"If my understanding of predestination is not correct, then my sin is compounded, since I would be slandering the saints who by opposing my view are fighting for the angels." (RC Sproul, Chosen by God, pg. 14)
"Answer all [the Calvinists'] objections, as occasion offers, both in public and private. But take care to do this with all possible sweetness both of look and of accent...Make it a matter of constant and earnest prayer, that God would stop the plague."
"God sovereignly decreed that man should be free to exercise moral choice, and man from the beginning has fulfilled that decree by making his choice between good and evil. When he chooses to do evil, he does not thereby countervail the sovereign will of God but fulfills it, inasmuch as the eternal decree decided not which choice the man should make but that he should be free to make it. If in His absolute freedom God has willed to give man limited freedom, who is there to stay His hand or say, 'What doest thou?' Man’s will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so." A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God
"Besides, even true and living faith in Christ precedes regeneration strictly taken, and consisting of the mortification or death of the old man, and the vivification of the new man...For Christ becomes ours by faith, and we are engrafted into Christ, are made members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones, and, being thus planted with him, we coalesce or are united together, that we may draw from him the vivifying power of the Holy Spirit, by which power the old man is mortified and we rise again into a new life." [Works Vol.2 pg. 233, Wesleyan Heritage Collection].
Didn’t see that coming, lol.
Yes I did.
The sad thing is that there will be so many who will never be aware that this much hyped myth has been discredited.
Dawn,
Yeah, you’re probably right. The other new “missing link” called Ardi has also been sensationalized in the press. It was reconstructed from “thousands” of bone “fragments”. I believe the pelvis was especially fragmented. These fragments also had to be sifted through from numerous other fragments in the boneyard (it took a team of scientists about 17 years). Despite this, these scientists supposedly were able to reconstruct this splintered pelvis and other features (some fragments were reportedly smaller than toothpicks) enough to definitively say that this was a bi-pedal primate with both human and chimp-like characteristics (and the “human” characteristics are basically the shape of some of the teeth and the supposed bi-pedalism).
This was the same basic story with “Lucy” I believe. The pelvis was severely crushed. The scientists tried to reconstruct the badly crushed pelvis and “Tada!”, it turns out that the pelvis had bi-pedal characteristics! Of course, on both counts there are no doubt scientists who would dispute the findings and question the possibility of coming to such conclusions based on crushed bones and thousands of bone fragments. But those voices get forever drowned out in the hype, as you pointed out.
God Bless,
Ben
BTW, I have no problem with extinct forms of primates that are unlike anything we have seen today, even bi-pedal ones. But finding such extinct primates does not mean that they are our ancestors. One has to presuppose evolutionary theory to draw such conclusions. The existence of extinct primates with characteristics different from any primates we see today is simply not enough to establish ancestry or an evolutionary progression. All it objectively demonstrates is that there once existed primates different from what we find today (but since when are evolutionary scientists objective?).
Hahaha, I had been waiting for this to happen… I knew it would just take a few more months… it always does…