However, I never stated anything about works.
Thinking what you call natural man or woman, cannot come to faith in Christ is actually not defensible when rightly dividing the harmony within the Gospels and Jesus' teachings. If it were true that natural man cannot choose or understand Jesus call to Salvation, and they are only to be put into God's grace, Saved, because God makes all those aforementioned changes in them that you earlier posted, then God made a HUGE mistake in appointing His Apostles to go forth in the Great Commission.
If, per what you claim, God has to get to people first and change them so that they are able to receive the GC when the teaching arrives, God should have not had to send Jesus to die , not have Jesus appoint Apostles to serve the purpose of the GC to the point each and everyone save John were martyred for their commitment to that duty. But instead, God would have erred when he simply changed natural man and woman, whom He would have had to first make incapable of choosing to follow Jesus, and didn't fulfill the entire program of Salvation Himself.
It makes zero sense that a Higher Power that is eternally knowing and everywhere present at all times within its creation, would predetermine an dull ignorant lot , humans, whom after the 6th day of creating everything including them gazed upon all creation and judged it very good, only to pre-plan, and pre-arrange those humans damnation and separation from Him, so as to thousands upon thousands of years later, incalculable really as to how much actual time passed, send Himself to save the race He condemned Himself. And to boot that "Salvation" would , will, only be possible once the creator of the Damned changed them Himself so that they could then comprehend the Gospel He sent Himself to deliver to the world and die to seal.
And the worst part of that alleged plan is, according to you, that Salvation and even His own death on the cross, was to "save" those whom He, after making them dull and ignorant and incapable of accepting His word by their own choice, predetermined were worthy of His death on the cross for, because He died there to save those people He predetermined worthy.
A Higher Power stops at adjusting the intellect of a creation that HP first made without intellect, or the ability to make a cognizant choice to follow Him, so that they are now able to hear the Gospel and enter into the faith paradigm it teaches them. While all others are left to die and burn eternally for being exactly what that HP preplanned and created them to be and for that end.
God adjusted only the people He wanted to save before He created anything much less had yet let to happen that event that would insure those chosen people would need to be saved from Him, to accept the Gospel He died for once He'd made them able to understand it. But He didn't just go ahead and save them without the whole Jesus and death on the cross bit, because why?
Why would God have to send Himself so as to suffer and die on the cross to change the rules about life and damnation that He Himself created, and then when planning that knew He was doing all that because He was only going to save those humans He'd predestined worthy of saving before humans came to exist. While letting the rest of humanity whom He didn't choose continue to live separated from Him and ultimately perish and suffer Hell's torture, because He determined they weren't worthy of being His elect. And all that before anything came to exist.
I have to tell you, that's one sick and twisted ideology one's got going there. One thing for a fact about it though? That HP's one attribute that does not exist is Omani-benevolence! Nothing benevolent there at all.
People were made separated from God and doomed unto damnation because God made it so in the beginning having planned it to happen before anything came to be created by God.
And then a select chosen few will be saved from that so they can worship the God that set all that into motion as they argue they're in the grace of the God who damned them Himself and Saved them later on from Himself.
WOW!
And all this because that pre-planning of that Higher Power chose not to forgive ignorant dull witted Adam and Eve who were not capable of understanding good and evil, obedience and disobedience, after the serpent was let into the garden by the Higher Power that created a forbidden tree His omniscience knew would damn His human creation because He knew they would be persuaded to eat of it so that that happens by what we consider His enemy; Satan.
Who saves us from a God that thinks like that?
God was Jesus.
Maybe think about what the system of belief about that which you've come to allegedly believe is telling you about that which you believe made you one worthy of His saving and worship.
"God is not a man that he should lie...." Why then would anyone accept a doctrine that says, God is a psychopathic immoral creator and sadist that plays chess with peoples souls because he and the evil he let live after it rebelled against him in Heaven, and that can only operate within the constraints that god permits, can? Which is an argument many a Christian has offered when they're asked, why would God , not Satan, becasue God is the only one in scripture as we're told that can give or take life, kill or order others to kill people when His laws tell people murdering people is wrong? The answer , that aforementioned argument some Christians offer?
Because He's God and He can do anything he wants with His creation.
It's a sorry proposition for a Higher Power to operate in a manner that reinforces the axiom, do as I say not as I do.
Where's the opportunity then to better ones self as that formerly natural man/woman who is God appointed ignorant and dull witted until God changes that for them, after making them that way, to better themselves from what they formerly were when that kind of God is the role model for them to aspire, as He says, to be Christ-Like.
If that's the case, then mass murder, depraved indifference to suffering (as pertains to those non-elect God predestined to go to Hell before Hell was created), should be something those "saved" by God aspire to. Because when God was Jesus, that would indeed then be an example of Christ-Like, since God did all those things and the elect He saved from Himself are to aspire to be like Him in all ways.
Hey, I must not be one of those type elect because I can see all that in the doctrine those type elect defend for their own sake. And then they consider themselves saved by grace, by that which created humans to need saving. Or not.
That's not cute.
