What happens if someone who is not elect tries to seek God? From the perspective of Reformed Theology, in relation to Unconditional Election:

What happens if someone who is not elect, tries to seek God? Does God reject them?

Or this an impossibility - does the mere act of seeking God mean that the person must be elect?
[...] does the mere act of seeking God mean that the person must be elect?


Yes.

Reformed theology must be understood wholesale. If you pick and choose some ideas and don't put them in the context of all the other ideas it stops making much sense. This has to do with the presuppositions involved.

From a Reformed perspective the answer to this question is really easy. If anyone seeks God, they are the elect. They will find him because it isn't dependent on them in the first place (this is where irresistible grace comes in). It is only those that God has first called that will seek him, and those he calls he will save (meaning they are elect).


  Romans 8:29-30 (ESV)
  For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.


Reformed theology finds no place in that continuum for half-way measures. Of course in this life all we ever see is snapshots somewhere short of "glorified", but those who seek God will find him because they only sought God in the first place because they had been called (and justified).

Of course you might have lots of people that say they seek God and don't find him, but if they do not find him this is only proof that the thing they were seeking was not God but a counterfeit. Many are those who think they are following God who actually are not. What they wanted and followed was a God of their own imagination, not the one true God. They will be surprised to learn that they never knew God.


  Isaiah 48:8a (ESV)
  You have never heard, you have never known, from of old your ear has not been opened.