God speaks to His people about their sin - "The people of Jerusalem turned away from Me without ever returning..." (Jeremiah 8:5). He is not pleased with them. He is calling them to return to Him - "Change the way you live ..." (Jeremiah 7:3).
The life of Israel is “like the desert” (Jeremiah 9:12). This moral and
spiritual desert is described in Jeremiah 9:13-14 - “The Lord answered,
They’ve abandoned My teachings that I placed in front of them.They
didn’t obey Me, and they didn’t follow them, They followed their own
stubborn ways and other gods ...” This was a serious situation. These
words are very relevant to today’s Church and world. God is not being
taken seriously. His Word is being ignored. The situation goes from bad
to worse. God is speaking. Few people are listening. He speaks through
His Word. Few people are reading His Word. We must listen to what God
says and do what He tells us to do.
In this post, I will draw comparisons between Arminius and Berkouwer. * Bangs points out that the historical situation in Holland was not a simple one - Calvinism coming in, Arminius nearly ruining it and the Synod of Dort restoring it: “The earliest Dutch Reformed leaders don’t seem to be Calvinists at all. They rise out of the soil, here and there, nurtured by the old Dutch biblical piety, not seized by dogmatic insights, but steadily pressing toward a purified life of faith according to Scripture” (p. 21). This emphasis is similar to Berkouwer’s insistence that election is not a special gnosis for the theological elite. Rather, it is a confession of faith, arising from the hearts of those who have come to know the grace of God ( Divine Election (DE), p. 216). * Bangs observes that Arminius’ theological method is “practical and through faith”: “For the Theology which belongs to this world, is practical and through faith: Theoretical Theology belongs to the o...
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