I am out too, permanently (here anyway).

Happy Day! Happy Day! When Jesus washed my sins away!
I so want others to experience that too! We must keep praying and preaching!

I have been reading your posts … outstanding … I couldn’t have said it as well. Particularly post 177 and the follow ups to responses.

I think it then becomes extraordinarily simple for the reformed person to look at an infant (and I intend that to be from conception) that has died and say that God has elected and appointed as many as He has chosen to eternal life. This may be all or it may be many, or it may be few but it is this simple. If he has chosen them according to His good pleasure, then they are our brothers and sisters in Christ and we will rejoice with them in heaven. If He has not predestined them to be called then they hate our glorious God by nature and they are not our brothers and sisters in Christ. Who do we love more our true family or our earthly family? Our faithful, merciful, wondrous, creator or a lost child. My wife and I lost a child. And if that child was one of the Lord’s chosen …. praise the Lord…. if not … praise the Lord… because my love for my God, given to me by God the Holy Spirit, is much greater than my love of my off spring. I don’t want those who the Lord has not chosen to mar his Glory and I would be in the same boat if He hadn’t worked in my life. Think of Abraham …. He demonstrated this very point by God working in Him. Not only was it foreshadowing of a far greater love, an infinite love, it demonstrated that our love is first and foremost to our God. As Jesus pointed out He came to bring the sword and dividing (Matthew 10:34-39 and 12:46-50), and this could give clearer understanding of that hate of which God directed at Esau. We have been separated and are of a different family even though we don’t know who is among that family.

Christ’s righteousness and death in the place of sinners were sufficient for all, but not efficacious for all. So the answer to your question is, No. Nothing our God does is in Vain for those who take God at His word that He foreknew and predestined and called and justified and sanctifies and glorifies. It is only from the Armenian stand point that the Christ could have died in vain in some sense.

Read what you wrote and then read the entire chapter of Romans 9 (below) as a continual thought and line of argumentation. You will not be able to reconcile it with Post 178 and I mean this with respect.

I know it doesn’t sit well with our sinful hearts and I would confirm as Paul does this rubs my flesh the wrong way, but I cannot argue with God’s word. Even when I don’t particularly like it. Although I have found when He teaches me these things, after I get past my flesh, His truths are wonderful. They magnify our brother … The LORD JESUS CHRIST … How wondrous is that, that we should be called brothers and children!

He gives grace to those He chooses and not according to them, but according to His own purpose and will and pleasure.

In other words if He didn’t effect us (call us give us a free gift (look up the definition of gift - there is a reason this word is used) we would all choose separation from God and Hell. No one would choose God. As it is He has chosen to effect many for His good pleasure and as Jason pointed out gives common graces to all. This is why we can be so utterly thankful or we would be in the same boat as those who choose by there own will to separate themselves from their maker and put themselves under His condemnation.

Romans 9

I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit— that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.

But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. For this is what the promise said: “About this time next year I will return, and Sarah shall have a son.” And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls— she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.

You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? As indeed he says in Hosea,

“Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’
and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved.’”
“And in the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’
there they will be called ’sons of the living God.’”

And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: “Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved, for the Lord will carry out his sentence upon the earth fully and without delay.” And as Isaiah predicted,

“If the Lord of hosts had not left us offspring,
we would have been like Sodom
and become like Gomorrah.”

What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith; but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written,

“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense;
and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

Frankly, I see scripture confirm both, that we must pray, and that God has the ability to change the human heart.

If God has chosen them then He wouldn’t need our prayers would He? There are so many question marks for me concerning Calvinist beliefs, and every time I hear something they say I hear something else coming from the Word which does not agree with it.

Again, I can only agree to disagree. And hopefully I shall not be tempted to interject again. (It’s difficult at times but I’l try my best!)

Does Mark Vanderberg go to Hope?