Awaken Bible Prophecy Update 2-7-24 – Calvinism, Eternal Security, & Free Will

Is it any wonder we don’t, and cannot, have unity in the church this side of eternity?  We have so many different interpretations of Scripture that are so far apart, it’s difficult to find anything about which we can all agree.  How do we have common cause in the debate regarding pre-Tribulation Rapture versus post-Trib, or no Rapture, or no Tribulation?  In the context of today’s Commentary, how do we who believe in free will (i.e. Arminianism of one stripe or another) and those who adhere to Calvin’s doctrine of election with no free will whatsoever on our part come together as one?  Yes, presumably we all believe in the shed blood of Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins and our eternal salvation, but even that has its major differences, as we’ll discuss later.  We could probably all enjoy an ice cream social together as brothers and sisters in Christ as long as none of the conversation veers toward anything theological.  Is it any wonder we have so many denominations and other schisms in the body of Christ?

A lady who follows my work has concerns regarding what her pastor was preaching.  Because of that, she asked me to hear what he said and provide my take on it.  I listened and came away with a very definite understanding of his theology.  Much of his sermon was quite good as he brought out interesting details about the message text, but his hard-core Calvinist message came through loud and clear at the end.  If you like the Calvinist approach to God’s character and how this sees Him operate, all well and good.  If you’re not on-board with that, you would have had a major problem and disagreement as I did.

In this Prophecy Update today, I want to bring several points together that I’ve been stressing lately by adding in the Calvinism component, and enlarge that with a couple more ideas thrown into the mix.  No doubt, what I say will step on a few toes since the topic is a touchy one.  Hopefully, however, I’ll provide something for everyone to think about rather than blindly adhere to a doctrine that perhaps you picked up in the past, but never really thought deeply about.  If nothing else, we should know not only what we believe, but why we believe it.

Transcript:

Is it any wonder we don’t, and cannot, have unity in the church this side of eternity?  We have so many different interpretations of Scripture that are so far apart, it’s difficult to find anything about which we can all agree.  How do we have common cause in the debate regarding pre-Tribulation Rapture versus post-Trib, or no Rapture, or no Tribulation?  In the context of today’s Commentary, how do we who believe in free will (i.e. Arminianism of one stripe or another) and those who adhere to Calvin’s doctrine of election with no free will whatsoever on our part come together as one?  Yes, presumably we all believe in the shed blood of Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins and our eternal salvation, but even that has its major differences, as we’ll discuss later.  We could probably all enjoy an ice cream social together as brothers and sisters in Christ as long as none of the conversation veers toward anything theological.  Is it any wonder we have so many denominations and other schisms in the body of Christ?

A lady who follows my work has concerns regarding what her pastor was preaching.  Because of that, she asked me to hear what he said and provide my take on it.  I listened and came away with a very definite understanding of his theology.  Much of his sermon was quite good as he brought out interesting details about the message text, but his hard-core Calvinist message came through loud and clear at the end.  If you like the Calvinist approach to God’s character and how this sees Him operate, all well and good.  If you’re not on-board with that, you would have had a major problem and disagreement as I did.

In this Prophecy Update today, I want to bring several points together that I’ve been stressing lately by adding in the Calvinism component, and enlarge that with a couple more ideas thrown into the mix.  No doubt, what I say will step on a few toes since the topic is a touchy one.  Hopefully, however, I’ll provide something for everyone to think about rather than blindly adhere to a doctrine that perhaps you picked up in the past, but never really thought deeply about.  If nothing else, we should know not only what we believe, but why we believe it.

We’ll get right to this as soon as we pray and read from God’s Word.

<PRAY>

Scripture:

Exodus 32:32-34

But now, if you will forgive their sin—but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written.” But the Lord said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book. But now go, lead the people to the place about which I have spoken to you; behold, my angel shall go before you. Nevertheless, in the day when I visit, I will visit their sin upon them.”

Revelation 3:5
The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels.

Calvinism, Eternal Security, & Free Will

• I won’t beat around the bush
• Here’s my premise that is sure to irritate some number of people:
• If someone believes in the concept of eternal security, whereby once a person is saved, he cannot forfeit his salvation, nor can he be left behind from the Rapture for some reason, then I maintain that this is integral to Calvinism
• In other words, when eternal security is claimed, with no possibility of a saved person choosing to walk away from God, then this position is part and parcel of the Calvinist thinking of their “doctrine of election”
• The doctrine of election maintains that God chooses completely and fully whom He will save through irresistible grace
• Human beings as such have no free will to choose whether or not they will be saved and remain that way
• Thus, the concept of eternal security is Calvinist at its core
• “Once saved, always saved” believes that because God has made it so regardless of any future circumstances, a born-again person cannot fight God’s will, nor can he choose to follow his own path away from God
• This belief system holds that Salvation = Rapture and that Salvation = the eternal state with no holds-barred, since God has chosen, and that’s the end of the story
• Did everyone who believes in the idea of eternal security ever consider that they’re all Calvinists, whether they think they are or not?
• Didn’t I tell you this was touchy?

• Let’s define Calvinism a little more
• The Five-Points of Calvinism are contained in the acronym TULIP as follows:

1. Total Inability
   2. Unconditional Election
   3. Limited Atonement
   4. Irresistible Grace
   5. Perseverance of the Saints

• Total Inability
  1. Man is totally unable to do anything to obtain salvation.
  2. Calvinists state very emphatically that man cannot repent or believe the gospel.
• Unconditional Election
  1. God has determined and decreed that some are to be saved without any conditions to be met on their part.
  2. This is called Unconditional Election and is the choosing of some to salvation in Christ, while at the same time, leaving the rest in their lost condition by not choosing them.
• Limited Atonement
  1. Christ died on the cross for the sins of the Elect.
  2. To say that He died for the sins of the Non-Elect is not reasonable.
  3. Since, according to their system, God has chosen some to be saved and chosen the rest to be lost,
• Irresistible Grace
  1. All those whom God has chosen to be saved will be unable to resist the call of God.
  2. Since He has predetermined them to be saved, He effectually calls and regenerates them without any condition to be met on their part.
• Perseverance of the Saints
  1. Those whom God has chosen to be saved will persevere to the end and will not finally and fully depart from the faith.
  2. The one who is truly born again is eternally secure in Christ and is never in danger of losing his salvation.
• How do we know a pastor is preaching a Calvinist message?
• Listen to the language
• Here are several things the pastor said whose sermon I listened to:
  • “Some say” that the doctrine of election is a doctrine of demons
  • “Some say” that if only God chooses, then we have no say
  • (Notice the straw man argument attributing these sayings to unspecified others)
  • The truth is that people won’t choose God because they are dead
  • Only one can choose – either God or man; it is God who chooses
  • God doesn’t cast out anyone who comes to Him if He has chosen them in the first place
• You should be able to see how this Calvinist thinking affects the idea of eternal security
• There are many who say, “I’m not a Calvinist,” and they dance around some of these tenets to prove their point
• But the bottom line is that if through God’s choice and His alone, one has eternal security, then that’s a Calvinist position
• If man does not have free will after salvation to reject God’s incredible gift, then he is helpless and can effectively be forced by God to join Him in heaven for all eternity
• I’m not say that it’s necessarily easy for a person to disengage himself from God
• The Lord goes to great lengths to retain those whom He has called and who has responded
• But if someone is bound and determined for some reason to walk away from the umbrella of God’s grace and mercy, free will says he can do so
• Otherwise, he is a captive – possibly even held against his will by his “loving” God
• There’s a problem with that
• An example might be a person who gets thoroughly saved
• However, as a young – but real – Christian he attends a very liberal church
• Obviously, the Holy Spirit will be speaking to him and trying to get his attention that doctrine is false in this place
• However, he resists the Holy Spirit’s prompting – no one ever does that: right?
• The church starts up yoga classes
• This new Christian wants the exercise, and because the church is offering it, he reasons it must be well and good with no conflict to the Christian faith
• After all, the class is called Christian Yoga
• During all this the Holy Spirit is saying to him that he must run from this
• But, he figures the resistance is only because he’s never been big on exercise – so he has to overcome that
• In the course of the class the instructor introduces the term namaste
• Here is how the invaluable resource website CANA (Christian Answers for the New Age) describes this word:
  1. Yoga has become very chic, and people may feel somewhat special and exotic folding their hands and bowing and saying “Namaste.” However, let’s look more closely at this term. Namaste, often used in Yoga, is a Hindu mudra and greeting. A mudra is a hand position usually derived from Hindu deities and has spiritual significance.
  2. Here is the meaning:

 The word nama is split into two, na and ma. Na signifies negation and ma represents mine. The meaning would then be ‘not mine’. The import being that the individual soul belongs entirely to the Supreme soul, which is identified as residing in the individual towards whom the namaste is directed. Indeed there is nothing that the soul can claim as its own. Namaste is thus the necessary rejection of ‘I’ and the associated phenomena of egotism. It is said that ‘ma’ in nama means death (spiritual), and when this is negated (na-ma), it signifies immortality.

3. . . . Simply put, namaste intimates the following: ‘The God in me greets the God in you,
4. So we see that Namaste expresses a philosophy that one is truly divine; this is a Hindu belief.

• Thus, in all innocence our new believer begins absorbing Hindu beliefs that are contrary to Scripture and the ways of God
• He starts believing that God is in everything and everything is God
• This is obviously completely contrary to God as creator and everything that is has come from Him – but it is not Him
• There is a separation
• But Hinduism does not believe this
• Regardless, our young Christian believes what he’s taught – he’s learning it in the church, after all
• And he begins to worship that which is false
• Ultimately, he worships other gods in addition to the God of the Bible
• He has become an idolator
• As is rightly said: There is no Hinduism without yoga, and no yoga without Hinduism
• In this idolatrous process, our hero has walked down the road that Paul describes in Romans 1:18-23:

¹⁸ For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. ¹⁹ For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. ²⁰ For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. ²¹ For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²² Claiming to be wise, they became fools, ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

• Now, are you really going to tell me that this kind of situation cannot happen and does not happen?
• It’s quite naïve to think that way
• To prove all this, I’m going to appeal to the Old Testament, which few do who hold fast to the idea of eternal security
• Who are those whom Calvinism deems as saved regardless of their will?
• They are “the elect”
• They are the chosen by God
• To review, you’ll recall I mentioned the sermon that I was asked to analyze
• The pastor asks the question:
• “Who chooses? God or man?  It can’t be both.  Both cannot be true.”
• To examine how this works or it doesn’t work, consider three instances from the Old Testament

1. Rebellion of Satan and Sons of God (i.e. fallen angels)
2. Adam and Eve’s fall
3. The stiff-necked-Israelites

#1 – Rebellion of Satan and Sons of God (i.e. fallen angels)

• Can anyone contend that God created the heavenly host?
• In fact, they were His first sentient creation – very special because they dwelled in the presence of God in heaven
• Can anyone seriously say that God did not choose to create them?
• If that’s the case – how then is it that some of these special, chosen beings rebelled?
• Will you really try to argue that God made them sinful and they had no choice in the matter?
• If so, that gets directly at the character of God
• If He made these angels sinful in the first place, what kind of perfect, loving God is He?
• For Him to have done that, then right out of the gate He decided that some of them would have to spend eternity in Tartarus and the Lake of Fire so as to accomplish His purposes
• But why would God do this and cause a purposeful rebellion among the heavenly host when there hadn’t even been a rebellion among humans whom He hadn’t yet created?
• If there is no free will and ability to choose even by divine beings, this is the only conclusion one can arrive at – and it makes zero sense
• Obviously, what does make sense is that God chose to create these angels and to do so perfectly without sin, yet they chose freely to rebel and act contrary to God’s will because they have the capability to do so

#2 – Adam and Eve’s fall

• If there are any human beings that we can say God chose, it is certainly Adam and subsequently Eve
• Just as God made the heavenly host with divine bodies special for that environment. . .
• He likewise made this first couple perfect as humans for their earthly environment
• Can anyone say that God in some manner didn’t choose Adam and Eve?
• How foolish that would be!
• If any humans in the history of the world had eternal security it had to be the first man and woman
• God made the Garden of Eden specially for them
• He walked personally in the Garden with them
• He gave them the divine task of caring for His earthly creation
• They more than likely were eating from the Tree of Life – a type of Christ
• Under the doctrine of election where only God chooses and man cannot, surely Adam and Eve were elect
• This means they absolutely could not have chosen to sin
• They had no choice in the matter of resisting the serpent
• As God’s chosen, there’s no way they would have eaten from the forbidden Tree
• They could not have taken that first bite because they had no ability to do so since God’s irrestible grace would have forced them to stay their hands and walk away from both the serpent and the Tree
• Yet, they didn’t resist the serpent, and they both took that prohibited bite
• How is this even possible given their circumstances?
• It can only be because they had free will with the means to choose whether to obey or not
• Otherwise, Calvinists have to make the claim that God created Adam and Eve with the purposeful intent to have them sin and thus contaminate all future generations of mankind
• That would be a very tall tale on the order of Paul Bunyon, the giant lumberjack with his blue ox, or Jack and the Beanstalk climbing to the giant’s lair on the vine produced by his magic beans

#3 – The stiff necked-Israelites

• Thus far, the Calvinists might argue, I’ve touched on unique cases: the heavenly host and the first humans
• But, after those situations God began choosing irrestibly by His grace
• Um, not so fast
• We have a problem
• The people of Israel, a.k.a. the Jews or Hebrews, were considered God’s Chosen People
• Note Deuteronomy 7:6:

“For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

• Or, how about Psalm 33:12 among numerous other references?

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage!

• Now, someone could go down the wayward path of Replacement Theology and declare that Israel is no longer chosen since God has abandoned them by making the church the new Israel. . .
• But I suspect for some number of Calvinists this might be a bridge too far
• It certainly doesn’t work for many others in the evangelical community who believe in eternal security
• But as noted, we have a problem
• God required certain responses from His people who he specially chose out of all the peoples of the earth
• Deuteronomy 10:12 succinctly lays out these requirements:

“And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul,

• The people of Israel – God’s Chosen People – were commanded to:
  • Fear God
  • Walk in all His ways
  • Love Him
  • Serve Him
  • And do all these things with all their heart and soul
• In fact, look at how God framed these things in Deuteronomy 11:2:

And consider today (since I am not speaking to your children who have not known or seen it), consider the discipline of the Lord your God

• Discipline would seem to indicate that consequences may be part of this equation
• After all, when an earthly father disciplines his son, a sore bottom might result from his crossing a red line
• On the other hand, if the son is obedient, he doesn’t need discipline in the form of possible punitive punishment, and may actually be rewarded for his obedience
• We see this specified in the following verses of Deuteronomy 11:13-16:

13 “And if you will indeed obey my commandments that I command you today, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, 14 he will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil. 15 And he will give grass in your fields for your livestock, and you shall eat and be full. 16 Take care lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them; 17 then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and he will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain, and the land will yield no fruit, and you will perish quickly off the good land that the Lord is giving you.

• This is shown exceptionally clearly in the full chapter of Deuteronomy 28
• We also see how conditional all this is by reading Deuteronomy 12:25,28,30:

You shall not eat it, that all may go well with you and with your children after you, when you do what is right in the sight of the Lord.

Be careful to obey all these words that I command you, that it may go well with you and with your children after you forever, when you do what is good and right in the sight of the Lord your God.

take care that you be not ensnared to follow them, after they have been destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire about their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods?—that I also may do the same.’

• Did you catch all that?
• God warns the Israelites about certain things they must not do SO THAT all goes well
• They must do what is right
• Otherwise, what happens?
• They WILL BE ensnared by unholy and unrighteous acts
• What happened to other nations committing such deeds?
• They were destroyed
• In like manner, God warns His people that they also will be destroyed for their perverseness and abominations
• This is not an empty threat
• They did commit those deeds
• For freely doing them, God acted against them
• But we have to ask:
• If Israel is God’s Chosen People called by His irrestible grace. . .
• Which they certainly were since He chose them of all possible nations. . .
• Why would God even need to warn them of rebellion and disobedience?
• For that matter, why would He call them a stiff-necked people? (check out Exodus 33:5)
• The only reasonable answer is that they had the means to rebel, be disobedient, and rise up against God with their very stiff necks
• But they were CHOSEN!
• Well, the Calvinist will surely say that all this happened in the Old Testament
• Under the New Covenant, these examples are irrelevant
• Jesus changes everything. . .
• Obviously, even with all that we’ve learned and seen in the Old Covenant
• If that’s the case of how these people think – and I admittedly haven’t picked someone’s brain in this regard – but if there’s any dismissal like this on the tip of someone’s tongue. . .
• Once more we have a problem
• During the time of Jesus and later the apostles, the only Scripture reference was the Old Testament, a.k.a. the Law and the Prophets
• Note what occurred in Acts 28:23 referring to the Apostle Paul:

When they had appointed a day for him, they came to him at his lodging in greater numbers. From morning till evening he expounded to them, testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus both from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets.

• Paul taught from the Law of Moses and the Words of the Prophets regarding Jesus
• What we’ve just reviewed about the Sons of God, i.e. fallen angels, Adam and Eve’s rebellion, and Israel’s stiff-necked disobedience all comes from the Old Testament, i.e. the Law and the Prophets
• If Paul was teaching about Jesus from these sources, they must be important and have some lessons for us
• For our purposes today, the most important revelation we have is that despite God having chosen each of these different OT beings – after all, He made them or called them and they had no choice in that matter. . .
• Regardless of their total inability to choose and their unconditional election, they still were able to make the bad choices that they did
• Here’s the bottom line:
• You cannot have a New Testament Doctrine that does not build on an Old Testament doctrine
• What is in the NT must build on the Law and the Prophets of the OT
• Scripture confirms Scripture
• If the Calvinist doctrine of election isn’t valid in the OT, then it cannot be valid in the NT
• If free will is what we see in the OT, then it must be what we observe in the NT
• If there is no doctrine of eternal security in the OT by which those chosen and saved can choose to walk away in disobedience, then there is none in the NT
• Free will demands that we have a choice
• The chosen and immensely blessed fallen angels had that choice
• The chosen Adam and Eve – of all peoples who ever lived – had that free will choice
• The Chosen People of Israel exercised that choice to walk away from their immense blessings time and again
• How is that today we think that we don’t likewise have that same choice of free will?
• And yes, I’m speaking of those who have come to Christ and been saved by His blood such that they are truly born again
• This is not just a case of professing Christians, as some would say, versus those truly saved
• God throughout Biblical history ALWAYS has said: IF YOU OBEY AND FOLLOW MY COMMANDS
• The conditional statement of God inevitably continues where He then says: IF YOU DON’T OBEY MY COMMANDS, then serious consequences arise
• This absolutely applies to the NT era
• There are many examples of this
• Here is Hebrews 3:12-14:

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.

• Who is the writer speaking to?
• Brothers in Christ
• He doesn’t differentiate between real saved individuals and those who are false converts
• What does the writer of Hebrews warn against?
• An evil, unbelieving heart that will cause them to fall away from Christ
• Do you remember our example of the truly saved individual who attended a liberal church and fell away into the evil of idolatry and an unbelieving heart because he practiced yoga?
• Again, I ask: Do you really think that cannot happen?
• Don’t we all have a deceitful and wicked heart?
• Is there anyone who can truthfully say he doesn’t struggle against sin every single day?
• And yes, we are victorious in Christ Jesus
• The Holy Spirit moves in us and does everything possible to keep us from sin
• But can you truthfully say you’ve obeyed the prompting of the Holy Spirit every day of your Christian life?
• Have there never been instances where you have CHOSEN to ignore Him and do things your own way?
• Can you not imagine some individuals ignoring Him more than others and thus falling into the Romans 1 progression of sin?

• If we search the Scriptures and are honest about the relationship between that which is in the OT and that which is in the NT, we must come to the conclusion that despite being truly saved, a believer can choose to walk away from God
• This can have both temporal and eternal repercussions
• It may – as I’ve stated many times – result in the consequence of being left behind in the Rapture
• Because of God’s mercy in this could be the blessing they need to return to God in Spirit and in truth
• God brings good out of what could have been disastrous
• Without this potential, I see it no other way than such a person likely perishing in his sins
• This is probably what happened in the past
• But since we’re in a unique era of the end-times, it may be that God extends even greater grace to those who are stiff-necked, rebellious, and disobedient among those born-again
• I know that those of you who believe in eternal security will still throw up defenses against what I’ve argued today
• However, I simply suggest that you search the Scriptures yourselves to see if you can correlate what is shown in the OT with the NT beliefs that you have

• One other thing:
• I don’t argue this point to cause fear
• I do it to warn
• In no way do I compare myself with the prophet Jeremiah, but his message of warning wasn’t popular
• So it is with this message
• As believers in Christ, we have an OBLIGATION to walk in His ways just as outlined earlier from Deuteronomy 10:12
• Again, this states:

“And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul,”

• The people of Israel – God’s Chosen People – were commanded to:
  • Fear God
  • Walk in all His ways
  • Love Him
  • Serve Him
  • And do all these things with all their heart and soul
• We likewise as Christ-followers must do the same
• There is nothing we can do in and of ourselves to become presentable to God and to save our own souls
• God calls us and brings us under conviction
• Once that happens, we must make the free will choice to respond to Him and believe or to reject His call on our lives
• Once we become Christians, yes, we have work we must do
• We MUST obey God in fear and reverence
• What do you think is the major problem in the church today?
• Can it not be said that very few people fear God and obey Him?
• Why else is there so much apostasy?
• The work is captured in Deuteronomy 10:12 that I read earlier
• If we fail in these obligations and freely decide not to heed God in this work and thus progressively fall away, we are the ones responsible
• God won’t let us go, but we can let Him go through our own willful – free will – choices

• What do we conclude?
• Calvinism ignores the OT for its doctrine because it apparently dismisses the examples such as I’ve discussed
• The evangelical idea of eternal security, whereby those who believe in the pre-Trib Rapture, have a Calvinist influence in their theology
• If you don’t like Calvinism, you should rethink your doctrine regarding the idea that Salvation = Rapture, or even that Salvation = the eternal state with no holds-barred, since God has chosen, and that’s the end of the story
• If you disagree with my conclusions, don’t just quote New Testament Scriptures to me
• Be a Berean and search the OT in order to confirm your beliefs such that Scripture confirms Scripture, NT confirms OT
• Then we can talk
• But if you have a doctrine that doesn’t find its origins in the OT, then you’ve made up or accepted something that comes from the mind of man
• One of my purposes, as I’ve noted many times, is to get people to think
• If you have to wrestle with what I’ve presented, then I’ve done my job
• I would much rather be wrong about all this – which I don’t think I am – but at least I will have warned people to draw nearer to the Lord because of the possibility of severe consequences for not doing so
• If we don’t warn, and the Lord does consider them guilty, then are we not guilty of negligence as well?
• Isn’t that presumption, which God hates?
• Will the Lord hold us guiltless in that?
• God loves us all immensely
• He immensely blesses those who trust and obey Him
• He cannot bless those who are rebellious and disobedient
• Might we have a part in warning such people so that they also will receive God’s blessings?
• I think we do
• Here are a couple more references regarding free will and Calvinism to consult, but ultimately the Bible remains our one true guide
• Let me know what conclusion you reach