Because the Jews thought they were predestinated because God chose them to be a blessing to all nations, and therefore, the Gentiles had to be circumcised and keep the Law, Paul stops and gives them a sermon from Romans 9-11. This was to  REPUDIATE predestination.

    God has free will and can select people or nations for certain tasks but that does not mean because they are SUPERIOR. God can select Baalim's ass to speak but that doesn't mean that the donkey was predestinated to heaven.

    The elect are those "called out" or invited and who being baptized become the ekklesia. God didn't elect or invite them based on their genetics but HE had the right to call EVERYONE and the Jews should not deny it:

    (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) Rom 9:11

    It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger Rom 9:12 .
    As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. Rom 9:13

    Hated means to love less or to have a LESSER PURPOSE: Jacob was chosen out of order because God had the right to pick him perhaps to repudiate the superiority of birth order.  The ELDER Jews were not superior to the YOUNGER brother the Gentiles.

    No one can find a single person ELECTED to go to heaven or go to hell or to believe or to not believe.  Truth was hidden in parables or figures of speech to fool the clergy out of which the notion of personal predestination oozed. Augustine could not believe that anyone could be as evil as he had been so he blamed God. He poured out his low attitude toward women by declaring that IF they had sex WITHOUT intending to get an offspring, or IF they smiled during conception then SHE (evil woman) passed on a virus more deadly than HIV.

    Here is what Calvinists never read from GenesisL
    Gen. 25:23 And the LORD said unto her,
            Two nations are in thy womb,
            and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels;
            and the one people shall be stronger than the other people;
            and the elder shall serve the younger.

    And they missed Paul:

    Gal. 4:24 Which things are an allegory:
            for these are the two covenants;
            the one from the mount Sinai,
            which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar.

    Gal. 4:25 For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia,
            and answereth to Jerusalem which now is,
            and is in bondage with her children.

    Rev. 11:8 And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city,
            which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt,
            where also our Lord was crucified

The elder brother gets ALL of the inheritance in the natural order.  God picked the YOUNGER to be the lineage through whom Messiah would come.  Esau turned out to be a wicked nation but God didn't make them so and they are credited with their own problems.

Most of the NATION of Jacob refused to be a blessing to the GENTILES but turned to worship like the Gentiles after they had shed enough Gentile blood.

The spiritual NATION came down through Isaac who obeyed God as Abraham was counted righteous BECAUSE he obeyed God's commandments, laws, covenants and decrees.
             

I have caught a bit of that but it seems amazingly counter cultural to me.  It would be a good one to explore.

The two threads: one good and one evil or the two sons is another one I have not really explored. If we have to pick one it will usually be the false but exciting way.

Probably inherent in the Bible but "explained" by ancient commentators is the false claim that Lucifer (Zoe) was the elder, wiser sister of the logos meaning Jesus as the Word. There are lots of documents on Gnosticism which explores this where, of course, Zoe is Eve.  I think Paul knew "all about Eve" and we know little.

I think there is more of this in the church than we want to admit: an angel of light is universally loved and applauded and made rich and famous on the Word.  It is a good sign that I am neither.

Here is one I have attached some links: lots of this is pretty old and needs cleaning up.  It is amazing how most of this information was hidden away until computer age.  I stumbled over the word ZOE when a group went professional to teach "worship ministers" to sing, play, dance and do drama to "lead people into the presence of the gods."  Information only oozed out with lots of hard work but I think it is better known today. Assuredly the Catholic church knew about Eve (Life) who became the Mother of God and was imaged like many other pagan goddesses holding an eternally-infant son.

http://www.piney.com/Docorigin.html

It doesn't take long (about 78 years) to grasp that the thingy called church and sermonizing seems to exist to keep everyone from seeing the truth. 

The more I read and find that the evidence out there fits the Bible and that the early scholars understood what the Bible meant, the more I shudder that our devolved civilization has done fallen into a literal form of "worshiping" a left-over atomic bomb. We have developed grand universities training people how to worshipfully polish and dangerously twist all of the knobs.  That leaves me as the "wacko" but while "they" are  looking for polished pebbles I have fallen into King Solomon's Mine.

Joseph Campbell wrote that when religious people loose their faith they "Crack Away" to really archaic forms of religion. Interestingly, praise singing was the OLDEST profession to which Babbling Billy was assigned full time because his insanity and other problems guaranteed that HE could be a "god manipulator."

I will post more.

Strong's Number:   1588  Browse Lexicon 
Original Word Word Origin
eklekto� from (1586)
Transliterated Word TDNT Entry
Eklektos 4:181,505
Phonetic Spelling Parts of Speech
ek-lek-tos'    Adjective 
 
 Definition
picked out, chosen
chosen by God,
to obtain salvation through Christ 1a
Christians are called "chosen or elect" of God
the Messiah in called "elect", as appointed by God to the most exalted office conceivable
choice, select, i.e. the best of its kind or class, excellence preeminent: applied to certain individual Christians