Rewording predestination doesn’t change it. God also uses the words “appoint” and “chosen”, “choose”, “determined” etc. to point out a pre-planned event and lifestyle and spiritual state on particular individuals. God forces belief as a matter of personal experience from having heard the Word of God and in knowing Him as Truth. So God “makes Calvinists believe in pre-determined salvation and pre-determined damnation.
The mere fact that prophecy exists as God speaking future events into existence also proves predestination/God choosing/God forcing.
Here is another God-forced action by His Speech: non free will, non robotic, non experimental obedience: God Speaks, He is His Word, He is the command as Spirit and performs it in us on our behalf. If he had not known the prophet before he was a prophet, exactly how would he have found him to make him a prophet? Observe in Christ:
The glory of the Lord has appeared to Ezekiel ..to Ezekiel ..to Ezekiel..not someone else..you would go so far as to think God simultaneously already knew Ezekiel and how to find him and that God already wanted to make Ezekiel a prophet without any input or prior knowledge or “power to be a prophet” of Ezekiel in the least. I.E. God had predestined Ezekiel to be who he was and where he was to make him a prophet when God wanted:
The prophet has fallen on his face at the glory of God and cannot get up.
Let’s rehearse a favorite lie of free willers at this point: “If God told me to do something and I didn’t have the power ( can be understood as “enough foreknowledge to make a “decision” “) to do what he said, and yet He punished me for not having done it, that wouldn’t be fair. We know God is fair, so we have free will and cannot be constrained by “predestination”.
That is a purpose of speech argument in favor of human/non-creating speech, which cannot create even one thing and which God has cursed. The fake purpose of speech for human speech is, paraphrased, “a tool to communicate will-neutral stuff as fodder for the free will to act on”. Note the reactionary mode that leaves the hearer of said words inside of: has no need for cognizance of a before-time-of-hearing coming together of circumstances converging on the hearer. Everything has the appearance of happenstance IN ORDER for the hearer to “feel unconstrained” as if not in any circumstances at all to keep saying “I’ve got free will. What predestination?” It appears that way precisely because human speech cannot create anything, so speech events seem like throw-away episodes that particularly don’t effect the future so each speaking event seems to be arrived at fresh and “unconstrained” by converging circumstances. over…and over…and over.
That is why the nonregenerate, those inside of human speech and not in Christ, don’t like predestination: their speech is a living spirit hat can’t create anything and which seeks to hide that fact by giving men the experience of speech as noted above that seems to always be happenstance.
But those in Jesus Christ/Word of God/Creating Speech know God as Word, know there is no happenstance and that in every way God forces convergence of circumstances He has made in order to bless us and to destroy His enemies. Predestination is the word that describes God creating the things that then converge to “happen to us”. They are not out of nowhere: we are not free will “do” as we like.
So observe God’s Word in the prophet, forcing the prophet to be a Son of Man as a brother to Christ by merely calling him “Son of Man” and forcing him to do something as simple as standing up from a physical fallen position:
- God arrives at exact location to a creature He has made and named and placed in a physical location to make it a prophet ( God had a plan already in place concerning the prophet ) in accordance and in coordination with all His other plans. God is not “reacting in surprise” –ever.
- God gives the command. God as His Own Word and Spirit IS the command.
- God as Spirit/Word enters the prophet and performs what He Speaks thus forcing obedience without any resemblance to a “robot” or experimentation on the part of the prophet ( target hearer of the Word Spoken) as to what “stand on thy feet” might theoretically mean in order to experimentally comply
Eze 2:1 And he said unto me, Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee.
Eze 2:2 And the spirit entered into me when he spake unto me, and set me upon my feet, that I heard him that spake unto me.
Boom. Ezekiel is now a doer of the Word and not a hearer only and is standing, having declared specifically he has “heard him that spake unto me”.
That is an example of predestination in action, which word “predestination” God mentions in Paul as a general truth for us. Paul was reading the Old Testement in the Holy Spirit to make plain God’s plan for us and that there is in fact a plan from which we cannot deviate.
In Christ, we went the long way around because generally, when someone asks “do Calvinists get their belief from this verse or that verse”, what immediately follows is a attempt to undermine the meaning of the words in that verse on which the supposed Calvinistic belief stands or falls. NonCalvinists do that as human speech does it through them continually as supposed “new’ or “deeper” “scholarship”. But predestination is demonstrated as a fact through out the Holy Scriptures and in our lives quite beyond the few passages in which God explicitly points it out with the word “predestinated”. So do not be deceived by fake “new scholarship” ploys to undermine particular idealized “proof texts”.
So: yes, we are told verbatim in Ephesians 1 that there is such a thing as predestination by use of the word “predestinated” as well as in Romans 8:29, 30..in Ephesians 1 as well of the timing of our being chosen in Him, our predestiny’s beginning event: before the foundation of the world, before the constant convergence of pre planned events as details that force the next event.
Eph 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:
Eph 1:4 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:
Eph 1:5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,
Rom 8:29 Because whom he has foreknown, he has also predestinated to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he should be the firstborn among many brethren.
Rom 8:30 But whom he has predestinated, these also he has called; and whom he has called, these also he has justified; but whom he has justified, these also he has glorified.
Also in First Thessalonians the word “appointed” for suffering for the Name of Jesus Christ is used:
1Thess_3:3 That no man should be moved by these afflictions: for yourselves know that we are appointed thereunto.
also in James 2 we are told God has ” chosen” the most of His elect to be of a certain economic strata ( where they were placed by Him and kept by Him in those circumstances to be saved from within them by Him )
Jas 2:5 Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him?
also in First Peter that those who stumble at the Word of God and misuse it have been “appointed” to do so..forced by God.
1Peter 2:7 Unto you therefore which believe he is precious: but unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner, 2:8 And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed.
We are also told in Jude that those who hate Christians/Calvinists and pervert the Gospel into a mere tool of the lie of free will as accusation were marked out for that damnation long ago ( as pre-destifying them..my sense of humor ) :
Jude 1:4 For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.
God also says “determined” as making wicked people act wickedly:
Act 4:27,28 For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, 4:28 For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.
So: predestination, chosen, appointed, determined..all the same. It’s going to go according to God’s plan and that’s it.
Job 14:14 If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.
Hope this helps.
Inside the Name Jesus Christ, Amen