BIBLE TEACHES PREDESTINATION MEANING IF YOU ARE SET BY GOD FOR HELL OR HEAVEN YOU CANNOT ALTER THIS

PREFACE

This work deals with the issues of Calvinistic Protestantism surrounding the notion that God chooses some people for salvation and rejects others. It shows how the Bible sees nothing worthy in human nature even to the extent that God gives you faith and it is all his work and it is the only thing that is necessary for salvation.
 
Augustine of Hippo taught something similar to basic Calvinism and Gottschalk of Orbais, who probably died in 867 AD, developed his doctrines further and taught predestination to salvation or damnation. It is foolish to imagine that the ideas of Calvinism were original. They were not.
 
If you read the Catholic Encyclopaedia on Gottschalk you will read that Catholic doctrine is that if God foresees that you will sin then he does not wish you to be saved. That is not far from the Calvinist doctrine that there are people God wants banned from Heaven. The only difference is that in Catholicism, God wants you damned because it is your choice. In Calvinism, God wants you damned because it is his choice and it has nothing to do with what you do or don't do.
 
Jesus said it was his decision not yours if you are to know God. He said that nobody knows God unless the son - himself - reveals God. Matthew 11:27. It is a clear statement in favour of the malevolent doctrine of predestination - that good works have nothing to do with salvation and it is all about how God chooses you. Jesus argued that the universe was God and would probably have argued that God has the right to ban people from salvation just because he doesn't want to save them. If predestination is an evil doctrine then it is a sin to believe in it and a sin to believe in Jesus.

“There’s not a single passage in the Bible that features an incompatiblist (contra-causal) account of free will. The simple fact of the matter is that the Holy Scriptures don’t mention the notion of free will at all.” God’s Undertakers.

My comment on that is: Believers say the Bible assumes it but makes no effort to define free will. They say it is there for the Bible says you are so accountable for your actions that if you sin you will be held responsible for it for all eternity and be punished forever. But considering how many religions and philosophers have talked about responsibility without believing in free will or understanding it correctly that is a bad argument.

There is no proper free will in the Bible so God predestines you to sin or to go to Heaven or Hell.
 
PREDESTINATION

Predestination can mean that God manipulates a person through memories, thoughts and feelings to freely but inevitable choose him or it can mean that God forces your will to act as if it freely chooses salvation but it is not free at all. The first retains free will which is shaped by our environment and inner soul anyway. The latter is fatalism.

The Bible says that when you are saved by God you are born again.  Jesus says you must be born a second time.  This seems to suggest that as you were not responsible for being born once you are not really responsible for being born again and it is all God's doing.  You are just destined to be born again and your free will is programmed to allow it to happen.

What can be confusing is the way believers use the idea of free will. Calvinist Christians who believe in predestination hold that we do not have free will in the sense that we can choose good or evil by ourselves. We have only the power to choose evil and we want to be evil so we have free will only to do evil. The choosing we do is just between different kinds of evil. They reject the Romanist doctrine that you can choose good as well as evil.

The Bible certainly teaches that the good works done by the unbeliever or the believer before real conversion to Christ are really sins of hypocrisy. This is the doctrine of total depravity. Since we do nothing but sin clearly the only way we can be saved is if God does all the work. He has to predestine us to conversion and salvation.

The doctrine of total depravity does not mean that we will do all the violence we can do but that all the good we do is really just hypocrisy and we do all the evil we can and only act good so that we can carry on with our addiction to sin. 

Predestination is expressed in the Calvinist Protestant idea that God chooses who is to be saved and not the saved. Unconditional Election is the doctrine that God chooses certain people for salvation not because of anything they have done or will do but just because he wants to. When God completely ignores merit it is obvious that this has to be arbitrary and is fatalism though not the extreme kind of fatalism that says that we have no free will at all. If we have no merit even when we choose saving faith it must follow that we are programmed to exercise this faith even if we are not programmed regarding anything else.

CONCLUSION

Born-again Protestantism is the religion of the Bible and the Roman Catholic Church is not Christian according to the Bible. Born-again Protestantism is bad news so the Bible is bad news too.

WORKS CONSULTED

A Catechism of Christian Doctrine, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1985
A Summary of Christian Doctrine Louis Berkhof, The Banner of Truth Trust, London, 1971
A Withering Branch, Joseph H Harley, John English and Co, Wexford, 1956
All One Body – Why Don’t We Agree? Erwin W Lutzer, Tyndale, Illinois, 1989
An Examination of Tulip, Robert L Sumner, Biblical Evangelism Press, Indiana. 1972
Apologia Pro Vita Sua, John Henry Newman, JN Dent & Sons Ltd, London, 1955
Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic, David B Currie, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1996
Can a Saved Person Ever Be Lost, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1943
Christian Answers About Doctrine, John Eddison, Scripture Union, London, 1973
Doubt The Consequences Cause and Cure, Curtis Hutson Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1983
Eight Gospel Absurdities if a Born-Again Soul Ever Loses Salvation John R Rice Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1946
Encyclopaedia of Bible Difficulties, Gleason W Archer, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1982
Four Great Heresies, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1975
How to be a Christian without Being Religious, Fritz Ridenour, Regal Books, California, 1970
HyperCalvinism, John D Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1970
Is it necessary for you to be baptised to be saved? Hoyt H Houchen, Guardian of Truth, Bowling Green, Kentucky
Legalism – A Smokescreen, Mike Allison, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1986
Radio Replies, Vol 1, Frs Rumble and Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul Minnesota, 1938
Radio Replies, Vol 2, Frs Rumble and Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul Minnesota, 1940
Radio Replies, Vol 3, Frs Rumble and Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul, Minnesota, 1942
Reasons for Hope, Editor Jeffrey A Mirus, Christendom College Press, Virginia, 1982
Saved For Certain, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1953
The Catholic Church has the Answer, Paul Whitcomb, TAN, Illinois, 1986  
The Catholicity of Protestantism Ed R Newton Flew and Rupert E Davies, Lutterworth Press, London, 1950
The Eternal Security of the Believer, Curtis Hutson, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1982
The Grace of God in the Gospel, John Cheeseman, Philip Gardner, Michael Sadgrove, Tom Wright, The Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, 1976
The Great Acquittal, Tony Baker, George Carey, John Tiller and Tom Wright, Fount, London, 1980
The Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin, Hodder and Stoughton, London,1986
The Other Side of Calvinism, Laurence M Vance, Vance Publications Pensacola, Florida, 1991
There is no Difference for all have Sinned, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1939
Unitarian Christianity and Other Essays, William Ellery Channing The Bobs-Merrill Company Inc, Kansas, 1957
Why I Disagree with All Five Points of Calvinism, Curtis Hutson, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1980
 
BIBLE TRANSLATION USED
The Amplified Bible