(This site was not developed with the intention of drawing a large number of visitors using trivial methods and shallowness. There is rejoicing among the angels of God over even one sinner that repents and believes in Jesus Christ. (Luke 15:10) If, for as long as this site is in existence, only one sinner is lead to repentance and belief with the aid of the material presented here, then the purpose of this site has been served.)
I CONFESS: Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.
(1 John 4:1-3; 2 John 1:7)
Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah.
Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
Jesus Christ is Lord.
"The promotion of unity at the expense of truth is satanic; it is demonic; it is not true unity. It is not the unity of the Holy Spirit for He is the Spirit of Truth. The Scriptural command which we have in Ephesians to promote the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace is given to those who have a common foundation of truth. Truth by its very nature divides.Where you have appeal to unity at the expense of truth all you can produce is uniformity."
- William Webster
Do you imagine that the Gospel is magnified or God glorified by going to worldlings and telling them that they “may be saved at this moment by simply accepting Christ as their personal Savior” while they are wedded to their idols and their hearts are still in love with sin? If I do so, I tell them a lie, pervert the Gospel, insult Christ, and turn the grace of God into lasciviousness.
- A.W. Pink
There are many today who regard truth and error as matters of small consequence; if a man lives rightly, they say, it matters not much what his beliefs and opinions are. Such statements do not surprise us. Night and day are all one to a blind man. Truth and error are all one to an ignorant man.
- Martyn Lloyd Jones
As the apostle says to Timothy, so also he says to everyone, 'Give yourself to reading.' He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains (inspired by the Holy Spirit) proves that he has no brains of his own. You need to read. Renounce as much as you will all light literature, but study as much as possible sound theological works, especially the Puritanic writers and expositions of the Bible. The best way for you to spend your leisure is to be either reading or praying.
- C. H. Spurgeon
We should aim to speak as in the sight of God. We are to ask ourselves not, 'what did the people think of me?', but, 'what was I in the sight of God?'
- J. C. Ryle
Away, then, with those prophets who say to Christ's people, "Peace, peace," where in there is no peace. Hail, hail to all those prophets who say to Christ's people, "The cross, the cross," where there is no cross. Christians should be exhorted to be zealous to follow Christ, their Head, through penalties, deaths, and hells; And let them thus be more confident of entering heaven through many tribulations rather than through a false assurance of peace.
- Martin Luther
(Theses 92-95)
Woe to him that takes up the fame of godliness instead of godliness! ‘Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.’
- Richard Baxter
In these days of health care for all, education for all, rights for all, and opportunity for all, it seems almost inevitable that the Gospel of Jesus Christ would be obscured by the popular religious teaching of salvation for all. The democratic ideals of equality and equal opportunity have invaded theology as well as politics.
- John Robbins
It's hard to find a liberal liberal.
- R.C. Sproul
I'm always amazed by the people who, despite God's clear and emphatic commands through the Apostle Paul, say things like, "Ah, we need to forget about the differences in our doctrines, and we just need to love one another." as though those two are consistent goals. Surely they haven't come to realize that the only way we can love right is to live right, and the only way we can live right is to believe right.
- Mark Kielar
Time doesn't forgive sin.
- Jeff Noblit
The student of the New Testament should be primarily an historian. The centre and core of all the Bible is history. Everything else that the Bible contains is fitted into an historical framework and leads up to an historical climax. The Bible is primarily a record of events.
- J. Gresham Machen
One of these days some simple soul will pick up the Book of God, read it, and believe it. Then the rest of us will be embarrassed.
- Leonard Ravenhill
I remember when I used to ask Jesus into my heart as a child over and over again. Each time I intended to make absolutely sure that I was saved. Why do we do that? Why is it in some churches that we see the same people walking down the aisle week after week? Perhaps it is because we are looking to something we can do, or have done, to secure the kind of assurance we need. But we can't trust our feelings or our abilities of either will or effort, so we're left with having to trust in the ability of God, 'who is able to keep you from falling' (Jude 24).
-Michael Horton
We must not forget that historic Christianity stands on a basis of antithesis. Without it historic Christianity is meaningless.
- Francis A. Schaeffer
I find it so funny that so many people ask and can't answer the question as to why God has done everything He's ever done. They say it's a mystery. I say it's not. I say they ought to read Ephesians. Do you want to know why God has done everything He's ever done? Do you want to know why there was a garden, why there was a fall, why there was a Christ, why there was a Cross, why there was a resurrection, and why there's you? Do you really want to know? Do you have enough time... or is your Christianity looking at the clock?
- Paul Washer
The Emerging Church: overcoming the theology of Western European white male Christians and replacing it with the theology of Western European white male atheists.
- Way of the Master
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1 comments:
Sorry, it's hard to tell if the comment went through or not -- second try:
At around 0:15:00 or so, the speaker states the fact that God chose to actuate a world determined by decisions of free creatures. Then he goes on to say "that" is a severe limitation of the extent and the nature of God's will and his decision (I assume that by "that," he means "God's decision to actuate such a world").
However, he offers no evidence that God's decision to do so supposedly limits either the extent or the nature of His will and decision -- the speaker simply makes the blunt statement without offering any logical or scriptural reasons for anyone to accept it.
There are good logical reasons not to accept it, however:
All Theists should understand that the extent and the nature of God's will are unlimited. This means that God could freely choose to do anything that He wanted to do in any circumstance.
This does not imply, however, that God must choose to do everything that He could possibly do in every circumstance -- actually, God is never under any obligation. For example, He could choose to induce all the people in the world to increase their sins and to reject His love, if He wanted to. However, that is not what He wants to do, so He does just the opposite. He's under no obligation to go in either direction -- He freely chooses to go in the good direction.
God's free choice to induce the world to stop sinning and to accept His love instead, while neglecting to induce us to sin and reject Him, does not imply that He could not have chosen the sinful scenario instead -- He could easily have chosen it.
We are talking about His free choice, and the mere act of freely choosing A over B does not logically imply that there was no freedom to choose B -- neither when man chooses A, nor when God chooses A. God's choosing good over evil does not limit His free will in any way -- that act of choosing is simply a function of His free will.
It is abundantly clear that Molinism does not state, neither implicitly nor explicitly, that God's free choices somehow limit the nature or extent of His will.
Just like the speaker in this video understands that the extent and the nature of God's will is unlimited, so do all the proponents of classical Molinism, and I'm sure, so does Dr. Craig (I have heard him speak many times -- his statements about God's knowledge have been very clear).
Molinism does not put any limits on God at all -- not on His knowledge, not on His free will, not on anything in God's regard. Actually, Molinism posits a more complete and unlimited picture of God's knowledge than opposing beliefs do.
In fact, those who oppose Molinism (or oppose the idea of God's middle knowledge) are attempting to put a limit on God's knowledge, which is a "no-no" to all true Theists: By stating the belief that Molinism is somehow incorrect, one is implying that God somehow lacks a certain kind of knowledge, that God somehow lacks the knowledge that goes by the name "middle knowledge."
Of course, it is necessary to all true Theists to understand God's knowledge to be absolutely complete and absolutely unlimited, and this means that He certainly knows all that we can conceive of as well as knowing all that we cannot conceive of. Any honest and intelligent appreciation of God's absolutely complete and absolutely unlimited knowledge must necessarily accept the fact that God possesses middle knowledge -- to reject that fact is equal to stating that there is some lack somewhere in God's knowledge, and that lack (the lack of God's middle knowledge) is a limit imagined by the imperfect human mind and falsely attributed to God.
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