The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Gospel truth

beloved57,

In your response to my single post, you completely missed my point--that a handful of words from any holy text, divorced from their immediate context, can be framed to support any doctrine, whether false (e.g. universalism) or true (e.g. particular/limited atonement)--and proceeded to instruct me as though I needed to be delivered from the evils of universalism. Well, you are at least 25 years too late for that exhortation.

You have been repeatedly rebuked not for holding true a precious element of doctrine--your allegations to the contrary, I don't think anyone who has attempted to reason with you in this thread holds limited atonement as any less true or essential than you do--but rather for mishandling of the word of God.

All truth is of God, and because God is one, all true propositional expressions are invariably rooted in his being and nature and mighty deeds and revelation. So my statement "we felt we had to put our dog to sleep last winter" conveys more than a mere historical fact; it is rooted in, and can therefore be said to imply, several foundational truths: God is; God is Creator of people, animals and time; people make decisions because they are made in the image of God; the consequences of rebellion against God reach to the non-human physical world; etc. Similarly, any biblical statement concerning the gospel of Jesus Christ is ultimately rooted in the entire counsel of God in which that gospel is revealed, and therefore, as one example, the doctrine of limited atonement is indeed implied whenever the gospel is preached.

However, humanity being both finite and fallen, the Holy Spirit-inspired pattern of evangelistic preaching to the lost constantly returns, as you well know, to a handful of explicit proclamations of the person and work of "Jehovah-saves!", the anointed God-man, the Lord Christ. These proclamations are exquisitely wrought and wielded by the Holy Spirit to irresistibly translate lost sinners from death to life, from darkness to light, by giving them faith to believe the promise, not of particular election--how could God promise them what he had decreed before creation?--but the promise of salvation from their sins against his threefold holiness, which faith rests entirely in the life, death, resurrection, reign and return of--and thus glorifying alone--the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Your insistence upon elevating the true doctrine of particular redemption--essential to the comfort and assurance of the believer--to an essential facet of evangelistic preaching is a mishandling of the Word of God: the doctrine is not constantly, explicitly present in Sciptural evangelism, and by making it so you inevitably exclude other, more prominent and necessary, facets of gospel doctrine, in effect taking away from the Word of God, against which you have been warned. And your insistence upon defending its elevation by exegeting the Scriptures as though what were implicit is actually explicit leaves you open to the charge of allegorization, which gives encouragement to those determined to read false doctrine into passages (viz. the point of my original post).

Grievously, I have discerned in your writings in this thread very little desire for instruction, for fellowship with co-laborers, for an extension of charity to those you may not understand, for a public display of unity in the church, for humble praise of the glorious grace of God revealed in Jesus Christ. I have lived long enough to see men, to their peril, infatuated by a single doctrine to the exclusion of others; heed the warnings you have received!

I see that by now you have been rebuked by Pilgrim for your dishonoring treatment of one of the brothers. Here is another false accusation made by yourself. You told Adopted,


In truth, he stated explicitly, a day earlier:


It would be most wise to search your posts for these, and more, unfounded public accusations and publicly make them right.