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AJC said:
I think election is only really undestood by the spiritually mature?!?!?!

I don't think it's a matter of maturity so much. For me at least, it's a matter of how big God really is. If He's truly God and all knowing and all powerful, then election must be a fact. If He is less than that, then Man's sovereignty equals God's.

Any doctrine that makes God out to be less than God - all mighty, all knowing, all sovereign - cannot be the truth. Election is a necessary consequence of God's nature!

It is much more than merely a question of foreknowledge (God looks down the corridor of time and sees who will have the good sense - i.e., MERIT - to accept Christ and thus God "elects" those people). The greatest example of His sovereignty in time and human will, to me at least, is Acts 2:23. which says

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...this Man, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death...(Acts 2:23, NASB)

Murder is certainly not God's will! Yet it was His predertmined plan before creation. Not only that murder would happen, but that His ownly begotten Son would be murdered! Godless men acting according to their own "free" will defied God's commands and murdered their own Messiah. Yet that horrific crime had to take place - indeed, took polace infallibly according to God's eternal decree.

Does it take an especially mature person to understand that God rules absolutely over all the affairs of His creation, even every act of every creature? Nah. Not maturity. Just awe. Childlike wonder. And gratitude.

-Robin