A God Who wails aloud for His children is not a god which creates them for Hell

God Incarnate sobs over Jerusalem, the very same souls Bob says that in His "sovereignty" He created for hell.

So, Calvin's god has gone from being a capricious monster to being a criminally-insane capricious monster.

By the way, the ESV heads the passage in question: "Lament over Jerusalem."

In response to Bob's comments (regarding Matthew 23) here:

if you check the actual context of the passage you'd find that there is no weeping involved

[. . .]

If you're basing the whole "jesus weeping" thing on the word longing; you've completely ignored the context. The pronouncement of woes is before this and after this passage

[. . .]

No weeping at all.

What makes you think that YHWH's pronouncing woes precludes His feeling sorrow over His children's unbelief and their resultant doom?

Unlike Calvin's god, Christ loves us all.

This is the same God Who prayed for those who crucified Him: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34).

This is the same God Who calls out to all people: "Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other" (Isaiah 45:22).

This is the same God Who declares: "The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance" (2 Peter 3:9).

This is the same God Who promises:

". . . God . . . desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all . . ." (1 Timothy 2:3-6).

No, the God Who lamented:

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not" (Matthew 23:37)!

(Did you read that? What is the hen's attitude toward her offspring? Does she delight in pronouncing woes against them? Is she indifferent to their destruction? And that's not my analogy, it is the LORD's.)

Is the same God Who weeps for Jerusalem in Luke 19:

And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, "Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation" (Luke 19:41-44).

The word translated here "wept" (klaio) is "wail aloud, sob, bewail," not silent tears or misty eyes.

If the Son of God wails aloud for the physical destruction of the people of Jerusalem -- and their rejection of Him, for they "did not know the time of [their] visitation" -- what makes you think He would be indifferent to (or pleased with!) their unbelief in Matthew 23?

But no. Your god is licking his chops at the chance to put some reprobates on The Machine in The Pit of Despair.

Bob concludes with:

As far as all of the other things you've stated; God creating people on whimsy, God capricously sending people to Hell..

Those are straw men and you know it.

You don't have to like Calvinism, but at least represent what the doctrines say accurately; that's only fair.

The fact is; God IS sovereign...yes, even in the matter of one's salvation and your anger at it doesn't change that.

If you want to be taken more seriously in the future; you'd be better off to lose the Ad Hominems and misreprestation of Calvinism.

"God IS sovereign" is code for "God creates people for Hell." The only problem is, that is not the God of the Bible. A God Who wails aloud for His children is not a god which creates them for Hell.

And it can't be ad hominem if the point of my argument is that Calvin's god is a monster, which makes him a blaspheming heretic.

Speaking of misrepresentation, as to the false claim that I've lied about Calvin, here is the heretic in his own words, from the Modern History Sourcebook: John Calvin: On Double Predestination:

"In conformity, therefore, to the clear doctrine of the Scripture, we assert, that by an eternal and immutable counsel, God has once for all determined, both whom he would admit to salvation, and whom he would condemn to destruction. We affirm that this counsel, as far as concerns the elect, is founded on his gratuitous mercy, totally irrespective of human merit; but that to those whom he devotes to condemnation, the gate of life is closed by a just and irreprehensible, but incomprehensible, judgment. In the elect, we consider calling as an evidence of election, and justification as another token of its manifestation, till they arrive in glory, which constitutes its completion. As God seals his elect by vocation and justification, so by excluding the reprobate from the knowledge of his name and the sanctification of his Spirit, he affords an indication of the judgement that awaits them."

Calvin taught (and so do all who teach and defend TULIP) that God predetermines who goes to Heaven and Hell (Unconditional Election,"U"), that Christ died for only some, not all, people (Limited Atonement, "L"), and that God's grace is irresistible (Irresistible Grace, "I") which, if true, means that God does not shower His grace on all.

According to your man's own words in the passage above, Calvin's god denies its spirit to the many it created for hell. It denies those it created for destruction knowledge of it.

How can the god which denies its spirit to the people it's created for perdition be the same God Who wails for doomed unbelievers, prays for the forgiveness of His executioners, desires that all should be saved, and dies for all people to reconcile them to His Father?

It can't.

Post scriptum:

So, how do you know whether or not you're going to Heaven?

The answer is, you can't know, because Calvin's god chose in its "divine sovereignty" to create some for heaven and some for hell.

So, which is it? Are you one of the elect, or are you one of those of whom at the end of your life others will say -- just like I've heard leading evangelicals say -- "He never was really a Christian."

I hope for your sake that your flip of the cosmic coin turned up the right face.

Or, you can trust in the Son of God Who died for the sins of the whole world.

That "whole world" would include you, which means that you know your sins are forgiven, you have been reconciled to the Father, Heaven is opened, and eternal life is yours.

Believe Christ, not Calvin.