You may wish to note that Muffy himself has only recently come to hold to the Calvinist point of view, and was previously 'an Arminianist', so-to-speak.
One of the most interesting things I have come across is that people seem to simply deny what the bible says. There are many texts supporting predestination.
Jacob and Isaac: God loved one and hated the other, even before they were born.
Romans 9:11 onwards…
Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad--in order that God's purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who calls, their mother Rebekah was told, "The older will serve the younger."[4] 13Just as it is written: "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! 15For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion."[6] 16It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy. 17For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: "I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth."[7] 18Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.
23What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory-- 24even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?
Exodus 33:19 says something similar
Israel was not chosen because they had shown any belief in God.
I believe there are many many more examples in the bible. But I don’t have the time at work.
By denying God’s right to choose who goes to heaven, you run into significant problems.
If God doesn’t choose who goes to heaven or hell, but it’s the individuals choice to go to heaven then what happens too all the retards and people, say, in Africa who never hear the gospel - what happens to them ? They must be going to hell? Because no one has preached the gospel to them. So as an Arminianist by not preaching the gospel you yourself are sending people to hell.
Under the Calvinist view.:
God chooses who he wants to save period. So they don’t have to be smart enough to understand the gospel or necessarily have the gospel preached to them to be saved.
The Arminianist view quickly deteriorates into works based religion. “I” choose to be saved or not. (You can’t get any more works based than that!
The Arminianists love their “back sliding”, if you can be unsaved by what you do, you then need to define what constitutes being saved and unsaved. Therefore you must live between theses walls to be saved.
This denies the fact that we all fall short of the glory of god and none of us deserves to be saved and that we are saved by grace not by works. Christ not only died on the cross for our sins, He lived the perfect life for us. If we have to live between walls of salvation we will never be sure of our salvation because we will always sin.
I believe it’s very hard to explain to an Arminianist the light of Calvinism because to understand Calvinism you have to understand many other doctrines of the bible and these need to be understood before you can understand Calvinism.
To me it seems clear that churches that don’t preach any doctrine can believe in this because they simply don’t know what they believe.
Arminianism waters down Christianity and takes the power away from God in many areas and gives it to the sinner. (We haven’t talked about most of them here)
I believe this view is the infiltration of society into the church … where the self is all-powerful; it’s simple rebellion against god.
We simply don’t have the right to choose
