Hi Joe:

As usual, you have ignored the direct question and are engaging in verbal gymnastics to get around a simple answer.

To do so, you asked:

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Gerry do you think you may have not given us the complete context of this quote in Part 2,

No, Joe, I don't, because, once again, your own quote from Berkhoff proves the point I am making, which is that he, Berkhoff, can't reconcile a covenant of grace for the elect, and include the non-elect. It simply can't be done because it is either/or as I previously stated and you have chosen to ignore. Read your own quote again, part of which I supply;

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While they understood that others have a place in the covenant in some sense of the word, they nevertheless felt that that it a was subordinate place, and that their relation to it was calculated to be subservient to the full realization of it in a life of friendship with God…..

Berkhoff must use terms like "some sense of the word" and "subservient to the full realization of it" to qualify his understanding of the covenant of Grace. Sorry, but this is the same as saying that such are not the elect, for there is no such thing as the elect who have less than "a full realization of it in a life of friendship with God".

To compound the error Berkhoff goes on to state:

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From the proceeding it follows that even unregenerate and unconverted person may be in the covenant. Ishmael and Esau were originally in the covenant,

To which I reply, unregenerate and unconverted persons may be in A covenant, but not THE covenat of Grace, which flows from the covenant of redemption, the everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure. Ishamel and Esau may have been in some covenant but not the covenant of grace, or at least no covenant of grace I want any part of.

As I said before, this is a weak attempt to reconcile apparently divergent scriptures.

Why don't you just admit your error and get on with it instead of making statements like the following;

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Gerry, the Scripture severely severs your argument

On the contrary, sir, scripture fully supports it for the postion I have taken requires no mental and verbal gymnastics, no double speak about the covenenant of grace "in some sense of the word". No, my postion, in keeping with the analogy of faith, reconciles all the scripture such that such qualifications and contradictions, which both you and Wes have refused to address directly, are eliminated.

Now, would you care to answer my question directly instead of providing more equivocation and qualification from Berkhoff? Or will you let the deafening silence be the answer?

In Him,

Gerry