ECT What is the true root objection to MAD?

[SaulToPaul 2]

John 3:16

The dreaded red letters that you assume is not for you.

What does "believeth in him" mean?

 

[Desert Reign]

OK, sure.

The means of salvation will never change; Jesus Christ has always and will always be our means of salvation.

The rules of salvation have changed. They must have, given that for half of our history, He had not yet died on the cross.

Given that I've just said that salvation is not about rules and you have sort of agreed with this, to say that the rules have changed seems to punch the air.

If your father told you that you were not allowed to drive the car for 15 years and then after you reached a certain age he changed the rules, would you be wanting to "steer clear" in that situation as well?

This is a hypothetical question. You can only chage something that already existed. An instruction by a person in authority might not be the same thing as a rule.

Absolutely. However, without Paul, nobody would know this.

In order to prove this very broad assertion, you would need to show that nowhere before Paul did anyone know this. Proving a negative is not impossible but you are facing an uphill struggle. And then, it wouldn't be hard for a person who disagrees with you to come with any number of contrary examples. You might of course debate the validity of some or many of them and that would lead to a great endless debate over scripture interpretations. But what you need to prove your point is surely not to be found up this particular path.

Roses are red,
Violets are bluish,
If it wasn't for Paul,
We'd all be Jewish.

Again, this is just an unproven assertion.
​

No action, regardless of how obedient or good it is, has any part to play in the means by which we are saved.

Do you consider the act of believing to be included in this?

 

[andyc]

What does "believeth in him" mean?

He who forgives sin. Those who receive him as forgiver, ascribe to him honor as one having come from God, and have a quality equal to God. As a man, the Son of God.

 

[SaulToPaul 2]

He who forgives sin. Those who receive him as forgiver, ascribe to him honor as one having come from God, and have a quality equal to God. As a man, the Son of God.

How do you know if the people you tell this gospel to understand that?

 

[Stripe]

Given that I've just said that salvation is not about rules and you have sort of agreed with this, to say that the rules have changed seems to punch the air.

The means of salvation is not about the rules of salvation.

The rules of salvation have changed, they must have. The means of salvation will never change.

This is a hypothetical question.

Yip. Feel free to give a hypothetical answer.

In order to prove this very broad assertion, you would need to show that nowhere before Paul did anyone know this.

How about we stick to the crux of the issue? The rules must have changed. Today we teach that salvation requires a person to confess Jesus Christ as risen Lord and savior. Before Jesus died, this cannot have been the rules of salvation. The rules must have changed.

If you can agree with that, we can forego the mucky task of arguing over who meant what and when.

Do you consider the act of believing to be included in this?

Nothing anybody believes contributes anything toward salvation.

 

[andyc]

How do you know if the people you tell this gospel to understand that?

We don't. That's why we scatter the seed. The devil is gonna steal some.

 

[SaulToPaul 2]

We don't. That's why we scatter the seed. The devil is gonna steal some.

why not just tell them, 1 Cor 15:1-4 (KJV) ?

 

[Desert Reign]

The means of salvation is not about the rules of salvation.

The rules of salvation have changed, they must have. The means of salvation will never change.

The 'rules of salvation' are still rules. Like I said, you haven't proved there is any such thing.

Yip. Feel free to give a hypothetical answer.

I thought I did.

How about we stick to the crux of the issue?

Yes, that's an excellent idea.

The rules must have changed.

If there ever were any.

Today we teach that salvation requires a person to confess Jesus Christ as risen Lord and savior.

Actually, I teach that a person must believe in Jesus first. I know full well that a confession is not always worth the paper it is written on. It's a committment of life and soul. Not a parrotting of a formula. I'm sure you would agree with that.

Before Jesus died, this cannot have been the rules of salvation. The rules must have changed.

If you can agree with that, we can forego the mucky task of arguing over who meant what and when.

Glad you agree that there is no point hacking it out over scripture. I'd certainly steer clear of that! However, you could give some pointers and then I'd have a clearer idea of what you mean. You seem to be fixated on rules. Would your world collapse if you didn't have rules to live by? Can't you get by without them? Can't you make your own mind up about what is right and wrong?

Nothing anybody believes contributes anything toward salvation.

Are you going down the Calvinist route here?

 

[heir]

why not just tell them, 1 Cor 15:1-4 (KJV) ?

:up: Give it to em' straight! It is after all, the gospel that is the power of God to save anyone who trusts the Lord believing it!

 

[Stripe]

The 'rules of salvation' are still rules. Like I said, you haven't proved there is any such thing.

Do you think there are no rules regarding salvation?

I thought I did.

Would you ignore your father's instructions because you prefer to "steer clear" off rules in favor of relationship?

And when I say "ignore," that does not mean break. Would you say the rules did not exist?

Actually, I teach that a person must believe in Jesus first.

Is that from the Bible somewhere?

I know full well that a confession is not always worth the paper it is written on. It's a committment of life and soul. Not a parrotting of a formula. I'm sure you would agree with that.

Right.

You seem to be fixated on rules.

Not at all. The rules are merely a tool to lead people into the relationship.

I am "fixated" on the rules because liberals tear down good ones and erect their own.

Would your world collapse if you didn't have rules to live by? Can't you get by without them? Can't you make your own mind up about what is right and wrong?

There is nothing wrong with a good set of rules.

Are you going down the Calvinist route here?

If I sounded like a Calvinist, would that make everything I've said wrong?

 

[andyc]

why not just tell them, 1 Cor 15:1-4 (KJV) ?

Same gospel. Faith in Christ for the forgiveness of sins.

The objective of the gospel is for people to believe in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins in order to inherit eternal life. The reason that Jesus forgives sins is because he himself is the payment for them. This has never changed. It makes no difference if people believed in him for the forgiveness of sins based on the fact that he was going to make payment, or has made payment. The fundamental fact is that he is the payment and therefore the forgiver. And so in this regard, nothing has changed between Jesus' gospel and Paul's gospel.
Jesus offered eternal life through his own gospel, and through Paul's gospel.
The eternal life was a binding agreement with Jesus, and also with Paul. However, after Acts 2, eternal life also became experiential when the Holy Spirit came to indwell believers, but the fundamental point of the gospel is simply faith in Christ for the forgiveness of sins in order to inherit eternal life. This was Jesus' and Paul's gospel (Mat 24:14)

What you're doing is putting false significance on what it means pre and post crucifixion.

 

[andyc]

:up: Give it to em' straight! It is after all, the gospel that is the power of God to save anyone who trusts the Lord believing it!

John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

 

[Nick M]

no

Sad but true.

 

[heir]

John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Believe what? Does John 3:16 tell me what Christ did for us? NO! It is not the WHAT of the cross/the WHY Christ died for us. Paul declared the gospel by which we are saved (1 Corinthians 15:1-4 KJV) and wrote that IT is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth (Romans 1:16 KJV)! There's no need to beat around the bush about IT. Preach IT that someone may receive the love of the truth and be saved!

 

[Nick M]

The dreaded red letters that you assume is not for you.

So you tell no one that the Lord Jesus Christ is the messiah? Cool. Not surprising really. And you do and observe what the Pharisee says. Cool. Not surprising really.

From the red letters, what must I do to have eternal life?

16 Now behold, one came and said to Him, “Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?”

17 So He said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.”

 

[andyc]

Believe what? Does John 3:16 tell me what Christ did for us? NO! It is not the WHAT of the cross/the WHY Christ died for us. Paul declared the gospel by which we are saved (1 Corinthians 15:1-4 KJV) and wrote that IT is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth (Romans 1:16 KJV)! There's no need to beat around the bush about IT. Preach IT that someone may receive the love of the truth and be saved!

So you're telling yourself that John 3:16 is just not IT. The believing in Jesus for eternal life is obviously about believing in him for the forgiveness of sins in order to inherit eternal life. It's the same thing.

Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Don't you see that love and forgiveness was already present before Christ came, not just after?

 

[andyc]

So you tell no one that the Lord Jesus Christ is the messiah? Cool. Not surprising really. And you do and observe what the Pharisee says. Cool. Not surprising really.

From the red letters, what must I do to have eternal life?

16 Now behold, one came and said to Him, “Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?”

17 So He said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.”

So from this you also conclude that Jesus wasn't good?

Jesus was responding from a viewpoint that he was a good teacher, not the savior, which appeared to be the perception of the rich young ruler. However, if the young ruler wanted to be perfect, he needed to follow Jesus, the perfecter.

 

[dreadknought]

First, my own understanding of Mid-Acts Dispensationalism is briefly this:

God chose a nation through whom He promised to someday bless the whole earth. That nation was Israel and that choosing involved various covenants. Christ Jesus came as Israel’s promised Redeemer, and through Israel – His nation of priests – He would redeem the whole world.

The problem is, Israel rejected Him. Not every individual Jew did so but Israel corporately, as a nation, despised Him and had Him crucified by Rome. But rising from the dead and ascending into Heaven, His apostles preached that if Israel repented and believed on Him as their Messiah, He would return to establish the long-awaited Kingdom, just as God had promised and as the Old Testament prophets had foretold.

But once again, Israel refused to bow to her Messiah. After the leaders stoned Stephen to death, God temporarily set Israel aside and temporarily suspended all fulfillment of prophecy.

At that point, God began to usher in the previously unmentioned dispensation of grace, which is now in effect and will remain so until He decides to bring it to an end.

During this age of grace, salvation is no longer to the Jew first. Previously unknown blessings and riches are promised equally to Jew and Gentile alike on the simple basis of faith alone in Christ’s death, burial and resurrection for the individual’s sin, without works of any kind either to be saved, stay saved or prove that one is saved, for God knows those who are His.


That is my understanding of MAD stated as briefly as I can state it.

Now the question is, Why do people who reject MAD seem to find it more intolerable than other doctrinal systems with which they also do not agree? I have found two basic reasons.

1. They don’t really understand MAD because what they have heard is not accurate. They believe a straw man version of MAD. In response, MADs try to clarify our position but usually with limited success.

2. They do understand MAD, or enough of it to hate what it implies for their own doctrinal position. I’ve found this to be the most common of the two, at least on TOL.

When you dig deep enough, informed objections to MAD (#2 above) tend to stem from one of two related roots. The opponent to MAD believes either (a) that the Christian Church has in some sense inherited the promised blessings, signs and covenants that God made solely with, or intended only for, national Israel, or (b) that the Christian Church has replaced national Israel outright. There is usually overlap between these two positions as they do stem from the same root, but objections boil down to one or the other.

Objection (a) can be seen in the opposition to MAD by Pentecostals, charismatics, various cultists and works-oriented members of Christendom who have been deceived into adopting Israel’s deactivated covenant works or sign gifts as necessary to salvation today, or necessary to their sanctification – some version of water baptism being the #1 expression of this error. Thus very, very few within Christendom today truly believe as Paul taught, that salvation is received by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone without works. THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS but almost all opponents of MAD, if they’re honest, will admit that they believe some degree of human religious effort [works] is involved in either getting themselves saved or keeping themselves saved. According to Paul, all such are believing a false gospel (Gal 1:8-9).

Objection (b) is straightforward enough among those denominations and cults that have adopted some variation on Replacement theology, wherein it is believed God will never again deal with Israel as His nation and all of His promises (and even warnings) have already been fulfilled in the past and/or fulfilled in the Christian church; hence the foolish "Zionist" label that is sometimes thrown against MADs as well as other dispensationalists.

In my opinion, even though they claim to uphold the entirety of God's Word (which they invariably and falsely accuse MADs of not doing), those holding to either of these dual errors deny the reliability of God and His Word because He has promised to someday once again deal with the world via Christ's redeemed nation Israel. However, He will do this ONLY after He has ended this dispensation of grace wherein there is “no distinction” between Jew and Gentile. In the meantime, He is not sovereignty judging anyone for error; He is not opening the ground beneath the feet of lying teachers and false prophets. He has given His Word and His Gospel of grace. For now He has nothing more to say. Such is grace!

So while some, by God's grace, do come to see the revelation of the mystery (Eph 3:8-9), the leaven of the errors described above - taking what God intended only for Israel while rejecting all He's given to the Body of Christ, and you can't have both - can only compound, spread and grow worse as this age of grace draws to its inevitable close.

As simply as I can put it: Did YHWH's Christ have "liberatian" free will to reject? IOW, could the Christ reject the Father? (He is the representative of those redeemed, not those left in their sin.)

 

[heir]

So you're telling yourself that John 3:16 is just not IT. The believing in Jesus for eternal life is obviously about believing in him for the forgiveness of sins in order to inherit eternal life. It's the same thing.

It's not the gospel that is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth. To believe the WHO of Jesus Christ is, is not the gospel (good news) of Christ (1 Corinthians 15:1-4 KJV). You don't like it. That's too bad. It is what it is and it's not John 3:16.

 

[Stripe]

As simply as I can put it: Did YHWH's Christ have "liberatian" free will to reject? IOW, could the Christ reject the Father? (He is the representative of those redeemed, not those left in their sin.)

Talking about evil when the truth is spelled out clearly is abominable.

Jesus was obedient unto death. Wondering if He could have done otherwise is for pagans.