Cheryl Schatz

Mark you said:

You can give your interpretation of a passage and that is fine, but do not mishandle how the greek can actually function in a given context. To do so is not a good thing to do.

I have not mishandled it at all. You yourself admit that the passage could be taken as it is in the present. And when I was first studying this passage, I queried my friend who is a bonafide Greek scholar (he indeed has his doctorate degree) about the grammar on this passage. He also did not tell me that it is not possible for the passage to be taken as the present.

You ought to be faithful to the grammar and explore ALL the functions of it as determined by the context around it.

So let me ask you – were you faithful to the normal usage of the present tense and consider that this is what it could mean in the passage, or did you just accept what you were given by Calvinists? Can you truthfully say that you considered this option? Or do paint all those who want to be thorough and consider all the options to be biased?

After closing looking at the passage, I wonder, how would I consider myself faithful to take the grammar as completely different from Paul’s usage of the terms dead and alive that are together in Romans 6:11 where one is both “dead” and “alive” at the same time? And a consideration that Eph 2:1 would be untenable if at the very time one is “dead” in sin as an unbeliever one is placed “in Christ” in heaven without so much as any faith in Christ, but in heaven with Christ in order to believe! My brother in Christ, this kind of interpretation flies in the face of the rquirement to believe to be “in Christ” for salvation. Fro it is believing that makes one “in Christ” and unbelievers can have no part of Christ. Does not the Scriptures say that the unbelieving will have their part in the lake of fire? How then can the unbelieving be joined with Christ?

Revelation 21:8 (NASB)
8 “But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”

More to come…