On a spring day last year, three months after the death of my younger son, Max, I opened my front door and saw a butterfly resting on the steps—an Eastern tiger swallowtail, I later determined, a species native to the Northeast but not one I remembered seeing before in the middle of Brooklyn. The date stuck in my mind because, as it happens, it was also my birthday. The butterfly, with its otherworldly beauty and silence, is, of course, a common metaphor for the soul. Its emergence from entombment as a chrysalis may have inspired ideas about human resurrection. In the newsletter of the Compassionate Friends, a support group for bereaved parents, the sudden appearance of butterflies (and birds, cloud formations, and particular songs on the radio) is sometimes cited as evidence of communication from beyond the grave. So let me be clear about where I stand: not only do I not believe it, but I can't...
In order to more intelligent prayer, San Jose John, is Harlan's hatred of God the result of some specific event in the past, or circumstance in his present; or is it intellectual? As I have no desire for intimate prying, an extremely general response would be sufficient. Please forgive my delay. My computer has not been behaving for a couple of days.
San Jose John, thank you for that description! The gospel, being spoken, is still a major way in which sinners are converted. They hear it and respond and yet when they look back they will know that God was the one that gave them ears to hear.
Postrue wrote: Either God alone draws you to Christ, - or you go to hell. You have nothing to do with it.
When considering God's perspective, I can now accept that he "drew" me to salvation, but from MY perspective--once the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to how hopeless and sinful I was--I RAN toward Christ and embraced his salvation...which FELT like "free will", excercised by me, as I've mentioned before on this blog.
My brother, on the other hand, tried harder than anyone I know to "be" a Christian, but was never able to "let go" of his own sense of goodness or see his true sinfulness to desire Christ. Today he hates God so much that if you bring up the subject of salvation or press the issue of exclusive Christianity, he gets VERY angry. And yet he excerciesed so-called "free will" far more than anyone I know when we were younger. He even tried to evangelize ME a number of times before I was saved.
Please pray that God will open his eyes the way He opened mine, which ultimately enabled me to truely desire to become saved.
""This is a time-honored argument for the existence of a God who created human beings in his image and imbued them with a moral sense, as well as the free will to follow, or ignore,""
NO!!!
This is the old Papist or Arminian or Pelagian hypothesis which implies that mans will is free to make the spiritual decision to come to Christ.
This of course is fallacy, fiction and unBiblical and certainly will not work.
Either God alone draws you to Christ, - or you go to hell.
You have nothing to do with it.
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Today's Quote
We must read our Bibles like men digging for hidden treasure. ... J. C. Ryle
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