Predestination, how does this work?
If it is all decided beforehand, how do things change?
This one is great, I think.
Understanding that foreknowledge does not mean predestination.
How do we deal with passages that talk about both?
For example, those he did foreknow, them he also predestined.
Yeah, I think this chain that's given in Romans,
predestined, called, so on and so forth, glorified,
I think it's best, and I have something online on my website about this,
you'd have to Google it. drmsh.com, election,
there's a series of posts there that are pretty old by now.
I think it's best to view them from the end. In other words, if,
I hate to put it this way, but if you wind up in heaven glorified,
we can be sure that God foreknew that.
God foreknows all things real and possible.
I'm not opposed to the idea that God predestined, you know,
your salvation or somebody else's salvation.
My view is just that he doesn't have to predestinate everything.
So I think these things are essentially true in hindsight.
But whether that means, whether predestinating your salvation means that
somebody else's salvation is not predestined, I think says far too much.
So here we are back to again, please explain to me.
Will the Calvinists in the room, please explain to me.
If this is all predestined, how do the non-elect become elect?
Who are the non-elect? In the Old Testament, the non-elect are the Gentiles.
They're everybody else except Israelites.
Who in God's name is Paul ministering to and winning to the Lord?
The Gentiles.
Who do the prophets say would one day worship the Lord?
The Gentiles.
Who are the other nations that Abraham is the father of?
The Gentiles.
Paul quotes Genesis 17 in that regard specifically.
He quotes it in Romans 4.
So how do the non-elect, if they're predestined to be non-elect,
how do they become elect if God had predestined their non-electitude?
And further, when you get to Romans 9 through 11, Paul warns the newly elect Gentile
to not apostatize and not reject the truth because then they'll become non-elect.
Again, predestination. How does this work if it is all decided beforehand?
How do things change? That's what I want from the Calvinist in the room.
So again, if we're looking at our own salvation point, you know, yes,
when I'm with the Lord, I'm going to know that I was elect.
I'm going to know that God, you know, was in the affairs of my life.
That could spell a direct predestination for me. That would be wonderful.
I don't know that it does. It could.
You know, I was foreknown. I was all these things that Romans 8 describes.
But again, to use that as an argument toward like double predestination,
that God has to predestinate every event goes well beyond the data.
And I'm just not buying it.