The very word should make us shake in our skin. It should invoke the most desolate of thoughts and feelings. It should leave us RUNNING to Scripture and to prayer and BEGGING the Lord to save us from such a fate.
A couple of years ago my husband found himself in the midst of people that casually and cavalierly dropped the term 'God damn' as if it meant nothing at all. I know the term is seen as a mundane swear word in our society and that most think nothing of saying such a thing.
But they should.
They should think hard about just what they are asking God to do each time they utter such profane statements.
I saw a quote on social media recently saying we need more preachers to preach about hell. Now, I happen to agree that we could do with a whole lot more hell is what awaits the unrepentant nonbeliever, or superficial believer. I think it would do every 'church' good if someone got in the pulpit and taught that 'God loves you' is a lie and that 'God hates sinners with a burning anger' is Truth. BUT I also believe, firmly and unquestionably, that 'God loves you' is keeping many a reprobate in check and that the Lord is using the Arminian 'free will' 'come as you are' faith to restrain great evil in this world.
What I don't understand is how people that claim to know the Truth of Scripture, that claim to be of the elect, that claim to be true Christians, can sit and declare that those that believe in free will will 'free will' themselves straight into hell. I cannot understand why there are those that are so determined to declare free will believers to be enemies damned to an eternity of hell because they believe in free will.
Is God not...God?
Is He not the one that gives grace at His discretion? Does He not save the most savage wretch? If He can do all that...if He can speak the world into being...if He can...be God, then why in the world does he lack the power to save a soul from the belief of free will?
Yet there are those that claim to know the Truth of Scripture that would deny God His power just as much, maybe more so, than any free willer ever did. They deny Him His power by believing that He is incapable of saving souls from a belief in free will.
They are so sure that believing in free will is a damnable sentence and that those souls will perish because of that belief. They question why others that do not believe in free will can look so lightly on the free will belief.
I cannot recall a single verse where we are told to concern ourselves with those that believe in free will. What I do recall is instructions that we are to spread the Gospel. And just what does Scripture say the Gospel is?
In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, 2“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.Matthew 3:1 ESV
That is the Gospel John the Baptist gave.
Afterward he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at table, and he rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. 15And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. 16Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. 17And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.” Mark 16: 14-18 ESV
That is the very instructions that Christ gave to his disciples. There wasn't a word spoken about free will. In fact the disciples wouldn't have even had the entire Scriptures. They knew only what they had seen so far which was essentially the spreading of the fact that Christ is the Son of God and that He is the Savior.
Yet we have those of the 'elect' today that are so focused on refuting 'free will' that they would declare free will to have more power than God does and they strip Him of His sovereignty by saying people that believe in free will are damned because they hold that belief.
Scripture does not tell us that we are to refute free will but unbelief. We are told to give the Gospel...to repent and believe. Why then are there those that claim to be true Christians, that believe themselves to be of the elect, so concerned about free will? There are those that are busy going around meddling in what others believe, declaring salvation and damnation based on their own standards and ripping apart those that do not share their style of belief.
And they do it while stripping God of His power.
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