The real question is whether those who ARE saved were chosen to be such from the beginning of time, and whether certain people were never chosen to be saved.

I may have missed it, but no one seems to address the question that the video was discussing.

Those who sought out salvation by professing their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and then later, fading away, falling away. Returning to their old worldly life full of sin.

This is the part that I struggle with. Because that sounds like me.

Does anyone who watched the video have any thoughts on that specific topic?

Take a look at this


It often comes from a Neglected relationship with God.

Think of it as if you had a wife whom you were in love with and married.
Then you started to pay less and less attention to her and paid more
attention to other things. In time your once-hot love will grow cold
and you will be more concerned about other things than with her.

Waco folks weren't given a choice, Jonestown wasn't even religious, they where communists forced into suicide by the leadership.  None of those examples reflect conviction in the face of extreme hardship. Romans where stringing Christians from crosses and feeding them to lions. Those men had conviction, this conviction ultimately won the day and culminated in the greatest societies ever known to men.

If you're denying that the West, particularly the U.S is rooted in biblical teaching and belief in God then you don't know anything about your own history. Your existence is incredibly improbable as is, without Christianity there's no West, no you.

We all have free will, and we can chose how to live our lives.  But God also knows who will choose to be saved and those who will not. He loves all of us, and doesn't want any of us to spend eternity in hell, but its not a choice He will make for you.

Bingo

Look, the world is what it is and the people surfing it can't grasp they can't "Control" or "Manage"  people. From either spectrum.

Christianity has been around for roughly two thousand years.

The religion it evolved from, Judaism, maybe twice that long.

People have been around orders of magnitude longer. Depending on what you consider human, let's call it a couple million years.

So what do you think happened to those tens of thousands of generations who lived before this god was thought up?

This is question begging...there was no millions of year, and all the generations of people are recorded in the bible. The old testament saints didn't think up this God (more question begging), they would have had an innate basic knowledge of God, but needed God to reveal Himself to have a much more well orbed knowledge of Him...and of the way of salvation.

Leviticus and Deuteronomy has some good torture and death snuff

This. You are drowning and there is an eternal life preserver within reach.  ??

There is no drowning, sinners are already drowned and dead in their sins. Dead men don't reach for anything, they're as dead as Lazarus was dead laying in a stone cave. It is the Spirit that gives life, and that is at the prerogative of God alone. Only the elect can be saved.

Why does the name of Jesus trigger you? You need Him.

I’ll leave it up to god as to who will be saved, but those that deny him, I truly feel sorry for them and hope they find him before they’re judged for acceptance into his kingdom.

https://alwaysbeready.com/concise-answers-to-atheists-objections-to-jesus/

What else were you expecting?

I'm a Christian, and I'm also a gigantic sinner. A hypocrite, a liar, and I lust over worldly things. If you think that because I'm a Christian that I should be perfect, well I'm gonna disappoint ya.

I'm just forgiven.

I often wonder if people who put religious stuff in the GD forums don't know there is a religion forum, or if they just don't want to follow the rules because they think they can "reach more people", or because they like to stir up controversy.  Oh, well, I can always just skip all the drama and go onto another thread.

"The book" has many conflicting messages, so some folks aren't sure which one to follow.  A good example is homosexuality....  One passage says to kill them, another one says to hate the sin, love the sinner, love your neighbor as yourself, etc.  

Islam says that the most recent writings in their book are the ones to follow.  I'll give them props for at least sorting out the whole mixed messages issue.

Any Christian who is Honest understands who they really are.

By The Way, Have you met my friend Paul?  Romans 7:14-25

...or refrain from giving bone cancer to a child.

Did God give it to him?

Or could it be that we live in a polluted world?

Who are those who can never be saved?


Those who refuse to apply critical thinking skills and reflect objectively on their belief in religion. They cannot be saved. They will waste their life obsessing over imaginary beliefs/beings. Just leave them alone and go on about your life. They cannot be saved.

Democrats.

Nope. There is no such thing as a certain "elect" people who were chosen for salvation. God provided a way. Its our choice.

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"Later at the Senior Pastor's office"

What have your critical thinking skills brought You to believe in?

Critical thinking skills? Like a life permitting universe popping into existence from nothing, uncaused? Like intelligent life coming from non-life through a random chemical process which has never been observed or replicated?

End

Click

Me…now fuck off to the religion forum

They are called Democrats, Marxists, Communists, Socialists, and the Green Party - WEF contingent... aka the Devil's Spawn.

Its an open forum.

This is why Mary Magdalene was such an important person in the bible, she is constantly seeking Jesus as she knows without him she will slide backward.

Then you have people like Paul who do a complete 180 in life are born again (infant thinking at that stage) and then seek the knowledge to grow and start applying that faith based knowledge which feeds the spirit and will drive a person forward. Anything you want to grow you have to feed.

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The scriptures actually use the word "elect" to describe those "chosen" before the foundation of the world. Spiritually dead people hate God and NO ONE seeks after God, it's God who seeks His chosen people. Free-willism is just a denial of how truly awful sin is and what it has done to us.  When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, do you think Lazarus  was weighing his options....MMMM...should I get up off this slab or should I just stay dead??? God is the determiner of men's destinies, but men in their gross pride think they are the masters of the own destiny. Free-willism is just gross pride.

John 1:12,13      12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:

13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

Unfortunately yes. Romans 1 describes a downward spiral where a person who willfully rejects God ends up finally being rejected BY God in the end. The Bible talks about there being temptations common to man, but according to Romans 1, at the time a person is given up by God, they are given over to do sins which are not convenient (common or natural).

This is unfortunately a stumbling block for a lot of people when it comes to getting saved. They have this idea that the gospel means serial killers can get saved whenever they want just by believing, and therefore the gospel must be wrong and there must be some works involved in salvation. 9 times out of 10 this can be fixed by understanding the reprobate doctrine.

You want nothing to do w him.  He is simply honoring your desire and removing you from his presence.

Are you arguing that it’s more likely an eternal God has existed forever without any beginning? Do you realize how retarded that sounds?

A man talked to a burning bush. A man talked to a snake. A man parted an entire sea. 3 men walked through a burning building. The entire bible is filled with ridiculous stories less believable than Santa Claus. It was written by men who lived thousands of years ago. How come none of that ridiculous stuff has ever been observed or replicated in thousands of years?

Historically speaking, religion has been used as nothing more than population control by governments and as a mortality coping mechanism by individuals.

A God that is so loving that he allows children to be raped, tortured, mutilated, diseased, etc. Look around you at all the evil in the world and how much harm it brings to innocent people. A loving God would have never created that.

A God so caring that if you do not worship and accept him as your savior you will burn in hell for eternity. It’s “your own free will” to serve him. However, he’s eternal and ominous which means he already knows what you’re going to do. So therefore he literally created you to put you in a burning hell for all of eternity.

Or just look at the big picture. Even if you ignore the stupidity of a magical God/Heaven/Hell and that you have some mythical soul;

There is literally no point to life. 75 years (avg lifespan) on earth is nothing compared to eternity. Our entire existence on earth is meaningless. And you do not have free will because God already knows the future and what you will decide. Therefore, he created humans and the Earth as a game. After you die, some burn in hell forever.

We all got a lot worse than that coming. High treason has it's consequences.

Don't worry, you'll die soon enough and in two generations at most nobody will care you were even here. And after you die and turn to dust, Christ will still be saving His people and changing the world.

Post somewhere else.  You can and will fight about these matters forever.   After my 20 daughter died 6 years ago I had to rethink all I thought I knew and believed.  My eyes are now open to all thoughts.  Believe what you want and what gets you thru the day.  Just be careful what you believe it may be a lie.  I don't talk about religion,  God,  Satan and the end times.  Good luck.  

That applies to 99.999999999999% of humans in history.

Christ is a figment of your imagination.

Jesus of Nazareth is far from a figment. There's really not much debate out in the world that he was a real person. Unbelievers that  were close in time to him talked about him. We have eye witnesses to him who wrote about him. You don't have world religions started based on the founder not actually being real. Mohamed was real, Siddhartha Guatama was real...etc etc. people like David and Solomon from the OT were real, there are ancient inscriptions of their names.

Dust you are and to the dust you will return.

God will remember me, I have His promise.

This is what I say Calvinists do and here is yet another example.

The Bible doesn't say some are chosen before the foundation of the world.

Here is what it says:

Eph 1: 4 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:

Those IN HIM - that is in Jesus Christ - are chosen before the foundation of the world.

No person is IN HIM until in repentance they humble themselves and believe the gospel - that Christ died for our sins, was buried and rose again the third day.

ONLY THEN are they baptized into the body of Christ through the action of the Holy Spirit.

The METHOD of salvation - sinners receiving a new birth and becoming the body of Christ is what was predetermined....

Not the individuals who would be saved.

The Bible tells us it is Jesus Christ who is the elect:

Isa 42:1 Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.

1 Pet 2:6 Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded.

Jesus Christ is the elect, and once a sinner believes the gospel and is baptized into the body of Christ that person becomes elect by virtue of being in the elect.

Calvinists, as we see here, love to say that dead men can't do anything.  Dead men can't hear.  But the very example used - Lazarus...  Lazarus was dead when he heard!

And then Jesus said this:  John 5: 25 Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.

Sinners, spiritually dead in sins and trespasses, CAN hear the voice of the Son of God.  If they WILL hear, they can be saved.

Christ is the elect of God, those in Christ have become elect when they became part of His body and...

The nation of Israel is also called elect.

Isa 45: 3 And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the LORD, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel. 4For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect, I have even called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me.

The Bible tells us it is a choice men make whether they will see and hear or not.

Acts 28: 26 Saying, Go unto this people, and say, Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive: 27 For the heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.

This passage refers to the Jews in the nation of Israel, who corporately as a nation were called elect.  So here we see elect people who did not want to hear - they were dull of hearing and you had elect people who closed their own eyes because they did not want to see.

The Bible also speaks of elect angels.

1 Tim 5:21 I charge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the elect angels, that thou observe these things without preferring one before another, doing nothing by partiality.

Systems teach their system, they don't teach the Bible.

Those who follow systems place the system over the Bible and won't allow the Bible to show them the error of their system.  

It's not just Calvinism, all the systems do that.

Atheists love the Calvinistic god.

Everything is predetermined and therefore everything is God's fault.

It's a false construct that allows them to rationalize rejecting God.

And free-willers like Criley teach a system that puts man at the center of his own salvation. We Calvinists start with God's sovereignty, free-willers make man sovereign, teaching that God must bow to the will of man.

Please Criley, exegete John 1:13 for us.  

Everything is God's fault? That's one of the grosses mischaracterizations, bordering on a lie I've seen lately.

Maybe you can regale us with the name of the Atheists that love the Calvinistic God.

Let me ask you something Criley...did God know that Adam would fall? I remember now....God isn't omniscient. Because He doesn't know what it's like to personally be a worm or some such non-sense.

As for your idea that somehow Israel was "elect".

Romans ch9:3-6

3For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: 4Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; 5Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen. 6Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel: 7Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. 8That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed. 9For this is the word of promise, At this time will I come, and Sara shall have a son.

Notice Criley how that not all Israel is really Israel. And where is man's free will in all this? Well, no where, it's all by promise, whose promise? God's promise. Did Sara will to have an "elect" son? Or did God in His sovereignty cause her to conceive?

So this how free willers operate. They take a passage like John 5:25 25 Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.

AND they read into this passage free will because they read free will into EVERYTHING. There is absolute nothing in this passage that speaks of how the dead might here. But here, let go to the passage before and after.

John 5:24-26 24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.

25 Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.

26 For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself;

Notice how the whole emphasis is on the Father and the Son having life within themselves. Lazarus was as dead as a door nail. Who had the life? Not Lazarus. Christ did. And how was Lazarus able to rise from the slab? By exercising his free will according to Criley. But he was dead, how could he hear? BECAUSE  Christ made him alive.

Here's a test for Criley and all of you. Next time you're around a dead person see if they can hear you. Get back to me on how it went.

Here's a very simple question for Criley and any other free willer out there. Has every man, woman, and child that has ever lived up to this point in history had a chance to hear the Gospel? WITHOUT exception? If not, what's that say about the god you believe in? Not quite the Almighty you thought He was?

Yes. Four verses in front of John 1:13 that befuddled you.
John 1:9
That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.