Ask Tim Conway: I keep repenting but it's not working

[TurningIntoDavid]

(04-13-2012 07:15 AM)bean Wrote:  "get us to a place where God now accepts us"
There you go right there.
This is all about EARNING ACCEPTANCE. What a crock. God loves and accepts us NOW! God is Love. Is love rejection? Not the last time I checked. Is love conditional? Nope. Not real love.

"God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not counting men's sins against them." JESUS got us to a place where God accepts us - though I admit to suspicion that God needed Jesus to die in order for Him to accept us. I have a suspicion that God accepted us already and Jesus, as God's word to man, was God's word - His word of accepting us. Like Derek Flood put it, on the cross, God surrenders first so we can put down our swords and come home.

(04-13-2012 11:23 AM)Bob M Wrote:  I cannot stand these preachers who constantly make salvation convoluted and difficult. Its by grace through faith. God pours grace out on the whole world and by faith you believe the gospel. And thats it.

Yeah... my dad always used to freak out about "easy-believism." Somehow I don't think "hard-believism" is a better option. It's not that we're saved because we believe the right things, or because we do the right things. We're saved because God saves us. We can believe we're saved because Jesus saves us. I suspect that our belief has far less to do with God's saving us than we'd like to think, and the relationship it does have is in a sense that as we believe that God is saving us, we let Him, and He does. But I think Brennan Manning is right when he said in Ragamuffin Gospel that

Quote:The word of the Gospel — after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps — suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started.

[Bob M]

(04-13-2012 11:49 AM)Elijah Craig Wrote:  

(04-13-2012 11:23 AM)Bob M Wrote:  I cannot stand these preachers who constantly make salvation convoluted and difficult.

http://www.amazon.com/Salvation-Crystal-...689&sr=1-1

Salvation Crystal Clear,Sword of the Lord Publishers, 334 pp.

Now I know you're sarcastic.

[barttheanorak]

The trouble is, the likes of Tim Conway and Paul Washer make a huge appeal to church history. And that history is not devoid of stuff like this.

I don't say this out of any theological bias but look at Jonathan Edwards of Sinners in The Hands... fame. His sermons "Sinners in Zion Tenderly Warned" talks about people in church who've never truly been converted realising even while in the throes of terminal illness that now they are too hardened to repent:

"But as death creeps more and more on him, he sees his twigs break, all his hopes of life fail, and he sees he must die. O! there is nothing but death before him! He has been hoping, but his hopes are all dashed. He sees this world, and all that belongs to it, are gone. Now come the thoughts of hell into his mind with amazement. O! how shall he go out of the world? He knows he has no interest in Christ. His sins stare him in the face. O the dreadful gulf of eternity! He had been crying to God, perhaps since he was sick, to save him. And he had some hope, if it were his last sickness, that yet God would pity him, and give him pardoning grace before he should die. He begged and pleaded, and he hoped that God would have pity on his poor soul... But, alas! now he is a dying, and his friends ask him, how death appears to him? whether any light appear? whether God have not given him some token of his favor? And he answers, No, with a poor, faltering, trembling voice, if able to speak at all. Or if his friends ask a signal of hope, he can give none."

Full sermon here http://www.biblebb.com/files/edwards/warned.htm but you get the idea. There's this conviction among the ConWasher movement that you've got to cry out to God about what a miserable sinner you are until you get a divine revelation of mercy. I thought God had already given us one at the cross! But alas the belief seems common among those of a Puritanical mindset through Wesley, Finney etc to the present day.

Were the greats of post-Reformation church history people we would have written off as fundies?

[phil]

(06-19-2012 06:07 PM)barttheanorak Wrote:  The trouble is, the likes of Tim Conway and Paul Washer make a huge appeal to church history. And that history is not devoid of stuff like this.

I don't say this out of any theological bias but look at Jonathan Edwards of Sinners in The Hands... fame. His sermons "Sinners in Zion Tenderly Warned" talks about people in church who've never truly been converted realising even while in the throes of terminal illness that now they are too hardened to repent:

"But as death creeps more and more on him, he sees his twigs break, all his hopes of life fail, and he sees he must die. O! there is nothing but death before him! He has been hoping, but his hopes are all dashed. He sees this world, and all that belongs to it, are gone. Now come the thoughts of hell into his mind with amazement. O! how shall he go out of the world? He knows he has no interest in Christ. His sins stare him in the face. O the dreadful gulf of eternity! He had been crying to God, perhaps since he was sick, to save him. And he had some hope, if it were his last sickness, that yet God would pity him, and give him pardoning grace before he should die. He begged and pleaded, and he hoped that God would have pity on his poor soul... But, alas! now he is a dying, and his friends ask him, how death appears to him? whether any light appear? whether God have not given him some token of his favor? And he answers, No, with a poor, faltering, trembling voice, if able to speak at all. Or if his friends ask a signal of hope, he can give none."

Full sermon here http://www.biblebb.com/files/edwards/warned.htm but you get the idea. There's this conviction among the ConWasher movement that you've got to cry out to God about what a miserable sinner you are until you get a divine revelation of mercy. I thought God had already given us one at the cross! But alas the belief seems common among those of a Puritanical mindset through Wesley, Finney etc to the present day.

Were the greats of post-Reformation church history people we would have written off as fundies?

I don't understand how you jump from Calvinist like Conway and Washer to Wesley and Finney. Particularly Wesley. Did John Wesley teach you must cry out to God until you get a divine revelation of mercy? Could you cite some quotes? I have never really read John Wesley, although I have wanted to get the set of his works. I was just curious. I know what you mean about Washer though, I've heard him tell stories and tell people to cry out to God until he saves you and people who did the same.

[barttheanorak]

(06-19-2012 10:48 PM)phil Wrote:  

(06-19-2012 06:07 PM)barttheanorak Wrote:  The trouble is, the likes of Tim Conway and Paul Washer make a huge appeal to church history. And that history is not devoid of stuff like this.

I don't say this out of any theological bias but look at Jonathan Edwards of Sinners in The Hands... fame. His sermons "Sinners in Zion Tenderly Warned" talks about people in church who've never truly been converted realising even while in the throes of terminal illness that now they are too hardened to repent:

"But as death creeps more and more on him, he sees his twigs break, all his hopes of life fail, and he sees he must die. O! there is nothing but death before him! He has been hoping, but his hopes are all dashed. He sees this world, and all that belongs to it, are gone. Now come the thoughts of hell into his mind with amazement. O! how shall he go out of the world? He knows he has no interest in Christ. His sins stare him in the face. O the dreadful gulf of eternity! He had been crying to God, perhaps since he was sick, to save him. And he had some hope, if it were his last sickness, that yet God would pity him, and give him pardoning grace before he should die. He begged and pleaded, and he hoped that God would have pity on his poor soul... But, alas! now he is a dying, and his friends ask him, how death appears to him? whether any light appear? whether God have not given him some token of his favor? And he answers, No, with a poor, faltering, trembling voice, if able to speak at all. Or if his friends ask a signal of hope, he can give none."

Full sermon here http://www.biblebb.com/files/edwards/warned.htm but you get the idea. There's this conviction among the ConWasher movement that you've got to cry out to God about what a miserable sinner you are until you get a divine revelation of mercy. I thought God had already given us one at the cross! But alas the belief seems common among those of a Puritanical mindset through Wesley, Finney etc to the present day.

Were the greats of post-Reformation church history people we would have written off as fundies?

I don't understand how you jump from Calvinist like Conway and Washer to Wesley and Finney. Particularly Wesley. Did John Wesley teach you must cry out to God until you get a divine revelation of mercy? Could you cite some quotes? I have never really read John Wesley, although I have wanted to get the set of his works. I was just curious. I know what you mean about Washer though, I've heard him tell stories and tell people to cry out to God until he saves you and people who did the same.

OK so I threw some non-Calvinists in there but the similarity of demanding people cry out until they get an experience.

I can't remember what the sermon was called but Wesley talked about three states of man - natural, religious and spiritual. The one in the middle was the one where the individual is grieved over sin but has not yet found salvation. His exhortation to such a man was to keep on pressing in until salvation was received, rather than to say a little prayer. With the vacuum Washer etc would create by jettisoning the sinner's prayer, this would seem to be something of a default option.

[NotUnderLaw]

The quotes from John Edwards above make no sense to me. If God will not refuse any who come to Him, why does He seem to refuse this man, in the example given above. When I read that though, I don't get any joy, just doubt and fear, which seems contrary to the gospel message. Sometimes I think I would be more sincere and "real" in my Christianity if I had a "divine revelation of grace" but maybe I have had it. It is just that my experience doesn't match those described by Edwards, Conway and Washer.

[barttheanorak]

(06-20-2012 10:31 PM)NotUnderLaw Wrote:  The quotes from John Edwards above make no sense to me. If God will not refuse any who come to Him, why does He seem to refuse this man, in the example given above. When I read that though, I don't get any joy, just doubt and fear, which seems contrary to the gospel message. Sometimes I think I would be more sincere and "real" in my Christianity if I had a "divine revelation of grace" but maybe I have had it. It is just that my experience doesn't match those described by Edwards, Conway and Washer.

I guess it's just the difference between whether one is asking to be forgiven etc because one is truly sorry like the dying thief or just wanting "fire insurance". I get the impression that Edwards might have been aiming at those who had been indefinitely postponing commitment rather than those who have gone from a resolute no to Christ to a resolute yes.

"With respect to the TIME when the wicked shall be thus surprised with fear.

1. It is often so on a death-bed. Many things pass in their lifetime, which one would think might well strike terror into their souls, as when they see others die, who are as young as they, and of like condition and circumstances with themselves, whereby they may see how uncertain their lives are, and how unsafe their souls. It may well surprise many sinners, to consider how old they are grown, and are yet in a Christless state. How much or their opportunity to get an interest in Christ is irrecoverably gone, and how little remains. Also how much greater their disadvantages now are, than they have been. But these things do not terrify them. As age increases, so do the hardness and stupidity of their hearts grow upon them."

It's JONATHAN Edwards btw.

[NotUnderLaw]

I'm not sure whether you are saying Tim Conway is correct in his response to the young girl who asks the question, or is giving her entirely the wrong message of condemnation, when she needs the good news.

[barttheanorak]

(06-21-2012 04:57 PM)NotUnderLaw Wrote:  I'm not sure whether you are saying Tim Conway is correct in his response to the young girl who asks the question, or is giving her entirely the wrong message of condemnation, when she needs the good news.

I suppose what I'm saying is I'm not sure. Being of a modern paradigm, I tend to take the view that you just take God on faith and THEN things will start to happen.

The trouble is that Conway and his ilk make a tremendous appeal to church history (Paul Washer calls their movement a return to "historical Christianity") and you tend to think well if this is what they were saying in the 16th/17th/18th/19th Centuries then perhaps we're all apostates who've done/promoted it differently.

When people make that strong an appeal to church history, particularly post-Reformation, it guilt-trips you into thinking they must be right.