I like the insight Jerry Edmon offers with regard to the Calvinist’s understanding of predestination wherein:
If predestination is true, one is either eternally saved or eternally damned before birth.
If predestination is true, then the concept of choice is a cruel deception.
If predestination is true, then the thought of being a free moral agent is simply a pretense.
If predestination is true, then reaching out to the non-elect is nothing more than an exercise in religious recital.
If predestination is true, then the sharing of the gospel by the elect can only stir up false hope within the reprobate.
If predestination is true, then why bother sharing God’s love unless it is just some misdirected sadistic tease to those who can never have eternal life?
If predestination is true, then preaching the gospel only dangles a mirage about the river of life to those dying of thirst who’re not able to partake of its stream.
If predestination is true, then the term “whosoever” from John 3:16 is a lie.
Edmon goes on to discuss two passages addressing predestination and how Calvinists have taken predestination out of context. According to Edmon:
[Romans 8:29-30 and Ephesians 1:3-14] specifically refer to a people group, not to individual people. What we see here is that God determined that he was going to have a people for himself, a Body. It is preplanned and predestined to happen. But it is misguided to take from these passages to suggest that [God] had selected [certain] “individuals to be saved” and [certain] “individuals to be lost”. God determined beforehand that those who believe in Christ will be adopted into his family and conformed to his Son. I believe in predestination as a people group. We are all called, but not as an individual. Individual predestination is misguided. We must individually hear the gospel and believe its message. We must appreciate the true condition of the fallen state of man and the plan of redemption that God provided for us if we will receive His precious gift. While it is true that man cannot come to God except he be drawn, that man still has to exercise his own independent choice to receive God’s invitation.
