Cheryl Schatz

Mark,
You said:

I don’t disagree with any of your scriptures. I agree that we are to fear God. I agree that people fear God. Where i disagree is that we can do this before we are saved or before the supernatural help of the Spirit.

Show me a Scripture that says that one cannot fear God before they are saved.

Let me show you a Scripture that showed that people did fear God before they were saved.

Acts 10:1–2 (NASB95)
Cornelius’s Vision
1 Now there was a man at Caesarea named Cornelius, a centurion of what was called the Italian cohort,
2 a devout man and one who feared God with all his household, and gave many alms to the Jewish people and prayed to God continually.

Are you going to say that this Gentile who fear God was already saved? If there is even one example of one who feared God before they were saved then the doctrine that no one can fear God until they were saved is false.

This is the issue. None of your scriptures say anything about people having to be God fearers before they come to God. Cornelius was a god fearer as a member of the Old covenant.

Cornelius was a Gentile. How was he a member of the Old covenant? And I didn’t say that people have to fear God before He calls them, but I did say that those who feared God were brought to Jesus and the new covenant. When they feared God and were taught by Him, they belonged to the Father. Which God haters belonged to the Father?

It seems to me that you are making all people into one category when God has said that there are differences.

Malachi 3:17-18 (NASB95)
17 “They will be Mine,” says the LORD of hosts, “on the day that I prepare My own possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him.”
18 So you will again distinguish between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve Him.

This is the passage that talks about those who fear God and that God promises to bring them to His covenant. God said that there is a distinguishing between these two kinds of people (the God-fearers and the God-haters) and you say they are all the same. Seems to me that you contradict the Word quite a lot.