God is omnipresent (everywhere), omniscient (all knowing), and omnipotent (all powerful). Psalm 139 shows all 3 of these. He knows what we are going to say before we even think of it. He is everywhere, a spirit filling the universe. He is all powerful as creator, can do anything he pleases, and is in full control. The omnipotence of God brings a lot of questions, however. Does God predestine everything that is going to happen (Calvinism)? Where does free will come in? Does God allow free will choices? Did Pharoah even have a choice since God hardened his heart? Did Judas really have a choice in betraying Jesus since his betrayal was an essential part of the plan for Jesus to die and save sinners?

I think of it this way. God doesn’t always allow us to choose our circumstances and what happens to us, but He always allows us to choose how to respond to our circumstances and what happens to us. Joseph was not allowed to choose whether to go to Egypt as a slave (he most certainly would have chosen not to), but he was allowed to chooose how to respond to that (he chose wisely and was faithful to God while in Egypt). It does say that God hardened Pharoah’s heart, but it also says that Pharoach hardened his heart (it also says the plagues hardened his heart). Pharoach had a choice on how to respond to the plagues and he chose to say no and thus hardened his heart. God indirectly hardened Pharoah’s heart by sending the plagues, but Pharoah had a choice. It was predicted by Zechariah that a close friend of Jesus would betray him for 30 pieces of silver. Jesus chose Judas b/c He knew that Judas would betray him and He knew that had to happen. Judas chose to betray him for money.

Predestination is a Biblical doctrined. God predestined things to happen based on His foreknowledge of how certain people would respond to events. God made certain things happen and controlled events. He didn’t always allow people to choose their circumstances or what happened to them, but he always allowed them to choose how to respond. Somehow by the providence of God He controlled things even while using the free will choices of those involved. Joseph’s brothers were envious of Joseph. God used their free will choice to envy and hate Joseph to get them to sell him to a caravan that just happened to be passing by on the way to Egypt. The providence of God can still work like that today, but it is often hard to know exactly what God is doing since we don’t have prophets to tell us what He is doing.

The dangerous thing about Calvinism is that Calvinism’s doctrine of predestination takes away the free will choices of men. A sinner might hear the gospel message, but according to Calvinism, he is totally depraved (the T in TULIP) and is not capable of simply believing the gospel message. If he is one of the arbitrarily, unconditionally, selected elect (the U in TULIP), then God will send His Spirit in some direct, miraculous, irresistible way to enable the sinner to be able to believe (the I in TULIP). If he is not one of the elect, then he really doesn’t have the free will ability to choose to believe in Jesus. He is left at the mourner’s bench disappointed and discouraged b/c he did not get the miraculous sign that he was one of the elect. I had a friend go through that experience. I later shared Acts 2 and how he could simply choose to repent and be baptized (Acts 2:38) and be saved, and he was baptized that night and went home rejoicing. In Calvinism, if a sinner is one of the elect and gets saved, he can never fall from grace no matter how sinful he lives. Calvinism teaches the doctrine that those who are truly saved will persevere in faith and ultimately reach salvation and cannot be permanently lost (the P in TULIP). Again, free will choice is not involved. God will save his elect regardless of their choices to live godly or not. God’s grace is that powerful according to Calvinism. Many teach a modified form of Calvinism. They might teach most of Calvin’s doctrine, but if someone gets saved and then backslides, they will simply say, “he never was really saved”. That is very confusing. They tell him that he is saved. He has saving faith. The Bible says that he is saved. But when he backslides, they just reverse all that and say that he never was really saved to begin with. Why dont’ they just acknowledge that the Bible teaches the a person can be fully saved by grace through faith and later fall from grace (Galatians 5:4; 2 Peter 2:20-22)? Many in the Reformed tradition are strongly Calvinistic but dont always hold to the doctrine of perseverance of the saints.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for reading.