He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. (John 3:36)
Would God condemn men to everlasting torment for a decision that He made for them? Would God condemn men for a decision that men cannot make because God has taken it out of our hands?
When God says:
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)
What does the word "whoever" mean there? If God says that salvation is available to "whoever" believes, then how is He not lying when what He really does is pick and choose those who will spend eternity with Him and those who will not? How is the above verse reconciled with the Calvinist belief that God creates some people for the express purpose of going to hell, and those people, contrary to Scripture like what is posted above, have no choice in accepting or rejecting Christ?
When God says:
For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. 18He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (John 3:17-18)
What does the word "world" mean? Does that refer to the entire globe, or just a select few whom God has picked out? Does God ever clarify in Scripture exactly what He meant when He said "world" and where can we go to find that out? And when God says that those who have not believed in the "only begotten Son of God" are judged, is that disbelief something that God has foisted on them, or did they choose to not believe of their own free will?
No, he would not.
Allah would do that, but not God.
Men are already condemn to hell. Adam's race is under bondage. Our Savior came to call us out of our bondage just like He called the Israelites out of their bondage. The Israelites that left Egypt, despite their suffering, wanted nothing more than to go back to Egypt. God took them via the Red Sea just so they wouldn't go back. And when they saw what laid ahead they wanted to turn back to Egypt.
We're not unlike the Israelites except in one very important respect. The only thing that keeps us from wanting to go back to Egypt is the Holy Spirit. God specifically tells us that He will give us a new heart and spirit so that we will walk in His way. It's not our choice because if it was our choice we would choose Egypt.
John 3:16...What does the word "whoever" mean there? If God says that salvation is available to "whoever" believes, then how is He not lying
Read the entire text.
Augustine compares and contrasts the believers against the unbelievers in his Treatise of the Predestination of the Saints:
....
Let us, then, understand the calling whereby they become elected,not those who are elected because they have believed, but who are elected that they may believe. For the Lord Himself also sufficiently explains this calling when He says, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you." [John 15.16.] For if they had been elected because they had believed, they themselves would certainly have first chosen Him by believing in Him, so that they should deserve to be elected. But He takes away this supposition altogether when He says, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you." And yet they themselves, beyond a doubt, chose Him when they believed on Him. Whence it is not for any other reason that He says, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," than because they did not choose Him that He should choose them, but He chose them that they might choose Him; because His mercy preceded them according to grace, not according to debt. Therefore He chose them out of the world while He was wearing flesh, but as those who were already chosen in Himself before the foundation of the world. This is the changeless truth concerning predestination and grace. For what is it that the apostle says, "As He hath chosen us in Himself before the foundation of the world"? [Eph. 1.4.] And assuredly, if this were said because God foreknew that they would believe, not because He Himself would make them believers, the Son is speaking against such a foreknowledge as that when He says, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you;" when God should rather have foreknown this very thing, that they themselves would have chosen Him, so that they might deserve to be chosen by Him. Therefore they were elected before the foundation of the world with that predestination in which God foreknew what He Himself would do; but they were elected out of the world with that calling whereby God fulfilled that which He predestinated. For whom He predestinated, them He also called, with that calling, to wit, which is according to the purpose. Not others, therefore, but those whom He predestinated, them He also called; nor others, but those whom He so called, them He also justified; nor others, but those whom He predestinated, called, and justified, them He also glorified; assuredly to that end which has no end. Therefore God elected believers; but He chose them that they might be so, not because they were already so. The Apostle James says: "Has not God chosen the poor in this world, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which God hath promised to them that love Him?" [James 2.5.] By choosing them, therefore; He makes them rich in faith, as He makes them heirs of the kingdom; because He is rightly said to choose that in them, in order to make which in them He chose them. I ask, who can hear the Lord saying, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," and can dare to say that men believe in order to be elected, when they are rather elected to believe; lest against the judgment of truth they be found to have first chosen Christ to whom Christ says, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you"? [John 15.16.]
"Would God condemn men to everlasting torment for a decision that He made for them?"
That statement can only come from a person with a horrible understanding of God and zero understanding of the Gospel. Since the Fall, all men, without exception, are wicked from the womb (Ps 58;3), hating God, loving Sin, unwilling and unable to seek or even please God and incapable of understanding the Scriptures (1 Cor 2:14) because their minds are blinded by both Satan and God.
Thus everyone deserves Hell and without God's personal and specific intervention, would surely be condemned, not only by Adam's sin, but by each man's own sin. There isn't a decision about it. The default state of man is condemnation. There isn't a limbo where God sits around and waits for a "decision" to accept or reject and then, and only then sends man to heaven or hell based on that decision. Hell is what every single person deserves, decision or not. For you to not even see this foundational truth means that you are alien to the Gospel for you don't even understand why man is condemned or why he needs a savior.
What does the word "whoever" mean there?
You are asking the wrong question. The question is "why would anyone believe"? 1 Corinthians 2:14 says that you hate the Gospel and consider it foolish - fully incapable of understanding the Gospel. Now if you hate the Gospel, don't understand it, and consider it foolish, exactly what is it that you are believing in? Logically you can't embrace and have faith in that which you don't understand and despise. Yet here you claim that any belief or faith is sufficient to obligate God into saving you.
How is the above verse reconciled with the Calvinist belief that God creates some people for the express purpose of going to hell, and those people, contrary to Scripture like what is posted above, have no choice in accepting or rejecting Christ?
First of all, it isn't just a "Calvinist belief" it is plainly taught by Isaiah (29:16), Jeremiah (18) and Paul (Ro 9:14-20). What I find interesting is that you acknowledge fully that your interpretation is hostile to other passages in Scripture. You admit that your free will interpretation contradicts the Potter and Clay picture of God and mankind - yet you are not only comfortable with creating a contradiction, but you despise those who have reconciled these passages and remain faithful to the Doctrines of Grace.
Jesus told the Pharisees in John 10:26 that they can't believe BECAUSE they are not His sheep. We are told in the Scriptures that God is the one that dispenses faith to His elect (Ro 12:3) We are told that the world has been made blind to the Gospel. (Isa 6:10; John 12:40; 2 Cor 3:14; 4:4)
You boast that people are naturally knowledgeable about the Gospel but somehow you have completely missed John's teaching of the blinding in his Gospel (12:37-41) where he quotes from the prophet Isaiah "He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, lest they should see with their eyes, Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, So that I should heal them..
When you make it policy and template of yours to reject in totality the Bible's teaching of man's spiritual death and inability, then you will come to this foolishness of natural man having a complete and saving knowledge of Christ and the only thing left is to make a "choice".
What does the word "world" mean? Does that refer to the entire globe, or just a select few whom God has picked out?
That is truly a sophism. Later on in John's Gospel (15:18-19) he writes that the "world hates you and has hated Me" and "they were chosen out of this world". Can you harmonize those passages with that insipid definition of "world" that you hold? Of course not. You must define "world" differently to fit your anthropocentric soteriology. It has been explained to you countless times that "the world" is meant "out of every tribe and nation" (Rv 5:9; Acts 10:35; Col 1:6), so it must be willful ignorance for you to act as if we have no answer.
My guess is that you have never been taught proper theology and this explains why you don't understand nor accept the Gospel. There is still time. HarleyD is a good teacher.