Steve Usaim

@CherylSchatz @DurdenAD70 @brunobarking @BroDeanBrown01 @JohnMar98888097 You have said you are elected, a member of the elect. You have NOT stated WHO elected you. Did you elect yourself? Did God elect you? Did someone else elect you?

@USAIMREF @DurdenAD70 @brunobarking @BroDeanBrown01 @JohnMar98888097 I already told you. I think you are having trouble conceiving that someone who is a Christian but not a Calvinist can be elect in Christ by grace through faith.

This is brutally honest.

@CherylSchatz @DurdenAD70 @brunobarking @BroDeanBrown01 @JohnMar98888097 I'm going to take that as a yes. The word, "elect" means being "selected" or "chosen" as in "president-elect." Legally bound to a position awaiting a future date to possess that position. Who elected you?

@USAIMREF @DurdenAD70 @brunobarking @BroDeanBrown01 @JohnMar98888097 I already told you. I was elected in Christ by grace through faith. In Christ I share His inheritance in the beloved.

@Waldorfmanhaha @TNTJohn1717 Gal 1:15

@USAIMREF @TNTJohn1717 On the road to Damascus, did God act: - internally to change Saul’s ability in his heart to understand spiritual truths OR - externally to declare the Gospel in power? Is there anything in the text that says Saul was internally regenerated before he could believe what he heard?

🚨‼️Calvinism always wants to make the debate sound like it is between people who believe in God’s sovereignty and people who do not. That is false framing. I believe God is sovereign. I believe God rules, judges, saves, chastens, raises up kings, puts down kings, answers prayer, and works all things after the counsel of His own will. The issue is not sovereignty. The issue is whether Calvin gets to define sovereignty in a way that makes plain verses start apologizing for themselves. The Bible says Christ “gave himself a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:6). It says He tasted “death for every man” (Hebrews 2:9). It says God is “not willing that any should perish” (2 Peter 3:9). It says “whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans 10:13). Those words do not sound confused until a theological system gets nervous and starts filing them down. The Calvinist does not usually deny the verse. He denies the reach of the verse. “All” has to be smaller. “World” has to be narrower. “Every man” has to be qualified. “Whosoever” has to be escorted into the room by election before it is allowed to speak. That is not believing the text. That is putting the text on probation until Geneva approves it. A Bible believer does not need to explain why God used the words He used. The Calvinist needs to explain why his system cannot survive them without redefining them. I am not against grace. I am against a cage being called grace. I am not against sovereignty. I am against a machine being called sovereignty. I am not against election. I am against election being used like a gag in the mouth of “whosoever.”

@CherylSchatz You didn't answer my question. Do you belong to God's elect? And because you just opened yourself up to another question: Who elected you to eternal life? @DurdenAD70 @brunobarking @BroDeanBrown01 @JohnMar98888097

@USAIMREF I was elected to eternal life in Christ, not outside of Christ when I responded to His call and I was saved by grace through faith. And you?

@CherylSchatz Everyone but one? You just negated your assertion that "God desires all men to repent and be saved." You are now saying that at least one person did not have "free-will" in choosing Jesus or not; your 2nd contradiction. @brunobarking @BroDeanBrown01 @JohnMar98888097

From the very beginning, every name was written in the book of life (except one) because Jesus was given before the foundation of the world. No man was predetermined spend eternity in the Lake of Fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels.

@MrTimothyRenfro Millions die without ever hearing the gospel. They go to hell because God chose not to present the gospel to them. God prefers to save those whom He presents the gospel to and to damn those whom He chose not to present the gospel. You believe in the doctrine of election as well.

Differences between Calvinism and Biblical Christianity

@Waldorfmanhaha @TNTJohn1717 On the contrary everything in the Bible is about God choosing people not people choosing God. You agreed the Bible says no one seeks, (chooses), God. Saul rejected Jesus until the day Jesus apprehended him & took him captive for his purposes.

@USAIMREF @TNTJohn1717 Option 1: You’re right on John 6:44 and the rest of the Bible is unintelligible nonsense. Option 2: There are other interpretations of John 6:44 which respect what it says but don’t require you to dismiss everything else in the Bible. Your choice.

@Waldorfmanhaha @TNTJohn1717 believing in Jesus before they actually humble themselves placing faith in Jesus. God does not give Jesus those who are not His. "Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you are unable to accept My message." Jn. 6:43

@Waldorfmanhaha @TNTJohn1717 So none seek God. Very good. Only those whom God draws will respond to Jesus' call. Jn. 6:44 & it is only those who are already owned by God the Father who gives them to Jesus Jn. 6:37 You cannot give something you don't own. God owns those who are saved by

@Waldorfmanhaha @TNTJohn1717 You used analogies that are not comparable to the subject to deflect from answering. Can you answer this one question? Does anyone seek God?

@USAIMREF @TNTJohn1717 What credit is there for humility? If you admit you’re broke, have you paid your debt? If you go to the doctor, have you cured yourself? If a slave cries for freedom, has he freed himself? Does crying “Lord have mercy on me a sinners” atone for your sins?

@Waldorfmanhaha @TNTJohn1717 You just affirmed that it's God who initiates the humility convicting those whom He chooses to convict, to draw to Himself. 1 Does anyone seek God? 2 Do you take the credit for humbling yourself? 3 Or do you give God the credit for imparting humility to you? Will you answer?

@USAIMREF @TNTJohn1717 This is key. We can do nothing to earn grace even though grace requires a response to the conviction and call God provides. Grace is unearned. Grace has a prerequisite. That prerequisite doesn’t obligate God. Grace with a prerequisite remains an unmerited gift.

@Waldorfmanhaha @TNTJohn1717 It comes down to whom you give credit to. Do you take the credit for humbling yourself? Or do you give God the credit for imparting humility to you?

@USAIMREF @TNTJohn1717 This is true as a general principle: God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble. You seem to say it takes grace to humble yourself. I say scripture reverses that order. Any anthropology where grace must precede humility is contrary to scripture.

@JordanMHatfield @HwsEleutheroi Do you believe that ECT is justified for a few people that ever existed? Like Hitler, Genghis Khan, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao? And then do you believe that ECT of justified for the fallen angels, eternal beings, that attempted to overthrow God and His thrown?

It’s truly amazing how otherwise intelligent and rational human beings can be become completely detached from reality and basic moral reasoning through their religion/theological commitments. How someone like @HwsEleutheroi can believe himself to be in possession of a morally superior religion than the Muslim, Mormon, or atheist while at the same time affirming the notion that innocent infants are deserving of burning in everlasting torment, is truly bewildering. If a rational, reasonable person actually considers - TRULY CONSIDERS - just how unimaginably horrible the reality of ECT would be, yet at the same time believes this is what countless babies have essentially been created for, then I don’t think they would be able to function emotionally. People that are able to casually sip their drink while affirming that babies are born to burn forever “for the glory of God” have either never truly begun to consider or comprehend the sheer horror of this doctrine they claim to believe, or they are psychopaths. This is not intentionally spicy language that I’m using to intentionally stir emotion. These are just my honest thoughts. If you find them offensive or aggressive, just know that’s not the point here. I’m simply trying to convey what I have concluded after spending many years as someone who held a deep belief in the traditional view of hell and spent those years deeply reflecting on it. There was a time in my life where I was pondering ECT to such a degree that it shook my whole life to its core… to the point that I was bed ridden, had to quit my job, and move back in with my parents. My belief that people would spend an eternity in agonizing pain and horror became much more than just some abstract theological concept that I intellectually affirmed… it became a tormenting and overwhelming reality to the point that I could not function. I would quite literally lay in bed for hours upon end, writhing in emotional and mental torment. Though some would say I probably had some kind of mental disorder, I think the truth about why this happened to me is a lot more simple. I think I was simply grasping (at least to some degree) just how horrific the reality of my beliefs truly were. To KNOW (not just intellectually assent to the belief) that many people around me, including friends and family, would likely end up in an eternity of agony and horror, was an experience that caused such emotional and mental turmoil that I could hardly function in life. Now apply this to innocent babies, and the degree of turmoil should multiply. Fortunately I came to utterly reject the doctrine of ECT on biblical grounds, but my point is this… I don’t think people like White ACTUALLY believe that infants will go to hell. I don’t think he’s a bad person, or a sociopath… and so I just think he’s doing what most religious people do in some shape or form. He’s intellectually assenting to doctrines which he doesn’t truly fathom or BELIEVE in a meaningful sense. His theological commitments essentially suggest that babies are subjected to unimaginable and endless agonizing torture for the “crime” of simply existing. Just a second or two of meaningfully grasping the actual horror of this belief should/would drop any sane person to the floor in emotional turmoil and cause an existential crisis of massive proportions. Just my take 🤷‍♂️

@Waldorfmanhaha @TNTJohn1717 The principle of grace is not exclusive to "saving grace." There are many "prideful" Christians who have not humbled themselves in other areas of their lives. Who provides the ability for a person to be "prideful" or "humble" as a personality trait in their fallen human nature?

@USAIMREF @TNTJohn1717 God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. This is quoted twice in the New Testament by 2 different authors. How can you justify changing it to “God graciously gives humility so He can give grace to the humble”? Humility must precede grace.

@Waldorfmanhaha @TNTJohn1717 The HS convicts a person of the need prior to the person humbling themselves. There many people who worship God but they are not His children; not His Church. Mth. 7:21-23 Mk. 7:7

@Waldorfmanhaha @TNTJohn1717 You're not accepting the plain teaching of the scripture. God opened her heart so she could believe. And you refuse to acknowledge all of the scriptures that show a man's heart cannot humble itself toward God.

@CherylSchatz Since God is sovereign in the acts of men, this man had no choice but to fulfill God's Word. "The Son of Man will go just as it is written about Him, but woe to that man by whom He is betrayed. It would be better for him if he had not been born.” Mth. 26:24

@CherylSchatz "Not one of them has been lost, except the son of destruction, so that the Scripture would be fulfilled." Jn. 17:12, Ps. 41:9 109:7-9 If God's prophecy were to be fulfilled someone was going to betray Jesus identified as a particular person, "son of destruction."

Before Joseph entered Egypt he had a dream given from God. That dream showed his family bowing down to Joseph. What did God do to Joseph that fulfilled that dream? Did God SEND Joseph to be a ruler, or did God SELL Joseph to be a slave?

@TerriGreenUSA The origin of evil by Pastor John MacArthur In Depth youtube.com/watch?v=yzoPd-…

So where did evil originate? Evil originated where? In heaven? Yes, evil originated in heaven, in an angelic rebellion right under the nose of God. Why Does Evil Dominate the World? — John MacArthur // March 4, 2007 There are people actually who aren’t even that sophisticated; they’re just short answer folks - we hinted at them earlier. You say, “Where did evil come from?” and they’ll say, “Oh, it came from Adam and Eve.” Really? How did it get introduced to Adam and Eve? “Well, oh yeah, that’s right, it came from the snake.” Well, how did the - how did the snake get to a place where he could be embodied by Satan? And how did Satan get to be Satan in which he was tempting people to do evil? “Oh, well, he came from - oh, he came from heaven, didn’t he?” So where did evil originate? Evil originated where? In heaven? Yes, evil originated in heaven, in an angelic rebellion right under the nose of God. You think that was a shock? Then you don’t have a God who is absolutely omniscient. You think God couldn’t stop it once it got going? Couldn’t put an end to it right on the spot? Then you have a God who is not all-powerful. No matter how you deal with it, if you sustain the biblical doctrine of God, God becomes ultimately responsible for the existence of evil. You remember Rabbi Kushner, in the book When Bad Things Happen to Good People? A lot of things wrong with that book. The thing that’s wrong with the title is there are no good people - but let’s grant him his title, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. What he does is reinvent God; He reinvents God. God doesn’t have the knowledge and God doesn’t have the power, so let’s not hold Him responsible for what He doesn’t know and can’t deal with. One writer, Leibniz, looked at this problem and said, “God created the best of all worlds that He could make; He couldn’t do any better.” Really. Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, other sort of ancient philosophies, said God had to deal with two co-eternal and independent realities, good and evil - co-eternal, independent, that is, always existing. Well, none of these answers is adequate. All these answers come from people who lack a fixed God-centered view of reality, and they have to abandon a biblical view of God. But many of the people who offer these kind of answers declare their faith in the Bible and the God of the Bible, but they expect the God of the Bible to be dragged into a human court, a court of human reason, to be judged by a moral law lower than Himself. Wow. Somehow God is a higher being, but we have a higher law. We’re going to acknowledge that God is the eternal God, but we’re going to hold Him accountable to our understanding of justice. Now, when you boil all this down, there are a number of categories in which theodicies can be created. Let me just give them to you. This is a little seminary class, folks, and hang on. The first category is metaphysical; metaphysical. That is to say, evil is inevitable. It is a corollary of good, it’s necessary, it’s yin-yang. It’s a necessary opposite; if one thing exists, by the very metaphysics of its existence, the opposite can exist as well. It is not that God created evil, it is not that God ordained evil; it is that evil is because good is. It is simply a negation, it is simply a privation. It is the absence of, the opposite of. If you have an infinity, you have a finitude. If you have a good, you have an evil. There’s some truth in that, to some limited degree metaphysically. There is also the more theological approach to that metaphysical idea, and it is this: that because God created humanity good, the potential for evil existed within that creation and man exercising his will chose the evil. So, it didn’t really come from God, it came from man. It didn’t really come from God, it came from Lucifer, who made the same choice in heaven. That was strongly the argument of Augustine and Aquinas in ancient times, and there is truth in that.