Tent meeting time ... Leviticus

And the Lord called unto Moses and spoke with him from the Tabernacle of the congregation. Leviticus 1:1

The Lord walked in the garden with Adam and was present physically with His creation. The Lord chose a physical platform to explain His plan to destroy the world with a flood. God visited Abram/Abraham and had lunch with him. They discussed the destiny of the world. Moses hung out at a burning bush and then met God on the mountain where he received the stone tablets (he had to carve his own set for the rewrite). God was constantly showing up in His own handiwork and having discussions with people about what He wanted. Meanwhile, the Lord begins an entirely new program of communication when He ordains the Tabernacle and validates it with His own presence there. The trajectory of the Tabernacle is the Throne of David, the Temple, the Exile (largely because the Tabernacle was cast aside as an embarrasment to the Israelites), the Cross and the Resurrection. God communicates to His people by being among them and, ultimately, being human (not a dog as Calvin thinks is ok), He lives a real human life and dies a real death.

It is difficult to understand how Calvinists can picture God as being pristine and distant like a cosmic fireball of energy. The idea that God's involvement in the lives of people is carried on from some ethereal laboratory setting where He is constantly viewing everything that is happening in all of creation and can never escape from His own omniscience is not supported in the Bible (If He knows everything, why does he need angelic reports Job 1:6... If He is sovereign de facto**, then why can't He choose to not know what He doesn't wish to know?). When all the bad pictures that you Calvinists come up with are processed, it amounts to the same thing...you favor a unitarian perspective of God and you subordinate Jesus to a position of semi-divine at best. Whatever your confessions and whatever your loud squawks about being committed to biblical revelation, when you make up unbiblical nonsense about God's preselection process where something you call God chooses to send babies and other people to hell just because he can and wants to, your theology does not agree with the apostles.

Jesus is God!
Did you get that?
Jesus is God.
Your ideas that put salvation in the clean room of pre-creation heaven and all of you the lucky recipients of a Holy lottery serve to exclude Jesus in action (sweaty, bloody, dirty...spitting to produce sight for the blind, weeping to produce tears for those who hurt as He hurt) on earth to provide salvation for those who trade their death for His life.

Jesus is God and He defines His glory as the cross (Luke 24:26,1 Peter 1:11). To glorify God means to live the cross, preach the cross, raise up the cross, honor the cross, cling to the cross, recognize the cross as the beginning place of salvation that only happens in time. You cannot prove anything about predestination...you can prove the power of the cross by living it.

Come to the cross.
　
　
**I am thoroughly indebted to C.S. Lewis for explaining the tension between Sovereign de facto and Sovereign de jure and his extensive explanation of the part that Calvin played in destroying de jure and setting up the modern world to accept liberalism. It is my opinion that Calvin was the spiritual grandfather of Darwin and Nietzsche who launched the modern myth of nihilistic developmentalism as good. Calvin pushed the boundaries and derived the sense that "power is venerable when stripped of all good." (Lewis).

Don't spill the ink! ... Exodus

Blots.

Ink blots.

Professionals in the field of psychology try to establish unconscious mental patterns based on pre-determined inkblots.  It's a bit like children staring at images in the clouds on a lazy summer afternoon... except that the predetermined part is left out for the children.

Moses offers a deal to the Living God (Exodus 32:30-35) who is of a mind to withhold mercy from His chosen people, the idolatrous children of Israel.
Moses: Blot me out of your book and not them, O Lord!
LORD: Blotting is reserved for those who sin against Me.  (Implied --- "You are not qualified to atone for sin, Moses." (Nor is the law, by the way.))

Apparently, God had not consulted with Calvin as to how He was supposed to order the universe.  In a present tense (in Time...not in Eternity) conversation with Moses, God had failed to perform according to the calvinistic predestination system of reprobating (blotting) in eternity past.  It appears that God does His blotting in Time - at some time after the resurrection (John 3:17...Jesus is under orders to NOT bring condemnation!).  Calvin's system is some ridiculous notion that he dreamed up while staring for too long at his ink blotter.

You Calvinists have sold your understanding to a liar and a fool (Psalm 14) whose reprobation imagination is like a mean pre-teen who calls someone to tell him he is not invited to your party.  Reprobation (as well as salvation) is based on a person's relationship with Jesus and the cross that He established as the key to human history---established in Time, that is.  You have no record of what is in His book other than names.  He has not consulted with Calvin or any of you to tell Him when to write in names or when to blot them out (and they weren't blotted out before the foundation of the world!).  Quit wasting your time telling yourselves about a salvation (or reprobation...) you think was handed out before the cross.  Salvation is available at the cross.

Come to the cross.

Fruits of Cain ... Genesis

Genesis 4:12 "When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you..." (New KJV). These words, spoken to Cain by the Lord, are the final verdict on the person he has become as a result of sacrificing his own brother. When the translators use the word "till" in this verse, they have interpreted instead of translating. The correct word to use would have been "serve." Cain has become a servant of the earth (and, possibly, of his father, Adam since the Hebrew word for earth is Adamah -- similar to red clay). This idea may seem to make no sense until we back up in time enough to be reminded of the last thing God has said about the earth. "Cursed is the ground for your sake..." (speaking to Adam...Genesis 3:17). Cain has managed to find a way around the curse.
There are Calvinists who think that the rejection of Cain's offering of fruit to God is proof of His divine prerogative to accept or reject whatever He likes. Looking at the Bible through a grid of God's total (de facto) sovereignty, the Calvinist comes up with the untenable position that God is arbitrary in His dealings with mankind instead of dealing with all of His creation through the basis of righteousness (sovereignty de jure). Ironically, it is this position of righteousness that God has established before the foundation of the world (Proverbs 3:19...one might easily make the case that "before the foundation of the world" is a biblical euphemism for "wisdom.") and to which He commits Himself exclusively. Therefore, the Calvinist idea of sovereignty de facto was one of the reformer's foolish (godless...Psalm 14) inventions and not an accurate picture of the Living God.
Meanwhile, back at Cain's plantation where he is enslaved to the curse of the earth. There is only one way that Cain could overcome the curse. Remember that all the original animals of creation are available to him and that they are innocent in their original constitution. Cain used their blood as fertilizer, reversing the curse so that the ground would "yield its strength" to him. God's rejection of his offering is just (de jure) because Cain has done so in the face of God's own pronouncement against Adam. Cain's attempt to gain ultimate control over the ground and its curse leads him to murder his brother and mock God when He asks about the hideous sacrifice.
Of course, there is only one innocent person whose blood can cleanse the curse upon the earth from which we are made and the sin that is resident in our flesh. Jesus made this blood available at the cross and whosoever will may receive its cleansing power (Acts 10:43).
Come to the cross.

The devil is not a Calvinist

The devil is not a Calvinist.  It would be difficult to make a case for him not being a subscriber to Augustinian/Calvinist notions of predestination because he is ignorant of the Word.  The devil understands scripture and uses it when/if he can to accomplish his purposes.  The temptation of Jesus in the wilderness is partly a trial of the priority of the written word (Luke 4:1-13). 
The devil would have no reason to afflict mankind if the outcome was predetermined.  What would be the point of bothering about lost souls and trying to trap them in sin?  The devil does not accept this predetermined perspective and neither does Jesus. 
When Jesus is exclaiming His agony over the lostness of Jerusalem, He does not condemn those whom He has named the sons of the devil (Pharisees).  Instead, He leaves them with the question, "How can you escape the damnation of hell?" (Matthew 23:33)  If Jesus, who is God Himself, leaves room for salvation to the sons of the devil, who is Calvin that he can erect a system of reprobation wherein he preaches lies about the work of the Holy Spirit, blaspheming as he goes?
Apparently it is worth it to God (Jesus is God) to enter into our condition and fight against evil and darkness so that we, through Him, may be granted access to those same weapons of warfare (2 Corinthians 10:3-5).  He calls us to the cross so that we may enlist -- none of us was drafted before we existed or before the cross opened the enlistment office.
Come to the cross.

Barking my protest...

So! I went back to the source to make certain I was not incorrect in something I said about Calvin last week (I was correct...) and ran across an idiotic statement by him that made me laugh -- and made me angry.  If this one doesn't make you Calvinists give up and burn your copies of the Institutes and whatever else he wrote that you value above Jesus and the written Word, then good luck to you!

When God took dirt and formed the red (adam=red) clay lump that he knelt over to breathe the recycled air of the eternal realm into, He had made a replica of Himself.  Another way of saying this is that He made something like a clay statue of Himself.  This idea causes problems with the Calvinists who think God is a Cosmic Fireball and think Jesus is sort of God...not quite reaching fully divine status.  (Don't get confused by the semantic slight of hand that Calvinists use.  They don't seriously give a damn about Jesus.  He is relegated to an exalted man concept that is not much better than that of the Muslims.  Certainly no better than Mormons.) In the Calvinist reinvention of reality, there is no way to make a statue that represents a Cosmic Fireball.  What they think "made in His image and likeness" means, seems to be incomprehensible.

Oh wait!  That last statement is not exactly true.  Apparently, according to Calvin, God could make dogs in His divine image.  Or Jackasses.  Or Oxen.  You Calvinists are pantheists.  Your leader had no difficulty rewriting the Bible version of creation and importing the stupid idea that innocent Adam had a built in corruption.  Then, in order to exalt his pet doctrine that God was sovereign de facto, Calvin says that the image of God could be accomplished in dogs.  Maybe it is not as bad as thinking, as Pharisees do, that God can make the devil in His image if He wants to (Think about that one for a while you fools --just being technical with that word...read Psalm 14!).

Calvinistic rationalization coupled with the deceptive power of the dark angels (Matthew 24:21-24).  When you boys find that you have been playing in a Giant's kitchen, the Tribulation will be upon us with a vengeance.  Maybe y'all will wake up in time to remember the cross of Jesus and start chopping off your right hands (Revelation 13:16, Matthew 5:30...not hyperbolic).  Not sure what you plan to do about the forehead mark...

The notion that God could make humanity out of dogs insults mankind and the Son of Man, Jesus.  The formula doesn't work and, as ever, Calvin is derailed by rationality and proves that the cross means nothing to him.

Jesus promises to open Himself in time to allow anyone who so chooses to come into him.  As a man, He becomes the one and only being about whom we can ALL say that He is "man's best friend."  He proves this truth at the cross.

Come to the cross.