Clarification of my post 2286. I am not going to debate the historical development of Calvinism. It is what it is.
People have not arrived at this doctrine without the aid of men, who in their preference for doctrine over truth and not being
led by the Holy Spirit, turned the Reformation into something that it was not when it began. There was no grand 'aha' moment
when scripture was better understood by those who wanted to understand and know God. Rather, it was the sad development, over time, of men who appealed to their own senses and decided to alter the once biblical understanding into something that is distinctily without spiritual direction.
I don't care if people read it or not; that decision is up to the individual and of course personal research should anyone decide to
see if I just made things up or I am truthfully portraying a history of the development of Calvinistic doctrine, that Calvin himself might have reacted to with an raised eyebrow. I'll get to that.
This thread is not a discussion. We might more accurately call it a cloudy and sometimes vulgar adherent to personal convictions (for one reason or another)
The gospels do not represent Calvinism, with its current mashup of old and new testaments which operates somewhere along the lines of 'if Calvinsim cannot be proven from the new testament, then we shall garner misappropriated scripture intended for rebellious Jews in which Gods' prophets sought to woo them back to Himself.'
In that case, you could wonder why God would be so mysterious as to hide evidence of TULIP among his chosen people. You would be right to wonder and right to conclude He did no such thing. Much like the High Calvinists of history, much liberty is
taken to 'prove' that the Bible is, basically, not to be trusted when it speaks of the simplicity of the gospel/salvation, and we must
show our vigorous desire to spread the truth we believe at the expense of the truth of scripture.
You are right. That makes no sense at all.

So, as per my usual method of attaining truth and decision making (which this forum does not really accomodate because I don't take or like shortcuts and do such things in my own time) I'm posting research garnered from different sources and making it available to anyone who cares for such things and I am doing it as much for myself as anything else. I do like to share.
I absolutely have a great dislike and concern for the vicious way non-Calvinists have been represented, not to mention the twisting of scripture and the twisting of posts by those who desire only to be right. This type of behavior spawns defensiveness and sometimes anger and is probably the main reason this thread and another similar thread, have both reached pregnant proportions with no infant to show for the trouble. In other words, it's alot of words that go nowhere and resemble a broken record rather than intelligent exhange. I've had my share of that and doing that.
So, read it or not, be who you are, get angry, find it helpful, be surprised....whatever. I'm fine with discussion that does not show a desire to smite me, twist what I say, call me names, tell me I hate God, call me a blasphemer, call me to worship and then call me names, and so on and so forth (as my dad used to say). I am not responsible for anyone's actions here, but honestly, the way some have manipulated this thread is a blatant desire to gaslight others.
So, yeah. That's what I'm up to here at the moment.
