Abundance of life...not the "Abundant Life"

Jesus is such a passionate protagonist for life (“I have come to give you life…YES, an overwhelming amount of life!” John 10:10) that He takes the remnant of the stuff of life upon Himself so that He can die the death toward which all of mankind was turned.  Taking death to the realm of death, He leaves it there and returns to be the truth that He had already predicted: “I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me.”  This proclamation destroys the Calvinist/Evolutionary notion that the Father is available to special people who were preprogrammed by God/Everythingness before time was countable.  Time makes all men accountable and points to the one who set all things in motion in our realm: Jesus. 

The banner of Jesus

flies over a hill

that is a skull,

the place of declaring

with whom

you will be numbered. 

The door to the recruiting office was opened on this side of the cross with “WHOSOEVER WILL” written above it.  Jesus does not need the help of self-appointed Superhuman/Nietzschean characters that “discover themselves” like comic book heroes in some ridiculous, Augustinian/Manichaean fantasy.  You Calvinists need to get a manly philosophy to live by and leave behind your nursery room notions that served to derange men like Hitler.  There is only one place and time that matters as far as enlisting to serve the Living God. Come to the cross.

Fail-Safe

Water heaters and furnaces that use natural gas are all equipped with a failsafe mechanism. By using a thermocouple or similar device, the main gas valve is prohibited from opening unless there is a pilot flame. “Failsafe” conditions are established in many areas such as bank accounts, gasoline pumps, dam engineering, rocket science, etc.  A failsafe approach is a fairly common perspective in many areas of our lives.  However, its application is quite often curiously missing in our theology. 

Consider for a moment the concept of pre-trib rapture.  A failsafe approach would be to ask, “What if this theological assumption is incorrect?”  Notice that, by definition, the safe approach is the one that assumes that there is danger ahead. The pre-trib perspective assumes that there is no danger and even teaches people to ignore danger; the danger of being unprepared for the greatest trial the church can endure – relentless deception (Matthew 24).  The pre-trib position would build water heater gas valves without a pilot light, thinking that, “everything is going to be okay for those of us who are favored.”  Notice as well that anyone who assumes that they will have to go through tribulation will certainly be pleasantly surprised if pre-trib turns out to be true.  However, how quickly can you prepare for tribulation if you’ve been skylarking along in your pre-trib assumption that ignored the danger, only to find the devil uncloaking in full power?

What happens if we apply failsafe theology to Calvinism?  Doesn’t the safe route take every individual though the methodology established by the church that you must believe and act upon your belief and understand that Jesus joins you in your belief through the power of the Holy Spirit?  Surely this procedure eliminates the danger of having to come to an understanding that you were preselected in some place and time where you don’t have access to the records.  Unless some angel has visited you with a Xerox of a heavenly papyrus that has your name written from before God decided to make anything (sounds dangerously parallel to baloney of Moroni that Mormons believe...), then you Calvinists would certainly be better off with your beginning place at the cross and your understanding of God’s will for you as something that was written after the foundation of the world.  Come to the cross.