A hardened heart does not mean total depravity. Don't assume. Have some humility. However much grace God gives it is always sufficient to have the free choice. That's why the Bible can say you are "without excuse." You would have an excuse if you didn't have sufficient grace to have the free choice. The Pharaoh, for example, even after 10 plagues still refused to repent, just as Calvinists refuse to repent and believe in Christ to be regenerated. You just choose to express your hostility to God of the Bible in a different way than Pharaoh did, but you are both independent and disobedient to His redemptive design.
You said the "Pharaoh hardening his heart and God hardening the Pharaoh's heart amount to the same thing." Man is not God. Man's hardening is not God's hardening. Man is not a robot. God will harden an already hardened heart or soften according to His good pleasure. Never does God violate man's sovereignty and free will He has given man made in His image. He is relational not a robot maker.
Piper was wrong to contradict himself to claim the first active instance was Pharaoh hardening his own heart first since that conflicts with his Calvinistic view that it is his god that is the first cause of the Pharaoh hardening. The Bible says be "not doubletongued" (1 Tim. 3.8). In God's realm we all have free will that is sufficiently supplied to receive the cross; whereas, in your fantasy land, people were born for Hell or were irresistibly caused and made to accept the cross. This is a demonic teaching of the same principles of Hitler, his treatment of the Jews allegedly born for the gas chambers and irresistibly selected Aryan race.
God did not choose you -- assuming you still continue to refuse to give your life to Christ -- because He could foresee you as a sovereign free willed being He made in His image and supplied with more than ample grace to accept the cross, yet you still refuse to come as a helpless sinner to receive what Jesus did for you to be regenerated. Your excuses given to you in your cult of Calvinism are a just a front for rejecting God and worshiping a false Christ.
Since God pleads with you and implores you to believe in Him, He gives you the choice. How else can He state you are without excuse? Otherwise, all is just a charade and Jesus died for no reason at all, since in your realm people are just irresistibly selected anyway. Sick!
What you fail to understand is how God chooses. You just assume He chooses like a robot maker, but you could not be farther from the truth. God chooses those who accept His only begotten Son. Praise the Lord!
You're a heretic. And don't falsely accuse Christians come "all on their own," for OSAS Arminians believe that without God's grace none could come to Him (it is sufficient for all). What a great God that He can do this and your god can't! You're confused. I doubt you will ever give your life to Christ.
The difference between you and I is that I believe God's grace is sufficient for us all to have the free choice, and you believe salvation has to be irresistibly imposed or denied any opportunity for salvation (preterition). Suffice it to say your god can't do what God of the Bible does, so God trumps your evil god any day. Since you can't find any Scripture to support your view without inserting into the text that which is not explicitly stated, consider yourself delusional and an unregenerate.
Calvinism gives off the aura of zombies.
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