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For those of you who were not convinced or persuaded by my first article on this subject, I thought I would add to it with more evidence. If you haven't done so, it will help if you read my first article "Freewill - Does Mankind Have It" before this one. Thank you.

As it happens, someone e-mailed me recently questioning my 'claims' that mankind does not have freewill. As always, I will remind readers that The Truth is not something that is claimed, it is something that is declared in confidence or preached as news - the Good News, and then either accepted or rejected. Now this man made his remarks based upon the idea that Paul reasoned with the Jews in the synagogues. Which he did not, please see my article: "Did The Apostle Paul Reason With The Jews In The Synagogues?" He then went on to say:

"You claimed to refute the idea that Paul reasoned with the Jews, and implied that logical reasoning is evil and worldly. But I ask to you: if reason is evil, then why can Christians use it so effectively to minister to atheists? If reason is evil, then why can Christians use it so effectively to minister to atheists?

Now here he is missing the point or points, because there is nothing wrong with reasoning if it's accompanied and guided by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, but in too many cases it isn't, and that includes the men who translated the Holy Word of God into the English of the King James Bible. Now this carnal reasoning is the problem and yes it is evil if it's applied to the Holy Word of God without the Holy Spirit. Finally he said:

"However, I do believe that God can use the faculties He has given us to lead us to Himself."

Here again, we see the mainstream Christian inability or the trinity blindness causing them to be unable to see the Father and The Son as two supreme beings, not one being, and this is precisely the issue. It's the Father tha16D0t leads us, not to Himself, but to His Son - The Lord Jesus Christ and no man or woman can come to The Lord Jesus Christ unless The Father calls us. John 6:44 "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day."

By this, too, I trust you all understand that the act of salvation is not in the hands of man, but, rather, in the hands of The Father God alone and no one else. This is why the mainstream Christian slogans "I have found Jesus" or "I have accepted Jesus as my saviour" are not true - they're just delusional lies. When The Father calls, the answer can only be as it was for Samuel and Jeremiah. In Samuel's case it was a simple answer "Here am I Lord". In Jeremiah's case it was predestination - Jeremiah was always going to be Jeremiah the prophet, come what may, so where was Jeremiah's freewill in this scenario! It wasn't, it wasn't there at all, because Jeremiah didn't have freewill!

"I know that you're probably thinking that those people can't see your truth because they are incapable of doing so. However, this denies the freewill that is the core of what it is to be human. After all, God "created man in His own image." If we are created in God's image (which I am sure you believe) and we lack free will, then that implies that God doesn't have free will either.

Yes we were created in the image of the Godhead but unfortunately this man has forgotten one catastrophic event - man's fall from the benefits that came with being created in God's image. As you know man chose (and chose for the last time) to believe a liar instead of his Creator who told him the Truth, always. Once man fell he lost any freedom he once had and became a slave to sin and the curse of death and a servant of the Devil. Again, as you must know slaves and servants just do as they are told, they have no freedom and certainly no freedom to choose, so they have no freewill. We have to be free in order to have freewill.

The fallen and lost have will, yes, but it's not free because the only will they can perform is the Devil's will for he is the god of this world (age or its systems) and he deceives the whole world. Man is in a rebellious frame of mind continually against his Creator. Even if man does good he is still in the overall fallen condition for he has the knowledge of good and evil within that fallen condition. This means he will sometimes do good and sometimes do evil but he is still fallen and in slavery and/or in bondage.

John 8:32 "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Freedom only comes with being Born Again. Anyone not Born Again is not free so therefore has no freewill. If we say we have freewill what is this freedom the Lord is referring to? Freedom is freedom you cannot have categories of freedom, it's either freedom or slavery.

I do not make any claims, for The Truth is not something we claim it is something we either have or do not have so we tell it like it is, i.e. through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in order for The Lord Jesus Christ to make His home with us. Once this has occurred we can only speak The Truth. Claims are for Bible intellectuals who do not have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

'Christians' can minister to atheists until they are blue in the face but unless the Father is calling those atheists they will remain atheists.

"At the end of your article, you said that those who claim that you were using reason to convince them of reason's evil were in essence wrong, because they were using reasoning to do so. In doing so, you created a circular logic that comes across as "the only reasoning that is true is that which I declare to be true"--something that has turned many intelligent nonbelievers away from the Lord."

My 'reasoning', as you call it, only appears circular because reasoning without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit can only be circular. This was the problem the first century Church had with Hellenising Greeks with their philosophers who infiltrated the Church and corrupted it with their non-gospel. Once Born Again His Spirit joins our spirit and all our reasoning then points in a straight line to Him and is no longer circular.

Romans 8:16 The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:

It's a Spiritual thing not a reason based logical thing and this is where so many go wrong within mainstream Christianity.

Thank you for taking the time for e-mailing me back. While I still do not completely agree with you, especially on the point that persons without Christ do not have free will (if our will is not free, then God determines who will be saved and who won't, which is against His plan for us, for "it is not God's will that any should perish." ), it is good to know that you are not one of those people who considers himself above responding to people with honest questions."

I thanked him for his reply and pointed out that, in part, he had answered his own queries.

He was right, it is not God's will that any man should perish and that is precisely what will happen - God's will, will happen. Is God all powerful or not!? God's will is not our will for His ways are not our ways (unless we are Born Again) which, if it is God's will that is being done it proves that our will is not in the picture - free or otherwise. The Lord Jesus Christ came and conquered death so if any man dies and remains dead i.e. has not been a part of any resurrection then He and the Father will have failed. Nothing is conquered completely if any fraction of it remains unconquered. The Lord did not come to this earth to partly conquer sin and death, He came to conquer it all complete5B4ly and He did!

With regards to his point about our 'freewill' he had not understood the issue that it's only being Born Again that gives us freewill. Adam and Eve lost their 'freewill' - the first Adam. We are under the grace of the second Adam and have been restored to an even better position than the first Adam before he fell. We are, in effect, more free than the first Adam so we have freewill if we are Born Again, but the lost and unsaved do not have freewill, they can only do the Devil's will - that is the fallen condition.

If we believe that the lost and unsaved have freewill then by default we are saying that they have a say in whether they are saved or not. By default you are saying man's decision overrides or overrules The Father's decision and man has the power to control God's will. This is a tail wagging the dog scenario of cataclysmic proportions that he is describing here, whichever way you look at it, and makes God look very weak indeed. This, too, is the foundational flaw in all mainstream Christian denominational teaching and it renders all adherents to it as believers in a non-gospel.

Once we embark upon a spiritual journey of salvation based upon man's decisions or upon man's authority, which, if it is our decision then it must be based upon our authority, we then have a spiritual journey of Spiritual insecurity. That is why mainstream Christians are always questioning the validity of their salvation565 and in turn why they live lives of worry, fear, guilt and doubt about their position in Christ. Why? I will tell you why, because it all started on a sandy foundation of their decision based upon the myth of their freewill when all the while it is not their decision at all but, rather, The Father's decision alone.

I told him, I hoped it would help him in his understanding and we parted on good terms with him saying he thought I made some very interesting points. He said he would have to think long and hard on this subject. He thanked me again for being willing to sacrifice my precious time, so it was refreshing and encouraging to part amicably.

Charles Crosby.

If you, too, have any queries on this or any other subject please feel free to e-mail me: yes2faith@yahoo.co.uk