Paul's Passing Thoughts

Source: John Calvin’s Gospel of Works, Fear, and NO Assurance

Source: The Gospel According to Joni Eareckson Tada

Protestantism is often touted as the movement that brought biblical enlightenment out of the Dark Age mostly underpinned by Catholicism. There is no part of this historical fallacy that contains any vestige of truth. Beside the fact that Martin Luther and John Calvin never left the Catholic Church, they merely devised a different way of keeping the great unwashed from interpreting the Bible on an individual basis. The Catholics outlawed individual possession of Bibles while Protestants outlawed individual interpretation. The result is the same.

Either way, the authority of the institutional church whether Catholic or Protestant dictates knowledge and truth. Either way, Catholics and Protestants know what the church wants them to know…which is nothing or next to nothing. You can’t control a knowledgeable populous. Hence, until this very day, the masses are mostly ignorant about who God really is. Knowledge is personal empowerment and freedom which is counterproductive to tyranny; also, money and financial resources empower people as well which is also counterproductive to the ancient religion of tyranny. Be sure of this—this is what drives anti-capitalism. All human history is an epic struggle between individualism and social caste. It boils down to institutional ownership of truth, or institutions facilitating individual freedom and serving at the behest of the people.

Catholics and Protestants alike relegate their own thinking to the church and empower the church with their own money as well. When they stand before God ALONE without the church self-proclaimed mediators present, that will be a rude awakening inflamed by the knowledge that they paid hard-earned for the privilege to boot.   

The American Revelation confused two church fundamentals: the church as a political party inseparable from the church-state model, and the foreboding of individual interpretation. These are church fundamentals that define church and always will. Those who confuse Americanism with church are just that…confused. But also, be sure of this, post American confusion is passing and the church is returning to its tyrannical roots of social caste and the institutional ownership of truth.

What is the TANC mission? To promote individual interpretation of truth. To promote individual thinking. To promote personal accountability to God, not an institution. To promote Christ as the only mediator. To promote edification in a family-of-God setting where all are free to be convinced in their own minds, not the institutional dictation of truth.

How deep is the darkness? How deep is the ignorance? Ten years later, TANC has finally developed a definitive perspective on justification that exposes the embarrassingly elementary error of the Protestant gospel. Apparently, the Bible is not deep and mysterious; it is to be taken at face value through individual study. TANC promotes a collective effort towards knowledge, and seeks to get the ball rolling in that direction. Love for THE truth will lead to a progressive consensus—not confusion and disunity. Obedience to an authority will lead to unity? How’s it working for us? And which authority? It’s funny how personal interpretation dictates the authority of choice that disavows personal interpretation.  

Past a fundamental biblical understanding of justification, we believe a true perspective on God is uncharted territory in Western culture. We contend that most professing Christians are totally confused about who God is. Why? Because few Christians really study the Bible for themselves with their own minds. In the same way that the physically handicapped cannot ambulate without special equipment, the Protestant relies on scholarly commentaries and the Catholic relies on the Pope.

Personally, as one who now questions everything taught to me by Protestantism because it doesn’t even know what justification is, I suspect that I truly know very little about God. We can now hear the shrills of condemnation from those who claim to have intimate knowledge about God found in what has been told to them by mere men drunk with control-lust. After all, who am I to say that Protestants have had it wrong for 500 years because they saved humanity from Catholicism which had it wrong for 1700 years while claiming the same doctrinal father in St. Augustine? Yes, how dare I question such a firm foundation as that.

Real Christians need to get off their lazy rumps and rediscover truth and the peace of soul found there. That’s what TANC strives to promote, and it is time for many people to stop watching from afar and get personally invested in the home fellowship movement. With all of that said, what is a topic among thousands that needs to be questioned and rediscovered? Answer: prayer.

In Protestantism, prayer is one of the “means of grace.” Remember, in Protestantism, “grace” is a soft term and replacement word for “salvation.” This nuances the real Protestant gospel of progressive justification, viz, the idea that you go to church to obtain a continued “means of [salvation].” Why would you pray for any other reason per Protestantism because God is “sovereign”? Right? Hence, prayer is an acknowledgment that we are still wicked sinners who have no clue what God is up to except that it will always contrast with our totally depraved desires. Therefore, prayer is for the express purpose of confessing our own wickedness “as set against God’s holiness” and thereby receiving more “grace” (whisper, “salvation”).

But what if prayer is an actual conversation with our literal Father? If God is sovereign yet not completely defined by such because He is unlimited, and not limited by His own so-called “attributes,” does He choose to not know everything and predetermine everything for the sake of true conversation? Sorry, but from a historical-grammatical biblical viewpoint, God has changed His mind and said that He doesn’t know certain things. The Bible is replete with examples. And sorry, but on the same wise, He changed His mind on some things. Your dismay resulting from such an assertion is indicative of your Protestant brainwashing. Please note: you are not incredulous because of what you have read in the Bible yourself, but what you were told at church by some petulant adolescent who paid for his privilege to rule over your thinking.

What if prayer is a real conversation with God as we understand conversation normally? Would that enhance our conversations with God because they are real conversations?

This is one area where you can study to show yourself approved of God rather than seeking the approval of men.

paul                  

Today, 3/10/2017 @ 12:00 Noon. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/falsereformation/2017/03/10/are-you-saved-or-continually-resaved

Page One:

http://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/am-i-really-ready-for-heaven 

http://www.declaringglory.com/song/deliver-me/

https://paulspassingthoughts.com/2015/09/30/john-piper-proclaims-christians-condemned-and-in-need-of-continued-salvation/

https://paulspassingthoughts.com/2016/12/16/no-john-piper/

https://paulspassingthoughts.com/2016/05/17/train-wreck-john-pipers-ability-to-interpret-scripture/

Page Two:

https://escapetoreality.org/2016/10/13/how-do-i-know-im-saved/

Page Three:

Related link sent by listener: https://winteryknight.com/2010/10/31/greg-koukl-lists-6-things-you-have-to-believe-to-be-a-christian/

There is NO denying that the doctrine of double imputation is a staple of Protestant soteriology (the doctrine of salvation). What is it? This is the idea that Christ not only came to die for our sins, but also came to obey the law perfectly during His life so that God’s righteousness can be imputed to the “believer.” Why? Because justification/righteousness is defined by a perfect keeping of the law and of course no mortal whether saved or not can keep the law perfectly.

This imputation of Christ’s obedience necessarily replaces any obedience/love by the believer which would supposedly be works salvation because Protestantism holds to a progressive or ongoing salvation. So, instead of good works being a natural result of the new birth/new creaturehood, the new creature still can’t keep the law perfectly. Hence, Christ’s perfect law-keeping must be imputed to the “believer” as he/she continues to live by the same gospel that saved them or by “faith alone.” So, faith alone not only saves the Protestant, the Protestant must also live by faith alone in order to remain saved. Supposedly.

But there is a biblical problem with that; namely, election. Double imputation holds to the idea that Christ came to prepare righteous works for us as an additional substitution by perfect law-keeping which is imputed to our lives. Christ walked in perfect law-keeping so His obedience/love could be credited to our account as long as we live by faith alone. The problem is, God the Father and the Holy Spirit prepared the works that we walk in before the foundation of the world:

Ephesians 2:8 – For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

If double imputation is true, why would this passage not say that God prepared works ahead of time for Christ to walk in instead of us? Isn’t that the whole point of double imputation? The works being prepared ahead of time also implies that this preparation was well before the law to begin with:

James 2:20 – Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; 23 and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God. 24 You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25 And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? 26 For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.

Galatians 3:15 – To give a human example, brothers: even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. 16 Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ. 17 This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. 18 For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.

Obviously, the works that showed Abraham’s righteousness were well before the law; specially, 430 years prior. In addition, why would Jesus come to fulfill a law covenant when the gospel is based on the covenant of promise? Well before Jesus came to live on earth, righteousness apart from the law was imputed to Abraham.

Though I am not quite ready to be totally dogmatic about it, I would say the covenant of promise was elected before the foundation of the world because religion is absolutely hellbent on defining justification by perfect law-keeping. The means of salvation was elected, not individuals. When the term “elect” is used in the Bible, it refers to a category of individuals (a noun form) instead of grammar indicating those who have been acted upon. This is why “elect” being translated as “chosen” throughout the New Testament is incorrect and implies the individual was chosen rather than the means of salvation being chosen, viz, the covenant of promise.

paul