Exactly! So please don't think that you understand something the Bible itself does not indicate. God loves all of us far more than you know.
Helen, elsewhere you have complained about the "condescension" and lack of love in posts. Are you referring to this, and to your post above?
Yes, He knows who will choose what... God did NOT create people just to abandon them to hell. That is NOT the God I know and love and trust. The God of the Bible loves each and every person ever born, and truly does have a plan for their lives, each and every one.
If He does know beforehand that people will be born and will die, having rejected Him, wouldn't it be more loving for Him to keep them from being born? He KNOWS these people won't believe! Doesn't He? Yet He still permits them to be born, knowing that they will die in their sins. The reason Clark Pinnock and Greg Boyd and others have advanced the "Openness Theology" is because of this very reason. They have a true grasp of what foreknowledge means - and it collides with "God's love" and "free will."
And He died for the sins of the world, not just an elect few.
According to the Synod of Dort, as they understand the Scriptures, "Christ's death is sufficient for the whole world, yet efficient only for the elect." And no, it's not just a few - it's an innumerable host.
But to say that God has pre-selected a few and abandon the rest is to malign God's character.
Romans 9:14-21 - "What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not! For He says to Moses, 'I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.' So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, 'Even for this same purpose I have raised you up, that I might show My power in you, and that My name might be declared in all the earth.' Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens. YOu will say to me then, 'Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?' But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, 'Why have you made me like this?' Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?"
While some would like to say this is referring to "nations," let it be remembered that Pharaoah was an individual. Pharaoah hardened his heart against God (human responsibility). God hardened Pharaoah's heart (divine sovereignty). Both are true. Both must be maintained. Pharaoah rejected the signs, the miracles, the warnings, the words of the prophet. He is responsible.
But there is one who parades as an angel of light -- and one of the marks of a cult is this business of 'if you are not one of us, then you are going to hell.' Calvinism is not just wrong, it is dangerous.
This, again, is a condescending an "unloving" statement. You are not just speaking of a theology, but the words you are using show that you are speaking of individuals. No one here has stated that "if you are not one of us, then you are going to hell." We have only asserted what you have, and others have, that unless people repent of their sins and trust Jesus Christ alone to save them, they will be lost and will go to Hell.
Now you are stating that we are part of a cult, that we are instruments of the evil one ("the angel of light"), and that what we believe is dangerous.
Well, what we believe IS dangerous. It tore up the settled institutions in Europe who were stuck in the quagmire of Roman Catholicism. It caused Europe to be evangelized during the Protestant Reformation. It brought about the very first Protestant missiological works and Protestant missionaries. It brought about the Modern Missions Movement. It brought about the Great Awakening. It caused John Newton to pen the hymn "Amazing Grace." It is dangerous, dangerous to the kingdom of darkness.
Rev. G
