Depending on how we interpret what Jesus was doing, we might actually make a case for the Calvinist doctrine of election where only a small, privileged few are predestined—chosen ahead of time—for salvation while everybody else is chosen ahead of time for everlasting punishment and separation from God. However, the thought has always seemed pretty weird to me that God would go to the trouble of creating billions of people in His image, knowing ahead of time that He would endlessly reject and torture them. Not only does it fail to correspond with the forgiving and loving nature of God as
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