoever'.

But, you would rather make God lie in His Scriptures (and run to a 'secret will') then to accept the facts that Scriptures say that God wants all men saved and died for all men and all men are savable.

Thus, in your hubris you feign humility, while rejecting the truth revealed to you in the words of God.

It is about desire.

If, as Calvin reinterates, we all have a "religious propensity," then what causes one man to desire Christ and another man to seek the golden calf?

Is it perhaps the purer soul of the Arminian who thinks he freely chooses God while his lesser brethren wallow in self-deceit?

Or is it simply a gift from God to man?

You can slight all the Calvinists you want, but you can't get around the fact that it's YOU who thinks you're better than the Somalians and Chinese and pigmies because YOU decided in favor of God.

But it sticks in your throat to admit it. Rightly so.

God wants all men saved.

But since we agree that all men are NOT saved, God's will is thwarted by man, right?

The omnipotent force of all time and space, creator of creation, beginning and end, God is greeted by man with "Uh-uh, no thanks; I'd prefer not to."

I didn't get this principle until it was said to me about 100 times.

Where are we at with you, FTD?

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