I was careful to not write in a manner that Raymond would find offensive and if it were me I don't think I would find Jeanne's posting offensive either. I hope Raymond does come back.
Alright, it's been about two weeks, so now we can say he's probably gone. He started making some one-liner comments like he had a chip on his shoulder before he left, and that's a pattern we've seen here many times before. Again, this is why we require most people to come here and discuss things with us before they join our church; not to say that Raymond was joining us because that was never brought up, but I'm saying that the people we often (at first) think are with us, turn out to be not with us after a bit of conversation.
What you're trying to do, Raymond, is to remove any personal responsibility for sin and place all the blame on God, and that's not going to fly.
Not at all. Because I have a personal will, I am responsible for my actions. My nature dictates how I exercise that will in any given situation.
That was a total cop-out and he should be ashamed of himself. That's why I started getting firm with him; when people start deceiving others, I don't have a lot of patience left. That was a sleight-of-hand trick that he thought would fool others, and not only was it a little surprising (because I didn't expect to see him do that), I don't appreciate that garbage, especially here where there are other Christians around the world that read this forum.
Raymond knows that by "free will," we mean that we have the ability to make a choice that is apart from God's will. That's why I demonstrated to Raymond, from the Scripture, that God is not willing that any man should perish, but wills that all men come to repentance in 2 Peter 3:9, and thus, we have a free will to choose that which is not God's will. That's not hypothetical, that's simple, and can be proven Scripturally.
Instead of saying he has a "free will," so to avoid any agreement with us, while trying to appear reasonable on the outside (as if he does not believe in heresy), he says he has "personal will," which, as far as I'm aware, he did not define. Again, he says on the surface that he is "responsible for his actions," but while at the same time saying that it's not really his responsibility because it's the fault of "his nature." The reason I pointed out to him that either God was responsible for his sin nature (which is heresy) or devils were responsible (which is an indirect version of the same heresy), is because the only option left is that we make our own choices, but he desperately wants to avoid that, as he demonstrated earlier when he quoted Noah Webster's 1828 dictionary on the word 'will'.
Webster's 1828:
WILL, noun [See the Verb.]
1. That faculty of the mind by which we determine either to do or forbear an action; the faculty which is exercised in deciding, among two or more objects, which we shall embrace or pursue.
---> The will is directed or influenced by the judgment.
The understanding or reason compares different objects, which operate as motives; the judgment determines which is preferable, and the will decides which to pursue.
---> In other words, we reason with respect to the value or importance of things; we then judge which is to be preferred; and we will to take the most valuable. These are but different operations of the mind, soul, or intellectual part of man. Great disputes have existed respecting the freedom of the will will is often quite a different thing from desire.
Here's where he gets really deceptive. I wanted to cover more on this earlier, but I was waiting a couple of weeks to see if he would give a response, or at least repent of his heresy. He obviously did not, decided to depart, and worse still, in my opinion, he never gave his reasoning for why he was holding so tightly onto his heresy, which is the core of what I want to know.
Raymond highlighted the part about the will being directed or influenced by the judgment, and then said: "
If the will is directed by the judgement consider all the possible influences on that judgement!" That has
NOTHING to do with the argument that's being made to Raymond. This is a red herring, and you can tell because if you keep reading Webster's explanation in the next sentence, he says:
"the judgment determines which is preferable, and the will decides which to pursue"So the either we decided to disobey God, or God decided and disobeyed Himself on our behalf. There's more under the word 'will' in that dictionary, so I "decided" (if you will, or perhaps, under Raymond's belief, by the will and power of God to disprove Raymond's false beliefs) to keep reading to point #2:
2. Choice; determinationWebster starts with a full explanation, and then simplifies it in point 2 that it is a choice, but isn't it interesting that Raymond just skipped over that? In fact, the very first thing Webster suggests to do is go to the
VERB portion of the word 'will'. Okay, let's go down to that and see what he says:
To determine; to decide in the mind that something shall be done or forborneRaymond was simply trying to avoid saying we have choice or make decisions, and yet, the very source he was using agrees with the doctrine I'm teaching.
The final deception of Raymond (both deceiving us and himself) is found in his first response on this thread:
The choices that God offers reveal the nature of the one deciding one course over another, or whether to obey or disobey. A regenerated spirit's nature is to obey and please God, but unregenerated flesh's nature is to disobey God and please itself, so there's the warfare. An dead spirit and unregenerated flesh obviously would have no reservations against absolutely revelling in sin.
choice (n): the act of choosing; the voluntary act of selecting or separating from two or more things that which is preferred; or the determination of the mind in preferring one thing to another; the power of choosing, optionRaymond says that a man who is unregenerated with choose the evil.
Raymond says that a man who is regenerated will choose the good.
Raymond says that both are the nature of man, and that the choices God offers them (which means Raymond
DOES believe in choice), reveals their nature. The problem with all this is that God
CHANGES the nature of a man upon regeneration, and what Raymond is skipping over is how/why that happens.
And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.
-Eph 2:1-3I believe this is where the disagreement lies: I believe that God can bring the Holy Spirit to a man to give him understanding of his sin, but a man has the power of choice, which liberty God gives to all men, and men can
REJECT the Holy Spirit of God. (This has to do with a man seeing his sin and making a choice, which Paul covers in Romans 7, SEE HERE:
http://creationliberty.com/articles/bookromans02.php#7) This is why the only unforgivable sin in the Bible is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit of God because when a man accuses the Holy Spirit, the grace and healing, of being of the devil, claiming that the Spirit of God is wicked or evil, there is no hope of his salvation.
Raymond is holding on to the belief that a man has no choice in the matter if the Holy Spirit of God comes to a man. That's simply ignorance, and likely a heresy he's hanging onto for "personal will" reasons he will not disclose. A man cannot choose to do the good without the Holy Spirit of God, nor can a man call Jesus "Lord" (not in the generic sense, by which many call Jesus "Lord" under false pretenses [
Mat 7:21-23], but in the sense of true faith in the heart) without the Holy Spirit of God. However, a man can reject the Holy Spirit of God, which God gives men free will to do, otherwise, there is no reason for commandments, no reason for judgment, no reason for evangelism, no reason for study, and definitely no reason to argue about this doctrine.
So Raymond did say that he agreed with me that we're both worshiping two different gods. His is a god of heresy that contradicts himself, and we worship and serve the Perfect Living God who was kind enough to not make us into robots, knowing that true love is only found in liberty and choice, choosing us first, and then allowing us the choice to choose Him back.
Personally, I believe the reason men like Raymond hold on to these false doctrines is to justify laziness. After all, if everything is by nature, and there is no free will in man, then what's the point in preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ to others? If he will be honest, there is no purpose in it at that point.
If any of you want to learn more about this, Paul explains more about it in Romans 9. I have notes walking through those verses in the following link if you want to take a look:
http://creationliberty.com/articles/bookromans02.php#9