My beef with Calvinists is not that they believe they were elect from the foundation of the earth, heck I believe that, it's that Calvinists believe that if you don't believe that you were not given a choice in the matter -- despite all the verses that say that you do have a choice in the matter -- that somehow you don't believe the Gospel and that your "gospel" is the lie of Eden or some other such nonsense.
I believe that when God says "Choose Life, that you might live" that he really expects people to make that decision for themselves. God does not make the decision for you. If you go to hell it is because of missed opporunities, not because God gains pleasure from sending people there. It is in that sense that I see Calvinism as dangerous. Not because they believe that regeneration preceeds faith.
In the first place, the doctrine of predestination is not the formative principle of Calvinism, it is only its logical implication. It is not the root from which Calvinism springs,...
Thus it comes about that monergistic regeneration--"irresistible grace," "effectual calling," our older theologians called it,--becomes the hinge of the Calvinistic soteriology.
God does not make the decision for you. If you go to hell it is because of missed opporunities, not because God gains pleasure from sending people there. It is in that sense that I see Calvinism as dangerous. Not because they believe that regeneration preceeds faith.
Yea too bad some people are not as smart as others to take advantage of the "opporunities"*grin*
Did the gentiles around them have that Choice?
What about the nations they were about to enter ? Or was the choice limited to ELECT Israel?
Deu 30:6 And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.
This verse PRECEEDS the one you like