(As an aside to the GRPL: has any of you found that, if you drop the 5 points, and just discuss monergistic regeneration, you get a lot further? I found that, as soon as I dropped the title "Calvinism" and ignored the 5 points, but focused on how "it's all God from start to finish," I was able to elicit agreement from an hardened anti-Calvinist that what I believed was Biblical after all.)
Thats called closet tulip, and underhanded, I was a member of a church that the closet tulip folks tried to take over using this method and they tore the church apart.
BigMack
I is who I is Jude, I do not fly under a false flag
I never expect anyone to accept what I say as true, that is the work of the Holy Spirit to illumine scripture not mine .
Those, that as students of the scripture, will go and read like Bereans , to search out the truth will see it and understand it . Those that are afraid to let go and let God be truly sovereign , will not bother..
In the last year or so the number of Calvinists have grown here because they have gone to the "book" to verify what Calvinism teaches . They finally stop reading past the "hard parts" and justifing in their minds that it can not possibly mean what it says and reading on .