Understanding God’s election

Magenta · Sunday at 3:23 PM

Thank you so much BillyBob! I have switched to my phone to answer this because I am a 2 finger typist, and that can get to be quite laborious if I am making a longer post, which I rarely do, but I suspect this one may get a bit long because I'm going to explain a few things to you in order to answer your questions. Yes, magenta is one of the primary colors ... the opposite of green, being comprised of equal parts red and blue. The name Magenta was given to me many many years ago by a very good friend because I wore a lot of purple and pinkish purples, and magenta is actually a very pink color LOL and we never or rarely ever say purple at work when discussing the color of a print or what color we would like to add the filtration to neutralize it. That friend is someone I worked with for about 17 years (until she passed away) and she 12 stepped me into the program of Alcoholics Anonymous... I remember being invited to a cake or 2 of hers before I ever got clean and sober, and at 1 of those meetings I was asked to share, and I just I got up to the podium and I had no idea what to say and I certainly wasn't going to say I was an alcoholic LOL. But at some point I did start going to meetings on my own because I loved listening to people talk about the conditions of their life, especially while I was seemingly incapable of articulating the depth and source of my pain. I also loved listening to people's God stories. Anyway yes we worked together for many years and at some point she was pretty much the only person who could listen to what was going on in my life at the time because it was so bad nobody else wanted to hear it. I think there was an element of people thinking I should just be able to fix myself ha ha. And then she really showed up for me at the end of 1992 when someone that I was really very close to suddenly passed away, which was quite a shock to so many people, and yet within the depths of my own self I knew that that person had been a gift to me from God who I did not believe in... It was a year and a half later when I cried out to that God I did not believe in for help... oops I accidentally posted. Anyways, not asking for help to quite drinking and drugging but that was the outcome after 24 years of abuse, because withing days I was attending NA and lost the desire to use mind and mood altering substances.

Changing the eyes of a face is often one of the first things I do. They start as AI generations and then I overlay and blend in a real person's face and I often change their eyes... sometime the AI face is not too bad except for maybe the eyes so I will change them...

Magenta · Sunday at 3:45 PM

The original AI woman/image I generated

I think I fashioned her after Natalie Portman? I had a document where I had recorded which woman was made to
look like in what series, as I generated and saved thousands of them, and did not want what was auto-generated...
but the document accidentally got overwritten (not by me).

Colossians 1 verse 12; 1 John 1 verse 7 ~ The Father has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.

Rufus · Sunday at 7:25 PM

GWH said:

If God wanted to save each and every person on this planet, He could easily do so; for nothing is impossible with Him. But that was never his purpose. Never his plan. From the very beginning right after the Fall, we see Remnant Theology in action. He chose to save Eve; but let Adam remain a seed of the serpent.

BillyBob · Sunday at 8:02 PM

That is fascinating! Some really good thing will take place due to AI. I just hope the bad does not outweigh the good.
I don't know all the possibilities, but Randy Travis who had a stroke was able to sing again through the use of AI.
You might want to do a search on "Where That Came From" to hear it. They took voice sample

Magenta said:

That is fascinating! Some really good things will take place due to AI. I just hope the bad does not eventually outweigh the good.
I don't know all the possibilities, but Randy Travis who had a stroke, making it impossible to continue singing, was able to sing again through the use of AI.
You might want to do a search on "Where That Came From" to hear it. They took his voice samples from the past to make the recording.

GWH · Sunday at 8:30 PM

Rufus said:

Yes, but God wanted to save persons, not robots.
Any nerd can program a robot, but only God can create humans in His image/with MFW,
and thus the ability to love or hate--and not just AI imitations of the real thing.

Magenta · Sunday at 8:43 PM

BillyBob said:

Whoa, how sad, but wonderful and amazing at the same time! I read quite a few of the comments while
listening and everyone loved hearing him again; losing your voice to a stroke, the horror never ends!
Digital killed 80% of our industry, but we still survived and I am still working at 70, only 6 hours days
3 days a week but it keeps me active and getting out and about and helps heaps in this economy,
plus I have always loved what I do (it is the only thing I knew I wanted to do after discovering
my love of darkroom work in college after dropping out of high school). Country music has never
really been a favoured genre from me but I did enjoy hearing "his" voice, and the song, thank you!

Magenta · Sunday at 8:49 PM

Cameron143 said:

2 Chronicles 16::9a The eyes of the LORD roam to and fro over all the earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose hearts are fully devoted to Him.

Magenta · Sunday at 8:53 PM

BillyBob said:

And all God's people said, "Eye men."

Magenta · Sunday at 8:56 PM

BillyBob said:

BillyBob, you are already one of the kindest people on this site. If you get any better with the
gentleness and respect in how you respond to people, you will be rocketing into the stratosphere!

Cameron143 · Sunday at 9:05 PM

Magenta said:

Careful...a bigger head for him just increases his eyes.

Rufus · 2025-05-26T10:12:25-0400

Magenta said:

GWH said:

FTFY! The helpless in this world are not robots. Another inane straw man. You have no empathy or sympathy whatsoever for the handicapped in the world. This must be because you see yourself as being sound and competent and self-sufficient through and through, so you look down your nose at those less fortunate.

Rufus · 2025-05-26T10:15:01-0400

Magenta said:

Or..."A[ye] men"!

GWH · 2025-05-26T10:51:37-0400

Rufus said:

On the contrary, I indicated sympathy for you in post #13,760 in reply to your #13,719, which replied to my #13, 697.
I have repeatedly said that I have no excuse for faithlessness because of being brought up from infancy to believe.
Sometimes I have been almost jealous of those with more interesting testimonies!

BillyBob · 2025-05-26T11:17:50-0400

Cameron143 said:

And ears!

Magenta · 2025-05-26T11:45:44-0400

BillyBob said:

And we know ears are important because it seems apparent that some have ears to hear and some do not, a fact which is sadly ruthlessly overlooked by those who want to pretend that everyone hears. They wish to pretend this to the point of making claims that directly contradict what Scripture explicitly states, even when it is Jesus making the proclamations they sweep aside and say are not true.

Rufus · 2025-05-26T12:58:52-0400

There's been a lot of banter back and forth at various times in this thread about Romans 1 and what it's teaching. One gent (can't recall who exactly) recently tried to diminish the universal force of vv. 18-32 by claiming that only "some" rejected God's truth that he has revealed through his physical creation. But this doesn't square at all with context of the first three chapters, which is what I'm going to set out to prove by quoting or citing a few passages mostly from within these three chapters. So...without further adieu...

Rom 3:9
9 What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin.
NIV

"Conclude" from what? Obviously from what he wrote in the first two chapters! And what did he argue in those two chapters? He argued man's depravity from God's three-prong revelation to mankind: From Natural Revelation to all men which pertains to the external world around us that touches all our senses; then from Special Revelation (or more specifically the divinely inspired written code of the Law) as this was revealed to the Jews; then finally from Intuitive Revelation by which God internally revealed his righteous Law by writing the works of that Law on the hearts of all men, especially the Gentiles who basically were not privy to Special Revelation the way OT Israel was. In these we have God's comprehensive three-in-one Revelation of Himself in terms of His attributes, his holy Law and his holy character. This is how Paul could write that all men are without spiritual/moral excuse (Rom 1:20; 2:1). Plus all men are under sin, that is to say, all are under the penalty, power and presence of sin in this world. So, just from these passages alone, we can readily and easily see that Romans 1 applies to a lot more than just a few men or some men.

But there's even more compelling evidence of this fact from Romans 1itself; for Paul tells us in this chapter what mankind did as a result of their depravity, as this was expressed by mankind's wanton and willful rejection of God's Natural Revelation. Note this text carefully, please:

Rom 1:21-23
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
NIV

Verse 23 tells us what depraved men did once they turned away from God and rejected him: They ALL became pagan idol worshipers! And the world has more than "some" or 'few" of such worshipers, most especially when we consider that Paul broadened the definition of "idolatry" to include the idols men erect within their own hearts due to sin (Col 3:5). Something has to fill the spiritual vacuum man has created when he rejects his Creator. And we can clearly see this truth throughout the OT and NT! Even Israel and Judah became vile idol worshipers! The need to fill this vacuum is inevitable! The sons of men MUST turn to the will of Self to create a god in their own image to their own liking. Men live to either do God's will or to do the will of Self.

Moreover, even in Paul's day, the entire known Greco-Roman world was filled with pagan idol worshipers, as we see when Paul visited Athens (Acts 17) and from the grief he suffered in Ephesus from the troublemaker Demetrius, a silversmith who fashioned idols for the population (Acts 19), etc. Even Roman emperors were worshiped as gods, just as Egyptian pharaohs before them were in the days of Moses, along with their pantheon of other gods. Therefore, idol worship was and still is to this day a universal phenomenon! Man either worships the one true God or a god of his own making!

And the last piece of evidence that Romans 1 applies universally is found in Paul's divinely inspired indictment of all mankind (Rom 3:9-18.) This indictment didn't fall on just "some" men but on all mankind because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23).

Before ending this, I have a couple of miscellaneous observations. All men sin and fall short of the glory of God because of their inability to understand spiritual truth. This fact is pointed out twice in Rom 1-3 (1:31; 3:11), all of which harmonizes nicely with 1Cor 2.

Rom 1:21 teaches that the sons of men became vain (or futile) in their thinking, and as a result they became idol creators and worshipers. This shouldn't surprise any of us since those who live in the flesh (which all unregenerates do!) have minds that are hostile towards God, not able to subject itself to the law of God, and for these reasons such men cannot please God (Rom 8:7).

BillyBob · 2025-05-26T15:50:52-0400

Rufus said:

Thank you for bringing this all together! It is precisely for this reason that I disagree with all who try to make infants immune to God's anger.
In my opinion, this has never been clearly proclaimed in scripture. Even though I may sympathize with those who teach this, I believe it to be a case of man worshiping a god of his own making.
It would seem better to hope and pray that the child is among the remnant that God has set aside according to His election of grace.
Romans 11:5

Magenta · 2025-05-26T16:07:34-0400

Isaiah 40 verses 6B-8 ~ All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall when the breath of the LORD blows on them; indeed, the people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.

Rufus · 2025-05-26T18:03:38-0400

BillyBob said:

But on the other hand, there is some positive biblical evidence that supports the salvation of those who die without real knowledge of good and evil. The fact that God "elected" to allow the entire 2nd generation of Exodus Jews to enter the Land, especially since the passage makes a point of saying that that generation didn't have any knowledge of good and evil -- and the fact that the Promised Land is a type of restored Eden, (i.e. New Earth) which will be the eternal home of all the saints -- but even more importantly the Land is a type of Christ. So...when God decreed that that generation would enter the Land, he was decreeing that they enter Christ.

Am I dogmatic on this? No! But I just follow where the three major pieces of biblical evidence leads and draw a conclusion, albeit not ironclad.

studier · 2025-05-26T18:22:42-0400

Romans does teach that sin is universal and that all need Jesus Christ.

Romans also teaches that God has never left Himself without witness that men are unable to comprehend.

Hebrews 11 teaches that there have been men and women of faith throughout history since Abel.

Understanding God’s election

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