{"id":9292,"date":"2023-02-03T03:37:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-03T03:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=9292"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:33:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:33:12","slug":"which-came-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=9292","title":{"rendered":"WHICH CAME FIRST?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Recently I cited a study on “The State of Theology” in the U.S. which showed some disturbing trends regarding American beliefs about what Scripture teaches. I revisited the website this week because I thought some of its information might be useful for my upcoming sermon.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

The first time I looked at it, I hadn’t paid too much attention to the sponsor of the report – Ligonier Ministries.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

That’s R.C. Sproul’s legacy, so there’s a decidedly Calvinist bent to a couple of the questions.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

Take for example “Statement #10” with which respondents were asked to agree or disagree:<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n

The study found 21% of Evangelicals responded with “Somewhat Agree” and 37% with “Strongly Agree”!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

According to the authors of the study, these folks got the answer right because the statement is true.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

Here’s their rationale:<\/p>\n\n\n

“Jesus told Nicodemus that a person must be born again before he can see or enter the kingdom of God (John 3:3\u20135). Even the faith by which we enter the kingdom is a gift of God, who by His Spirit brings us to new spiritual life so that we can trust in Christ (Eph. 2:1\u201310). The Spirit, therefore, must give us new life before we can believe (Rom. 8:1\u201311).”<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

This is cherry-picking Scripture passages to find support for a purely Calvinist paradigm and they are ignoring all of the other verses which have belief coming before the new birth.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

If you look up the cited verses, you might find yourself scratching your head as to how they prove that you must be born again before you can have faith.\u00a0<\/span>Apparently, you need to be wearing Calvinist glasses in order to see it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

I was saddened to see only 8% rated their opinion as “Somewhat Disagree” and only 19% said “Strongly Disagree”.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

People don’t understand what the Bible has to say about the Order of Salvation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

You can see the entire study at thestateoftheology.com<\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently I cited a study on “The State of Theology” in the U.S. which showed some disturbing trends regarding American beliefs about what Scripture teaches. I revisited the website this week because I thought some of its information might be useful for my upcoming sermon. The first time I looked at it, I hadn’t paid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9293,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9292"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9294,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9292\/revisions\/9294"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}