*Matthew enters*

[Matthew]

I'll repeat what I said in my last post: "I did not perceive that God was pursuing me. Rather, the repeated experiences of trying and failing to avoid the conclusion I did not want to arrive at certainly gave me the impression that I was not simply wrestling with my own thoughts but with something outside of myself. After my conversion, I understood that something to be God Himself."

You didn't answer my question Matthew, once again, how do you know you didn't hallucinate or perceive this external agent, this god? How are you certain it was a deity communicating with you and not some other chemical imbalance in the brain brought upon by stress, depression, anxiety, a nervous breakdown, or some other mental disorder? Not saying it was necessarily any of those listed, of course, but how did you rule out all the other possible natural explanations and conclude your thinking some deity outside the real world was responsible?

I didn't say that I thought God was communicating with me. You have misunderstood me; my saying that "I did not perceive God" was to clarify that I did not directly sense or interact with God prior to my conversion (at least not to my knowledge). My speaking of "wrestling with something outside of myself" is referring to the feeling that my thinking was being guided in a particular direction despite my willingness to go in another, and my interpretation of that as being God's guidance is made in the light of my new-found beliefs after the fact.

This is not the Christian understanding of "becoming a Christian". To become a Christian, God must accept you. A person becomes a Christian because of what God does, not because of what they do. God cares very little about whether human beings believe that He exists.

What interpretation of Christianity is this? You seem to be quoting Christian soteriology yet it adds another requirement of being predestined to be saved which contradicts the doctrine of repentance.

You will have to explain exactly what this contradiction is based on what you understand Scripture to teach regarding predestination and repentance.