Count them if you dare!

Limited atonement is the L of the Calvinist TULIP.  The rationale for coming up with this unbiblical idea of God's saving grace is an extension of the pre-destination logic that decides (according to human reasoning) that God only had room for a few wretched sinners in His heart and the rest are going to hell where they (unluckily) belong.  If God preselected the (lucky) few, then He knows exactly how many there are and He has arranged with Jesus to only shed just the right number of drops of blood for that number.  So the idea of this limitation was logically arrived at by looking at the redemption situation as a whole and helping God with the math.

Unfortunately for Calvin (who didn't write the Bible, by the way!) and other TULIP growers, the Bible denounces this exercise of human reasoning in Revelation 7:9.  The number of humans around the throne is impossible for humans to count.  Another way of expressing the same thing would be to say that there is no human accounting system to apply to this number.  Calvinistic imagination of how God works out the number cannot be properly applied.  Again, one might even be able to say that, standing among the redeemed around the throne, everyone there would be able to say, "there's no accounting for how David Price could be here from any human point of view."  I am glad that my claim to heaven is based on the unaccountably wonderful love of Jesus on the cross and not on human accounting systems.

By the way, the danger of human accounting systems is just over the hill from anyone who is reading Revelation 7.  When you get to the 13th chapter, you will find the enigmatic number 666 (the giant's version of 500) established as the final attempt at blending human reasoning and satanic enlistment procedures.  There is a limited damnation.  Only certain of the humans that surrender themselves to Satan will be numbered with the false prophet as they make up the full complement of the 7 headed beast.  Blasphemers of the Holy Spirit, they get no opportunity to stand before the Lord in judgment.  Like their cousins, the Pharisees, their judgment is built into their choice of partnerships.

God's math doesn't add up in human accounting systems. Dirt and sin plus Jesus (who numbered Himself with the transgressors...not the pre-selected) equals new creation.  Come to the cross and find out how God's math works.