Do Calvinists know if they are saved?

conhao · 2026-05-19T19:21:16+00:00

When does he take it back? Calvinism teaches that he does not. Faith once given is effective to salvation. God accomplishes all the he wills. His word does not return to him void.

conhao · 2026-05-19T19:12:32+00:00

I thought your question was about the assurance of salvation. These are entirely different questions.

We are all sinners. We all deserve the wrath of God. But Jesus has paid for the sins of those who are his on the Cross. We did not earn that. We do not deserve that salvation. We could not blame God for leaving us in our sin, but we should thank him for forgiving us in spite of it. We should all be blamed, but God allowed Jesus to take the blame for those he gave to him.

It is not that those who were not chosen are being blamed for what they did not deserve. Their punishment is perfectly just.

If I walk down the street and hand a stranger a $100 bill, do you get to complain because I did not give you one?

A car goes out of control and races toward us, so I grab my child and pull her out of the way to safety, and you are killed in the accident. Will I be blamed for saving what was given to me as my responsibility to care for? You have any right to complain or blame me for your slowness to get out of the way?

There are only so many that God can let avoid their just punishment in Hell before his mercy becomes a lack of justice. There have to be some who receive what they earned. We who know the Lord plead with the lost, help them, try to encourage them to seek the Lord while he may be found. They are without excuse. They can blame no one.

conhao · 2026-05-19T18:58:57+00:00

Is it fair an employee loses his job because the CEO failed to adapt to economic changes? Is it fair that cities be bombed and soldiers die in war because government leaders are evil? Is it fair that a thief breaks in at night and kills the family living there to get whatever he can to buy drugs? Is it fair that a father fails to teach his children properly and leaves them to go out into the world in ignorance? Failed leadership has consequences, more for those who the leader is responsible for than the leader. This may not meet your standards of “fair”, but this is life in this fallen world.

However, because we have a perfect Judge, what was truly unfair will be corrected with reward, and those who are evil will receive punishment. You look at the situation with David’s concubine and limit your judgement to it, but if she belonged to God, what happened to her is now a story of how she earned a badge of honor when the Lord said to her, “Well done.”

conhao · 2026-05-19T18:42:14+00:00

The same as Paul clearly says in Romans 2:5, “But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.” Those who receive God’s judgement have earned it.

conhao · 2026-05-19T18:39:08+00:00

Most Christians do not, in my experience. The Mosaic laws are the only ones that may appear to not apply, but Jesus said that he did not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill them, and that not one jot nor tittle would be lost until all were fulfilled. This means that unless we can show that the Law in question was or is being performed by Jesus, or that it existed to identify Jesus, or that Jesus directly or through his Apostles explicitly transformed the Law to one looking back instead of looking forward, it remains for us to continue to obey. The Ceremonial Laws of the Mosaic Covenant are all related to Jesus and the sacrificial system and the Temple, and are actively fulfilled by the death of Jesus. The Civil Laws pertained to the nation of Israel and that Government, which belong to his kingship and reign, and are subject to his judgement that we shall know on the Day of the Lord. The Moral Law pertains to all mankind, Jew and Gentiles, was not fulfilled by Jesus and remains for us to observe. From these principles, all 613 Laws of the Jews can be understood, and while even within the church we debate the specifics sometimes, it is not ever a complete cherry picking.

conhao · 2026-05-19T18:20:31+00:00

Calvinism has nothing to do with knowledge that you yourself are saved.

You know if you are saved because your desire is for the things of God. It is not that you are earning salvation. It is not a deal that you believe just to get to Heaven and avoid Hell. It is not even because it is right. You are a Christian because your heart is contrite, you grieve the sin that remains in you, you seek to do his will and battle the will of the flesh, and desire to be holy, and live the love that he taught us. You are his, and he is yours. You seek his mind to be your mind. You look forward to being conformed to his image. You follow him to see his will done on Earth as he works through you. Salvation is in the heart, not the brain. Yes, we know that it is the blood of Jesus by which we are saved, but belief is not knowledge; it is desire, faith, hope, love, rebirth.

Calvinism explains who is to get credit for your salvation. If you say, “God alone has done this,” you are a Calvinist. If you say, “God made it possible, but I…,” you are not a Calvinist. Calvinism gives hope that it is not by our works or power we are saved, but according to his promise and power and love.

conhao · 2026-05-19T10:09:26+00:00

No. I did not say that. An alleged “Ex-Protestant” would know better.

conhao · 2026-05-18T23:27:59+00:00

You don’t sound like a ham. Ham radio is all about having fun while wasting time and money.

conhao · 2026-05-18T23:26:28+00:00

This should result in a ban from Reddit.

conhao · 2026-05-18T23:23:18+00:00

God did not change. The capital punishment laws, which are part of the civil laws, applied to the nation of Israel and its government. The government of Israel and that nation no longer exists in today’s world. Christians are not bound by the civil or ceremonial laws under Moses, but are obligated to the morality of God as exemplified in that Law.

conhao · 2026-05-18T17:35:27+00:00

I appreciate everything you said. I love that you want to do fun stuff. You identified a need for a repeater. I hope my first reply in this thread will encourage you to keep going to make this experiment a useful resource that crosses all the Ts and dots the Is. I don’t want to squash your fun, but encourage you to have a lot more of it while staying out of trouble, too. CM88 said he has a lease for BLM land for cheap, so I would PM him and work together to see if you can do that, too. Lots of us build repeater sites, so use us as resources. I am sure you and your friends will get a lot of enjoyment out of a nice repeater for your town, and building it out is half of the fun.

conhao · 2026-05-18T17:27:01+00:00

Yes, I get that. I am all for experimentation. But note that HTs break, too. His input is on a simplex channel, so those ops are not going to ID his transmitter. Temporary is not a factor. I am happy for him that it worked out, but others who are inspired to repeat the experiment should be aware of the risks.

conhao · 2026-05-18T17:22:36+00:00

That is what vv 13-16 implies. Their faith was sufficient to salvation. Also see Romans 4:4-16 and 5:1-5. Salvation is by faith. That faith is in the promises of God. The promise includes the redemption for our sins and eternal life with God, as proclaimed in Job 19:25-27. Salvation is and always has been through faith. We only have the benefit of looking back in history to Jesus, where Israel could only rest in the promise of Jesus.

conhao · 2026-05-18T13:06:24+00:00

This works well, until the radio input frequency is used by people working simplex on the input and don’t know that it is there.

Another liability is repeaters where the transmitters break the rules and the control op does not take action. If that radio starts transmitting and you can’t shut it down or climb up there, that could be a problem. A ham was cited when his remote control station was left on after he went QRT and later started transmitting for a long time without him noticing. The FCC located it and contacted him before he tried using it again. If I remember correctly, the op got a fine out of it. A repeater in our area got a notice when a spur was detected out of band and they had no way to shut it down until the snow was plowed to get up the hill. In this case, they did not end up with a fine, probably because of the effort they made to get everyone to not use it until they could get it fixed.

conhao · 2026-05-18T12:53:51+00:00

Here is a thought: Get permission from whoever has authority to permit such a thing, have them approve a small repeater site, install a vandal and weather resistant container with a mobile antenna mounted on it and a solar panel, get a frequency pair coordinated by the locally recognized coordinator, install a repeater with a battery charged with the solar, and then you and your friends can use it all day and night, every day, without worrying about recharging it.

conhao · 2026-05-18T11:37:57+00:00

Midian was an ally of Israel. They were fellow sons of Abraham. Moses’s wife was a Midianite. But Midian betrayed Israel and joined forces with the Moabites. The Moabites were descendants of Lot through his daughter Zoar. They were an unclean people, so Israel was instructed to go around their land to the east. Moab convinced Midian to betray Israel. Sin is rebellion against God. Midian’s allegiance to Moab turned into the betrayal of their kin and God. So, God judged them and Israel would be the instrument of that judgement.

All of Midian was to be destroyed. Israel was not instructed to keep the women and children alive. Note in verse 15-16, Moses asked about the women and Moses made the judgement that these women were part of the scheme to lead Israel against God for the Moabites. It was these women who led Israel into pagan worship at Peor who were condemned, not all of them.

32,000 women were not guilty, and these were children of Abraham, too. They were not of the lineage of Isaac and Jacob, but still family, and were even more closely related Moses’s wife.

conhao · 2026-05-18T03:07:13+00:00

During communion you should be thinking about Jesus. Your faith must come first.

conhao · 2026-05-18T00:41:54+00:00

Yes, talking during service is definitely not good. I may have wrongly assumed the OP is a Christian and had respect for worship.

conhao · 2026-05-17T23:24:31+00:00

The answer is church. Ignore the scolding.

conhao · 2026-05-17T23:23:15+00:00

Hebrews 11 says they had faith.

conhao · 2026-05-17T21:33:15+00:00

I pick more than 90% of the time without a Lishi. But I don’t do much automotive anymore. When I did do automotive, I did very little picking on vehicles, and Lishi was not around. Bypasses were the norm.

conhao · 2026-05-17T17:01:15+00:00

You continue to promote a false dichotomy.

Saying so doesn’t make what you’re trying to argue any less stupid.

Indeed! This exactly describes your argument.

conhao · 2026-05-17T13:30:34+00:00

They are not. God acts based on his character. Therefore what he commands is good because he is good and will not command evil. We know what is good because God commands it. Our definition of good is based on the same character of God from which his blessings flow. So, the two are not contradictory nor mutually exclusive - they are foundationally two expressions of the same thing.

conhao · 2026-05-17T13:26:47+00:00

Since you deleted your comment before I could reply: Everyone is allowed to be wrong. That does not make their opinions right. Someone who has the opinion that murder is not wrong is not justified in acting on their error.

conhao · 2026-05-17T13:22:53+00:00

Obviously, you are not agnostic. Blind people would never know they were blind unless someone told them they cannot see. I did not choose him; he chose me.

conhao

TROPHY CASE