I'm not really doing cartwheels on anybody's behalf, but you've made me aware of ways this can be misunderstood that I had no idea was possible. I think I've explained it pretty well, but not well enough obviously.
I'm sorry for the ways I fall into the flesh but some of what you object to is not that but quite biblical opinions you just don't like.
There's no way to assess the other examples. The theology I consider to be Calvinistic says you can't lose your salvation so that would mean that no matter how deeply involved a person had been, his falling away is a sign that it was all of the flesh and he wasn't really born again. The reasoning I've seen about the Bible by such people certainly seems to confirm that explanation. But I also think there are probably some who have fallen away who will eventually come back because they really are born again and merely experienced a temporary attack of the flesh. But I don't know of course, nobody knows, that's why I say time will expose what it all really is.
Predestination is biblical. Calvinism is biblical. There's no "game over" because nobody knows who is predestined. Once a person is solidly established in the faith we can suppose that person was predestined but that's the extent of our knowledge, and even in some of those cases we may be wrong. Those outside the faith could yet convert, there is no way to know until they do, and those who do were also predestined.
And again the whole point of this emphasis in Calvinism is to underscore the biblical truth that we can't earn salvation, it is completely a gift of God. And again we can't even have genuine feelings and beliefs consistent with salvation without God's giving them to us as He gives the new birth to us so you can't say He chooses "in spite of" those things since they are generally a sign that He HAS chosen.
I can't convince you I'm not making anything up I guess, but I truly am not. I've been up to my ears in this kind of theology for decades through my own church experience and through a bazillion sermons I've read and heard on the internet and elsewhere; I may be wrong about this or that but I'm not making any of it up.
Being 'solidly established in the faith' is irrelevant. You destiny was fixed before creation. There's nothing that you can do to change it; believe or not.
In a way our lives are predestined whether we know it or not anyway, all that's different here is that we're given a glimpse behind the scenes into God's plan. We have the same sense of freedom of choice or lack of it either way, there's no difference.
Why does knowing a cause make a difference since you don't care about it anyway? Do you think you have total control of your own life? Or, to put it another way, doesn't life just more or less "happen" to all of us beyond anything we have to say about it? Was it John Lennon who said "Life is what happens while you're making other plans." Or was he quoting someone else? Anyway it's rather a profound truth I think.
So when the Bible gives an explanation for why some people choose salvation and others don't, what's all the fuss about? The Bible gives us glimpses into God's judgments against nations too, and into God's methods of judgment, the reasons for it, all spelled out in His Law, but if we didn't have that information those terrible things would happen anyway. Since you don't believe the Bible you simply don't get to know why things happen but they happen to you just the same.
If it's a horrible judgment then it's a horrible event whether we understand it or not, horrible in either case, but I for one appreciate getting to know why some things happen rather than just suffering the whims of fate as it were. And given the Biblical heads-up one COULD take measures to try to change one's fate you know. Prayer and repentance will change God's judgments against nations, and even against individuals. And if you "want to be in that number when the saints go marching in" you can petition God to be included and He will include you because He says He will. So why would you need to know if you're predestined or not. If you want salvation you'll get it and that means you were predestined to it; if you have no interest in it, don't believe in it etc, you won't, it's all the same either way except whether you know something about it or not.
I ought to know what Calvinism is since I've heard it discussed by theologians and preachers for decades now. But of course an unbeliever who just read about it for the first time knows more about it than I do.
For one thing Calvin wrote a huge study called "The Institutes of the Christian Religion" which I read years ago, and what is today known as "Calvinism" is just a tiny bit of his thinking that some people who object to the TULIP doctrines put together. They invented the TULIP themselves for their own purposes. Calvinism is a much bigger system of thought that covers the whole theology of Christianity.
I should put up the video of the Twilight Zone theme here. Too much work. \\
There really doesn't seem to be much wiggle room there. God's gonna choose - has already chosen - who the hell he likes regardless of anything else. Looks like I've got as big a chance of being saved as you
Yes you do have as big a chance of being saved as I do, and I hope you or some others here will be. To hear you all carry on, however, it's hard to think it would ever happen, but God IS sovereign and even all your ridicule and resistance could be overcome in a flash and I'll be saying Hi to you in heaven.
I thought you'd enjoy it. I meant to put up a link but I see you found it anyway.
Here's another talk you might enjoy, though it's longer and you may not have the time. This is Rosaria Butterfield giving a talk recently at R.C. Sproul's Ligonier Ministries, which is Calvinist, and so is she, but the talk is all about loving your neighbor and I think it's very moving.
Yes, there've been thousands of gods. Most of them now abandoned as we learn more. The more we learn, the less people believe. That's why religious believe is declining in the West.
You are right that there have been thousands of gods and that they are less and less acknowledged. The Bible reveals them to be devils or demons that have taken up the role of gods to various human groups. These days they are lying low so that people will forget they exist. They've done a good job of it with you and most people in the west.
There is one creator God however, the real deal, who is revealed in the Bible.
God' choice was made before the creation. It can't be changed. Your converstaion from atheist to grovelling worshipper makes no difference and my conversion from grovelling worshipper to 'ridiculing resister' makes no difference. The choice was irrevocable and immutable.
If God did it it can't be changed, but some choices are made in the flesh and they can be changed.
I know that you want a tough God that is going to really punish the wrong doers
No, GDR, I do not WANT any such thing. You have chosen to create your idea of God according to what YOU want, but I haven't done that. I believe the portrait of God in the Bible is simply true and that's why I believe it. Certainly has nothing to do with my own likes and dislikes. I don't like God's severe judgments any more than you do, I simply believe they explain reality, that we are sinners and God's Moral Law must judge sinners harshly, that "the wages of sin is death."
...but Jesus brought a message of love of God, of neighbour and of our enemies.
So did the God of the Old Testament, who sent His Son to die for us to save us from His harsh justice. The only way that could be done was for God Himself to become man so that by having both natures, the God nature and the human nature He could die in our place and take our deserved punishment upon Himself so we don't have to endure it. Not to appreciate that fact is to trivialize the Jesus you think you admire.
We can never know whether God is simply a product of our imagination or whether we are a product of His imagination initially...ideas and beliefs are all we have. God has no physical, measurable or verifiable form.
Oh come on, Phat, you are falling for the limitations of unbelievers. They can't know God but if you are a Christian then you are born again, and that means you have a revived spirit and CAN know God. Because God is Spirit and is known by spirit. He is not known by mere intellect and our senses are useless because as you say He is invisible and has no form.
But if we are born again then Jesus has sent us the Holy Spirit to revive our spirits that died at the Fall so now we can know God. It's like having a sixth sense or a new faculty, it is a different way of knowing. Imagination and intellect and the five senses are all people have who are not born again and you can't know God that way, you have to have a regenerated spirit.
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