Rosenritter
New member
"If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” - Romans 10:8b-13)
If you get this one thing right, whatever else you get wrong cannot overcome the blood of Christ. You may make it "by the skin of your teeth" as Job described his escape from his enemies or, as Paul put it in I Corinthians, "as if by fire" but that's better than the alternative.
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I strongly suspect, however, that most of the people who call themselves Calvinist believe it the exact same way that you and I believe it and they make no attempt to reconcile it with the doctrine of immutability or with any other Calvinist doctrine. They believe it and, as compartmentalized as it may be away from the rest of their doctrine, that belief is, in my view, an acceptance of the gospel.
Clete
I agree with GM's assessment, that is a good post. I think it is important to remember that we should look to one's fruits, especially if we disagree over specific doctrine or theory.
Mat 13:28-30 KJV
(28) He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?
(29) But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.
(30) Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.
To mix this with another parable, doesn't it matter far more what we become than were we started, whether the seed takes root and produces fruit a hundredfold, rather than what type of ground that seed managed to grow within? We don't have the right or wisdom to ultimately judge wheat from tares now. And even most especially from the Open perspective, where we understand that God himself has withheld judgment until the end.