What Changed?

The Calvinist God is the planner and decreer i.e. the ultimate source and wellspring of all sin. Though Calvinists say it in different words and then just add the contradictory disclaimer that He is not responsible or blameworthy for it. Your God should, by your assertion here, hate himself.

We need a more Rufus-like God? I love the real God who is love too much to exchange Him for a Rufus-Zeus.

.. as Rufus' God irrevocably decreed you would from eternity past. Why would an all-wise God want to decree so much banality and foolishness in His Creation. Apparently, our banality, which He supposedly decreed, is supposed to bring Him glory by making Him look awesome in comparison. I don't believe that for one second.

But you have not shown what scripture teaches.

You show the reformed view. which is in error

And you and your calvinist buddy missed the point.

Those people actually were committing the sin, The did actually attribute the work of The HS to Satan.

Yet Jesus did nto condemn them, why? They could still repent. like any unbeliever can still repent.

You missed the point it is faith that saved.. Everyone else is in unbelief.

But hey, You want to continue to live in ignorance. feel free.

How can you want people to believe the word of God when you do not?

This really makes me laugh.

Will you explain WHY jesus used the story of moses and the serpent to typify himself being raised on a Cross?? We are still waiting.

No, this is what your finite, profane imagination has concluded about God who has revealed himself in scripture and whom you hate. How did God force A&E to sin? Or Satan to sin? Did he create them as evil entities? Aren't you the big touter of moral neutrality -- everyone comes into the world with a clean moral slate -- no bias toward good or evil? Now, you're talking out of both sides of your mouth! Did God create his moral creatures evil or morally neutral?

I have. But you CANNOT hear because you're unwilling!

It typifies salvation of God's elect. The bitten who died had no power, no ability to approach Moses (a type a of Jesus). Only the non-bitten (living) Israelites were able to approach him for intercessory prayer and help. And they received it. After Moses created the serpent pole, the living were bit but they obeyed him and were "born again" (healed of their bites). You see spiritual life (regeneration) truly does precede and enable faith and repentance, Just as physical life enabled the living Israelites to go to Moses to seek help, and after they were bitten they were healed by looking to the Cross by faith (the serpent pole), with the healing typifying the miraculous new birth from above. In other words Salvation is precisely what I have always maintained on this forum: It's a 100% supernatural work of God! And this includes the fact that God sovereignly and graciously spared many Israelites from being bitten so that they could go to Moses to seek help!

John 11:26
26 and whoever lives and believes [in this order] in me will never die. Do you believe this?"
NIV

And so it was with the ancient [living] Israelites in the wilderness. They did not die, did they?

I haven't shown any view. All I've done is refute your silliness. If unbelief is the unpardonable sin, then all are condemned because no one comes into the world with biblical faith. Or did you mean to say PERPETUAL UNBELIEF?

Apparently you you have never read that men who trust in their own heart are fools (Prov 8:26).

And "there is a way that seems right unto a man [such as his own finite, carnal, profane understanding] but in the end it leads to death! (Prov 14:12).

Or why do you put yourself under the curse by trusting in yourself [your carnal reasoning] instead of the infallible, authoritative Word of God (Jer 17:15)?

You have no idea how much you sound like a God-hating atheist.

smh

Thanks for proving you do not understand the word of God.

The people in Moses day could chose. if they did, they lived, if they did not they died.

Go follow your hypocrite of a God.

What you prove is you do not listen

the only thing that will get anyone condemned is unbelief.. Those at the great white have died in unbelief/

Jesus did not condemn those people He warned them, they still could repent. as far as we know a man names saul was there with these people also claiming Jesus did the power by the power of satan.

IF this was the unpardonable sin. then no one who said this could ever be saved..

I agree totally. The UNBITTEN LIVING were drawn by the Father to the Cross of Christ (bronze serpent on pole) when they saw all the dead laying around them and they chose wisely so that they wouldn't up like their dead brethren. The non-elect, bitten DEAD certainly had no power to look at the pole. You're so blinded by your presuppositions you cannot understand the passage at all. God USED the [non-elect] dead to draw the unbitten to himself. It was the dead that moved and frightened the living to go to Moses in the first place!

This is some of the Typology of this narrative:

John 6:37
37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.
NIV

And,

John 6:44
44 "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.
NIV

God can draw men to his Son by all manner of Providences. In this story, it was a chain of events. First the flagrant disobedience of the Hebrews, then God punishing their disobedience by sending venomous serpents to kill many of them, causing great fear among those God preserved from being bitten so that they could ask for Moses' help, then Moses being obedient to God's specific salvific instructions, then God sending snakes again to bite those who had appealed to Moses earlier, and then finally the newly bitten were fearful again and driven to look to the snake on the pole.

And,

John 12:32
32 But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself."
NIV

And this is precisely what happened in the camp! God drew all the living to himself who had not been bitten, then he caused snakes to bite them which further caused the living to look to the Bronze Serpent.

And,
Matt 22:31
32'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not the God of the dead but of the living."
NIV

The narrative proves this graphically. God gave the Dead (non-elect) no opportunity to be saved.

And,

Prov 16:4
4 The LORD works out everything for his own ends —
even the wicked for a day of disaster.
NIV

Those who were bitten and died are illustrative of this truth. These represented the non-elect -- the clay pottery God MADE for common use (Rom 9:21).

And,

2 Peter 2:8-9
8(for that righteous man [Lot], living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)— 9 if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment, while continuing their punishment.
NIV

And in contrast to the preceding passage, God knew how to rescue the goldy (elect) in the camp by preserving them from feeling his wrath as described earlier...and even more importantly by actually saving them. And, of course, God made these clay pots for noble use (Rom 9:21), just as Lot himself was made.

God could have punished everyone in the camp by sending snakes to bite all of them at one time but he didn't. He spared his elect, so that they could seek him out through Moses.

In other words, you really meant to say PERPETUAL UNBELIEF?

But even that doesn't fit the context of the passage we're alluding to. How does "unbelief" = blasphemy?

Sanity Test Number Two:

It seems no NR liked my first test question in 695. Where have all the Spirit-filled, knowledgeable N0n-Reformed bible "scholars" gone? Maybe you guys will like this next one better:

Acts 21:28a
28 shouting, "Men of Israel, help us! This is the man [Paul] who teaches all men everywhere against our people and our law and this place...?
NIV

So what about it, folks: Are we to understand that Paul taught each and every person in the world?

I was reciting what you believe, not what I believe. Your pronouncements on the nature of God are riddled with contradictions which you attempt to paper over with a 3m x 3m poster that says "Of course our description of God appears contradictory. He is so completely other to us that our logic cannot comprehend him. Humble yourselves and just accept that the contradictions are true."

No Christian here who has continued reforming since 1559, has claimed that in scripture "all" always means "absolutely all" in every context. You are flailing at a straw man you yourself created.

Bearing false witness isn't a good look.

Is it not true that according to Calvinism, God has decreed in Himself all things, whatsoever comes to pass, meaning that God’s decree is universal and comprehensive. Nothing happens outside of God’s decree, and everything that comes to pass is the perfect outworking of God’s decree?

You don't have to understand what I believe, but you don't get to misrepresent it without getting called out for it.

PaulThomson said:
Is it not true that according to Calvinism, God has decreed in Himself … all things, whatsoever comes to pass, meaning that God’s decree is universal and comprehensive. Nothing happens outside of God’s decree, and everything that comes to pass is the perfect outworking of God’s decree?

Why won't you answer my question? Is it not true that according to Calvinism, God has decreed in Himself … all things, whatsoever comes to pass, meaning that God’s decree is universal and comprehensive. Nothing happens outside of God’s decree, and everything that comes to pass is the perfect outworking of God’s decree?

Is that what Calvinism teaches, or is it not?