Can We Really Exercise Free Will?

You are naive if you think that Cameron does not push TULIP. There is not one tenet of the TULIP that he disagrees with.

On your question, I accept all of them as the Word of God, it is your opinion (which is most of it) that I disagree with.

Thanks for sharing that testimony. And your experience with your old, unsaved friends is very typical. Many Christians have shared similar experiences that involved unsaved family, friends and acquaintances, and it's actually taught in the bible. There's a reason why those of this dark world world are most inclined to separate themselves from those who have become children of the day (light).

Scriptures supporting belief in MFW include:

56. M – Gen. 2:17 begins the biblical revelation of God’s moral nature and requirement and is followed up by Gen. 6:5-6 revealing that God is grieved by sin, which truth Paul noted in Eph. 4:30. A main point of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7) per Jesus in Matt. 5:20 is that souls should be righteous, and main point of the Sermon on Salvation (Rom. 1-11) per Paul in Rom. 3:21-22 is that righteousness is attained through faith in Jesus as Lord (cf. Acts 16:30-31).

57. F – Deut. 30:19 is one of the clearest statements of the condition of volition in Scripture, and Jesus lamented the sinful misuse of this divine gift in Matt. 23:37. Jesus commanded the correct application of volition in Matt. 7:7 (cf. Heb. 11:6). Paul indicates that God enables sinners to seek salvation in Rom. 2:4, where he says that God’s kindness toward sinners leads them toward repentance. In 1Tim. 2:3-4 Paul taught that God wants all souls to be saved, but he lamented that many resisted God’s will in Acts 28:26-27, like Jesus did in Matt. 13:14-15.

58. W – The short version of Paul’s Sermon on Salvation in Romans is found in Eph. 2:8-10, which states that God’s grace is received through faith, not works, implying that the condition of cooperating (called partnership in Phil. 1:4-5, cf. 2:12-13) with God both by professing Christ at conversion (from first/first day) and by producing the fruit of the Spirit during sanctification (to last/the day of Christ Jesus) is NOT meritorious or a reason to think salvation is earned (Rom. 1:17). However, choosing to disbelieve God or resist His kindness does manifest spiritual separation from His blessings and warrant eventual experiencing of divine wrath per Rom. 2:4-6 (cf. Matt. 23:37).

The concerns of those who accept TULIP—to affirm the sovereignty of God and the inability of souls to earn salvation—are valid, but the solutions are problematic, because they deny or ignore Scripture teaching the love of God for all sinners and the moral accountability of sinners for rejecting the love of God, thereby effectively perverting the Gospel (Gal. 5:6) and impugning God’s justness/righteousness (Psa. 33:5, Isa. 9:7).

The apparent reasons for these errors are threefold: 1. Ignorance of Scripture that contradicts their dogma, such as those teaching the possibility of apostasy, 2. Viewing faith as a meritorious work rather than as the non-meritorious condition of cooperating with God’s grace, and 3. Unconcern about portraying God as unjust by showing favoritism toward the elect. Once these errors are cured by including Scripture supporting MFW, doctrinal harmony is enhanced.

What does faith come by?

"Where is your faith?" he asked his disciples.

Lol

"Where is your POOFED faith?" he asked his disciples.

Poking fun is the best!

I still have unsaved friends that I include among my best friends. They dont hate on me for believing in dont hate on them for not.

I don't know how many times the scriptures command us "to believe" before it gets through there is something we must do which, in and of itself, does not cause our salvation.

Personally I think the problem begins in the understanding that human nature is born wicked which, it is not. Human nature is to be found in the soul which is created in the image and likeness of God. But that is another story for another thread.

Appreciate your posts.

I believe God knows everything including whether or not we are gonna believe. That is the forknowledge slash pre destination concept. I too never went to church not raised in it never gave it 2 thoughts. But as things happened in my life I came to believe. That in no ways is saying I saved myself. But I did make a decision to really believe. I can't speak of the whys or how's of how other people came to God. I dont have the faintest idea of why they made that decision. I do believe in my heart God did not force me to believe in Him and he does not force others not to believe. IMO man's responsibility in responding to the word is his own decision. That dosent mean they saved themselves. Not even close.

The disciples were saved. Why wouldn't they be expected to exercise their faith?

So God loves each and every sinner, heh? Delusional much? Meanwhile, read and weep.

Lev 26:30; Deut 25:15; Job 21:22; Ps 5:5-6; 11:5; 15:1-5; 73:18-20; 95:10-11; 106:40; 107:40; Prov 3:32; 6:16-19; 11:20;
2Chron 19:2; Isa 66:24; Jer 12:8; 16:5; Lam 2:6-7; Hos 9:15; Nah 1:14; Mal 1:2-3; Dan 12:2; Mat 7:23; Rom 9:13

P.S. There isn't one text in scripture that teaches that God loves every single human being with his filial covenant of love w/o exception. Give me one explicit passage that teaches what you foolishly claim. And the passages above don't even address the nature of God's love which is conditional! You remember those four key Johanine passages, right? Or do you need to be reminded of those again? Moreover, God's love isn't even eternal with respect to the wicked, which I also proved recently (Dan 12:2; Isa 66:24). So, my friend, you have a few serious problems to address with your wild, crazy and UNSUBSTANTIATED claims.

The disciples were saved. Why wouldn't they be expected to exercise their faith?

Oh but it does! Since FWer's deny the efficacy of God's grace/power, then the question that is begging to be answered is: what is the ultimate efficacious cause of a sinner's decision, if not his own volition, especially since God doesn't actually save anyone but only provides opportunities for everyone to be saved? This is why I keep saying that the Good Samaritan was more righteous than God since he actually saved the "half dead" man! Unlike God, he didn't just provide an opportunity for the guy to save himself.

Yet to all who did receive him

I still have unsaved friends that I include among my best friends. They dont hate on me for believing in dont hate on them for not.

“Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” John. 1:12

Notice receiving Him and belief gave the right to become His children?

Not the right to become His children allowed belief?

Calvinism is false.

Those who believed are the same as those who received. What do you have that you have not received? What did they receive? Could it have been faith?
Your error is that you believe receiving is something you do. Receiving doesn't necessitate any action on one's part. If you were honest you would have included John 1:13. It tells you how it was received: nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, BUT OF GOD. Wonder why you left that out? Aren't you the one who dislikes single proof texts? Aren't you the one who espouses context, context, context? You literally ripped that verse out of it's context. And for all your mockery, you still didn't answer my questions.
You are getting as ridiculous as your cohorts.

You know it occurred to me as I have thought about that incident of crying out to God = that I cannot even take credit for that, and maybe saying I did it is not the correct way to express it, for as I mentioned I attended a number of 12 step fellowships, and some before I first got clean and sober, and one of the things I was taught was to write about my feelings, heh, okay, so one night, after being involved with a man who was just using me and lying to me and who knows what all else (yeah I could say other things here but...) I sat down to write about my feelings, and do you know that saying about being sick and tired of feeling sick and tired? I was at that point. I was so sick and tired of the way I was feeling, I had been in that place before, and the enormity of it, my powerlessness over it, and the sheer madness writing about it seemed after experiencing it what felt like so many other times, times that had hospitalized me even... well, yes, that is when that cry arose out of the depths of my being. "Please God, help me." And the rest as they say, is history .

No Isreal is a result of the covenant with a raha
God promised him land and a nation as an eternal gift gen 12,15 and 17