To: Brumar89 who wrote (29057 ) 1/5/2000 8:12:00 PM From: Berry Picker Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 39621
You are quite right and very clever Bruce... The Reformers stated it this way in the ================================================================== Westminister Confession of Faith 1643. Try to remember this work took 5 years and many of the best theologians the world has ever seen. Many of these men spoke all three of the scholarly languages. Hebrew, Greek, and Latin but all of them understood all to well that true spiritual understanding was by God's Grace through the Holy Spirit. CHAPTER X.Of Effectual Calling. I. All those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those only, he is pleased, in his appointed and accepted time, effectually to call, by his Word and Spirit, out of that state of sin and death in which they are by nature, to grace and salvation by Jesus Christ: enlightening their minds, spiritually and savingly, to understand the things of God, taking away their heart of stone, and giving unto them an heart of flesh; renewing their wills, and by his almighty power determining them to that which is good; and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ; yet so as they come most freely, being made willing by his grace. II. This effectual call is of God's free and special grace alone, not from any thing at all foreseen in man, who is altogether passive therein, until, being quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit, he is thereby enabled to answer this call, and to embrace the grace offered and conveyed in it. III. Elect infants, dying in infance, are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth. So also are all other elect persons who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word. IV. Others, not elected, although they may be called by the ministry of the Word, and may have some common operations of the Spirit, yet they never truly come to Christ, and therefore can not be saved: much less can men, not professing the Christian religion, be saved in any other way whatsoever, be they never so diligent to frame their lives according to the light of nature, and the law of that religion they do profess; and to assert and maintain that they may is without warrant of the Word of God. ================================================================== I agree with all that they said as being what the Bible does indeed teach! I believe this is the hardest teaching for the Christians to accept. If you can get past this one your on your way.