"Why won't God heal amputees?"

Archimedes,

Although you are no longer a believer, I am sure you remember this passage quite well:

“
1Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2He came to Jesus at night and said, "Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him." 3In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.[a]" 4"How can a man be born when he is old?" Nicodemus asked. "Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!" 5Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 6Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You[c] must be born again.' 8The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." 9"How can this be?" Nicodemus asked. 10"You are Israel's teacher," said Jesus, "and do you not understand these things? 11I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. 12I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? 13No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man.[d] 14Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. 16"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,[f] that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.”


Archimedes, if you have some time, re read verse 5 and verse 18:
Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.”

and

"Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.”

Christ himself, not I (I am merely bringing his words to your attention), says in the above that you cannot enter the kingdom of God unless you believe in Him. Christ also says that to enter the kingdom of God you MUST be born again. Condition A (belief) and condition B (born again) are one and same. If you are truly born of water and Spirit, you have made the decision to believe in Christ and will enter into his presence. You CANNOT have one without the other, they are mutually inexclusive. Belief is the natural consequence of a true new birth. Some would argue semantics and say that the very instant you are born again is the very instant you have believed unto Christ.

The condition for salvation in the christian worldview (which you are of course, absolutely free to disagree with) is belief in Christ which is a consequence of being born again. NOT whether one claims to have ‘loved’ God or not. Make no mistake, the love that one feels for God is something to celebrate and grow and something that leads us to, in turn, love our neighbor as we love ourselves. But ‘love’ as you define it, is insufficient for salvation in the christian worldview. To make the point even clearer, consider this. Could one claim that Gandhi truly loved God? It is extremely likely that he did yes, some would probably even say it’s a fact that Gandhi did, by virtue of his good deeds. Does that mean however that Gandhi was a born again believer of Christ because he loved God and his neighbor? No it does not. In the same way, do I question whether lkh loved God? Absolutely not. What I question is whether he was truly born again. He was not, and his words combined with the gospel’s truth, bear that out clearly.

I am surprised that someone like you, Archimedes, who clearly has researched his faith/lack of it, would be so misguided on such an essential of the christian faith… You understand the distinction between calvinism and arminianism, and clearly seem to enjoy discussing the finer points of both, but yet have failed to understand what being born again is really about. Again, if someone is GENUINELY born again, they would not even dare to think about going back to their unbelief. That would be like as you elegantly said it, a ‘zero divsior’ moment… in other words, simply impossible, by definition. So my conclusion is that one cannot to claim to have been born again but then to have lost faith in Christ. Those two statements are mutually incompatible and if I was to depict them with simple math/topology, I would represent them as two separate sets. If you have truly been born again, you will not lose your faith in Christ, but rather grow in your faith and be ever increasingly thankful and grateful for what Christ did on the cross for you.

Now before you engage in more ad hominem attacks against me, I want to remind you that I do not condemn lkh or anyone else, but again, Christ said:

18 “…Whoever believes in him (Christ) is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.”

I am merely the messenger here, who brings forth the truth not for the sake of argument (trust me, there are many things I’d rather be doing right now, but since this thread has had 20k views, I felt compelled to speak out as a believer. I am not ashamed of my faith and never will be, God willing).

On a final note, I would like to remind you Archimedes or anyone else reading this thread, including those filled with hate for Christ and christians, that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,[f] that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

It is NEVER too late to come back to God, he welcomes prodigals as much as first borns, with the same love and open arms. Christ gave you a free gift of salvation to atone for your sin and my sin and no good deeds we do will ever make up for, pay for, or cover up our wrong doings. Does a white cloth put over a black cloth stained with dirt make the black cloth clean again? No it doesn’t. The black cloth has to be washed clean before it can be made white again. Christ has effectively washed away our sin by offering himself as a sacrifice for us. The God of the Bible is the only God to have entered into human suffering and shared it with us for the sake of our souls. This is the message of genuine christianity and where it stands so starkly and beautifully different from all other competing belief systems in the marketplace. Everything else, islam, judaism, hinduism, catholicism, buddhism, new agers etc tells you, that if you work hard enough, you might or just might stand a chance of out weighing your wrongdoing with your good deeds, no one really knows. In start contrast, only Christ says, I have already paid the price for your wrongdoing and offer you my free gift of salvation, if you were to only believe in me. That is God’s beauty for all to marvel at in awe. He does not force, compel, push. He simply offers a free gift to us, knowing full well that we have the ability to say no to him and walk away. My prayer is that you choose to accept that gift and experience the tremendous joy and peace that will engulf you as a result of finally being set free by the truth. Jefferis referred to this earlier as having met Christ and this was my experience as well and one that I pray and hope you would come to know one day.

 

Do you understand the implications of omnipotence and predestination as laid out by Calvinist theology?

I say honestly, not as ad hominem, that I'm not sure you do.

Read this essay for a better understanding of what predestination entails.

I was genuinely born again, Maverick1, as far as any Christian in this day and age has ever been. I know the doctrine and the requirements. I still have boxes of doctrine texts in my garage. I know all the legalities, the questions and the spiritual tests. You don't have to remind me of what protestant salvation entails. I assumed, wrongly it seems, that telling you I was a knowledgeable Calvinist would have covered that ground.

You further underline my point here regarding the zero divisor. To repeat, I was indeed GENUINELY born again, as you put it; I am now GENUINELY no longer in the faith. Therefore, I am a walking conundrum. You can assert that I am wrong... but you do not know me, nor my heart, nor the testimony of my friends, nor my past 'spiritual works'. I know all those things.

I met all the qualifications. I believed all the things I was supposed to believe, and not just routinely or rotely. I believed them with my whole heart, with passion and fervor. I lived intellectually and emotionally for God, and cared not of my own glory, for many years.

The fact that I am no longer in the faith thus creates a conundrum. My own personal experience has conclusively invalidated--for me if no one else--a major pillar of theological teaching. Either 'once saved always saved' is simply not correct... or I was deluded and deceived by the God I loved for 15 years or so, even as I strove to selflessly glorify him during that time.

Invalidation or cosmic deceit; either way, the answer does not compute. There are no qualification outs available because I was my own test subject; I can see with unblinking eyes what was true of my heart and mind then, and I see with unblinking eyes what is true of my heart and mind now.

This is why I present a conundrum to you. It doesn't suprise me in the least that you reject my testimony; you have to reject it, don't you see, because my testimony invalidates the doctrine of once saved always saved if true. It would be internally disastrous for you to accept that off the cuff. Of course you reject it.

I suspect you missed the gravity of this point the first time around, simply because you brought it up again without changing the angle.

Again I say this as observation, and not intentional ad hominem. I know what you think, and I know that you absolutely must think it to preserve the structure of your theological beliefs. I know the non-negotiable implications of the P in TULIP full well.

What I'm telling you is thus something very dangerous... dangerous to your faith, that is. By the dictates of Calvinism, I shoud not exist. Yet I do exist. Either it's a mind-boggling cosmic mystery, or something very simple: the theology is wrong. Or actually, not even 'wrong'... closer to 'phony' or 'meaningless.'

If you look hard enough at the implications of Calvinist theology with logical eyes, that theology will begin to unravel. This isn't an endorsement of the alternatives, because they are even worse. Calvinism at least seeks to paint a logical picture of God's omnipotence. Arminianism and Catholocism hold to so many philosophically untenable propositions, it's a wonder the believer's capacity for reason in other areas of life isn't badly damaged by association. Testimony to the mind's awesome plasticity I suppose.

Anyway... when one views everything from within the bubble of faith, that faith acts as a sort of force field, repelling certain outside assertions and neutralizing / neutering others as they pass through. (Note too that many scriptural verses exhorting defense of the faith could easily be adopted by cults. Put on your armor, ye Raelians; take heart Scientologists, your understanding is not of this world, etc.)

Faith is also a ring fence of sorts, creating perspective boundaries one must not step outside. In Christianity, the doctrines of eternal punishment are like electricity and barbed wire for this fence.

If one has spent a very long time inside the ring fence, maybe even their entire adult life, then finding a break in the fence can be deeply traumatic. And if one manages to stumble outside the fence one day, and get a glimpse of the enclosure from the outside... The instinct is to hurry back inside, to repair the breach in the fence as quickly as possible and shut one's mind of it.

But the curious mind, the mind committed to truth, is apt to leave the fence breach open... or to repair it only halfheartedly. The temptation to explore eventually becomes too great, no matter what dangers await outside the safety zone.

And then it's just a matter of time before new territory is explored--and perspective on just about everything changes.

The ironic thing here is that, in all the change I have experienced--or rather, all the growth I have experienced--a few core things have remained the same. For instance, I have the same commitment to truth that I had all along.

In fact it was unwavering commitment to truth that did my faith in. I did not turn back where others would have; when things started to get frightening, I didn't rationalize or hide. I willingly risked all in terms of my relationships, my core beliefs, and even my sanity. It was commitment to truth that gave me that strength. I still have it. Most believers are afraid to give their beliefs the Samsonite test; they are too afraid of what might happen if the mighty rock cracks. Not me. I strode boldly and confidently forward from the earliest days, confident my faith would only become stronger for it.

Oops.

Do I regret my loss? Not in the least. My commitment is still to truth, as it has always been... and I am closer to it now. I have more peace now, and more joy of life now, than I did in my best days as a Christian. I'm still in love with the constellation of aesthetics and virtues that I once assigned to a biblical God. I just no longer have illusions about knowing God's name.

So in a very real and meaningful way, my path to enlightenment hasn't changed. Christianity just turned out to be a temporary stop... a place of passing through.

Happy trails.

 

God is.

The opposite of illusions is not disillusionment but truth. Only to the ego, to which truth is meaningless, do they appear to be the only alternatives, and different from each other. In truth they are the same. Both bring the same amount of misery, though each one seems to be the way to lose the misery the other brings. Every illusion carries pain and suffering in the dark folds of the heavy garments in which it hides its nothingness. Yet by these dark and heavy garments are those who seek illusions covered, and hidden from the joy of truth.

Truth is the opposite of illusions because it offers joy. What else but joy could be the opposite of misery? To leave one kind of misery and seek another is hardly an escape. To change illusions is to make no change. The search for joy in misery is senseless, for how could joy be found in misery? All that is possible in the dark world of misery is to select some aspects out of it, see them as different, and define the difference as joy. Yet to perceive a difference where none exists will surely fail to make a difference.

Illusions carry only guilt and suffering, sickness and death to their believers. The form in which they are accepted is irrelevant. No form of misery in reason's eyes can be confused with joy. Joy is eternal. You can be sure that any seeming happiness that does not last is really fear. Joy does not turn to sorrow, for the eternal cannot change. But sorrow can be turned to joy, for time gives way to the eternal. Only the timeless must remain unchanged, but everything in time can change with time. Yet if the change be real and not imagined, illusions must give way to truth, and not to other dreams that are but equally unreal. This is no difference.

Reason will tell you that the only way to escape from misery is to recognize it and go the other way. Truth is the same and misery the same, but they are different from each other in every way, in every instant and without exception. To believe that one exception can exist is to confuse what is the same with what is different. One illusion cherished and defended against the truth makes all truth meaningless, and all illusions real. Such is the power of belief. It cannot compromise. And faith in innocence is faith in sin, if the belief excludes one living thing and holds it out, apart from its forgiveness.

You will escape from misery entirely or not at all. Reason will tell you that there is not middle ground where you can pause uncertainly, waiting to choose between the joy of Heaven and the misery of hell. Until you choose Heaven, you are in hell and misery.

God is.

Seek peace,

Jesus

 

Whatever dude. Pass the bong.

 

Look closer.

Do you see?

Does this belief exclude one living thing and hold it out, apart from its forgiveness?

Why do you assume I exclude anyone from forgiveness?

Predestination, properly understood, means that at the end of time, all will be saved, without exception. Since this is both your will and God's Will, there is no other way. Yet, you are free to decide when you will make the choice. Time will not end until all have forgiven all for all, for time is relative to forgiveness, literally. There is only time to forgive. The only question is when will you and your bother forgive all for all? Take your time, but the end it known. All you can do is delay happiness. Believe in the illusions of birth and death and damnation all you want. The illusions end when all is forgiven. How can your will and God's Will be the same regarding this? Because your will preceeds time, for you are God's Son. You are experiencing desires. This is nothing compared to will.

Thus, have you ever really understood me? Have you ever really been free from illusions?

Peace,

Jesus

 

You did not take on my argument which was based on John 3:5 and 3:18... but I am not surprised, because your writings show how hardened of heart you have become. Instead, you throw in the red herring of predestination and calvinism and build a straw man response...

I will try one more time... according to the words of Jesus, if you are born again, you believe in Him. You cannot reject Christ after having been born again. That is like saying that 0 + 0 = 1. Predestination has NOTHING to do it. Again, you have gone off a meaningless tangent.

Whether God predestined you or not to be saved is not what we are discussing here. You could assume either way, and still have to confront what I have shown you in my prior post, namely that you simply did not have a genuine salvation experience. Let's assume that I was a calvinist, then I would say that God did NOT predestine you to be saved, because you have turned away from him, regardless of how hard you try to argue that you were. I would base myself on John 3:5 and 3:18. If I wasn't a Calvinist, I would say that your testimony invalidates your claim that you were once saved because of my prior argument based on John 3:5 and John 3:18.

Now I understand that you can say you were saved but your testimony sinks you against the truth of Christ's words. Your testimony does NOT invalidate once saved, always saved because you PRESUPPOSE that you WERE once saved. I have gone to great lengths to show you that you were NOT, based on Christ's teaching. I don't need to know you or your past devotion/works, since the latter have no bearing on the truthfulness of your experience. One can be sincere and sincerely WRONG my friend. Sincerity is NOT the measure of truth, unfortunately for many. Knowledge is also NOT the yardstick by which one can gauge the geniuneness of the salvation experience. God could not care less of how much you know or have read, your wisdom is foolishness to Him. There is only one 'qualification' that measures the genuineness of a salvation claim, and that is do you believe in Christ. If you don't believe you stand condemned, if you do, you do not stand condemned. If you had really believed initially Archimedes, you would not have questioned your faith.

You are flat out wrong, I'm sorry to have to state it so bluntly. Will you respond to my John 3:5 and 3:18 argument?

 

Sigh...

Apparently I was not blunt enough.

 

To argue is to withhold forgiveness. Thus, you would not be able to build any kind of argument based on my words, properly understood.

Keep trying. Currently you understand as much as Nicodemus .

Salvation is for the mind, and it is attained through peace. This is the only thing that can be saved, and the only way to save it.

It does not appear that you have peace of mind.

There is no condemnation in Christ. You must assume your brother is not in Christ. Therefore you condemn yourself to the status quo. As you measure, so it is measured to you, for he is your brother. Why do you withhold forgiveness from your brother?

I have responded to your call for help in healing.

Peace be with you,

Jesus

 

Is that the best you can do? Your reasoning is weak, and as long as you choose to disregard the two verses I presented you and are incapable of refuting the logic I presented based on those two verses, I will continue to believe that you deluded yourself into believing that you were once saved and now are not. You were never saved Archimedes, whether you believe in predestination or not. God's arms are still wide open, however, it is never too late to embrace grace/Christ.

On a different note, frankly I have never seen any conflict between the predestination argument and free will.... why? because I believe that we are approaching the problem from our limited dimensions of space and time. If you believe that God transcends time and sees past, present and future as one continuum, then you will find all those questions about calvinism and arminianism to be irrelevant. I have to qualify this by saying however that this is my own thinking on the matter, and I do not believe that it affects the main argument presented to you earlier. I wanted to respond to your straw man argument.

 

Indeed, it is not too late for you to embrace my words and forgive your brother! Not as the world forgives, but as I forgive. You do not know how I forgive. If you did, you would see the face of Christ in your brother, and not project your fears upon him.

Fear not! You will not have peace of mind until you fully put off fear, and fear-mongering, which is projection.

Peace,

Jesus