TBP POLL #3%4$6@

78
Leave a Reply

avatar
  Subscribe  
Notify of
Ten Year Lurker

DEA

Iska Waran
Iska Waran

It’s between NSA and Defense. I’ll go with Defense.

Stucky

Really????

You mean this country should have no armed forces whatsoever?? You know what that means? A platoon of Austrians could take over ‘Murica!

Seriously, I surely do HATE how our military is being used today. Utterly repulsive. But, for fuksakes, don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Iska Waran
Iska Waran

Let em try.

Captain Canuck
Captain Canuck

Come on America wake the Fuck Up…

You kill the Fed and the other three die as well…

Im a Canadian and I watch your current civil war between righteous and sociopathic murderers of everything good…

And you say what does a Canadian know about The Republic of the United States of America…

Well for proof this happened in Canada in 2014 America…

Make Sure to read the third paragraph please.

Habakkuk
The book of Habakkuk was probably composed near the end of the seventh century B.C., perhaps not too long before the coming of the Chaldeans (Babylonians) which resulted in Judah’s captivity for seventy years (Jeremiah 25:12). It records a dialogue between God and Habakkuk concerning a moral issue that troubled the prophet. He was anxious about the corrupt state of the kingdom of Judah. Lawlessness and violence were rampant (1:1-4). Why was the Lord tolerating such?

Jehovah replied that he was not ignoring the evil of his people. He intended to raise up the Chaldeans to severely discipline Judah. When he was finished using them as the “instrument” of his wrath (cf. Isaiah 10:5), he would deal with these pagans as well (1:5-11). In chapter two, five indictments (each prefaced with a “woe”) are leveled against the wicked Babylonians. They are obsessed with the acquisition of territory (vv. 5-8); the Chaldeans are consumed with greed and arrogance (vv. 9-11); they are excessively violent (vv. 12-14); they are worldly (vv. 15-17); finally, they are immersed in idolatry (vv. 18-20).

The prophet still was perplexed. He exalted the Lord’s holy nature but wondered if his mode of punishment was consistent with his lofty character. The prophet would wait for the divine answer (1:12-2:2). God responded by a vision, declaring that he was determined to deal with the arrogant and evil Babylonians; by way of contrast, however, “the righteous shall live by his faith” (2:4). A study of this sentence is most illuminating. Let us first note the common meanings of the three major terms of the text—“just” (or “righteous”), “live,” and “by faith.”

Anonymous

JULY 1, 1983
Universalism in Romans 9–11?
Testing the Exegesis of Thomas Talbott
Reformed Journal 33:7 (July 1983): 11–14

John piper t1zc1vhs.jpg?ts=1484866457&ixlib=rails 2.1 Article by John Piper
Founder & Teacher, desiringGod.org
For Thomas Talbott the command “Love your neighbor as yourself” teaches universalism. You cannot desire the good of your neighbor and simultaneously approve of a God who refuses to promote that neighbor’s good. But God does command us to love our neighbor. And we must approve of God’s ways. Therefore, God does omnipotently promote the good of all men, and so all men will be saved.

My first response to this argument (Reformed Journal, April, 1983) contained an inconsistency that I should own up to. I said, “It is questionable that we are commanded to love in a way which God fails to love” (p. 10). I had in mind the fact that “we are never commanded to dispense electing love.” That is God’s sole prerogative. But now I see (thanks to Talbott’s counter-response, RJ, June, 1983) that my position does imply that we are commanded to love in a way that God does not love. We are commanded to love people as ourselves. But God does not love people “as himself.” He does not esteem people “as himself,” for that would be idolatry. And he does not pursue the ultimate happiness of every individual with the same devotion he has to his own happiness, for that would jeopardize the manifestation of his power and wrath for the sake of the elect. I think the main argument of my previous essay still stands, however, because it was in fact not an argument that God must act only as he commands us to act, but that “the difference between God and man would . . . justify God acting differently toward people than he commands us to act toward people” (p. 10). That is, divine reprobation is not morally or logically inconsistent with the command that we love our neighbor as ourselves.

Talbott’s main quarrel with my essay was that its exegesis ignored contextual considerations. So I suppose what I need to do is show as briefly as I can the exegetical basis of my disagreement with Talbott’s universalism.

The contextual considerations of Romans 9 are there: In verses 1–5 the problem is introduced that Paul’s kinsmen are anathema, cut off from Christ. Paul expresses this by saying that if he could, he would be accursed in their place (v. 3). This raises the question (v. 6a) whether God’s word of promise to Israel has failed: How can God’s word stand if people of promise are under God’s curse? Paul’s first answer is that not all Israel is Israel (v. 6b). Or: not all who are descended from Abraham are his true seed or God’s children (vv. 7–8). In other words, God’s word of promise has not fallen even though many Israelites are accursed (v. 3), because the promise was not made to every individual Israelite.

God did not simply elect a nation for historical purposes, he also elects individuals within that nation to become “children of God.” The contextual issue of Romans 9 is how God’s word can stand when so many individual Jews within Israel are “accursed and cut off from Christ.” The only way to honor this context in dealing with verses 6–13 is to recognize that God’s election of Isaac over Ishmael and Jacob over Esau, apart from any human distinctives (vv. 9–11), is intended to illustrate a principle of unconditional election which supplies the answer to how Israelites can be accursed and God’s word of promise still stand. The answer to that question is this: God’s saving purpose for Israel has not fallen because he elects unconditionally who in Israel will be the beneficiaries of his saving mercy and who will not (vv. 10–13). “It is not as though the word of God has failed; for not all Israel is Israel” (v. 6). Any effort to avoid this implication does not answer to the contextual demands of Romans 9:1–5.

Romans 9:14–23 deals with the question whether God is unjust in this unconditional election. Therefore, the scope of Paul’s concern is still governed by the problem that many Israelites are under God’s curse (v. 3). Paul says in 9:14–18 that it is not unjust for God to show mercy on whom he pleases and harden whom he pleases (v. 18), because in doing that, he has a regard to the glory of his name (v. 17). The ultimate outrage of justice would be for God not to act in a way that magnifies the fullness of his glory. The fact that not all Israel (v. 6) is Israel but some are accursed and cut off from Christ (v. 3) is owing to God’s unconditional mercy and hardening (v. 18), which is not unjust, because therein God most clearly magnifies the fullness of his glory.

In Romans 9:19 someone objects that if God is so sovereign then he should not find fault with people who are hardened and not part of true Israel. Paul answers that the sovereign rights of the Creator cannot be impugned by the objections of his creatures and that there is no legitimate objection to his making one vessel for honor and one for dishonor out of the very same lump of clay (v. 21).

Talbott’s effort to construct the meaning of Romans 9 does not honor its context. For example, Talbott says, “God’s mercy requires him to deal severely with the disobedient; it requires him to mold the disobedient into vessels of wrath; and it requires him to prepare these vessels of wrath for destruction.” By destruction he means conversion: “Was not Saul, for example, utterly destroyed on the road to Damascus?”

There are three obstacles to this view. God’s saving promise applies to true Israel, not to every individual Israelite.

(1) If preparing vessels of wrath for destruction simply means preparing disobedient people for conversion (whether in this life or through the purifying fires of hell), then it is hard to see why the issue of God’s injustice would have been raised (v. 14). The intense theodicy of 9:14–23 would not have arisen if God was simply using severe discipline on disobedient people in order to bring them to faith. That would not cause any Jew to say God is unjust (v. 14) or to say “Why does God still find fault?” (v. 19).

(2) Talbott is wrong to say that God “molds the disobedient into vessels of wrath.” Romans 9:21 says God makes “from the same lump” vessels for honor and dishonor. It is not the disobedience of the lump that determines its destiny. There is only one lump and from it the Creator fashions vessels for dishonorable use and vessels for honorable use. The context suggests that we read 9:21 as a restatement of 9:11. Before Jacob and Esau were born or had performed any disobedience God determined in his freedom to mold one for honor and one for dishonor.

(3) To say that “prepared for destruction” means prepared for conversion stretches the semantic range of apoleian (destruction) beyond reasonable possibility. Moreover, there is a very close parallel between 9:22 and 9:17 which shows Pharaoh (not Paul!) as the typical vessel of wrath prepared for destruction. And it is his hardening not his conversion which is in view. Talbott challenges me to explain how a vessel of wrath could be destroyed and yet maintained for wrath in hell. The answer is that the word “destruction” does not have to mean annihilation (TDNT, 1, 396). It is not the opposite of existence but of glorious existence. But here I must cut short our discussion of Romans 9. I plead not guilty to the charge of contextual negligence. In fact, I wrote 300 pages of historical-grammatical exegesis on Romans 9:1–23 to undergird the position taken here. It is found in The Justification of God, An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9:7–23 (Baker Book House, 1983).

But what about Romans 11? For Talbott Romans 11 teaches universalism: all individuals will finally be saved, for verse 32 says, “God shut up all in disobedience in order that he might have mercy on all.” If the “all” of human disobedience is universal so must the “all” of mercy be universal. Does this universalistic reading of Romans 11:32 square with the argument of the chapter?

The question Romans 9–11 was written to answer is this: How can God’s word of promise to Israel stand (9:6) when so many of Paul’s Jewish kinsmen are accursed and cut off from Christ? The first answer Paul gave was that all Israel is not Israel. God’s saving promise applies to true Israel, not to every individual Israelite (9:6–13). So his word stands even though some Israelites are accursed. The second answer Paul gives to the question of God’s faithfulness is that some of Israel are Israel; that is, God has not rejected physical Israel (11:1), for there is, and always has been, a “remnant according to the election of grace” (11:5) who have not bent the knee to Baal. Romans 9 says: God’s word stands in spite of lost Israelites because the promise did not apply to every Israelite. Romans 11:1–10 says: God’s word stands because the promise did guarantee a remnant of believing Jews, and the election of grace has preserved this very thing. “Israel (as a corporate whole) failed to obtain what it sought. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened” (11:7).

But there is a third and final answer given to the question of God’s faithfulness to his word of promise (9:6), namely that this corporate Israel will all one day be saved (11:26). But just as Romans 11:1–10 showed that the inclusion of a Jewish remnant in true Israel is owing to an election of grace, so Romans 11:11–32 shows that “all Israel” will be saved in a way that excludes all boasting by Jew and Gentile and gives all glory to God.

The first step towards bringing salvation to “all Israel” is to harden them. “Israel failed to obtain what it sought. The elect obtained it, the rest were hardened, as it is written, ‘God gave them a spirit of stupor . . . ’”(11:7–8). Notice that this is not a reference to all Jews but to Israel as a corporate whole conceived as an entity that endures from generation to generation made up of different individuals from time to time. A hardening has come upon this corporate whole until the full number of Gentiles comes in (11:25). As a whole, Israel has been temporarily rejected (11:15); it has been shut up to disobedience (17:32); it has stumbled (11:11).

But it has not stumbled simply to fall and be lost. Rather God’s purpose (and this is the second step towards the salvation of all Israel) is that through the stumbling and failure of corporate Israel salvation might come to the Gentiles (11:11). Through the disobedience of corporate Israel mercy comes to the Gentiles (11:30). Israel is counted as God’s enemy now for the sake of the Gentiles (11:28). The hardening of corporate Israel will last “until the full number of the Gentiles comes in” (11:25).

But the Gentiles who benefit from Israel’s hardening do not include every individual Gentile. It is a corporate whole, or a “full number,” which must “come in” before the hardening of Israel is lifted. Therefore, this group of Gentiles cannot include those who (on Talbott’s scheme) may later be saved from hell. Yet it is the mercy shown to this corporate entity which leads to the third step in the salvation of all Israel. When the “full number” of Gentiles has come in, then “the Deliverer will come from Zion and will banish ungodliness from Jacob” (11:26). Thus when 11:30 says that “by the mercy shown to [the Gentiles] [Israel] also will receive mercy,” it is clear that the group of Gentiles in view is the “full number” of verse 25. And the Israel who receives mercy (11:31) as a result of the salvation of the “full number” of Gentiles is also not every individual Jew but the same corporate entity which had for a time been rejected (as 11:15 shows).

Therefore in 11:30–31 the two groups in view (Israel and Gentiles) do not have reference to every individual Jew and Gentile that exist. The same corporate groups are in view that have been in view since 11:7. The stumbling (11:11), failure (11:12), rejection (11:15), hardening (11:7, 25), and disobedience (11:30–31) of corporate ethnic Israel lead to the mercy (11:31), salvation (11:11), riches (11:12), reconciliation (11:15), and coming in (11:25) of a “full number” of Gentiles. This in turn leads to the mercy (11:31), acceptance (11:15), and salvation (11:26) of “all Israel,” the same corporate entity that had to be temporarily hardened (11:7, 25) and rejected (11:15). Romans 11:32 (the linchpin of Talbott’s universalistic construction of Rom. 9–11) is the summary statement of this remarkable plan of salvation by which the full number of Gentiles and all corporate Israel will be saved: “For God has shut up all (tous pawns) to disobedience that he might have mercy on all (tous pantas).” There is no exegetical warrant for construing the two “all’s” of 11:32 to refer to anything other than the complete number of Jews and Gentiles in the corporate entities referred to throughout the chapter. A universalistic reading of Romans 11:32 is not exegetically defensible. Again I plead not guilty to contextual negligence. Romans 9–11 remains a grand pillar in the Reformed doctrine of God’s sovereign freedom to have mercy on whomever he wills and harden whomever he wills (9:18).Thanks

Read the rest here:

Rdawg
Rdawg

Nice cut and paste job.

You forgot the link for “read the rest here:”.

Doesn’t matter; nobody will fucking plow through your shit anyway.

Maggie
Maggie

Funny and accurate. I tried to skim it, but it got tedious quick.

Wip
Wip

Maggie,

My brother memorized my SS#. One day, HE was stopped for DUI. How he was able to convince the cop he was me is a testament to our heroes in blue. I received a letter informing me I had missed my DUI court date. Knowing my brother, I took a chance and got a photo of him from my mother. I found the cop outside the courtroom before it opened for business (I had filed a mistaken identity complaint(?)). Seeing that my brother has an impressive rap sheet, I figured the cop would be in deep shit for making such a fucked up mistake. Not only was my thinking wrong but when I approached the cop to show him a photo of my brother, he said…”You’re not lying to me, are you? You weren’t the one I gave the DUI too”? What an asshole the cop was.

Ironically, that brother is the only one who ever stood up for me against my bullies.

Your turn.

Btw, my brother is adopted and looks nothing like me. How is it a cop can make such a fucked up mistake and not get reprimanded? That could have put an incredible hardship on my life.

Proof, there it is!

JULY 1, 1983
Universalism in Romans 9–11?
Testing the Exegesis of Thomas Talbott
Reformed Journal 33:7 (July 1983): 11–14

John piper t1zc1vhs.jpg?ts=1484866457&ixlib=rails 2.1 Article by John Piper
Founder & Teacher, desiringGod.org
For Thomas Talbott the command “Love your neighbor as yourself” teaches universalism. You cannot desire the good of your neighbor and simultaneously approve of a God who refuses to promote that neighbor’s good. But God does command us to love our neighbor. And we must approve of God’s ways. Therefore, God does omnipotently promote the good of all men, and so all men will be saved.

My first response to this argument (Reformed Journal, April, 1983) contained an inconsistency that I should own up to. I said, “It is questionable that we are commanded to love in a way which God fails to love” (p. 10). I had in mind the fact that “we are never commanded to dispense electing love.” That is God’s sole prerogative. But now I see (thanks to Talbott’s counter-response, RJ, June, 1983) that my position does imply that we are commanded to love in a way that God does not love. We are commanded to love people as ourselves. But God does not love people “as himself.” He does not esteem people “as himself,” for that would be idolatry. And he does not pursue the ultimate happiness of every individual with the same devotion he has to his own happiness, for that would jeopardize the manifestation of his power and wrath for the sake of the elect. I think the main argument of my previous essay still stands, however, because it was in fact not an argument that God must act only as he commands us to act, but that “the difference between God and man would . . . justify God acting differently toward people than he commands us to act toward people” (p. 10). That is, divine reprobation is not morally or logically inconsistent with the command that we love our neighbor as ourselves.

Talbott’s main quarrel with my essay was that its exegesis ignored contextual considerations. So I suppose what I need to do is show as briefly as I can the exegetical basis of my disagreement with Talbott’s universalism.

The contextual considerations of Romans 9 are there: In verses 1–5 the problem is introduced that Paul’s kinsmen are anathema, cut off from Christ. Paul expresses this by saying that if he could, he would be accursed in their place (v. 3). This raises the question (v. 6a) whether God’s word of promise to Israel has failed: How can God’s word stand if people of promise are under God’s curse? Paul’s first answer is that not all Israel is Israel (v. 6b). Or: not all who are descended from Abraham are his true seed or God’s children (vv. 7–8). In other words, God’s word of promise has not fallen even though many Israelites are accursed (v. 3), because the promise was not made to every individual Israelite.

God did not simply elect a nation for historical purposes, he also elects individuals within that nation to become “children of God.” The contextual issue of Romans 9 is how God’s word can stand when so many individual Jews within Israel are “accursed and cut off from Christ.” The only way to honor this context in dealing with verses 6–13 is to recognize that God’s election of Isaac over Ishmael and Jacob over Esau, apart from any human distinctives (vv. 9–11), is intended to illustrate a principle of unconditional election which supplies the answer to how Israelites can be accursed and God’s word of promise still stand. The answer to that question is this: God’s saving purpose for Israel has not fallen because he elects unconditionally who in Israel will be the beneficiaries of his saving mercy and who will not (vv. 10–13). “It is not as though the word of God has failed; for not all Israel is Israel” (v. 6). Any effort to avoid this implication does not answer to the contextual demands of Romans 9:1–5.

Romans 9:14–23 deals with the question whether God is unjust in this unconditional election. Therefore, the scope of Paul’s concern is still governed by the problem that many Israelites are under God’s curse (v. 3). Paul says in 9:14–18 that it is not unjust for God to show mercy on whom he pleases and harden whom he pleases (v. 18), because in doing that, he has a regard to the glory of his name (v. 17). The ultimate outrage of justice would be for God not to act in a way that magnifies the fullness of his glory. The fact that not all Israel (v. 6) is Israel but some are accursed and cut off from Christ (v. 3) is owing to God’s unconditional mercy and hardening (v. 18), which is not unjust, because therein God most clearly magnifies the fullness of his glory.

In Romans 9:19 someone objects that if God is so sovereign then he should not find fault with people who are hardened and not part of true Israel. Paul answers that the sovereign rights of the Creator cannot be impugned by the objections of his creatures and that there is no legitimate objection to his making one vessel for honor and one for dishonor out of the very same lump of clay (v. 21).

Talbott’s effort to construct the meaning of Romans 9 does not honor its context. For example, Talbott says, “God’s mercy requires him to deal severely with the disobedient; it requires him to mold the disobedient into vessels of wrath; and it requires him to prepare these vessels of wrath for destruction.” By destruction he means conversion: “Was not Saul, for example, utterly destroyed on the road to Damascus?”

There are three obstacles to this view. God’s saving promise applies to true Israel, not to every individual Israelite.

(1) If preparing vessels of wrath for destruction simply means preparing disobedient people for conversion (whether in this life or through the purifying fires of hell), then it is hard to see why the issue of God’s injustice would have been raised (v. 14). The intense theodicy of 9:14–23 would not have arisen if God was simply using severe discipline on disobedient people in order to bring them to faith. That would not cause any Jew to say God is unjust (v. 14) or to say “Why does God still find fault?” (v. 19).

(2) Talbott is wrong to say that God “molds the disobedient into vessels of wrath.” Romans 9:21 says God makes “from the same lump” vessels for honor and dishonor. It is not the disobedience of the lump that determines its destiny. There is only one lump and from it the Creator fashions vessels for dishonorable use and vessels for honorable use. The context suggests that we read 9:21 as a restatement of 9:11. Before Jacob and Esau were born or had performed any disobedience God determined in his freedom to mold one for honor and one for dishonor.

(3) To say that “prepared for destruction” means prepared for conversion stretches the semantic range of apoleian (destruction) beyond reasonable possibility. Moreover, there is a very close parallel between 9:22 and 9:17 which shows Pharaoh (not Paul!) as the typical vessel of wrath prepared for destruction. And it is his hardening not his conversion which is in view. Talbott challenges me to explain how a vessel of wrath could be destroyed and yet maintained for wrath in hell. The answer is that the word “destruction” does not have to mean annihilation (TDNT, 1, 396). It is not the opposite of existence but of glorious existence. But here I must cut short our discussion of Romans 9. I plead not guilty to the charge of contextual negligence. In fact, I wrote 300 pages of historical-grammatical exegesis on Romans 9:1–23 to undergird the position taken here. It is found in The Justification of God, An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9:7–23 (Baker Book House, 1983).

But what about Romans 11? For Talbott Romans 11 teaches universalism: all individuals will finally be saved, for verse 32 says, “God shut up all in disobedience in order that he might have mercy on all.” If the “all” of human disobedience is universal so must the “all” of mercy be universal. Does this universalistic reading of Romans 11:32 square with the argument of the chapter?

The question Romans 9–11 was written to answer is this: How can God’s word of promise to Israel stand (9:6) when so many of Paul’s Jewish kinsmen are accursed and cut off from Christ? The first answer Paul gave was that all Israel is not Israel. God’s saving promise applies to true Israel, not to every individual Israelite (9:6–13). So his word stands even though some Israelites are accursed. The second answer Paul gives to the question of God’s faithfulness is that some of Israel are Israel; that is, God has not rejected physical Israel (11:1), for there is, and always has been, a “remnant according to the election of grace” (11:5) who have not bent the knee to Baal. Romans 9 says: God’s word stands in spite of lost Israelites because the promise did not apply to every Israelite. Romans 11:1–10 says: God’s word stands because the promise did guarantee a remnant of believing Jews, and the election of grace has preserved this very thing. “Israel (as a corporate whole) failed to obtain what it sought. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened” (11:7).

But there is a third and final answer given to the question of God’s faithfulness to his word of promise (9:6), namely that this corporate Israel will all one day be saved (11:26). But just as Romans 11:1–10 showed that the inclusion of a Jewish remnant in true Israel is owing to an election of grace, so Romans 11:11–32 shows that “all Israel” will be saved in a way that excludes all boasting by Jew and Gentile and gives all glory to God.

The first step towards bringing salvation to “all Israel” is to harden them. “Israel failed to obtain what it sought. The elect obtained it, the rest were hardened, as it is written, ‘God gave them a spirit of stupor . . . ’”(11:7–8). Notice that this is not a reference to all Jews but to Israel as a corporate whole conceived as an entity that endures from generation to generation made up of different individuals from time to time. A hardening has come upon this corporate whole until the full number of Gentiles comes in (11:25). As a whole, Israel has been temporarily rejected (11:15); it has been shut up to disobedience (17:32); it has stumbled (11:11).

But it has not stumbled simply to fall and be lost. Rather God’s purpose (and this is the second step towards the salvation of all Israel) is that through the stumbling and failure of corporate Israel salvation might come to the Gentiles (11:11). Through the disobedience of corporate Israel mercy comes to the Gentiles (11:30). Israel is counted as God’s enemy now for the sake of the Gentiles (11:28). The hardening of corporate Israel will last “until the full number of the Gentiles comes in” (11:25).

But the Gentiles who benefit from Israel’s hardening do not include every individual Gentile. It is a corporate whole, or a “full number,” which must “come in” before the hardening of Israel is lifted. Therefore, this group of Gentiles cannot include those who (on Talbott’s scheme) may later be saved from hell. Yet it is the mercy shown to this corporate entity which leads to the third step in the salvation of all Israel. When the “full number” of Gentiles has come in, then “the Deliverer will come from Zion and will banish ungodliness from Jacob” (11:26). Thus when 11:30 says that “by the mercy shown to [the Gentiles] [Israel] also will receive mercy,” it is clear that the group of Gentiles in view is the “full number” of verse 25. And the Israel who receives mercy (11:31) as a result of the salvation of the “full number” of Gentiles is also not every individual Jew but the same corporate entity which had for a time been rejected (as 11:15 shows).

Therefore in 11:30–31 the two groups in view (Israel and Gentiles) do not have reference to every individual Jew and Gentile that exist. The same corporate groups are in view that have been in view since 11:7. The stumbling (11:11), failure (11:12), rejection (11:15), hardening (11:7, 25), and disobedience (11:30–31) of corporate ethnic Israel lead to the mercy (11:31), salvation (11:11), riches (11:12), reconciliation (11:15), and coming in (11:25) of a “full number” of Gentiles. This in turn leads to the mercy (11:31), acceptance (11:15), and salvation (11:26) of “all Israel,” the same corporate entity that had to be temporarily hardened (11:7, 25) and rejected (11:15). Romans 11:32 (the linchpin of Talbott’s universalistic construction of Rom. 9–11) is the summary statement of this remarkable plan of salvation by which the full number of Gentiles and all corporate Israel will be saved: “For God has shut up all (tous pawns) to disobedience that he might have mercy on all (tous pantas).” There is no exegetical warrant for construing the two “all’s” of 11:32 to refer to anything other than the complete number of Jews and Gentiles in the corporate entities referred to throughout the chapter. A universalistic reading of Romans 11:32 is not exegetically defensible. Again I plead not guilty to contextual negligence. Romans 9–11 remains a grand pillar in the Reformed doctrine of God’s sovereign freedom to have mercy on whomever he wills and harden whomever he wills (9:18).Thanks

Read the rest here:

https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/universalism-in-romans-9-11

bigfoot
bigfoot

the Fed

It is the ultimate enabler.

Dirtscratcher
Dirtscratcher

Exactly. Without the Fed, all the others fall of their own dead weight.

Mad as hell
Mad as hell

Was going to say that myself. Lets face it, you shut down the fed, immediately we the productive people of the USA become in charge again. Period. No money printing, no way for politicians to subvert our will. They will try to make us tax donkeys, but when people actually start to see that they have to pay – with real work and real money, not borrowed “payments” and what not, things will change – fast.
The other agencies don’t even come in at a close second in my opinion for the simple fact that without the Fed, most would be impotent, and would not have the global reach they do now.

i forget
i forget

To be supplanted by bitcoin, no doubt.

Fed’s domino 1. Knock that down, the rest follow.

But keeping it down? Doubtful.

razzle
razzle

The Fed was my immediate answer too but I have to ask… is there an actual paper trail from the fed printing money to the NSA/CIA paying for itself?

I would be very surprised if those organizations have no capacity to just “add” money to whatever account they like, rendering them money printers in their own way as well.

Anonymous

razzle,
cia/nsa etc get a lot of their money from drug deals and arms deals. Afghanistan is their main source of income. If you don’t believe me, start doing your own research on it, the info is out there…………..

razzle
razzle

I know they make money and gain control/influence of people and regions via drug deals and gun running.

My point is that I see no reason to believe they are dependent on the Fed to just manifest money into accounts out of thin air. It makes nose sense to me that they are remotely dependent on the Fed for money. It would surprise me if they can’t add value to any account in (almost) any currency.

RiNS

End the Fed

ZeroZee0
ZeroZee0

No question: The Fed….

xrugger
xrugger

The Fed without question. It is a financial and monetary abomination. It is the ultimate source of funding for the other three. The other three are like suckling pigs. Without the sow, they starve.

lamont cranston
lamont cranston

You beat me to it.

Brian
Brian

This times 109+ trillion! The Fed has contaminated the money, which is the mortar binding the economy and nearly everything else together.

This funny money’s demand for compounding interest is what is pushing everything into bankruptcy and corruption.

The money power was given to the federal government to benefit YOU AND I to help secure our rights. When it was illegally usurped to the control of the bankers, our country was doomed from that moment on. When the bankers took it over, it flipped the script and instead of securing our rights, it became a tool to undermine and deprive us of said rights.

ALL of the agencies and corporations that have grew under the funny money regime would die without it.

Jefferson (or whomever said this) was absolutely spot on in saying:
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations (AND government agencies, my add) that will grow up around(these banks) will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

“The issuing power of currency shall be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”

hardscrabble farmer

xrugger for the killshot.

The Fed is the Alpha and the Omega of our troubles. Without it the rest die on the vine.

steve
steve

The FED without a doubt. How else could we fund IllumiCorp? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=152aqznWT_Y Money, the root of all evil, produced in unlimited quantities in this country by us, the FED. We own at least half of the assets in this country with money we print out of thin air, while you fools work and slave for the same. ha ha ha hah. This message graciously provided by our Board of Governors-thank you!

IndenturedServant

comment image

GilbertS
GilbertS

Looking at that dude I think to myself, “Wow, those rat things from Harry Potter are real!”

SnowieGeorgie

@Indentured Servant
( Post on Countries w/o a Central Bank )

I wish I could give your post ten, or even 100 upvotes !

Every US Citizen should see, by your example alone,
how evil and corrupt and controlled by the elite NY
Banksters out USA Gubmint is. Controlled and also
enabled by the damned FED ! ! !

Evil and apparently unstoppable too.

Captain Canuck
Captain Canuck

That’s a lie you left out the United States and Canada and there is more that you missed…

Piss off with your disinformation…

GilbertS
GilbertS

Don’t blame me-I voted for the purple M&M. -H. Simpson

I would opt for the Rederal Feserve.

TJF
TJF

The Fed without question. Everything else stems from the Fed and the other three would fall like dominoes or at least end up severely curtailed if the Fed was gone.

Of course it depends on what replaced the Fed.

xrugger
xrugger

How about nothing replaces the Fed and we take the considerable pain involved in adjusting back to an honest money system.

Diogenes
Diogenes

END THE FED

Stucky

If you shut down The Fed, what happens to the trillions of dollars of debt? It’s just gone, don’t pay it, fuck ’em!

I’m guessing lots of assets would see their market values collapse …. 401(k) Retirement Plans, Mutual Funds, Pension Funds, individual brokerage accounts … POOF, Gone In 60 Seconds!

Refusing to pay the debt means the US would be unable to borrow any money, right? Well, the Federal Budget is paid for with borrowed money every year, let’s say 33% … so there would be massive cuts across the board to everything. The
Great Depression will be remembered as The Good Old Days.

Maybe we’ll just print money like crazy. Maybe mint a Trillion Dollar coin. Yeah, that will work out great.

Am I defending The Fed? FUCK NO!!!

But, just ending it willy nilly … without knowing exactly what the consequences are … or what will come next as a replacement …. seems like a monumentally bad idea.

Francis Marion

If you want to make an omelette…. now quit being so damn rational.

i forget
i forget

Consequences of chips where may are known, knowable, after “may.” Same as chips specified from on high.

You want some fries with that freedom, or is Vichy good enough for you, Frenchy?

Francis Marion

The Fed. It’s the wellspring from which all the others are sustained.

Wip
Wip

comment image

Zarathustra

Teh FED. Duh.

DurangoDan
DurangoDan

The power to create money is the very heart of government. Government is the root of evil. Shoot an arrow through it’s heart and kill it. Just because the Fed is not officially government doesn’t mean it doesn’t govern. It is the uber government, not answerable to the dirt peoples. End the Fed.

Eyes Opening
Eyes Opening

The Fed. Greatest source of damage to the common American.

Stucky

For reasons stated above, I cannot choose Defense or Da Fed.

(I do want Da Fed ended … but only in an orderly fashion, not just overnight.)

That leaves the DEA. I don’t like the idea of any organization collecting mountains of information about me. Talk about loss of liberty and freedom!

DurangoDan
DurangoDan

There can be no orderly exit from our central bank imposed insanity. If we wait Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen and others will escape the neck stretching they so richly deserve. End the Fed now!

kokoda - AZEK (Deck Boards) doesn't stand behind its product
kokoda - AZEK (Deck Boards) doesn't stand behind its product

It is the NSA that collects and stores the info.

Stucky

Oops. You’re right. I gotta quit being high when I post.

OK.

END THE FED!!!

SnowieGeorgie

I think you mean the NSA. The DEA is Drug Enforcement and the NSA is National Surveillance and Massive Information collection, to be used against citizens.

The DEA collects information, but not so much. But it does imprison young foolish people for toking weed or attempting suicide by injecting or ingesting fentanyl-laced heroin or OXY

Sad for them but prison may not be the best way to improve their lives.

Stucky

I wish the Department of Education was one of the four choices.

El Magnifico
El Magnifico

The Fed. It allows for all the abuses of the others.

Trapped in Portlandia
Trapped in Portlandia

Lots of good choices, but I’ll have to say the Fed.

Dave
Dave

Easy. The Department of Defense. The invaders will then eliminate the other three for us.

MrLiberty
MrLiberty

The invaders fully understand the power and control the Fed has over everything. You should too. End the Fed and the defense department will finally be forced to utilize their money wisely, would finally have to actually DEFEND this country (instead of Israel, and all the other brutal regimes around the world), and the likelihood of invasion (or the perpetuation of all of our overseas conflicts and terrorism) would drop to nothing.

kokoda - AZEK (Deck Boards) doesn't stand behind its product
kokoda - AZEK (Deck Boards) doesn't stand behind its product

NSA

The country needs a Central Bank. If you don’t understand that then you don’t know the history of the U.S.

Hopefully, the Fed can be modified from its present form.

DurangoDan
DurangoDan

Funny, based on the public education history of the US (mostly fiction granted) I’ve concluded just the opposite. Consumer debt is a drug that eventually kills both the host and the parasite. With debt masquerading as money it’s impossible to distinguish one from the other. The Fed cannot be reformed regardless of what David Stockman and you might wish. The world needs honest money. So far as I can discern gold and silver are still the top choices.

kokoda - AZEK (Deck Boards) doesn't stand behind its product
kokoda - AZEK (Deck Boards) doesn't stand behind its product

Dan…………Don’t disagree with your thoughts.

I was thinking about when Jackson forced the Bank of the US to close and then each state set up their own banks and then over time state bankruptcies, people losing all their money.
CA in very early 1900’s suffered greatly and this was b-cuz they couldn’t borrow from anyone to stop the crisis (like when you need a fire hose to put out the fire).

However, what is really needed is Banks established the Ellen Brown way.

Montefrio

Yep. Public banking without the intermediaries skimming of what should be publicly–not privately–created fiat currency without the artificial “debt” provision.

i forget
i forget

If you don’t understand that interest rates information content can only be generated by supply\demand in a free market, & that everything else is malinvestment bubbling (color of law theft), then you don’t know econ, finance or history. Including very recent history.

Competition, all the time, everywhere, every direction. that’s the sortie that sorts. Anything else is a scam.

Grog
Grog

Elasticity is for undies and garters.

i forget
i forget

And breathing is for the price of elastic, undies, garters, & cash. Emperors Anaerobes would disagree.

SnowieGeorgie

RESPONSE TO kokoda,

Quote: “The country needs a Central Bank. If you don’t understand that then you don’t know the history of the U.S.”

Hopefully, the Fed can be modified from its present form.”

Knowing the history of the USA ? I am sure that all or most TBP readers know the facts going back to Hamilton’s National Bank and Andrew Jackson’s courageous stand against the Eastern banks.

How to understand the history of National Banks, the Greenback period of the Civil War and the century of FED domination of our government from 1913 on — well that is the question, is it not?

You say you understand the History, but it is my understanding that if you think the FED is necessary, then you do not understand the history. Start with Griffin’s Creature From Jekyll Island book.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-story-behind-the-creature-from-jekyll-island-the-anti-fed-conspiracy-theory-bible

People will know the same history and reach differing conclusions for sure.

And if you have read the book, then I do not trust your current conclusion at all.

Signed,
SnowieGeorgie

doug
doug

Does this country need a Privately owned central bank to which we pay interest for currency origination? NO. We need our government, which abdicated it’s responsibilities in 1913, to provide this to the public for the public good.

Abelard Lindsey
Abelard Lindsey

The agency I want to abolish is not on the list. It is the FDA. One of the many problems of the FDA is its refusal to consider aging itself as a disease. So, anyone who develops effective anti-aging medicine (say, the SENS therapies or a telomere elongation treatment) cannot get FDA approval to commercialize it in the U.S. That is why many of us expect to either be traveling to Asia for such treatments in the next decade or developing them in home labs (e.g. DIY medicine).

Yes, the NSA and other agencies are a problem as well. However, your life is your highest value. All other values are derived from this fundamental value. This requires the dismantlement of the FDA. Hence, you must ensure your life first, then you have the time to pursue all other values (Time Enough for Love) and the dismantlement of the rest of the alphabet agencies.

kokoda - AZEK (Deck Boards) doesn't stand behind its product
kokoda - AZEK (Deck Boards) doesn't stand behind its product

Abelard Lindsey…I just might have an interest in the
telomere elongation

Montefrio

As a member of a multi-generational officer-level Fed family with some interesting insider anecdotal knowledge, I heartily agree with most of the commenters: The Fed has to go, or the USA is as good as gone.

Penforce

Yep, end the Fed.

Gus
Gus

The FED.

Pepin the Short
Pepin the Short

Federal Reserve by far. The three others listed here aren’t even close.

Jim
Jim

The Fed. The others would cease to exist shortly after.

Stucky

Jesus Effen Krist. This IS the biggest fucken circle jerk thread in the history of TBP.

Tomorrow I might post a QOTD:

Q: Which one of these lawbreakers deserve the death penalty?

—A) Speeders
—B) Jay walkers
—C) People who remove the “Do Not Remove” labels
—D) People who fucken torture children and then eat their pineal gland.

Maggie
Maggie

I choose D. Unless the pineal glands they consume are from cloned organs, which means it is only sorta cannabalistic.

Dave
Dave

Wow that’s hard but I have to go with the first one out of my head. The Fed.
That’s where all the money comes from to fund the others.

john prokovich

read…….End the FED.

Llpoh
Llpoh

It is a trick question. The real answer is the EPA, followed by DHS and IRS.

digitalpennmedia
digitalpennmedia

Fed… money (any form of it accepted in a society…Rothschild quote?) is always the source to power. Fed goes, all agencies go; in fact, the world globalists go too.

Miles Long
Miles Long

The Fed. Without their funny $$ the others may wither & die.

wdg
wdg

Of course…the Fed. The privately (banksters) owned and unconstitutional Federal Reserve is a system of massive plunder and theft that funds the Evil American Empire, perpetual wars and all its supporting agencies including the Pentagon, DEA, NSA, CIA, IRA, Congress…and yes the Executive Branch. In fact, it controls all levels of government including the Criminals’ Justice System…all the way up (or should I say down) to the Supreme Court.

SnowieGeorgie

I had just finished reading all of the comments here . . after the poll about which agency to end – – and then I encountered this gem :

The Rug Yank Phase of Fed Policy

Too Precious ! And fully in line with many of the comments in this thread. The greatest parasite agency conceived and executed by men with power : THE CENTRAL BANK – brought to you by the Rothschild Elite, thank you very much !

SnowieGeorgie

kevin
kevin

The Fed. All the other evils spring from it.

Discover more from The Burning Platform

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading