The Calvinist doesn’t want to apply Romans 9-11 the way he interprets the part about Pharaoh and the Potter. The wrong interpretation requires he also use that interpretation to explain why Israel wasn’t believing in Christ.

The Calvinists prove their position that God sovereignly chooses exactly to the soul which one will be saved and which one will be damned by going to Romans 9 that says, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth.” These are the words of God to the Pharaoh. But what does it mean? Does it mean God directly hardened the man to disobey God or does it mean that God does it by presenting His will that is heavenly wisdom that a carnally wise man will reject? The latter is correct.

But the Calvinist digs in his heels and insist that God damned the man to hell to prove His point. But God doesn’t need to fabricate disobedience since we know the world is already full of people who stumble over the wisdom of God!

Calvinist point out it’s only one person. As God hardened Pharaoh, so God hardened the entire nation. Exodus 14:17 says God hardened Egypt.

“And I indeed will harden the hearts of the Egyptians, and they shall follow them.”
So it is not only a single man God made an example of, but this passage says God hardened the nation with its army, chariots, and horsemen. The Calvinist doesn’t merely have to defend the point that, “it was only one soul God hardened”; but now he must defend that God hardened the whole nation of Egypt. The Calvinists have a harder problem now to explain that God would damn an entire nation.

How God hardens is the question. The question is not if He does, but how He does is the question. God’s wisdom in the cross is hardening Greeks and Jews all of the time. Men will be judged, rightly so, by God for preferring a carnal messiah and for wishing for human wisdom and miraculous signs. The ways of God do not cater to a carnal man. The carnal man must repent and embrace God’s wisdom.

And in Romans 9, which Calvinists understand so little, whatever is the understanding of God’s action against Pharaoh, the conclusion must be applied to the Jews themselves who are the real subject of the entire chapter, along with the following two chapters. But if you listen to Piper and MacArthur, they will not preach that therefore the reason the Jews are lost, though given so many opportunities, is because God hardened and damned them! Calvinism is dumb. Calvinism is unchristian. I vehemently oppose Calvinism and the so-called Reformed Theology in the Westminster Confession. 

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