It wouldn't Corrupt his Perfect Justice for God to Create People to go to Hell; Unconditional Election is True, no matter what Caveat may come against it...
The thing that matters, is what the Bible says. Fortunately it says, Whosoever Calls upon the Name of the Lord shall be Saved. To the Jew, this was Blasphemous. We want to avoid seeing this New Testament Promise as a Blasphemy like the Jews supposed it was; because they were wrong...
Election can remain Unconditional and Limited, while the Gospel Promise can be True for All; despite Reprobation...
As an Israeli, I can certainly understand that sentiment among my orthodox brothers, but as a Messianic, I still find that to be highly subjective in its backing within scripture. One line of argumentation that my acquaintances used in support is a statement Yahshuah made:
John 6:44, 65
44 No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day. ...
65 And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father.
What is betrayed in that context is that Yahshuah was testing His disciples, the result of which thinned them out with many of them leaving Him at that point. As to the masses of people who hear the Gospel, that context was never applied again in relation to those to whom the disciples would minister, for it is also written:
John 12:32 And I,
if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all [men] unto me.
It seems to me that, for convenience, they eisegetically injected into that text what is not there, in that He draws only those of His choosing, as if the Lord was incapable of inspiring that to have been written by John with clarity and precision of language, and which he nowhere else ever stated in his writings, nor ever intimated, not that I can find.
Upon further discussion with them, they stated to me that it is by Yah's Sovereignty that He then enacts His Sovereign choice as to who will go to Heaven and who will go to Sheol. It seemed to me that they were applying something that contradicts the above, for if Yahshuah draws ALL men to Himself, with no limitation specified nor implied, given that He was indeed "lifted up." So, given that He draws ALL men to Himself, each man is THEN without excuse, which satisfies the perfect Justice of Yah against all those who reject Him.
My acquaintances then reverted back to the so-called "total depravity" of man in their TULIP model of thinking, and man's inability to willfully turn to Yah for deliverance in and of himself. With that I agreed that doing so does indeed go against the grain if a sinful nature, but given that Yahshuah then and now draws ALL men to Himself, with no limitation given in the Greek from which verse 32 above was translated, that casts a shadow upon what seems to me a totally subjective injection of meaning into the text that simply isn't consistent with it's broader context on the basis of systematic study.
Yes, yes, this is an argument that will never be settled to the point that we all agree on the same side of things, for personal interpretations are going to remain a staple among all us arm chair theologians till the end of time. It is what it is, right?
But, I just like to explore other's thinking and hermeneutic methodologies to see the basis of their thinking. The myriads of rabbit holes that have been written about by all the post apostolic writers from the second century to this day, I have never seen among them the ultimate appeal to one pesky little verse that remains ignored by the masses in the midst of all their bickering over doctrinal distinctives.:
1 John 2:26-27
26 These [things] have I written unto you concerning them that seduce you.
27 But
the anointing which ye have received of him
abideth in you, and
ye need not that any man teach you: but as
the same anointing teacheth you of
all things, and
is truth, and is
no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.
THAT is my final go-to when confronted with the unresolvable items such as this topic. I would hope that we can ALL agree that the promises of Yah are absolute, and therefore not parsed out on the basis of favoritism, as some have dared to try and suggest to me about salvation.
Thanks for your response. Much appreciated.
MM
