Exactly my point of what prayer means to the predetermined.
Jesus tells us over and over to pray. He even gave us the Lord’s Prayer. But under predestinarianism, prayer means nothing. It is pointless and meaningless.
We do as God wishes and nothing else. Our prayers and our good works are meaningless, since they avail nothing, mean nothing, and do not change the course of anything in the world. I still have not received an answer from the Calvinists as to the efficacy of anything that we do.
I certainly have not received an answer to the question as to why I should bring the Gospel to the world. I have not received an answer to the question as to whether or not an individual who has been elected and not received baptism or the Word of God (getting hazy here amongst beliefs) because I have decided not to do it, will still get into heaven. If so, then anything whatsoever that I do is meaningless.
And therefore, there is no hindrance to me doing whatever I want since either I am of the elect and will get into heaven, or I am not of the elect and will go to hell regardless of what I do. If anything I do here on Earth is meaningless, then what is to stop me from raping and killing a Jessica Lunsford? What separates me from a sadistic human predator like Gerald Couey, if not the Judgement of the Lord?
What separates me, other than common human decency?
The fact that Our Lord Jesus Christ will judge my soul moment by moment of my entire life. If the Reformed believe that there will be no Judgement, or that somehow they get a pass, then what gets a Gerald Couey an eternity in hell? Nothing according to Reformed theology.
The very Bible they worship tells them otherwise.
It shows that nothing is set in stone. God gives us until the last breath to change our mind and come to Him.
Yeah, but you see they concocted a "get-out-of-jail" card even for this one. They will say that those who commit such sins are not (and never were) the elect. LOL!
They also deny that, once saved, you cannot lose you salvation (fall) because God promises that nothing will snatch you out of His hands.
This flies in the face even of +Paul, from whom they claim to get this theology (by revisionist interpretation of Luther's), when he says: "So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall!" [1 Cor 10:12]
Duh! And they say the Lord's Supper is a "symbolic" ritual. Yet +Paul says "Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?" [1 Cor 10:16-17] Double Duh!