Why Is Calvinism So Dangerous? (updated)
Because it appears to teach biblical truth while actually teaching the opposite - while using manipulation and cult-like tactics to suck you in!
But the more you read and study God's Word as it is clearly, plainly written, without Calvinist glasses on, the more you'll see that Calvinism completely contradicts the Word (and itself) and destroys God's truth/character, Jesus's sacrifice, the Gospel, and people's faith.
Never shut off your critical-thinking discernment skills! Never let others tell you what to think! Always run what people say (even what I say!) through Scripture, even if - especially if - they tell you they are "only preaching Scripture." How do you think error and heresy slips in? By announcing itself with bells and whistles, shouting "hey, I'm a heretical, unbiblical idea"? No. It slips in slyly, subtly, slowly, with the appearance of looking biblical. A little twist here, a little tweak there, a little "Did God really say ..." along the way, so that you don't notice what's happening, until it's too late. (See "Exposing Calvinism: My comment on Calvinist twists.")
Calvinists use this "Yes, but ..." approach (see "The Calvinist's Big Ugly 'But'") because they evidently believe God has blessed them with some sort of superior insight into some sort of "hidden, deeper truths" that help them understand what He really meant to say, even though it totally contradicts the simple, commonsense truths of Scripture.
And it's my hope that I can help you see more clearly so that you don't get suckered into Calvinism and so that you too will take a stand against it before it seeps into more churches and ruins more people.
It's already spreading like the cancer it is. Silently. Aggressively. Unopposed. If you haven't encountered it yet, you will. (Or maybe you already have, you just don't know it yet because they are sneaky. See "How to tell if a Church, Pastor, or Website is Calvinist".) And if we don't wake up and notice what it's teaching, if we don't start researching for ourselves what the Bible really says, if we don't start speaking against Calvinism and calling it out for what it is, it's going to infect more and more people, until no one even remembers anymore who God really is and what the simple, basic, beautiful truth of the Gospel really is.
[Hey, Calvinists ... Do you want a test to see what's driving your view of this issue? Pray and ask God to reveal to you if you are wrong, if you are reading the Word wrong or trying to make it fit your own ideas of what it says. Tell God that you want to know the truth and give Him permission to open your eyes to truth, even if it means finding out you've been wrong this whole time.
Now ... how did it make you feel to think about doing that? Did you get offended at the suggestion that Calvinism is wrong? Did you bristle and stiffen your neck as in "I'm not praying that! I know I'm right!"? Did you scoff? Do you want to throw away everything I am saying - and going to say - because you've decided that I "don't understand Calvinism"? Did you start coming up with all sorts of reasons for why you're right, rehearsing all the theological arguments that "support" Calvinism? Did you think "I need to consult MacArthur or Grudem or Sproul or Piper to see what they say about all this"? How much is your pride driving your theology? Are you willing for God to correct you if you're wrong? Do you want to know His truth more than you want to cling to your own views?
So now, pray and ask God to reveal truth to you, to show you if you're wrong. (If you're right, there's no harm in praying this, is there?) Determine in your heart that you really do want to know the truth, no matter the cost. And don't just think about praying it. Do it! It's not the thought that counts when it comes to prayer. (And if you're resistant to praying this, ask God to show you why.) Also see the "Defend Your Calvinism" Challenge.]
Many Christians don't want to get into this issue. It's messy and uncomfortable and confusing. And so we straddle the fence and put it on the back-burner and say "Oh, it really doesn't matter what we think about this as long as the Gospel is preached and people come to Jesus. Can't we all just be unified? God likes unity!" [I've gotten push-back, even from non-Calvinists, for being so harsh against Calvinism. See "Why am I so harsh towards Calvinism?"]
But does it really "not matter"? Does it "not matter" which version of the Gospel, of God, that you're preaching or unifying around? Does it "not matter" if one person says "Jesus died for all people" but another says "Jesus died only for the elect"? Does it "not matter" if one person says "All people have the ability to believe and be saved" but another says "Only the elect can and will believe and be saved"? Does it "not matter" if one person says "God does not take any pleasure in sin or people being in hell" but another says "God ordains all sin and unbelief for His pleasure and glory"? Does it "not matter" if one person says "The Gospel is for all people" but another says "It's only for the elect"?
Does it really "not matter"?
No, it's not. It's manipulation, that's what it is! It's satanic deception!
But since they said "it's what the Bible says," we trust them and drink the Kool-Aid and shut up and fall in line, like good little Calvinists.
But the Gospel is not meant to be highly-academic stuff that only the highly-educated can understand. It's meant to be a simple message of hope and salvation for everyone. For adults and for children. For the educated and the uneducated. For the seminary student who spends all day studying the loftiest resources and for the blue-collar worker who never picks up a book. For everyone!
"But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." (John 20:31)
God wants us to find the truth. He wants us to know the truth. Because He wants us to find salvation and life in Jesus. And that's why He made the truth clear and easy to see. That's why He made Himself easy to find.
So I'm not necessarily speaking against the average Calvinist, but against Calvinism and the dogmatic Calvinist teachers.
In fact, I think most Calvinists in the congregation are "Calvinists," in quotes. They are just good people who don't realize they've been duped, that they've been misled by and manipulated into a false theology that twists Scripture until it appears to teach Calvinism and that traps people with a biblical-sounding surface-layer while hiding/obscuring the dark side until it's too late. And so most "Calvinists" don't even know enough about it all to know that they aren't really Calvinists at all. They think they are just being good, humble Christians, honoring God's Word and sovereignty.
But I don't care what they "say" because what they "say" is meant to obscure what they really believe. And so what I've done here is simply get to the heart of what they really believe, stripping off the many deceptive layers they wrap their beliefs in as they try to make Calvinism sound biblical, to explain away their contradictions, and to hide what they're really teaching.
Sadly, dealing with Calvinists is like dealing with people who pathologically lie (but who don't realize it), who always spin everything they say, who keep things vague on purpose to allow wiggle room for themselves, and who have multiple layers for everything they say so that you can't pin them down on anything. You must listen to everything they say very carefully, question every term and verse they use, and dig deeper and deeper, asking more and more questions, to get a fuller, more honest picture of what they really believe (and then you'll see how deceptive the first thing they said was).
(However, I don't think most Calvinists are really "lying," as in "trying to deceive you." They truly believe that their theology is the truth, and they've been trained to defend it in all sorts of ways. So they're not deliberately lying; they just don't realize that they've bought into a package of cleverly-disguised lies, a false doctrine that they've been led to believe is the Truth. It's sad.)
1.
The Bible says ... Jesus died for all, loves all, and wants all men to be saved.
But Calvinism says ... Jesus died only for the elect, loves only the elect, and only wanted the elect to be saved.
John 3:16-17: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." [Calvinist version: "The world/whoever" means "mankind/the elect from all over the world." Most of us would think - and rightly so - that this verse is an instruction on how anyone can be saved, that anyone who believes will be saved. But in Calvinism, it's not an instruction on how to be saved because not everyone can be saved; it's merely a statement informing us of how the elect are saved: the elect will believe and not perish.]
John 5:24: "... whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned ..." [Calvinist version: Only the elect can "hear and believe," and so only they will be given eternal life. Once again, not an instruction, just a statement.]
Titus 2:11: "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men." [Calvinist version: But only the elected people will be able to see that grace and accept that salvation. Sure, it "appears" to the non-elect, but they can't see it because God blinds their eyes and hardens their hearts because He predestined them to hell. (Question: Why would God need to blind and harden people that were created to be unable to see and believe from the very beginning anyway?)]
1 Corinthians 15:22: "For as in Adam all die, so as in Christ all will be made alive." [Calvinist version: Calvinists assume that the "in Christ" people are those predestined to be saved. However, Ephesians 1:13 tells us how we become "in Christ: "And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit." It's not that there are elected people God predestined to save and causes to believe; it's that anyone who believes becomes "in Christ" and will be saved. Once we believe, and anyone can, we become part of the "in Christ" group, the group that God predestined to take to heaven. God chose the destination of the "in Christ" group, but we choose whether to be part of that group or not.]
1 Timothy 2:3-6: "This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, who gave himself as a ransom for all men ..." [Calvinist version: Just because God wants all men to be saved doesn't mean that all men can be saved, and "a ransom for all men" really just means "for all kinds of men, for mankind, for all the elect."]
1 Timothy 4:10: "... that we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, and especially of those who believe." [Calvinist version: Once again, "all men" doesn't mean that salvation is actually available to all individual people, just to all kinds of people, the elect from all nations. However, it would be quite redundant if "all men" and "those who believe" both mean "the elect": "... who is the Savior of the elect, and especially of the elect."]
Romans 5:18: "Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men." [Once again, Calvi-Jesus didn't die for "all men," just for "all kinds of men, mankind." But non-Calvi-Jesus (Jesus as seen in the Bible when read plainly and clearly) died for everyone's sins, to justify us all and offer all of us eternal life. But we choose to accept it or reject it.]
Romans 10:13: "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." [Calvinist version: "Everyone who calls" doesn't mean everyone can call. "Everyone who calls" means only the elect because only the elect can/will call on the Lord.]
This first point alone is all you need to see how twisted and destructive Calvinism is.
To make Scripture fit their view, Calvinists say that "all men" and "whosoever" and "the world" really mean "just the elect" or "all KINDS of people" ... but not ALL individual people. Lots of verses to twist. If it was just one verse, I could be more understanding of them getting it wrong. But it's many. Scripture repeatedly, consistently tells us Jesus died to save all, that He paid for all men's sins so that all could live. And then Calvinists go and repeatedly, consistently twist each verse to mean "only the elect, from all nations."
But look at the verses above, without twisting them or reading into them. Does "all" sound like "only some" in these verses? Or does it only sound like "only some" when read with the presuppositions that only the elect can be saved and that people don't get a choice about Jesus?
Be aware: To make Calvinism appear biblical, Calvinists will often say "God loves everybody," but what they mean (and will say, when pushed) is that He actually has two different kinds of love. He has a saves-your-soul-because-Jesus-died-for-you kind of love for the elect and a Jesus-didn't-die-for-you-but-God-gives-you-food-and-water-on-earth kind of "love" for the non-elect before they're sent to hell for eternity for being the unbelievers He created them to be. (They also call this "grace," two different kinds of grace, so that they can say "See! God is gracious to all, even the non-elect.")
Wow ... if that's "love," I'd hate to see hate!
And likewise, they'll say "Jesus died for all people," but they mean "all of HIS people - the elected people."
You'll see something like this in the Statements of Faith for Calvinist churches (and for churches that are trying to hide their Calvinism). They'll say something like "From the beginning of time, God decreed to save for Himself a group of people to bring to heaven with Him."
We might read this and think they're saying that God planned to have people in heaven with Him, which would be accurate. But what they really mean is that God prepicked the specific people who would be in the saved group ... and no one else can be part of that group because they were predestined for hell.
Guess what? You can't. This is purely from their own reasoning and philosophizing, and it's contrary to what God's Word clearly says.
So which is it: Lying God or Elected False Teachers?
And if Calvinism is correct, then God is also lying about them bringing destruction "on themselves." They didn't do it; God did. For His glory. Right, Calvinists!?! So then why would He give them the credit by saying they "brought destruction on themselves," when He supposedly did it for His own glory?
2.
The Bible says ... God is not willing that any man should perish, He wants all to be saved, His saving grace is available to all.
But Calvinism says ... God predestined most people to hell for His pleasure and glory, His saving grace was never for the non-elect.
2 Peter 3:9: "... He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." [However, Calvi-god predestines most people to perish, but then he says here that he doesn't really want anyone to perish. Deceptive! And if he gets glory for predestining people to perish, then isn't he denying himself glory by saying he doesn't want anyone to perish? If predestining people to hell truly was glorifying to him, then shouldn't he - and Calvinists - celebrate people going to hell because it brings Calvi-god more glory? If Calvi-god's okay with the non-elect going to hell, why isn't the Calvinist? FYI: The ESV Bible translates this verse differently than any other version, making it much more Calvinist. At least to me. Click here to see.]
Ezekiel 33:11: "Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?'" [Why will they die? Well - duh - because you, Calvi-god, predestined them to die, for your glory and pleasure, and there's nothing they can do about it.]
Romans 11:32: "For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all." [Calvinists say the first "all" means "all," but the second "all" means "only the elect." Calvi-god only truly has salvation-mercy on the elect. But to sound more non-Calvinist (more biblical), Calvinists will say that food, water, and sunshine are "daily mercies." This way, they can say "See! God does have 'mercy' on all people, even the non-elect." Just not salvation-type mercy. That's some wonderful mercy for the non-elect, isn't it!?! Like feeding pigs lots of good food to fatten them up before slaughter. But hey, at least they got some "mercy" while they were alive! But let's not care about those headed to hell; let's just focus on the lucky few that get to go to heaven!]
Acts 2:38: "Peter replied, 'Repent and be baptized every one of you ...'" [Calvinists say that only the elect can repent, but that we have to tell everyone to repent because we don't know who's elect and who's not. And they say that Calvi-god commands the non-elect to repent - even though he's predestined them to hell - because he needed them to be guilty of disobeying his command - even though that's all they could do, by his design - so that he could "justly" punish them for their disobedience. As if they had a choice! As if that's true justice!! It's convoluted and sick! See "Things my Calvinist pastor said #15: No altar calls, and replacing 'believe' with 'repent'" and "Calvinists, altar calls, and evangelism"]
HOGWASH!
It's the same thing. And they know it. (Which is why they have to write theology books that are hundreds of pages long to try to explain it, to try to make it make sense. Which they fail at, because it just gets more convoluted, confusing, and contradictory.)
They are just trying to soften up Calvi-god's image, to make it seem like he's not really a bad, unjust, unrighteous, monster god who predestines people for hell; he just "passes over them, doesn't choose them for heaven." (If he's such a good, righteous god, why the need to soften his image?)
But it's nonsense! If Calvi-god is the one who predestines who goes to heaven and the rest have to go to hell, then he does indeed predestine who goes to hell. It's two sides of the same coin. You can't have one without the other. Not choosing someone for heaven is choosing them for hell.
Do you know what we would call someone like that?
A psychopath! A dangerous, deranged, unstable lunatic!
But Calvinists call him "God," and they worship him. And since "He is the Potter and we are the clay," He can do whatever He wants with us and we have to be okay with it, because "it's all for His pleasure and glory," and so it's all good.
Matthew 23:37: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you because Calvi-god caused you to, how often I have longed to gather your children together even though I predestined you for hell, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing because Calvi-god caused you to be unwilling."
And I say "WHAT!?!"
To further distance Calvi-god from being the cause of sin, they'll also use the idea that there are two causes of sin: God is the ultimate cause, but we are the secondary cause. (They also go by other names, such as proximate/primary cause and remote cause.) They'll say that as the ultimate cause, God "ordains" everything, even our sins, but as the secondary cause, we "willingly" carry out that sin - much like how a robot "willingly" carries out the actions that the programmer tells it to do or how a puppet "willingly" does what the puppet-master makes it do. ("But you don't understand Calvinism," cries the Calvinist. "We don't say people are just robots or puppets." Maybe not, but their theology does.) But because we carried out the actions, it somehow makes us responsible for our sins, and not Calvi-god, even though Calvi-god programmed it all to happen that way and we couldn't do anything differently.
Calvinism is full of layers and layers of deception and convoluted nonsense, all in an effort to cover up the fact that Calvi-god alone is the cause of sin, evil, and unbelief. It is God-dishonoring, Gospel-destroying, pig-sloppy hogwash! (Get used to this word. When you hear "Calvinism" from now on, I want you to instantly think "hogwash"!)
Here are a couple examples from John Calvin himself:
In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 2, Section 1, he says: "For, until men feel that they owe everything to God ... they will never submit to him in voluntary obedience ..."
This makes it sound like men have the free-will to choose to obey or disobey God.
But how is "voluntary obedience" possible when, according to Calvin, ...
Never mind the fact that Calvin just said he is "unwilling" to use the term "free-will" - that he wills himself to not believe in free-will (ha ha ha, what a joke!) - but this contradicts what he said about us obeying God voluntarily (of our own free-will choice). (And, just wondering, but how can he reason with people to not believe in free-will when he believes that God makes all of our choices for us? Talk about nonsense!)
Another example: In Book 1, Chapter 17, Section 5, Calvin says this about wicked people: "I deny that they serve the will of God." He says that we CANNOT say that "he who has been carried away by a wicked mind are performing service on the order of God" because the evil person is "only following his own malignant desires," not acting in obedience.
And yet ... just a couple sections later, as we see above ... he says that all the ungodly are held in the hand of God so tightly that they cannot even conceive a thought unless God commands it. And a chapter earlier, he said that everything happens according to God's decree (according to how God planned it to happen), that God controls our wills in order to move us in exactly the course He predestined us to go in.
But now ... in this section ... he dares to say that wicked men are acting on their own, outside of God's control, that God doesn't cause them to do the wicked things they do!?!
And a chapter later, in Chapter 18, section 2, Calvin says, "The sum of the whole is this, - since the will of God is said to be the cause of all things, all the counsels and actions of men must be held to be governed by his providence; so that he not only exerts his power in the elect, who are guided by the Holy Spirit, but also forces the reprobate to do him service."
So ... he denies that wicked men serve the will of God, saying that they are "not performing service on the order of God" ... but then he goes and says that "the reprobate do him service"!?!
Confused, inconsistent theologian, table of one!
4.
The Bible says ... When we hear the Gospel, we choose to repent and believe, or not. Those who choose to repent/believe are then saved/born-again and filled/sealed with the Holy Spirit who regenerates the hearts of believers, helping us grow in the faith.
But Calvinism says ... The "elect" are prechosen to be saved before time began. Then when it's their predestined time to believe, the Holy Spirit regenerates them to cause them to want/seek God. And only then are they equipped to understand and respond to the Gospel, and then to repent and believe. (The Holy Spirit gives them faith first to cause them to believe.)
Acts 2:38: "... Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." (It's repent/believe first, then get the Holy Spirit. But Calvinism reverses it.)
Ephesians 1:13: "And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit." (Believe first, then get the Holy Spirit.)
Basically, Calvinists believe that being chosen for salvation comes before receiving the Holy Spirit, and that receiving the Holy Spirit comes before being able to want/seek God, to understand the Gospel, and finally to repent and believe. So technically, in Calvinism, the elect are saved, regenerated, filled with the Spirit, born-again before understanding and responding to the Gospel, repenting, and believing. [But the non-elect can never understand or respond to the Gospel because the Holy Spirit does not and will not wake them up from their spiritual death. Because they weren't chosen. And Calvi-Jesus never even died for them anyway.]
[If a church's statement of faith says something like "the Holy Spirit regenerates sinners" instead of "the Holy Spirit regenerates believers" then it may be Calvinist - because Calvinists believe the Holy Spirit regenerates the hearts of elected sinners to cause them to believe ... but, biblically, the Holy Spirit regenerates the hearts of new believers, after we put our faith in Jesus, to make us born-again and change us into new creations. Once again, see "How to tell if a Church, Pastor, or Website is Calvinist".]
But ... I wonder ... if the elect cannot respond to the Gospel until after they are chosen and regenerated and born again, if their salvation is secure before they ever heard the Gospel or responded to it, then what good is the Gospel anyway? What does it really do?
It doesn't really lead to the salvation of the elect, for they were elected/saved from the beginning of time, before they ever heard the Word, and they are regenerated/born-again before understanding and responding to the Gospel. And the Gospel cannot lead to the salvation of the non-elect because they are predestined for hell and so Calvi-Holy-Spirit will never regenerate them or help them understand/respond to the Gospel.
So what good is the Gospel really, in Calvinism? What does it accomplish?
Calvinism makes the Gospel superfluous, inconsequential, completely unnecessary and ineffective! And yet, people (good Christians even) are still drawn to it, like flies to poop.
Additionally, not to confuse you more, but Calvinists say that the elect are born as reprobates, just like everyone else. How exactly does that work!?! So they are elected/saved before time began, then they turn back into a reprobate when they're born, and then they turn back into one of the elect when Calvi-Holy-Spirit regenerates them!?! So what happened to the supposed "eternal security of the elect" that they got back before time began, if they were turned back into reprobates when they were born?
Reprobates (in Calvinism) are those who are born non-elected, rejecting God, predestined for hell. How can the elect go from being predestined for heaven before time began to being born as a reprobate who is destined for hell? How can a reprobate ever change from being predestined for hell when they're born ... to being destined for heaven later? So when exactly does a person's "election" kick in? And do Calvinists even know what "predestination" means according to their own theology (they definitely don't know what it means according to the Bible)? Strange!
5.
The Bible says ... God expects us to seek Him in order to find Him, to find new life in Him.
But Calvinism says ... God commands us to seek Him but no one can seek Him unless He makes them seek (and He only makes the elect seek/find/believe in Him).
It's garbage! It really is. Calvinism's "spiritual death is the same as physical death" analogy is simply a ridiculously bad, terribly wrong analogy. Go ahead and try to find one verse that says this! You can't. Because it's not from Scripture. Calvinists made it up based on their own presuppositions, bad definitions, and their wrong ideas of how God works, of man's condition, and of what God "meant" to say in verses that they took out of context. Don't buy into this nonsense! (If you accept their definition of "spiritual death," you are on your way to becoming a Calvinist.)
Calvinism says "dead people can't seek," but God Himself commanded "dead people" to seek. So we cannot be that dead; we're just "mostly dead." 😉
But what they really believe is that God calls to all, but only the elect will respond because He causes only the elect to hear, respond, repent, believe. But the non-elect will resist the call because He does not give them the ears to hear it. He hardens their hearts so that they can't respond, so that they don't want Him. He gives them the unregenerated-nature that makes them "want" to reject His gift of salvation, and so that's all they can do. But because they "wanted" to do it, they are responsible for it, not Him, thereby "earning" their punishment in hell.
6.
The Bible says ... Satan blinds eyes, but Jesus takes the veil away when we turn to Him. And "receive" and "believe" (in the concordance) are active, not passive. We do them. "Receive" means to reach out and grab ahold of what is being offered to you (salvation). And "believe" is to let yourself be persuaded by something (the truth) and to commit to it.
But Calvinism says ... God blinds eyes (prevents the non-elect from believing in Him) and opens eyes (causes the elect to believe in Him). Faith is something done to us, not by us.
2 Corinthians 4:4: "The god of this age had blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." [Calvinist version: Calvi-god causes Satan to blind the non-elect so that they can never see the Truth, so that they go to hell for Calvi-god's glory. Question: If the non-elect are already born without the ability to believe, why the need to blind them? If he didn't blind them, would they somehow believe, contrary to what he predestined? NOTE: "The minds of unbelievers" is a mistranslation. It should be "minds of them which believe not" (KJV). The first is a noun, making it sound like it's who we are, that people are created to be unbelievers. But the second is a verb: "believing" is something we choose to do or not do. This is not about blinding non-elect people so that they can't believe in Jesus; it's about Satan blinding those who choose to not believe, who choose to resist Jesus, so that they cannot understand spiritual truths. See "A random verse that destroys Calvinism (and Is the ESV a Calvinist Bible?)"]
2 Corinthians 3:16: "But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away." [In Calvinism, "anyone" means "the elect." And keep in mind that Calvinism actually reverses this verse. This verse says that first we turn to the Lord and then the veil is taken away. But in Calvinism, the veil has to be taken away from the elect first, by the Holy Spirit, so that they can turn to the Lord. Note: This passage in Corinthians is actually specifically about the veil over the Jewish people because they put their faith in keeping the Law. If they insist on believing that keeping the Law earns them salvation, there will always be a veil over the truth that salvation is found only in Jesus.]
Romans ...
1:5: "Through him and for his name's sake, we received grace and apostleship..." (In the concordance, "received" is active, not passive - the person reaches out and grabs what is offered to them. It's not forced on them or instilled in them while they wait passively, as happens to the elect in Calvinism.)
5:11: "... but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation" (We actively grab onto the reconciliation that Jesus makes possible.)
5:17: "... how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness" (active, not passive, reach out and grab it)
8:15: "... but you received the Spirit of sonship ..." (active, not passive)
10:4: "... Christ is the end of the law, so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes." (In the concordance, "believes" is to let yourself be persuaded by something and, consequently, to commit to it. It's NOT "to have someone else [God] cause you to believe.")
Ephesians 1:13: "... Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit." (Having let yourself be convinced of the truth and choosing to commit to it, you were saved and received the Holy Spirit.)
John 1:12: "Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God" (All those who reach out and grab onto Him and the salvation He offers, who allow themselves to be persuaded that He is the way, the truth, and the life, who choose to commit to Him - these are the people who become children of God. For more on what the concordance says, see "According to the concordance, it's NOT predestination".)
Calvinists believe that "faith" is a gift that Calvi-god has to give and that he only gives it to the elect. And they base this, in part, on Ephesians 2:8-9: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this not of yourselves but it is the gift of God, so that no one can boast."
I used to think faith was the "gift" in this verse too. Until I dug deeper. And now I believe that "salvation" is the gift spoken of in this verse, not faith. (Once again, see "Is Faith A Gift God Gives (or forces on) Us?") And it's offered to everyone.
But Calvinists believe that the gift is faith, and that God "forces" it on the elect but withholds it from everyone else. And so if He doesn't give you faith, you can never believe in Him.
And they also use verses like Acts 16:14 and Luke 24:45 to support their view that God "forces" the elect to see/believe the Truth, that He gives certain select people the "gift of faith."
Acts 16:14 talks about God opening Lydia's heart to believe Paul's message. Calvinists say this means God caused her to believe in Jesus. But - big mistake - they assume that the message she heard was the Gospel and that God opened her eyes to believe it and be saved. But this isn't in the text. The text simply says that her eyes were opened to the message Paul gave. And I believe that it very well could be that his message was about the need for believers to be baptized (the same message he gave to some disciples in Acts 19, a few chapters over), because the very next thing she does is get her family baptized. Besides, if you look at the verses before, you'll see that she was already a worshipper of God, a believer. So this is most likely a case of God helping a believer take the next step, and not one of God causing a non-believer to believe.
After I pointed this out to my ex-pastor who loves using the Lydia example as "proof" of Calvinist predestination/election, he made sure to add something like this to his next sermon about it: "Yeah, it says here that Lydia was a worshipper of God, but she wasn't really saved. Not until God opened her eyes."
And Calvinists will point to Luke 24:45, about God opening the minds of the disciples to understand the Scriptures. But once again, this isn't causing unbelievers to believe. It's opening the minds of those who already believe to help them grow in their wisdom and faith.
The thing is, Calvinists read into verses things that aren't there. So if a verse talks about something like God opening someone's eyes, they think it must mean that He caused them to believe, that they couldn't believe before that, that He didn't open other people's eyes, and that if He doesn't open your eyes then you can't believe. But all of that is reading into the Bible things that aren't there. It may simply be that God helps us learn and grow and take the next step on our faith journey, a journey that He invites all people to take, a journey that anyone can join if they want to. It may just be that all the information we need to know is right in front of us, but that God tries to help us see it if we have a hard time seeing it ourselves.
Have you ever met someone that you know you met before, but you can't remember who they are or where you know them from, but then someone says something that suddenly makes you remember everything? Was the information you needed withheld from you before that? Were you being deliberately kept in the dark by some mysterious force? Or did you have all the details you needed somewhere in your head to figure out who it was, but you just weren't able to figure it out without a little help?
Just because a verse says that God prompts someone or "opens their minds" to help them understand something doesn't mean that He kept them blind before opening their minds or that not opening your mind means He prevents you from seeing the truth. It might just be that God gives us a little help sometimes to see the things we should be able to see but that we have a hard time seeing for some reason or other.
7.
The Bible (and the concordance) says ... That when God "hardens" hearts, it is retribution for first hardening your own heart, for resisting God for so long even after He's been patient and long-suffering with you.
But Calvinism says ... God arbitrarily chooses whose hearts to harden against Him (non-elect) and whose to turn to Him (elect), with no input/responsibility on our parts.
Romans 9:18: "Therefore, God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden." [Calvinists say "See, God hardens whomever He wants. We have nothing to do with His choice of whom to harden and whom to elect." But in the concordance, "hardens" is retribution for first hardening your own heart, for resisting God. And so, yes, we do have something to do with whether we are hardened or not. God further hardens those who choose to resist/reject Him. He confirms their decision and then uses it for His purposes. Plus, and this is critical, Romans 9 is about Israel as a nation, about God handing them over to their hard-hearted rejection of Jesus and giving the Gospel to the Gentiles instead, because the Jews didn't want it. But then the Jews cried "not fair!" because they thought the Gentiles shouldn't get salvation. They thought the Jews were the "special" ones and should get God's favor and salvation just because they were Jews. That's what Romans 9 is about. God is telling them that He can give the Gospel/offer salvation to whomever He wants to, to whomever is willing to receive it (and the Gentiles were), and that He can take it away from (and punish) anyone, even Jews, if they resist/reject it. But if you let Calvinists convince you that Romans 9 is about God choosing individual people for salvation or hardening individual people for hell, you will be a Calvinist. Examine the worm!]
And notice the order of unbelief in John 12:37-39 - "they would not believe" resulted in "they could not believe." Because they would not believe in Jesus, God hardened them so that they could not believe. But they chose to not believe first. And so God gave them what they wanted, what they chose: a hard heart.
And in Ezekiel 20:21-25 and Romans 1:21-24, the people rebel against God, so He lets them become hardened and defiled, handing them over to their own sinful rebellion. They earned their hard-heart by choosing first to rebel against God.
A simple study of what the Bible says and what the concordance says about many of the words Calvinists hinge Calvinism on will defeat Calvinism.
Such as, Calvinists always use God hardening Pharaoh's heart as "evidence" that God chooses whom to harden, without any influence on our parts. But a simple reading of the early chapters of Exodus shows that early on and through the first several plagues, Pharaoh hardened his own heart. And then eventually God made Pharaoh's self-chosen hardness permanent (retribution for first hardening his own heart). God knew Pharaoh would harden his heart, and so God made a way to incorporate Pharaoh's hard heart into His plans. But God did not harden Pharaoh's heart apart from Pharaoh choosing to willingly harden his own heart first.
However, to make it fit Calvinism (after I brought this up in a letter to the elders), my ex-pastor tried to explain it this way in his sermons: "Yeah, I know it says that Pharaoh hardened his own heart, but it was really that God hardened it first, before Pharaoh hardened his own heart."
In order to be a Calvinist, you have to look right at a Bible verse that clearly, plainly says one thing and go, "Oh, but it doesn't really mean that! There's a secret layer of meaning that only we Calvinists know, and it changes what the verse is really saying."
Yep, sounds legit to me! Sign me up for this "knowledge of the secret layers" so that I too can understand what God meant to say when He wrote the words that He didn't really mean!
[No, I am not nice and tolerant about Calvinism! Not at all! I am nice and tolerant when it comes to the people trapped in Calvinism, but not when it comes to the theology or those who trap others in it. How can we be nice and tolerant about a theology that uses God's Word against God, that does such damage to God's character and truth and people's eternities while trying to appear like it actually upholds God's character and truth!?! If Calvinism is a lie, like I believe it is, then who is the father of those lies? That's right: Satan. May we never be nice and tolerant about a satanic lie infiltrating our churches and destroying God's Truth and character, about a theology that shuts the door of heaven on most people, declaring them un-save-able. Tolerating Calvinism or being soft on it will look like compromising with it, which will make it appear more acceptable, which will encourage its spread, which will eventually destroy the church from the inside out. Be nice and tolerant with people who are trapped in Calvinism, but not with Calvinism itself! I mean, if this issue - at the heart of the gospel and God's Word - isn't worth fighting back against, then nothing is.]
8.
The Bible says ... We are to evangelize because it's how people will hear the Gospel so that they can believe. By hearing the Gospel, we can believe, and by believing, we inherit eternal life.
Romans 10:14: "How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?"
John 20:31: "But these are written that you may believe ..."
But Calvinism says ... Evangelize because God told you to, even though God's already decided where everyone will go. The elect will be saved and the non-elect will be damned, no matter what, but we still have to obey God's command to spread the Gospel.
Makes no sense! Calvinism says that we are elected/born-again before we can even respond to the Gospel, that we can't respond to the Gospel or believe in Jesus unless God first regenerates us and gives us the Holy Spirit. They say that we need to evangelize and to spread the Gospel in order to help the elect people who don't yet believe realize that they are elect (to "believe" and be saved). They say that God predestined that the elect would hear the Gospel and believe, but that the non-elect will never be able to "hear" the Gospel and believe.
It's sad to me to think about the pathetic, twisted, half-gospel that people are getting through Calvinist evangelism: that "you too can be saved ... if you are one of the elect" and that God is really only about Himself and has predestined the non-elect to hell for His glory.
Now to be fair, my ex-pastor believes in calling people to repent of their sins (while believing that only the elect can and will repent). But he doesn't do "altar calls," asking people if they want to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior. He says it's because he doesn't want people to think they're saved just because they "walked the aisle." (But I bet that's not the reason at all. I bet the real reason is because he doesn't want people thinking that they have a choice about salvation, about Jesus. Because that goes against the very heart of Calvinism!)
So then, do we get a choice about obeying God's command to evangelize but we don't get a choice about obeying God's command to believe?
It doesn't make sense. It's nonsense. It's "Alice in Wonderland"-type nonsense!
On a different but similar note: Calvinists also act like prayer matters, even though they believe that God preplans/controls/causes everything that happens. But if everything's already been pre-planned, if God controls/causes all that happens, what difference does prayer really make? How necessary is it?
Calvinists answer the "Why pray?" question with "God ordains the means as well as the ends," meaning that God predestined the prayer as well as the answer to the prayer.
But Calvinists say God predestined everything that happens and that we can't affect it. And yet, then they try to make it sound like prayer really does matter and make a difference. They will even say that (in Calvinism) there are some things we have to pray for because God has decided to only give them to us if we pray for them.
(For more on this, see my Bible Study lesson on Prayer and see "Prayer, Faith, and God's Will", about the times prayer doesn't seem to "work.")
Okay now, back to evangelizing, to spreading the Gospel: The Bible says, "But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." (John 20:31) The very reason God gave us the Scriptures was so that we could learn about Jesus and believe in Him, and that by believing, we could inherit eternal life.
9.
The Bible says ... God shows His love and His justice by sending Jesus to the cross to pay for our sins.
But Calvinism says ... God shows His love by saving the elect (and by caring for the non-elect on earth) and He shows His justice by damning the non-elect to hell for their sins/unbelief.
Calvinists know the Bible says "For God so loved the world ...", and so to appear biblical they say "Of course, God loves everyone." But secretly, they believe in two different kinds of love: a "salvation" kind of love for the elect and a mere "kindness" kind of love for the non-elect. He shows His love to the elect by predestining them to heaven, but He shows His "love" to the non-elect merely by providing for their needs while they're on earth (before sending them to eternal hell for being the unbelievers He caused them to be).
But in the Bible, God doesn't say He shows His love in two different ways, based on whether you are elect or not. He Himself clearly told us the one main way He shows His love to sinners: He shows His love by sending Jesus to the cross to pay for our sins.
Romans 5:8: "But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
Unless only the elect are sinners and unrighteous (1 Peter 3:18) and ungodly (Romans 5:6), then Jesus died for all people. For "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). All are sinners. And Jesus died for sinners.
But for Calvinism to work, there has to be two kinds of sinners: those Jesus died for and those He didn't. Those who are born as unrighteous, ungodly sinners headed to heaven and those who are born as unrighteous, ungodly sinners headed to hell. But I don't see any verses like that in the Bible, that clearly say that there are two different kinds of sinners and that God shows His love to us in two different ways. The Calvinist has to infer it. And it's their inferences that lead them astray.
"... He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:9)
"... that we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, and especially of those who believe." (1 Timothy 4:10)
Leave it to Satan to come up with a theology like this - one that uses God's glory, sovereignty, and Word against Him - tricking people into thinking that Jesus didn't die for all people, that God doesn't love all people enough to offer them salvation, that we have no ability to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior and so God has to cause us to (the elect only, of course), that God is the ultimate source of and cause of our sins, and that the reason people go to hell is because it glorifies Him!
Stunning! Horrifying!
10.
The Bible shows that ... "Sovereignty" means that God is the highest authority there is.
There is no one above Him and no one He is accountable to. (I say it's perfectly fine to end a sentence with a preposition.) He has the power to do whatever He wants. And as seen in the Bible all over the place, part of what He wants is to allow us to make decisions, within any boundaries He sets up. He wants us to want Him, to willingly choose to love and worship and obey Him, not to be forced to or programmed to. (Anyone else singing "I Want You to Want Me" from Cheap Trick right now? If you weren't, you will be now. Ha ha ha!) Forced love can never be true love.
Yep, makes perfect sense!
[Calvi-god is actually a small, weak, flat, two-dimensional god when you think about it, because he can only handle what he himself causes. He can only work out his plans if he himself preplans and micromanages everything, if he controls every factor and every step along the way. If there was even one piece of dust outside his control, it would throw him off his axis. But a god that can be dethroned by one rogue particle of dust is no god at all! That is a small, small god.]
To be fair, I think most Calvinists are trying to be humble when they view "sovereignty" as "God controls and causes everything." They are trying to lift God up as high as they can and to lower humans as low as they can.
But if their view of "sovereignty" and of how God acts goes outside of what Scripture says, if it contradicts Scripture and turns Him into a monster, and if they refuse to consider that they might be wrong, then how humble are they really?
11.
The Bible says ... God is glorified when people praise Him, trust Him, believe in Him, preach the good news, obey Him, etc.
This is simply Calvinists trying to find a "good" explanation for why Calvi-god causes sin, evil, and predestines people to hell: It's "for his glory," and so that makes it okay. They start with their erroneous beliefs, build their view of God on top of it, and then find ways to make their erroneous beliefs sound good.
But find me the verse that says this. Seriously.
God can use evil for His glory, but He cannot and does not cause evil for His glory. He can preplan to work our sinful choices into His plans, to make something good out of it (because He knows ahead of time what we will choose to do), but He cannot and does not preplan that we commit the sins.
But the easy answer here (which they refuse to see) is that God didn’t cause Assyria to be wicked people and to do wicked things (Can you find a verse that says He did?). He just worked their self-chosen wickedness into His plans, almost like saying “You want to be wicked? Fine! Then go be wicked over there by Israel for awhile, to punish them for their waywardness. And then when you’re done, I can punish you for being the wicked people you chose to be.”
But the Calvinist will always use these examples to “prove” that Calvi-god causes sin but punishes people for it, and that it’s okay because he is “sovereign.”
And they actually do conclude that these things are ultimately for good, for God's glory. Listen to this clip of Calvinist James White defending his belief that child-rape is caused by God, because if it wasn't caused by God then there would be no purpose in it.
So, in Calvinism, it's so much better to have a God who causes child-rape than for Him to simply allow someone to make that evil decision on their own, because at least we can know it has a purpose then, that it's a "meaningful" rape!?!
What the @#$%!?! (Oh, my blood is boiling! Don't get me started!)
One dogmatic Calvinist said this about why Calvi-god causes evil: "Because it glorifies him to cause evil." And so I asked, "But if it glorifies him to cause evil, then why should we fight against it?" And he said, in all seriousness, "Because it glorifies him when we fight against evil."
Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!
12. (We're getting closer to the end. It's gonna go faster now.)
(See "Predestined for salvation? Or for something else?" for more on that.)
*Additional note: There are other verses like 2 Thess. 2:13 ("God chose you to be saved") where, according to Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible with Vine's Expository Dictionary, "salvation" is not even about our soul's eternal salvation but about God promising to spare believers from the His upcoming, end-times wrath that He will pour out on staunch unbelievers:
13.
Yes, God's glory should be held up high. The highest. But to do this, Calvinists reduce humans too low, lower than what God says. They base our value only on the "glory" God gets through us. (And for the record, God does not cause people to be unbelievers so that He can punish them in hell for His glory.)
But God Himself believes we have value and loves us tremendously, enough to send Jesus to die for all of our sins, no matter how "low and insignificant" we are in comparison to Him. Just so we could have a relationship with Him in heaven. Because He wants it. Because He wants us. God doesn't love us because we deserve it, but because He wanted to. Because that's the kind of God He is.
If God Himself says that we matter greatly to Him, that we're worth the price of Jesus's blood (not because of anything we are or do, just because God values us that much even if we don't deserve it), then how much does it glorify Him for Calvinists to spread the idea that God only really cares about Himself and His glory, and that we have no value other than the glory God can squeeze from us?
(See my posts "Are We Only Here For God's Glory? What About His Love?" and "Is God Only Concerned About His Glory and Being Famous?")
Here is an excerpt from my "Letter to our elders regarding Calvinism growing in our church", regarding this very thing:
Psalm 34:18: "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."
1 Peter 5:7: "Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you."
I'm sorry, but there's no polite way to say it.
Calvinism destroys God's integrity, trustworthiness, love, grace, Word, etc.
And how could we ever trust a God like that!?!
And it's spreading. Stealthily, fast, aggressively.
(We watched it happen firsthand in our church, which is why I wrote this blog. See "What's the best way to make people agree with your Calvinist views?" Sadly, we ended up leaving that church, a place we attended almost 20 years.)
[I updated this November 2022 to try to shorten it. I failed. But I hope it's more readable and streamlined at least. If you only read one anti-Calvinism post of mine, I think it should be this one. But I'm warning you, this post is long. Very long. So pack a lunch and bring a sleeping bag. But it has to be long because Calvinism is so deceptively convoluted that it takes time to peel off the layers so that you can see it for what it really is. My hope is that with this one long post, I can show the deceptiveness of Calvinism and how it contradicts the Word, so that you can learn to identify where and how Calvinism goes wrong, how it manipulates, and the damage it does to God's character and truth. And FYI: I put all the links you'll find in this post - except the ones to John Calvin's writing - at the bottom of this post so that you don't have to stop reading to click on them or go back to find them. And for the version with just the text, no memes, click here. (All memes created with imgflip.com.)]
Introduction:
Calvinism presents itself as a "deeper understanding" of Scripture, as "the next level" of spiritual growth and wisdom and humility and glorifying God.
Calvinism presents itself as a "deeper understanding" of Scripture, as "the next level" of spiritual growth and wisdom and humility and glorifying God.
But it's not a "deeper-level" gospel; it's a different gospel, a false gospel. Underneath what Calvinists "say" it teaches, Calvinism actually teaches something very different. And the only way to realize that is to examine the Word deeply (without wearing Calvinist glasses), to examine Calvinist beliefs closely, to carry them out to their logical, undeniable, inevitable ends, and to compare it all against what the Bible plainly, clearly says.
And this is something Calvinists don't want you doing. (Heck, they don't even do it themselves.) And so they use all sorts of manipulative tactics and phrases to stop you (and themselves) from looking into it deeper, to shame you into simply accepting what they tell you without question or pushback.
And guess what? It works. Given the aggressive, unopposed spread of Calvinism, it's clear that their Scripture-twisting and cult-like tactics work.
But what most people don't realize is that Calvinism is not what it says it is. It's not what it appears to be. Calvinists do not take God at His Word or read the Bible as it was written. What they really do is start with their own unbiblical ideas of what God is like and what certain words/verses mean (contrary to the clear, plain teaching of Scripture) and then they twist Scripture and add multiple layers to make it appear to fit, all while shaming and manipulating you into being quiet and falling into line.
Such as, they start with (having been taught this themselves by other Calvinists) an unbiblical understanding of predestination (that God has predetermined from the beginning of time who goes to heaven and who goes to hell) ... and election (that God has chosen certain people to be saved) ... and God's sovereignty (God preplans, controls, causes, micromanages everything, even our thoughts, actions, and sins, because if He didn't, He couldn't be God) ... and spiritual death (that man is so "totally depraved" that it's impossible for anyone to think about, want, seek, or believe in God unless God makes them do it), etc. ... and then they twist Scripture, take it out of context, add imaginary secondary layers, etc., until it appears to teach that too. [See "A quick study of Calvinism's favorite words"]
And to keep you from pushing back, from disagreeing with it, they set you up to feel like only bad, prideful, unhumble, God-dishonoring, Scripture-rejecting, man-worshiping Christians disagree with it (or maybe you're not even a Christian at all).
And what good Christian wants to be a "bad, prideful, unhumble, God-dishonoring, Scripture-rejecting, man-worshiping Christian"? And so we sit quietly, keep our concerns to ourselves, and let them tell us what to think, let them shame and brainwash us into Calvinism.
But the more you read and study God's Word as it is clearly, plainly written, without Calvinist glasses on, the more you'll see that Calvinism completely contradicts the Word (and itself) and destroys God's truth/character, Jesus's sacrifice, the Gospel, and people's faith.
[But be warned: Calvinists have very clever ways - dare I say "demonically-clever ways" (they just don't know it) - of making you feel like you are the problem, and not their theology: "You're just having an emotional reaction to things you don't like hearing"... "Calvinism is like an itchy wool sweater that feels rough and uncomfortable at first, but if you give it time, you'll get used to it"... "Don't let your pride get in the way of God's truth"... "You're putting human logic over God's Word," etc.]
Calvinism is not a theological system where they build their theology on the Bible. It's a philosophical system, where they start with their presuppositions, assumptions, and misconceptions about God and faith, and then they build their theology on that, trying to force the Bible to fit their unbiblical ideas.
I sum it up this way: Calvinism is man telling God how God has to be in order to be God!
Calvinism is not a theological system where they build their theology on the Bible. It's a philosophical system, where they start with their presuppositions, assumptions, and misconceptions about God and faith, and then they build their theology on that, trying to force the Bible to fit their unbiblical ideas.
I sum it up this way: Calvinism is man telling God how God has to be in order to be God!
(And I'm gonna pull threads from that itchy wool sweater until it all unravels. And to read about other people's concerns with Calvinism, so you can see it's not just me, click on the links under the heading "What Others Say About Calvinism" in the post Links to Other Anti-Calvinism Posts.)
Calvinists look right at Bible verses that clearly say one thing and they essentially go "Yes, it says that, but what God really means is ..."
Calvinist preachers will say "I am only teaching right from Scripture! We always need to go right to Scripture to see what the text says."... but then they subtly spin the verse in a Calvinist way or tie a Calvinist belief onto the end of a biblical truth. A little bait-and-switch. (I've seen it happen.) But since you heard "right from Scripture," you trust that they're teaching "right from Scripture" and you let your guard down, shut off your critical-thinking discernment skills, put on the Calvinist glasses, and let them tell you what to think.
Calvinists look right at Bible verses that clearly say one thing and they essentially go "Yes, it says that, but what God really means is ..."
Calvinist preachers will say "I am only teaching right from Scripture! We always need to go right to Scripture to see what the text says."... but then they subtly spin the verse in a Calvinist way or tie a Calvinist belief onto the end of a biblical truth. A little bait-and-switch. (I've seen it happen.) But since you heard "right from Scripture," you trust that they're teaching "right from Scripture" and you let your guard down, shut off your critical-thinking discernment skills, put on the Calvinist glasses, and let them tell you what to think.
Never shut off your critical-thinking discernment skills! Never let others tell you what to think! Always run what people say (even what I say!) through Scripture, even if - especially if - they tell you they are "only preaching Scripture." How do you think error and heresy slips in? By announcing itself with bells and whistles, shouting "hey, I'm a heretical, unbiblical idea"? No. It slips in slyly, subtly, slowly, with the appearance of looking biblical. A little twist here, a little tweak there, a little "Did God really say ..." along the way, so that you don't notice what's happening, until it's too late. (See "Exposing Calvinism: My comment on Calvinist twists.")
Calvinists use this "Yes, but ..." approach (see "The Calvinist's Big Ugly 'But'") because they evidently believe God has blessed them with some sort of superior insight into some sort of "hidden, deeper truths" that help them understand what He really meant to say, even though it totally contradicts the simple, commonsense truths of Scripture.
But if you have to read Scripture with a "Yes, but ..." approach, if God says one thing but you say another, who do you think is wrong? You or God?
The Gospel is a simple message for all people, because God wants all people to be saved. And anyone who wants to can believe in Jesus. Anyone can be saved.
But Calvinists have turned it into a complex, multi-layered, double-meaning, self-contradicting, only-for-the-elect, "hidden messages" kind of thing that takes months of study with their hundreds-of-pages-long Calvinist indoctrination books in order to understand it.
Does this sound like what God intended? Did He need Calvinist theologians to come along 1500 years later to "clarify" His Word, to tell us what He "meant to say"? Does He obscure His truth so much that we need to go to the "enlightened" Calvinists to understand it?
Want an example of the twisted word-games they play? Of how sneaky they are, trying to get you to think they're saying something they aren't so that you don't notice what they really believe? (Sadly, most of them don't even realize they're doing this.)
Calvinists will verbally agree with what I said about the Gospel. They'll say "We believe the same things you do. Yes, the Gospel should be preached to all. Yes, God wants all men to be saved. And yes, anyone who wants to can believe in Jesus. Anyone can be saved."
Calvinists will verbally agree with what I said about the Gospel. They'll say "We believe the same things you do. Yes, the Gospel should be preached to all. Yes, God wants all men to be saved. And yes, anyone who wants to can believe in Jesus. Anyone can be saved."
And you'll think "Wow, I guess we really are on the same page." And you'll start listening to them more, because you trust that they believe the same as you do.
But what they hide - what makes all the difference - is this:
But what they hide - what makes all the difference - is this:
"The Gospel should be preached to all people, but that doesn't mean that all people can respond to it. Only the elect can/will respond because God gives only the elect the ability/desire to respond. But the non-elect can never respond because God prevents them from responding because they were predestined to hell from the beginning of time. But since we don't know who's elect and who's not, we have to preach it to all. And of course, God wants all people to be saved, but that doesn't mean that all people can be saved. On one hand, He wants all men to be saved; it makes Him sad to put anyone in hell. But on the other hand, what He wants more is glory for exercising His justice/wrath against sin, and so He needed sinners to punish in hell in order to show off His justice/wrath, and so He predestined people to hell, for His glory. And of course, anyone who wants to can believe in Jesus ... but not all people can want to believe. Only the regenerated nature contains the desire to believe in Jesus, and God only gives the regenerated nature to the elect. Therefore, only the elect can want to believe, which means only the elect will believe, just like He predestined. But since He doesn't regenerate the non-elect, they have to keep the unregenerated nature which contains only the desire to sin and reject God, which means they will only be able to choose to sin and reject God, just like He predestined. Because of their nature, they will never desire to believe in Jesus, and so they will never choose to believe in Jesus, which is why Jesus never died for them anyway. Because He wouldn't die for those predestined to reject Him. But anyone can be saved ... if God wants them to be saved. God could have picked anyone to be one of the elect, even you."
What do they think we are, stupid or something? Does this sound like the same message, the same Gospel? No! This is very, very different from the commonsense understanding of "The Gospel should be preached to all. God wants all men to be saved. And anyone who wants to can believe in Jesus and be saved." But they want you to think they are saying something they're not (that everyone has the ability and opportunity to be saved, that we really do make our own choices). They want you think you're all on the same page because they need to trap you before you realize what they really believe.
Go ahead and ask them. Ask them if this is what they really believe. They'll be shocked that you know what's going on, that you could see past what they "say," what they want you to think they mean ... to what they really mean. They rely on the deception to trap you. (See "Exposing Calvinism: 'Anyone' can believe and be saved" and "A not-so-imaginary conversation with a Calvinist")
Is this making you angry yet? Does God operate like this, with this kind of deception and double-speak? (If it's not from God, then who's it from?)
If this doesn't make you deep-down-in-your-soul angry, then you don't get what's going on and what's at stake here, the damage Calvinism does to God's character and Truth, to Jesus's sacrifice and people's eternities/faith.
And it's my hope that I can help you see more clearly so that you don't get suckered into Calvinism and so that you too will take a stand against it before it seeps into more churches and ruins more people.
It's already spreading like the cancer it is. Silently. Aggressively. Unopposed. If you haven't encountered it yet, you will. (Or maybe you already have, you just don't know it yet because they are sneaky. See "How to tell if a Church, Pastor, or Website is Calvinist".) And if we don't wake up and notice what it's teaching, if we don't start researching for ourselves what the Bible really says, if we don't start speaking against Calvinism and calling it out for what it is, it's going to infect more and more people, until no one even remembers anymore who God really is and what the simple, basic, beautiful truth of the Gospel really is.
[Hey, Calvinists ... Do you want a test to see what's driving your view of this issue? Pray and ask God to reveal to you if you are wrong, if you are reading the Word wrong or trying to make it fit your own ideas of what it says. Tell God that you want to know the truth and give Him permission to open your eyes to truth, even if it means finding out you've been wrong this whole time.
Now ... how did it make you feel to think about doing that? Did you get offended at the suggestion that Calvinism is wrong? Did you bristle and stiffen your neck as in "I'm not praying that! I know I'm right!"? Did you scoff? Do you want to throw away everything I am saying - and going to say - because you've decided that I "don't understand Calvinism"? Did you start coming up with all sorts of reasons for why you're right, rehearsing all the theological arguments that "support" Calvinism? Did you think "I need to consult MacArthur or Grudem or Sproul or Piper to see what they say about all this"? How much is your pride driving your theology? Are you willing for God to correct you if you're wrong? Do you want to know His truth more than you want to cling to your own views?
So now, pray and ask God to reveal truth to you, to show you if you're wrong. (If you're right, there's no harm in praying this, is there?) Determine in your heart that you really do want to know the truth, no matter the cost. And don't just think about praying it. Do it! It's not the thought that counts when it comes to prayer. (And if you're resistant to praying this, ask God to show you why.) Also see the "Defend Your Calvinism" Challenge.]
Many Christians don't want to get into this issue. It's messy and uncomfortable and confusing. And so we straddle the fence and put it on the back-burner and say "Oh, it really doesn't matter what we think about this as long as the Gospel is preached and people come to Jesus. Can't we all just be unified? God likes unity!" [I've gotten push-back, even from non-Calvinists, for being so harsh against Calvinism. See "Why am I so harsh towards Calvinism?"]
But does it really "not matter"? Does it "not matter" which version of the Gospel, of God, that you're preaching or unifying around? Does it "not matter" if one person says "Jesus died for all people" but another says "Jesus died only for the elect"? Does it "not matter" if one person says "All people have the ability to believe and be saved" but another says "Only the elect can and will believe and be saved"? Does it "not matter" if one person says "God does not take any pleasure in sin or people being in hell" but another says "God ordains all sin and unbelief for His pleasure and glory"? Does it "not matter" if one person says "The Gospel is for all people" but another says "It's only for the elect"?
Does it really "not matter"?
But hey ... at least we're unified, right!
How's that Edmund Burke quote go again ... "All that is needed for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing."
Well, evil is succeeding. Calvinism's spreading. And I can't sit back and do nothing, acting like unity is more important than truth, than God's good name, than Jesus's sacrifice, than people's souls.
How's that Edmund Burke quote go again ... "All that is needed for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing."
Well, evil is succeeding. Calvinism's spreading. And I can't sit back and do nothing, acting like unity is more important than truth, than God's good name, than Jesus's sacrifice, than people's souls.
Shame on me if I did that!
Of course, Calvinists will stress "unity" (I've seen several articles by Calvinists stressing unity in the church) ... because they need us to shut up and compromise with them. They need to stop us from standing in their way, from pushing back, from blowing their cover. They need us to capitulate to them. And they use "unity" to do it, to shame us into being quiet and falling into line.
And it works - because what "good, humble Christian" wants to be divisive, to rock the boat, to look like they are fighting God and His Word?
But could you imagine the disciples or the apostle Paul walking into the erroneous, compromising churches of their day and saying "Hey, it doesn't really matter what we all believe about the Gospel, does it? Let's not make a fuss about all the little details, about what's true and what's false when it comes to God's character, Jesus's sacrifice, who can be saved, how we get saved, etc. Why don't we all just put our arms around each other's shoulders and sing Kumbaya around the campfire? After all, God just wants us to be unified more than anything, right!?!"
Umm ... no!
But could you imagine the disciples or the apostle Paul walking into the erroneous, compromising churches of their day and saying "Hey, it doesn't really matter what we all believe about the Gospel, does it? Let's not make a fuss about all the little details, about what's true and what's false when it comes to God's character, Jesus's sacrifice, who can be saved, how we get saved, etc. Why don't we all just put our arms around each other's shoulders and sing Kumbaya around the campfire? After all, God just wants us to be unified more than anything, right!?!"
Umm ... no!
Matthew 7:15: "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves."
2 Cor. 11:13-15: "For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve."
2 Peter 2:1-3: "... there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies ... Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up."
Galatians 1:6-8: "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel - which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!"
2 Timothy 2:15,4:3-5: "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth... For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations ..."
Hebrews 5:14: "But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil."
Does it sound like the Bible is telling us to just trust what some local pastor tells us, without verifying the truth of it for ourselves?
I didn't think so.
“Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” (Acts 17:11)
Calvinists will say "Calvinism is the gospel. You don't have to like it, but you do have to accept it. Because it's what the Bible says."
Calvinists will say "Calvinism is the gospel. You don't have to like it, but you do have to accept it. Because it's what the Bible says."
No, it's not. It's manipulation, that's what it is! It's satanic deception!
But since they said "it's what the Bible says," we trust them and drink the Kool-Aid and shut up and fall in line, like good little Calvinists.
(Do you understand how cults work?)
[For more on this, see Predestination Manipulation. Update Dec 2022: Like "Calvinism is the gospel," Calvinist authors will also try to define Calvinism, in a nutshell, by saying things like "Calvinism is salvation, freedom from sin, eternal life, evangelism, the Good News, utter dependence on God, full assurance of His sovereignty, fully seeing/embracing God and His love and grace, blah, blah, blah." And this sounds great and all, but it's deceptive. Because these positive, flowery-sounding, hope-filled descriptions of Calvinism are only in relation to the elect, not to those whom Calvi-god predestines to hell. To the non-elect, Calvinism is death, eternal damnation, terrible news, hopelessness, God's hatred and injustice, etc. But Calvinists don't want you to know that part, and so they only tell you what Calvinism is if you're elect. Next time they go into their flowery descriptions of Calvinism, ask "Yeah, but what about if you're non-elect, as most people are?" And watch how they squirm and babble and deflect.]
[For more on this, see Predestination Manipulation. Update Dec 2022: Like "Calvinism is the gospel," Calvinist authors will also try to define Calvinism, in a nutshell, by saying things like "Calvinism is salvation, freedom from sin, eternal life, evangelism, the Good News, utter dependence on God, full assurance of His sovereignty, fully seeing/embracing God and His love and grace, blah, blah, blah." And this sounds great and all, but it's deceptive. Because these positive, flowery-sounding, hope-filled descriptions of Calvinism are only in relation to the elect, not to those whom Calvi-god predestines to hell. To the non-elect, Calvinism is death, eternal damnation, terrible news, hopelessness, God's hatred and injustice, etc. But Calvinists don't want you to know that part, and so they only tell you what Calvinism is if you're elect. Next time they go into their flowery descriptions of Calvinism, ask "Yeah, but what about if you're non-elect, as most people are?" And watch how they squirm and babble and deflect.]
But with all that's at stake, I think it's definitely worth doubting. Worth thinking about deeply. Worth researching. And worth fighting against with every bit of righteous anger you've got!
We are not questioning God or His Word. We are questioning Calvinism's unbiblical understanding of God and His Word! And that's a big difference!
We are not questioning God or His Word. We are questioning Calvinism's unbiblical understanding of God and His Word! And that's a big difference!
FYI: Just because there are lots of highly-educated, Big-Name theologians teaching Calvinism and writing Calvinist books doesn't mean that they're right. It just means that people are easily trusting of Big Names. And so those Big-Name Theologians have an easy time getting their Calvinism into the churches and books and seminaries, where they indoctrinate the next generation of Big Names. And then Calvinism ends up looking more reliable and accurate than it really is because "everybody's doing it."
But do you know who else were highly-educated Big-Names?
The Pharisees and Teachers of the Law in Jesus's day.
And yet they were so blinded by their own intelligence and popularity that they couldn't see the simple, obvious Truth, even when He was standing right in front of them - so full of themselves that there was no room for Jesus.
But do you know who else were highly-educated Big-Names?
The Pharisees and Teachers of the Law in Jesus's day.
And yet they were so blinded by their own intelligence and popularity that they couldn't see the simple, obvious Truth, even when He was standing right in front of them - so full of themselves that there was no room for Jesus.
But the Gospel is not meant to be highly-academic stuff that only the highly-educated can understand. It's meant to be a simple message of hope and salvation for everyone. For adults and for children. For the educated and the uneducated. For the seminary student who spends all day studying the loftiest resources and for the blue-collar worker who never picks up a book. For everyone!
"But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." (John 20:31)
God wants us to find the truth. He wants us to know the truth. Because He wants us to find salvation and life in Jesus. And that's why He made the truth clear and easy to see. That's why He made Himself easy to find.
"God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us." (Acts 17:27)
God means what He says and says what He means. There are no "hidden, deeper layers" that only Calvinists can understand.
God means what He says and says what He means. There are no "hidden, deeper layers" that only Calvinists can understand.
Now to be fair, most Calvinists do not have some sinister plan to lead people astray. Yes, some of them are smug and dogmatic and condescending and rude. (Can you say "MacArthur and Sproul and White, etc."?) But most garden-variety, pew-sitting Calvinists are truly good, humble people who are simply trying their best to honor God and His Word, as they've been taught to. Some of our favorite church-friends are Calvinists. They are some of the best, most kind-hearted, godly people we know. And it was never an issue between us because no one ever pushed their views excessively and dogmatically. (Not until our new Calvinist pastor came along.)
So I'm not necessarily speaking against the average Calvinist, but against Calvinism and the dogmatic Calvinist teachers.
In fact, I think most Calvinists in the congregation are "Calvinists," in quotes. They are just good people who don't realize they've been duped, that they've been misled by and manipulated into a false theology that twists Scripture until it appears to teach Calvinism and that traps people with a biblical-sounding surface-layer while hiding/obscuring the dark side until it's too late. And so most "Calvinists" don't even know enough about it all to know that they aren't really Calvinists at all. They think they are just being good, humble Christians, honoring God's Word and sovereignty.
That's how I started to get sucked into Calvinism in my late teens. We were taught that Calvinism is just the way it is and that to be a good humble Christian meant accepting it. And so I humbly, faithfully did ... because "God's sovereignty!" (Well, I accepted it for that week at least. And then I went on with my life and basically forgot all about it, until the new Calvinist pastor showed up at our church and started preaching things that didn't sound right. Thankfully, by then, I was older and had been studying the Bible a lot for myself, so I could recognize errors when I heard them.)
But if you take off the "Calvinist glasses" and read the Bible as it is written, in context, plainly and clearly and in commonsense ways, Calvinism falls apart. (See "12 Tips on how to think critically about Calvinism.") There is very little support at all for Calvinism if you read the Bible as it is, without the help of Calvinist theologians telling you what to think. Calvinism needs Calvinist theologians to help other people "find" Calvinism in the Bible. Because without their "help," Calvinism wouldn't spread like it is because it's not in the Bible the way they say it is.
(Watch "Calvinist Tactics Exposed" from Beyond the Fundamentals. In this video, Kevin says the same thing I do, that you won't find Calvinism in the Bible unless you've got Calvinists convincing you it's there.)
Question for Calvinists: Did you become a Calvinist by reading the Bible all on your own, in a plain, simple, commonsense way ... or was it through the influence of other Calvinists when you were young and naive (they preconditioned you to read verses in Calvinist ways), or maybe when you wanted to go deeper in the faith and honor God more (you let them convince you that Calvinism is the way to do it)?
But if you take off the "Calvinist glasses" and read the Bible as it is written, in context, plainly and clearly and in commonsense ways, Calvinism falls apart. (See "12 Tips on how to think critically about Calvinism.") There is very little support at all for Calvinism if you read the Bible as it is, without the help of Calvinist theologians telling you what to think. Calvinism needs Calvinist theologians to help other people "find" Calvinism in the Bible. Because without their "help," Calvinism wouldn't spread like it is because it's not in the Bible the way they say it is.
(Watch "Calvinist Tactics Exposed" from Beyond the Fundamentals. In this video, Kevin says the same thing I do, that you won't find Calvinism in the Bible unless you've got Calvinists convincing you it's there.)
Question for Calvinists: Did you become a Calvinist by reading the Bible all on your own, in a plain, simple, commonsense way ... or was it through the influence of other Calvinists when you were young and naive (they preconditioned you to read verses in Calvinist ways), or maybe when you wanted to go deeper in the faith and honor God more (you let them convince you that Calvinism is the way to do it)?
[I'm not saying you can't get a lot of good teaching from a Calvinist preacher. 95% of what they teach could sound great, setting off no alarm bells. And I think there's enough truth in there that unaware people could find the Lord through it. God can use anything, good or bad.
But when you know what the last 5% is - the bottom-line of Calvinism, the hidden layers they cover up with the 95% good stuff - it all becomes tainted, and you can't listen to even their good points anymore because you know what they really believe, how deceptively they present it, and how very wrong their fundamental beliefs are.
And in fact, that 5% is the most important stuff, the issues that matter most: their views of the gospel, sin, salvation, forgiveness, Jesus's death, faith, God's true character, etc. That 5% is so huge and critical that it overshadows and defines the 95%. And so since they get that 5% wrong, it doesn't really matter what lesser issues they get right. They got the most important, fundamental truths wrong, and it taints everything else. (Kinda like if a witness to a murder got 95 details right, such as the color of the clothes the people wore, the time of day, the weather conditions, the weapon used, etc., but they got 5 critical details wrong: the city it happened in, the year it happened, the gender of the victim, and the gender and name of the murderer. These 5 details are so critical that they would obliterate their testimony, far overshadowing the 95 details they got right.)
Listening to Calvinists is like drinking a glass of 95% clean water and 5% poison. It might not get you at first, but the longer you drink it, the more likely it is to hurt you, to destroy your faith and your trust in God.]
So let's see some of what Calvinism teaches and how different it is from what the Bible says. (Yeah, this was all just the introduction. And you thought you were almost done. Ha-ha-ha!) And ask yourself if these differences really "don't matter."
[If you're a Calvinist who's getting worried right now because you're thinking "Oh no! I've been believing a lie all this time! What do I do? What should I think?", let me just say this: Don't worry, because the true biblical truth is even more beautiful than what you've been told by Calvinists. What God did for you, He can do for anyone.
God loves all people and wants all people to be saved (not just the elect). Jesus died for all people, paying for all men's sins on the cross (not just the elect). And He offers the gift of eternal life to all people, for anyone to accept. No one is beyond God's reach, beyond His love, grace, forgiveness, healing, salvation, etc. It's for all people, not just the elect. And so no one is hopeless. No one is predestined to hell, unable to be saved. God loves all, Jesus died for all, and God offers salvation to all (but He leaves it up to us to accept it or reject it).
But in Calvinism, God truly loves only the elect, Jesus died for only the elect, and God offers salvation only to the elect and so only the elect can/will be saved, and so the non-elect have no hope at all, no chance to be saved.
The truth biblical truth of the gospel is so much more wonderful, hope-filled, gracious, loving, etc., than what Calvinism teaches, because in the Bible, no one is beyond hope. Anyone can be saved.
(Not to mention that in the Bible, God is not the cause of sin and unbelief, but He gives us the ability to choose our own decisions/actions and then He responds accordingly. But in Calvinism, He is the ultimate cause of all sin and unbelief but then He holds us responsible for it, for what He predestined and caused. Can you see the damage this does to God's character and to people's faith in Him and trust of Him?)
The truth of the Bible is so much more beautiful and hope-filled and life-giving and "for all people" than Calvinism ever could be. And so don't worry. When you give up Calvinism for the plain teachings of the Bible, you get something so much better!]
Note: Calvinists will disagree with how I've presented their views here. They will say "We don't say that!" or "You don't understand Calvinism!"
But I don't care what they "say" because what they "say" is meant to obscure what they really believe. And so what I've done here is simply get to the heart of what they really believe, stripping off the many deceptive layers they wrap their beliefs in as they try to make Calvinism sound biblical, to explain away their contradictions, and to hide what they're really teaching.
Sadly, dealing with Calvinists is like dealing with people who pathologically lie (but who don't realize it), who always spin everything they say, who keep things vague on purpose to allow wiggle room for themselves, and who have multiple layers for everything they say so that you can't pin them down on anything. You must listen to everything they say very carefully, question every term and verse they use, and dig deeper and deeper, asking more and more questions, to get a fuller, more honest picture of what they really believe (and then you'll see how deceptive the first thing they said was).
Because it's not what they say that's usually the problem; it's what they don't say. It's what they hide that makes all the difference!
(However, I don't think most Calvinists are really "lying," as in "trying to deceive you." They truly believe that their theology is the truth, and they've been trained to defend it in all sorts of ways. So they're not deliberately lying; they just don't realize that they've bought into a package of cleverly-disguised lies, a false doctrine that they've been led to believe is the Truth. It's sad.)
As you compare Calvinism to Scripture, pay attention to what the Bible clearly, plainly says, when understood in a commonsense way. Calvinist views are not clearly, plainly in the Bible. They only appear to be there when verses are twisted, taken out of context, mashed together with other out-of-context verses, reinterpreted in a "not commonsense" way (in a "mysterious, deeper understanding, contrary to what the Bible actually says" way), and when read through the lens of Calvinism's incorrect/unbiblical presuppositions, assumptions, and definitions.
Alright now, put on your thinking caps and away we go (if you thought the introduction was long, wait till you see the rest of it) ...
Alright now, put on your thinking caps and away we go (if you thought the introduction was long, wait till you see the rest of it) ...
1.
The Bible says ... Jesus died for all, loves all, and wants all men to be saved.
But Calvinism says ... Jesus died only for the elect, loves only the elect, and only wanted the elect to be saved.
John 3:16-17: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." [Calvinist version: "The world/whoever" means "mankind/the elect from all over the world." Most of us would think - and rightly so - that this verse is an instruction on how anyone can be saved, that anyone who believes will be saved. But in Calvinism, it's not an instruction on how to be saved because not everyone can be saved; it's merely a statement informing us of how the elect are saved: the elect will believe and not perish.]
John 5:24: "... whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned ..." [Calvinist version: Only the elect can "hear and believe," and so only they will be given eternal life. Once again, not an instruction, just a statement.]
Titus 2:11: "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men." [Calvinist version: But only the elected people will be able to see that grace and accept that salvation. Sure, it "appears" to the non-elect, but they can't see it because God blinds their eyes and hardens their hearts because He predestined them to hell. (Question: Why would God need to blind and harden people that were created to be unable to see and believe from the very beginning anyway?)]
1 Corinthians 15:22: "For as in Adam all die, so as in Christ all will be made alive." [Calvinist version: Calvinists assume that the "in Christ" people are those predestined to be saved. However, Ephesians 1:13 tells us how we become "in Christ: "And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit." It's not that there are elected people God predestined to save and causes to believe; it's that anyone who believes becomes "in Christ" and will be saved. Once we believe, and anyone can, we become part of the "in Christ" group, the group that God predestined to take to heaven. God chose the destination of the "in Christ" group, but we choose whether to be part of that group or not.]
1 Timothy 2:3-6: "This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, who gave himself as a ransom for all men ..." [Calvinist version: Just because God wants all men to be saved doesn't mean that all men can be saved, and "a ransom for all men" really just means "for all kinds of men, for mankind, for all the elect."]
1 Timothy 4:10: "... that we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, and especially of those who believe." [Calvinist version: Once again, "all men" doesn't mean that salvation is actually available to all individual people, just to all kinds of people, the elect from all nations. However, it would be quite redundant if "all men" and "those who believe" both mean "the elect": "... who is the Savior of the elect, and especially of the elect."]
Romans 5:18: "Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men." [Once again, Calvi-Jesus didn't die for "all men," just for "all kinds of men, mankind." But non-Calvi-Jesus (Jesus as seen in the Bible when read plainly and clearly) died for everyone's sins, to justify us all and offer all of us eternal life. But we choose to accept it or reject it.]
Romans 10:13: "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." [Calvinist version: "Everyone who calls" doesn't mean everyone can call. "Everyone who calls" means only the elect because only the elect can/will call on the Lord.]
This first point alone is all you need to see how twisted and destructive Calvinism is.
To make Scripture fit their view, Calvinists say that "all men" and "whosoever" and "the world" really mean "just the elect" or "all KINDS of people" ... but not ALL individual people. Lots of verses to twist. If it was just one verse, I could be more understanding of them getting it wrong. But it's many. Scripture repeatedly, consistently tells us Jesus died to save all, that He paid for all men's sins so that all could live. And then Calvinists go and repeatedly, consistently twist each verse to mean "only the elect, from all nations."
[However, Calvinists misinterpret our belief of "Jesus died for all men, to save all people," accusing us of saying "all people will be saved," of universalism. But that's not what we're saying. We're saying He died for all men's sins to offer all men eternal life, but we have to choose if we will accept it or reject it. But since Calvinists think we don't get a choice, that we can't reject Jesus's sacrifice, and that Jesus died only for those going to heaven (the elect), they think we're saying "all people are going to heaven" when we say "Jesus died for all people." And since all people clearly don't go to heaven, then it must mean (in Calvinism, according to their presuppositions) that Jesus didn't die for all. And so when the Bible says "all men," they reinterpret it as "the elect." What a mess it makes when you deny the biblical truth of free-will, that God gave us all the right and responsibility to decide if we want Jesus as Lord and Savior, or not!]
But look at the verses above, without twisting them or reading into them. Does "all" sound like "only some" in these verses? Or does it only sound like "only some" when read with the presuppositions that only the elect can be saved and that people don't get a choice about Jesus?
Be aware: To make Calvinism appear biblical, Calvinists will often say "God loves everybody," but what they mean (and will say, when pushed) is that He actually has two different kinds of love. He has a saves-your-soul-because-Jesus-died-for-you kind of love for the elect and a Jesus-didn't-die-for-you-but-God-gives-you-food-and-water-on-earth kind of "love" for the non-elect before they're sent to hell for eternity for being the unbelievers He created them to be. (They also call this "grace," two different kinds of grace, so that they can say "See! God is gracious to all, even the non-elect.")
Wow ... if that's "love," I'd hate to see hate!
Go ahead and ask them. Ask a Calvinist who says "God loves everybody" how they can say something like that if He predestines the non-elect to hell, and see what they say. And then ask them to find you a verse - just one verse - that clearly teaches "two different kinds of love: one for the elect and one for the non-elect."
Because in my Bible, God Himself tells us how He shows His love for sinners, Romans 5:8: "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Are we not all sinners? I'd say we all are, so therefore Jesus died for all of us. But if Jesus died only for the elect, not for the non-elect, then wouldn't that mean that only the elect are sinners? And at what point were the elect "still sinners" if they (according to Calvinism) were really saved since before time began, always set apart as God's "elect" before they were even born? It's really just a (false) formality to say that the elect were ever sinners or separated from God if they were never really lost or on their way to hell at any point in time, if they were created as saved, like Calvinism says.
Calvinism doesn't make sense. And it's very deceptive.
Calvinism doesn't make sense. And it's very deceptive.
So don't trust them when they say "God loves all people." They do not believe God loves all people the same way, in a salvation kind of way. God only loves the elect enough to send Jesus to die for them, to give them salvation. Everyone else has to settle for mashed potatoes and gravy.
And likewise, they'll say "Jesus died for all people," but they mean "all of HIS people - the elected people."
You'll see something like this in the Statements of Faith for Calvinist churches (and for churches that are trying to hide their Calvinism). They'll say something like "From the beginning of time, God decreed to save for Himself a group of people to bring to heaven with Him."
We might read this and think they're saying that God planned to have people in heaven with Him, which would be accurate. But what they really mean is that God prepicked the specific people who would be in the saved group ... and no one else can be part of that group because they were predestined for hell.
When they're criticized for believing God predestines people for hell, Calvinists love to shift the focus from the non-elect predestined for hell to the elect predestined for heaven. My ex-pastor gave a sermon once where he was like "Let's not focus on those predestined for hell. Instead, let's focus on God's great love for the elect, for His incredible mercy and grace in choosing to save anyone at all when we all deserve hell!"
Let's not care about those headed to hell!?! Let's just focus on the lucky few that get to go to heaven!?!
Let's not care about those headed to hell!?! Let's just focus on the lucky few that get to go to heaven!?!
OH MY GOODNESS, my heart! My heart is hurting! All those lost, hurting, hopeless people that Calvinism tosses aside, that Calvinists deem non-save-able! People who God loves and Jesus died for. People who need hope and healing. And yet Calvinists go, "Oh well! Pay no attention to those who'll burn. Let's just get all the elect together and have a party."
Oh, don't make me pull out the four-letter words! It's garbage. Total pig-slop garbage! (I guess Calvinism is much tastier when you ignore the fact that Calvi-god predestines people to hell. It's much easier to drink the Kool-Aid when you ignore the poison.)
The thing is, Calvinists do not believe that Jesus's gift of salvation can be rejected by anyone because, as they see it, that would be a disgrace to Jesus, a waste of His blood. And so - I guess to help Jesus save face - they say then that He didn't die for those who won't believe in Him, the non-elect. Therefore, Calvi-Jesus died only for the elect.
Or they reason it from the other direction: since Calvi-Jesus only died for the elect, He didn't waste His blood on the non-elect and so they can never really reject the offer of salvation because it wasn't really offered to them in the first place. Or whatever.
But find me one verse that clearly, plainly says this, without reading into it or taking it out of context.
Just one!
Guess what? You can't. This is purely from their own reasoning and philosophizing, and it's contrary to what God's Word clearly says.
Jesus's blood wasn't wasted on anything. It accomplished exactly what it was supposed to: buying salvation for all men so that we all have the chance to believe and be saved. Salvation is a gift, bought by Jesus's blood, offered to all, but we choose to accept or reject it.
1 Timothy 2:6: "... [Jesus Christ] gave himself as a ransom for all men ..."
1 Timothy 4:10: "... we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all men ..."
John 1:29: "... Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!"
1 Timothy 2:6: "... [Jesus Christ] gave himself as a ransom for all men ..."
1 Timothy 4:10: "... we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all men ..."
John 1:29: "... Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!"
Romans 5:18: "... so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men."
Romans 10:13: "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."
Romans 10:13: "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."
Be warned that Calvinists will find verses that appear to support their ideas, such as verses about Jesus praying for His people, which they interpret to mean His prechosen, elected people, and only them! They have out-of-context verses to support every "lie" of theirs, because Satan knows how to use Scripture too. He knows how to twist it and use it against God. So study each and every verse they use to "support" their theology. (FYI: In many verses, Jesus talks specifically about either the disciples or the Jews; but Calvinists apply it all to "the elect.")
If you have to play word games, add multiple layers of meaning, take verses out of context, and redefine words to make the Bible fit into your theology, it's because your theology is WRONG!
If you have to play word games, add multiple layers of meaning, take verses out of context, and redefine words to make the Bible fit into your theology, it's because your theology is WRONG!
Let's consider for a moment one particular verse that confirms that God means "all people": 2 Peter 2:1: "But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them - bringing swift destruction on themselves."
This verse says that Jesus's death even bought "the false teachers," the very ones who deny Him. Jesus's death paid for all men's sins, even those who "bring destruction on themselves." This would be the simple, commonsense way to read this verse.
But Calvinism makes a mess of this verse. If Calvinism is correct, then either God is lying and Jesus didn't "buy" the false teachers (didn't pay for their sins with His blood) because Calvi-Jesus didn't die for those "on their way to destruction" (the non-elect) ... or ... since Calvi-Jesus bought only the "elect" with His blood then it must mean that those false teachers are elect because it clearly says they were "bought" by Jesus (and so then the "destruction" would have to be something other than hell because the elect can't go to hell).
This verse says that Jesus's death even bought "the false teachers," the very ones who deny Him. Jesus's death paid for all men's sins, even those who "bring destruction on themselves." This would be the simple, commonsense way to read this verse.
But Calvinism makes a mess of this verse. If Calvinism is correct, then either God is lying and Jesus didn't "buy" the false teachers (didn't pay for their sins with His blood) because Calvi-Jesus didn't die for those "on their way to destruction" (the non-elect) ... or ... since Calvi-Jesus bought only the "elect" with His blood then it must mean that those false teachers are elect because it clearly says they were "bought" by Jesus (and so then the "destruction" would have to be something other than hell because the elect can't go to hell).
So which is it: Lying God or Elected False Teachers?
And if Calvinism is correct, then God is also lying about them bringing destruction "on themselves." They didn't do it; God did. For His glory. Right, Calvinists!?! So then why would He give them the credit by saying they "brought destruction on themselves," when He supposedly did it for His own glory?
You know, I wish Calvinists would stop softening up their theology, trying to make it more palatable, more free-will than it is. Have the guts and integrity to honestly tell people what you really believe: "Well, I don't know if God loves you or if Jesus died for you. I don't know if you're one of the elect. Odds are, you're not. He loves and died for and saves only a few select people. But there's nothing you can do about it anyway. Your eternity is already sealed. And none of us will truly know who's elected and who's not until eternity. So best of luck to you. May you win the 'salvation lottery'!"
If Calvi-god is not ashamed of his "truths," why should Calvinists be? (Plus, it would be a lot easier to identify Calvinists if they said it like it is instead of constantly trying to sound like a non-Calvinist. If a Calvinist has to put on non-Calvinist clothing to trick people into Calvinism, how good and biblical can Calvinism be!?!)
One down, twelve to go. And you thought I was kidding when I said pack a lunch.
2.
The Bible says ... God is not willing that any man should perish, He wants all to be saved, His saving grace is available to all.
But Calvinism says ... God predestined most people to hell for His pleasure and glory, His saving grace was never for the non-elect.
2 Peter 3:9: "... He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." [However, Calvi-god predestines most people to perish, but then he says here that he doesn't really want anyone to perish. Deceptive! And if he gets glory for predestining people to perish, then isn't he denying himself glory by saying he doesn't want anyone to perish? If predestining people to hell truly was glorifying to him, then shouldn't he - and Calvinists - celebrate people going to hell because it brings Calvi-god more glory? If Calvi-god's okay with the non-elect going to hell, why isn't the Calvinist? FYI: The ESV Bible translates this verse differently than any other version, making it much more Calvinist. At least to me. Click here to see.]
Ezekiel 33:11: "Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?'" [Why will they die? Well - duh - because you, Calvi-god, predestined them to die, for your glory and pleasure, and there's nothing they can do about it.]
Romans 11:32: "For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all." [Calvinists say the first "all" means "all," but the second "all" means "only the elect." Calvi-god only truly has salvation-mercy on the elect. But to sound more non-Calvinist (more biblical), Calvinists will say that food, water, and sunshine are "daily mercies." This way, they can say "See! God does have 'mercy' on all people, even the non-elect." Just not salvation-type mercy. That's some wonderful mercy for the non-elect, isn't it!?! Like feeding pigs lots of good food to fatten them up before slaughter. But hey, at least they got some "mercy" while they were alive! But let's not care about those headed to hell; let's just focus on the lucky few that get to go to heaven!]
Acts 2:38: "Peter replied, 'Repent and be baptized every one of you ...'" [Calvinists say that only the elect can repent, but that we have to tell everyone to repent because we don't know who's elect and who's not. And they say that Calvi-god commands the non-elect to repent - even though he's predestined them to hell - because he needed them to be guilty of disobeying his command - even though that's all they could do, by his design - so that he could "justly" punish them for their disobedience. As if they had a choice! As if that's true justice!! It's convoluted and sick! See "Things my Calvinist pastor said #15: No altar calls, and replacing 'believe' with 'repent'" and "Calvinists, altar calls, and evangelism"]
Mark 16:16: "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned." [Once again, in Calvinism, only the elect are predestined to believe. The non-elect are predestined to be condemned. And so in Calvinism, this isn't a call to believe or instructions on how you can be saved; it's merely informing us of the destiny of the elect and the non-elect.]
Romans 3:23-24: "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ." [Once again, Calvinists will say that "all" have sinned but "not all" are justified. But is this what the verse says? The problem is, they interpret "justified" as "going to heaven." They believe if Jesus died for you, you WILL BE saved. And of course, in Calvinism, this only happens to the elect. Therefore, since the non-elect don't go to heaven, Jesus didn't die for them. But Calvinists severely misunderstand Jesus's death. He died to pay for all men's sins, to justify us all before God, but we have to accept it. The penalty for all our sin has been paid, but God leaves it up to each of us to decide to accept or reject it. But since Calvinists do not believe it's possible for people to decide or to reject it, they say that if Jesus died for you, you will go to heaven, and so Jesus only died for "the elect" (those going to heaven, in Calvinism). And then, they have to twist verses like the one above to make it fit, creating contradictions and conundrums and destroying God's character and Word. But this whole mess would be fixed if they had a proper, biblical view of free-will, of God giving us all the right and responsibility to make decisions. But they refuse to do this because they're convinced it strips God of His "sovereignty," as they define it, which is that God has to control everything or else He's not God. Like I said: Telling God how He has to be in order to be God.]
Titus 2:11: "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men."
Titus 2:11: "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men."
1 Timothy 2:3-4: "This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth."
HOGWASH!
It's the same thing. And they know it. (Which is why they have to write theology books that are hundreds of pages long to try to explain it, to try to make it make sense. Which they fail at, because it just gets more convoluted, confusing, and contradictory.)
They are just trying to soften up Calvi-god's image, to make it seem like he's not really a bad, unjust, unrighteous, monster god who predestines people for hell; he just "passes over them, doesn't choose them for heaven." (If he's such a good, righteous god, why the need to soften his image?)
But it's nonsense! If Calvi-god is the one who predestines who goes to heaven and the rest have to go to hell, then he does indeed predestine who goes to hell. It's two sides of the same coin. You can't have one without the other. Not choosing someone for heaven is choosing them for hell.
Calvinists really think that by simply saying "We don't SAY God predestines people to hell and we don't SAY He causes sin and unbelief" that they can convince us that their theology doesn't ultimately teach it. But it does! They just won't admit it. They won't SAY it. (If a man says "I don't say I'm beating my wife" while he's beating his wife, are you going to believe him?)
And do you know why Calvi-god had to predestine people to hell?
To show off his wonderful attributes of justice and love/grace, so that he could get glory for them! He needed to have non-believers to punish so that he could demonstrate - and get glory for - his justice/wrath against sin (because without sin, he could never show off these attributes of his, which would've been stifling to him) and so that his grace/love for the elect would shine more brightly by comparison.
And do you know why Calvi-god had to predestine people to hell?
To show off his wonderful attributes of justice and love/grace, so that he could get glory for them! He needed to have non-believers to punish so that he could demonstrate - and get glory for - his justice/wrath against sin (because without sin, he could never show off these attributes of his, which would've been stifling to him) and so that his grace/love for the elect would shine more brightly by comparison.
But why then, I wonder, did he have to predestine most people to hell ... if he could have demonstrated his justice/wrath by predestining only one person to hell? Is there only a limited number of spaces available in heaven or something, that he has to be so stingy with salvation? Why is damning most people and saving just a few people more glorifying to him than damning a few and saving most?
But Calvi-god did predestine most people to hell (for sins he made them do), and so now we can truly see and celebrate his wonderful love (for the elect), his amazing grace (for the elect), and his righteous justice (for punishing the sin/unbelief that he caused) for the rest of eternity! Glory be to our wonderful, righteous, trustworthy Calvi-god!!! If he didn't predestine people to hell, we might never have realized how loving and gracious and just he is!
But Calvi-god did predestine most people to hell (for sins he made them do), and so now we can truly see and celebrate his wonderful love (for the elect), his amazing grace (for the elect), and his righteous justice (for punishing the sin/unbelief that he caused) for the rest of eternity! Glory be to our wonderful, righteous, trustworthy Calvi-god!!! If he didn't predestine people to hell, we might never have realized how loving and gracious and just he is!
[So then in Calvinism, God must have somehow been less of a God, less glorious, before sinners came along to punish, right? I mean, think about it, that's what Calvinism is saying - that God needed sinners to punish in order to be fully God, to be most "glorious." And so therefore, His "God-ness" and His glory depend on sinners. And so then, I wonder, what was He before sinners came along? Calvinism thinks it elevates God and His glory, but it's really just elevating sinful man, making God and His glory dependent on us, on sinners.]
Imagine something with me for a moment. Imagine that you are at a busy park, and there's children and adults all around you. And someone walks up to you and says, "I love you so much. I'm taking you for my own. And now watch what I do to show you how much I love you." And then he takes out a sword and starts slicing up people, left and right, indiscriminately hacking away at whoever he can reach, randomly killing people. And after he's done and there's bodies everywhere, he turns to you, grabs your arm, and says "See how much I love you! See how gracious I am to you! I could've done that to you too, but I spared you because I love you. But I destroyed them because I decided to hate them before they were even born. Now doesn't that make you feel grateful and humbled and loved!?!"
A psychopath! A dangerous, deranged, unstable lunatic!
But Calvinists call him "God," and they worship him. And since "He is the Potter and we are the clay," He can do whatever He wants with us and we have to be okay with it, because "it's all for His pleasure and glory," and so it's all good.
"Besides, what's sin/evil for us is not sin/evil for God because He made the rules for us, not for Himself. He didn't say that He can't do those things, just that we can't. And He sees things differently than we do; what's evil to us is not necessarily evil to Him. And even if something seems like injustice to us, it might be justice to Him, because He gets to decide what's just and what's unjust, not us. And who are we to question Him? He is God, and we are not. We just have to trust Him. So don't be unhumble, and don't talk back to Him."
Yes, I've read something basically exactly like this from Calvinists (for one example, see "Exposing Calvinism: Causing evil isn't sin for God"), that what we see as evil may be good in God's eyes (since it glorifies Him), that what we see as injustice may be justice in God's eyes. Calvinism erases the line between good and evil, between justice and injustice. It tries to convince us that they can be one and the same, that there might not really be a difference between the two. (Can you not see how satanic Calvinism is yet!?!)
But then I wonder: If we can't tell the difference between good and evil, if we can't judge between justice and injustice because they are one and the same, because there's no real difference, then how in the world can we choose the good over the bad or seek/exercise justice on earth, as commanded in verses like these:
Isaiah 1:16-17: "... Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice ..."
Micah 6:8: "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly ..."
Psalm 106:3: "Blessed are they who maintain justice, who constantly do what is right."
Lev. 19:15: "Do not pervert justice..."
Jer. 22:3: "This is what the Lord says: Do what is just and right..."
Prov. 31:9: "Speak up and judge fairly..."
Psalm 37:27: "Turn from evil and do good..."
Amos 5:15: "Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts..."
Zec. 7:9: "This is what the Lord Almighty says: 'Administer true justice...'"
And these are just a few. All of these verses mean nothing if we are to believe that evil can be good and that injustice can be justice! (And if the evil we do is really good in Calvi-god's eyes, why does he punish us for it? Isn't he then just punishing us for doing "good" things that bring him glory? Calvi-god is a sick, twisted psychopath!)
You know what's funny?
Proverbs 28:5 tells us "Evil men do not understand justice, but those who seek the Lord understand it fully."
Proverbs 2:6,9 says "For the Lord gives wisdom, and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding... Then you will understand what is right and just and fair - every good path."
And Hebrews 5:14 tells us "But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil."
But Calvinists tell us that we can't tell the difference between good and evil, between justice and injustice, because there may not be one. So then what does this tell us about Calvinists?
Do not buy into Calvinism's ridiculous nonsense and double-talk. Do not let them convince you that their contradictions are insignificant, that the conundrums don't exist, that their arguments make sense. They talk out of both sides of their mouth and expect you to not notice. They destroy God's character and Jesus's sacrifice and then tell you that you "have to accept it" if you want to be a "good, God-honoring, humble Christian." They turn evil into good, darkness into light, lies into truth, and they expect us to swallow it whole, without any push-back. Like good little Calvinists!
For more of their "talking out of both sides of their mouth" thing, more of how they qualify what they first say to change it into something completely different (I touched on this earlier):
At first, they will agree with you that "God wills that no one perishes, He wants all men to be saved," which makes them sound biblical because it's exactly what the Bible says, making you think they believe that all people have the opportunity to be saved.
But what they really mean (and will admit, when pushed) is that He has two different (contradictory) Wills and two different levels of "want". He has a revealed Will in His Word where He doesn't want anyone in hell, but then He has a "deeper, secret" Will where He predestines most people to hell for His glory. (And who are the only people God told this secret to? That's right: Calvinists!) And He has two levels of 'want.' On one hand, He wants all men to be saved; it hurts His heart to put the non-elect in hell. But on the other hand, what He wants more is to get glory for displaying His justice by punishing sinners in hell.
Umm ... yeah ... predestining/causing them to sin and reject Him, giving them no choice or ability to do anything differently, but then punishing them for it ... yep, sounds like justice to me!
This is far different from what they wanted you to think they were saying at first. Do not trust what they "say." There is always a deeper/unbiblical layer underneath the surface/biblical layer they first said, and the deeper layer reverses/negates the surface layer.
It would be like someone saying on the surface "I never torture animals," but the deeper, hidden, more-true layer is "... in my dreams." It's what they don't say, what they hide, that changes everything. And if you don't push them, if you don't ask questions (the right questions!) and dig deeper and challenge what they say and ask them to explain it more fully, you'll never uncover the deeper layer. If you settle for the surface/biblical layer (which is exactly what they want), you'll think they are right on track, and you'll trust them more, listen to them more, and eventually become a Calvinist just like them.
But if I may point out, regarding their whole "two different Wills of God" thing, notice what Paul tells us in Acts 20:27: "For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God." The whole Will of God! Paul's consistent message was "God wants you to be saved: to repent and believe in Jesus and be baptized in His name," and he calls it "the whole Will of God." Where is there room here for a secret, deeper, contradictory Will where God really does want people in hell for His glory? If there is a deeper, hidden Will, then Paul is lying.
3.
The Bible shows ... We are responsible for our choices, sins, and unbelief. God calls us to make choices, real choices among real options (and lets us face the consequences of those choices).
But Calvinism says ... God ultimately preplans/controls everything we think and do, and we can only do - and have to do - the thing He predestined us to do. He is the ultimate cause of all sin and unbelief, but we are still held accountable for it.
But Calvinism says ... God ultimately preplans/controls everything we think and do, and we can only do - and have to do - the thing He predestined us to do. He is the ultimate cause of all sin and unbelief, but we are still held accountable for it.
Deut. 28:1,15: "If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations on earth.... However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you."
1 Kings 2:3: "and observe what the Lord your God requires: Walk in his ways, and keep his decrees and commands, his laws and requirements, as written in the Law of Moses, so that you may prosper in all you do and wherever you go."
Titus 3:1: "remind the people to be subject to rules and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good."
John 7:17: "If anyone chooses to do God’s will …"
Joshua 24:15: "But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve ..."
So what do you think? Does it sound like we make real choices among real options, or does it sound like God controls our choices and forces us to do the one thing He predestined? If it's the latter, what do these verses mean then? Do they matter? What would any instruction from the Bible matter, if we can't make a choice about it anyway? (The Bible really is a massive waste of paper if Calvinism is true.)
Okay now, a few verses with a little Calvinist rewrite:
Romans 11:20-23: "... But they were broken off because of unbelief, caused by Calvi-god ... And if Calvi-god causes them to not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in..."Matthew 23:37: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you because Calvi-god caused you to, how often I have longed to gather your children together even though I predestined you for hell, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing because Calvi-god caused you to be unwilling."
2 Thessalonians 2:10: "... They perish because they were predestined/forced by Calvi-god to refuse to love the truth and so be saved."
Does Calvinism fit with the Bible? Would God tell us over and over again to choose to believe and to choose to do the right thing if He made it impossible for us to make our own choices, if He gave us no other options but to choose the one thing He preplanned us to do? Is that really a "choice," having only one door open to you that you're forced to walk through? Does God command us not to sin but then preplan/cause us to sin and then punish us for sinning? Does He command us to believe in Jesus but then preplan/cause us to not believe and then punish us for not believing? Would He be a just, righteous, trustworthy God if He did?
Does Calvinism fit with the Bible? Would God tell us over and over again to choose to believe and to choose to do the right thing if He made it impossible for us to make our own choices, if He gave us no other options but to choose the one thing He preplanned us to do? Is that really a "choice," having only one door open to you that you're forced to walk through? Does God command us not to sin but then preplan/cause us to sin and then punish us for sinning? Does He command us to believe in Jesus but then preplan/cause us to not believe and then punish us for not believing? Would He be a just, righteous, trustworthy God if He did?
If you're not a Calvinist, there are very easy answers to these that make sense: no, no, no, no, no, and no
But if you're a Calvinist, your answers would go more like this: "Calvinism is the gospel. And we do make our own choices ... according to our natures. But unregenerated man will always want to sin because that's the only desire their nature has, and so he will always 'choose' to sin. But it's still a 'choice' even though that's all he could choose. He 'chose' what he 'wanted' to do, even though God predestined it all. And God can command we do one thing while ordaining that we do the opposite because He sometimes decrees that people break His decrees for His purposes and glory. It's a mystery; we can't understand it because His ways are so far above ours. And even though He ordains that the non-elect sin and reject Him, He stills commands them to do good, repent, and believe so that they are guilty of breaking His commands. Then He can exercise His justice against them for breaking His commands. We don't get to define what's just and what's not, only God can do that. And so we just have to trust Him because this is what the Bible says. Calvinism is the gospel, and to reject it is to reject the truth."
Calvinists expect you to accept the absurd, illogical, unbiblical (evil!) idea that God preplans, orchestrates, controls, causes all sin, evil, and unbelief [but they won't say "causes," they hide it under "ordains," but find me one verse that clearly says "God ordains - preplans, causes - all sin, evil, and unbelief." And verses on God using our self-chosen sins for His purposes don't count, nor do verses on God causing natural disasters because that's nowhere near the same as God causing us to commit sins He commanded us not to commit] but that He is not responsible for it [they refer to the Westminster Confession and say "God ordains sin but is not the author of sin" - as if that nonsense fixes it], and that man is still responsible for his sin and unbelief even though God "ordained" it [because, according to them, unregenerated people "freely choose" to sin and reject God because that's what their God-given unregenerated nature "wants" to do: sin and reject God. But since they "wanted" to do it, they can "justly" be held accountable for it, as if it was a real choice].
It's all double-talk and nonsense. If God preplanned sin, evil, and unbelief and ultimately causes it, giving us no ability or chance to choose otherwise, then He is most definitely responsible for it. And there would be nothing just or righteous about punishing us for what He caused. It's nonsense.
[If Calvi-god is not ashamed that he causes sin, why should the Calvinist be? Why the need to polish up Calvi-god to make him sound better than he is if he gets glory for causing sin and evil and unbelief? It doesn't make sense.]
The thing is, Calvinists start with a verse or two from Proverbs or Psalms, such as Proverbs 21:1: "The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases." - and they say, "See, God controls all our choices. He controls everything." And then they reinterpret the rest of the Bible to fit their misunderstanding and misapplication of a few verses that are principles and good advice, not hard-core promises or bottom-line theology.
However, if Calvinism is right about God predestining/causing/controlling everything that happens, then how did these verses get into the Bible (Calvinists ignore the theological implications of these kinds of verses, heavily favoring the more Calvinist-sounding ones):
1 Kings 20:42: "He said to the king, 'This is what the Lord says: 'You have set free a man I had determined should die.''" [So God determined something would happen, but then it didn't happen. How is this possible if God determines everything that happens and nothing different could have happened? Calvinists would say, "Well, God sometimes decrees that people disobey His decrees." And I am not kidding about this. They really do say this, and with a totally straight face. And they clearly haven't thought that one through!]
Hosea 8:4 (God's words): "They set up kings without my consent; they choose princes without my approval." [If God ordains/controls all that happens, how can anything happen without His approval? Calvinists would simply say, "Oh, well, God can ordain things He doesn't approve of, for His mysterious plans."]
Jeremiah 19:5 (God's own words): "They have built the high places to Baal to burn their sons in the fire as offerings to Baal - something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind." [It would be kinda difficult for God to predestine/cause something that He never thought of commanding, wouldn't it? And how would Calvinists answer this? I'm actually not sure. I never heard one try. Instead, they always switch topics or bring up a different verse that they think "proves" God "ordains/causes" all that happens.]
Ezekiel 13:22 (KJV): "Because with lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad ..." And the CSB version puts it this way: "Because you have disheartened the righteous person with lies (when I intended no distress)..." [In Calvinism, God would be the one who preplanned and ultimately caused people to lie to the righteous people. He would have preplanned/intended to cause the righteous people to be disheartened, contradicting His claim that He never intended to do that. And so either God lies or Calvinism lies. Which one do you think it is?]
Isaiah 30:1: "Woe to the obstinate children," declares the Lord, "to those who carry out plans that are not mine..." [If all plans are God's plans, how can anything happen that He didn't plan? Calvinists might simply say, "Well, God has two different plans. In one plan, He didn't want the people to do what they did. But in the other plan, He caused the people to do what He didn't want them to do, for His glory and mysterious reasons. And He's so far above us that we can't understand it. He is the Potter and we are clay. How can the clay talk back to the Potter or understand the Potter's ways? Blah, blah, blah. Gobble, gobble, gobble."]
Psalm 33:10: "The Lord foils the plans of the nations ..." [If all plans are God's plans, and if we can only plan what God causes us to plan, then isn't God foiling His own plans here?]
Acts 14:16: "In the past, he [God] let nations go their own way." [Impossible ... if every way is God's preplanned way!]
Exodus 13:17: "When Pharoah let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country. For God said 'If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt." [I don't even need to tell you how this totally contradicts and disproves Calvinism, their idea that God preplans, causes, controls everything we think and do. You can see it clearly for yourselves. Calvinists can't, but you can.]
And why would God give "boundaries" to people, Satan, and nature (such as putting a boundary around the one forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden, and putting a limit on how far the sea can move in Job 38:11, and putting a hedge around Job and limits to how much Satan can do to him in Job 1) if God alone controls every single movement that everyone and everything makes? Boundaries are only needed when there is freedom to move within those boundaries.
And if Calvinists are gonna turn a Proverb into literal, hard-core, bottom-line theology, why not turn these Proverbs into literal, hard-core, bottom-line theology too:
"Whoever gives heed to instruction prospers" [16:20. So every person who heeds instructions will prosper as a result? Even instructions on how to embezzle money, cheat on taxes, hide an affair, hide a body? It doesn't specify what kind of instructions or prospering, so I guess we can apply it as a literal, hard-core, bottom-line promise for all situations.]
"Kings detest wrongdoing" [16:12. So all kings who ever lived detested wrongdoing!?! I think history would show otherwise.]
"The plans of the diligent lead to profit" [21:5. All the time? In every instance? For all people? Awesome!]
"Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife" [21:9. Even in the frozen lands of Siberia? What if you're an Eskimo? What if you live in a thatched-roofed house? Or a teepee? But the Bible said it, so you should do it. After all, it's literal, hard-core, bottom-line theology! But I wonder, how does this mesh with the other literal, hard-core, bottom-line theological truth of "He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord," 18:22. Hmm? That's a head-scratcher. And does this then mean that if you don't find a wife, you didn't get any favor from the Lord? What would that say about the apostle Paul who didn't get married?]
"No harm befalls the righteous" [12:21. Great, sign me up for this literal promise! No harm of any kind, ever!]
"and put a knife to your throat if you are given to gluttony." [23:2. Well, the Bible says!]
"Punish [your child] with the rod and save his soul from death." [23:14. I guess salvation can come through Jesus ... or through beating your child with the rod.]
"Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." [22:6. So I guess if any child does turn from the way their parents raised them, then God's Word would be proven false, right? Good thing, though, that this is literal, hard-core, bottom-line theology, and so there is no way this could possibly happen. The Bible says so!]
"To man belong the plans of the heart" [16:1. So if man owns the plans of his heart, doesn't that mean God doesn't? And wouldn't that go against Calvinism's idea of God's "sovereignty," that God controls all things, even our thoughts? And in fact, wouldn't this verse and Proverbs 21:1 ("The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord...") cancel each other out?]
And wouldn't these cancel each other out too: "Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself" (26:4) and "Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes" (26:5)? How do we apply both of these literal, hard-core, bottom-line theological truths at the same time?
I could go on, but you get the picture. If you're gonna make Proverbs literal, hard-core, bottom-line theology (reinterpreting the rest of Scripture to fit), you can't just pick and choose which verses you want. You've got to do it with all of Proverbs. Either the book of Proverbs is literal, hard-core, bottom-line theology ... or it's not (making it something more like "wise sayings and principles to live by")?
And if a Calvinist does tries to convince you that Proverbs 21:1 ("The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases") is literal, hard-core, bottom-line theology, tell them that it says God directs the heart of the king, and no one else.
But when you question Calvinists on all this, when you point out all their contradictions, holes, terrible inevitable conclusions, and the unbiblical-ness of it all, they accuse you of "not understanding Calvinism."
But do you know what the problem is?
They have so many contradictory layers of their theology that what we say against one layer will always "misunderstand" a different layer. Such as, if we point out that they believe God causes sin, they'll say "You don't understand Calvinism. God doesn't author or cause sin. We choose to sin, and so He is not responsible for it; we are." But then if we say, "Oh, so you believe in free-will, that we make our own choices," they'll say "You don't understand Calvinism. Man isn't free to do whatever he wants, but only what God ordained for him to do."
It's not that we don't understand what they're really teaching. It's that they don't - because they use all sorts of word tricks, mind games, songs-and-dances, smoke-and-mirrors to keep from having to see and admit the truth of what Calvinism really teaches. They keep themselves busy and distracted - talking in circles, repeating Calvinist pat answers, referring to out-of-context verses, quoting Calvinist authors, and jumping back and forth between layers and layers of contradictory, nonsensical ideas - all so that they don't have to stop and see the terrible, inevitable, undeniable, end-conclusion of Calvinism: that Calvi-god is indeed the cause of all sin, evil, and unbelief but that he punishes us for it.
[For more on how Calvinists cover up the word "causes," see "Calvinist Bad Logic #2: When a Calvinist says "ordains". Just know that whatever word they use - ordains, decrees, foreknowledge, plans, wills/willed, omnipotence, omniscience, sovereignty, God "agrees" to it, "allows" it, "knew" it would happen, etc. - they always mean God causes everything that happens, even sin and evil. They just won't admit they mean "causes," to us or themselves. They have many ways to hide it.]
FYI: One deceptive way that Calvinists try to get Calvi-god off the hook for causing sin is by saying "God doesn't 'give' the non-elect the unregenerated nature; He simply withholds the regenerated nature from them, and therefore they remain unrepentant sinners by default."
So since Calvi-god didn't actively and directly give the non-elect their unregenerated nature or the sinful desires that he built into the unregenerated nature, he is not responsible for their sins; they are.
And I say "WHAT!?!"
Oh, but that's not all.
To further distance Calvi-god from being the cause of sin, they'll also use the idea that there are two causes of sin: God is the ultimate cause, but we are the secondary cause. (They also go by other names, such as proximate/primary cause and remote cause.) They'll say that as the ultimate cause, God "ordains" everything, even our sins, but as the secondary cause, we "willingly" carry out that sin - much like how a robot "willingly" carries out the actions that the programmer tells it to do or how a puppet "willingly" does what the puppet-master makes it do. ("But you don't understand Calvinism," cries the Calvinist. "We don't say people are just robots or puppets." Maybe not, but their theology does.) But because we carried out the actions, it somehow makes us responsible for our sins, and not Calvi-god, even though Calvi-god programmed it all to happen that way and we couldn't do anything differently.
Calvinism is full of layers and layers of deception and convoluted nonsense, all in an effort to cover up the fact that Calvi-god alone is the cause of sin, evil, and unbelief. It is God-dishonoring, Gospel-destroying, pig-sloppy hogwash! (Get used to this word. When you hear "Calvinism" from now on, I want you to instantly think "hogwash"!)
[Additional note: An important thing to be aware of is that Calvinists will say one thing in one place but the opposite thing in another place. So never trust a quote from a Calvinist author or theologian - because there will be another quote you didn't hear yet where they said the exact opposite. Or they will add a bunch of qualifiers to what they first said, and it will change the meaning completely. (It's like I say: It's what they hide that makes all the difference!)
Here are a couple examples from John Calvin himself:
In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 2, Section 1, he says: "For, until men feel that they owe everything to God ... they will never submit to him in voluntary obedience ..."
This makes it sound like men have the free-will to choose to obey or disobey God.
But how is "voluntary obedience" possible when, according to Calvin, ...
"... everything done in the world is according to His decree..." (Book 1, Chapter 16, section 6) and ...
"... the devil, and the whole train of the ungodly, are, in all directions, held in by the hand of God as with a bridle, so that they can neither conceive any mischief, nor plan what they have conceived, nor how much soever they may have planned, move a single finger to perpetrate, unless in so far as [God] permits - nay, unless in so far as he commands ..." (Book 1, Chapter 17, section 11) and ...
"The counsels and wills of men are so governed as to move exactly in the course which he has destined" (Book 1, Chapter 16, section 8)?
Additionally, in Book, 2, Chapter 2, section 8, he scolds people for believing in free-will and says that they should not believe in it, saying, "If any one, then, chooses to make use of this term [free-will] ... but I am unwilling to use it myself; and others if they will take my advice, will do well to abstain from it."
Never mind the fact that Calvin just said he is "unwilling" to use the term "free-will" - that he wills himself to not believe in free-will (ha ha ha, what a joke!) - but this contradicts what he said about us obeying God voluntarily (of our own free-will choice). (And, just wondering, but how can he reason with people to not believe in free-will when he believes that God makes all of our choices for us? Talk about nonsense!)
Another example: In Book 1, Chapter 17, Section 5, Calvin says this about wicked people: "I deny that they serve the will of God." He says that we CANNOT say that "he who has been carried away by a wicked mind are performing service on the order of God" because the evil person is "only following his own malignant desires," not acting in obedience.
And yet ... just a couple sections later, as we see above ... he says that all the ungodly are held in the hand of God so tightly that they cannot even conceive a thought unless God commands it. And a chapter earlier, he said that everything happens according to God's decree (according to how God planned it to happen), that God controls our wills in order to move us in exactly the course He predestined us to go in.
But now ... in this section ... he dares to say that wicked men are acting on their own, outside of God's control, that God doesn't cause them to do the wicked things they do!?!
And a chapter later, in Chapter 18, section 2, Calvin says, "The sum of the whole is this, - since the will of God is said to be the cause of all things, all the counsels and actions of men must be held to be governed by his providence; so that he not only exerts his power in the elect, who are guided by the Holy Spirit, but also forces the reprobate to do him service."
So ... he denies that wicked men serve the will of God, saying that they are "not performing service on the order of God" ... but then he goes and says that "the reprobate do him service"!?!
Confused, inconsistent theologian, table of one!
Which is it, Calvin!?! Make up your mind!!!
Is Calvi-god in control of evil or not? Does he control everything or not? Do the reprobate do him service or not? Do we have free-will or not?
Do not trust what a Calvinist says in one place ... because they will say the opposite somewhere else. And it's almost always to hide the fact that Calvi-god is the cause of evil. For more on this, see "Do Calvinists Really Believe God Causes Sin? Let Them Speak For Themselves!"]
4.
The Bible says ... When we hear the Gospel, we choose to repent and believe, or not. Those who choose to repent/believe are then saved/born-again and filled/sealed with the Holy Spirit who regenerates the hearts of believers, helping us grow in the faith.
But Calvinism says ... The "elect" are prechosen to be saved before time began. Then when it's their predestined time to believe, the Holy Spirit regenerates them to cause them to want/seek God. And only then are they equipped to understand and respond to the Gospel, and then to repent and believe. (The Holy Spirit gives them faith first to cause them to believe.)
Acts 2:38: "... Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." (It's repent/believe first, then get the Holy Spirit. But Calvinism reverses it.)
Ephesians 1:13: "And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit." (Believe first, then get the Holy Spirit.)
Basically, Calvinists believe that being chosen for salvation comes before receiving the Holy Spirit, and that receiving the Holy Spirit comes before being able to want/seek God, to understand the Gospel, and finally to repent and believe. So technically, in Calvinism, the elect are saved, regenerated, filled with the Spirit, born-again before understanding and responding to the Gospel, repenting, and believing. [But the non-elect can never understand or respond to the Gospel because the Holy Spirit does not and will not wake them up from their spiritual death. Because they weren't chosen. And Calvi-Jesus never even died for them anyway.]
As famous Calvinist Loraine Boettner says in The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination: "A man is not saved because he believes in Christ; he believes in Christ because he is saved."
But does that sound like what Scripture clearly, plainly, repeatedly says!?!
"... Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved" (Acts 16:31)
"That if you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." (Romans 10:9)
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16)
"Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved..." (Mark 16:16)
"Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God" (John 1:12)
Calvinists talk like they honor God's Word above all, yet they refuse to read it or accept it as it is clearly, plainly written, and instead they reinterpret it according to Calvinism's ideas that are not clearly, plainly in the Bible.
And did you know that Calvi-god tricks some non-elected people into thinking they are really saved, just so he has more reason to damn them to hell. But they won't know they were tricked - that they weren't really saved - until they die. How then can any elected person ever be sure they are truly saved? (Here's a post that talks about that: "Can You Lose Your Salvation?" For the record, I don't believe that true Christians can lose their salvation, but for different reasons than Calvinists believe it.)
And did you know that Calvi-god tricks some non-elected people into thinking they are really saved, just so he has more reason to damn them to hell. But they won't know they were tricked - that they weren't really saved - until they die. How then can any elected person ever be sure they are truly saved? (Here's a post that talks about that: "Can You Lose Your Salvation?" For the record, I don't believe that true Christians can lose their salvation, but for different reasons than Calvinists believe it.)
God's Word clearly says that we hear the Word ... then believe (put our faith in Jesus) ... then we are saved/born-again and get the Holy Spirit to seal us, regenerate us, and help us grow as believers.
But Calvinism flips that on its head! For them, it's saved first (elected) ... then the Holy Spirit regenerates the elect to make them born-again, causing them to understand the Gospel and to (lastly) believe.
But Calvinism flips that on its head! For them, it's saved first (elected) ... then the Holy Spirit regenerates the elect to make them born-again, causing them to understand the Gospel and to (lastly) believe.
Can you not see that Calvinism teaches that people are saved/born-again/Spirit-filled without believing in Jesus, before believing in Jesus?
And who do you think it is that wants to spread a theology like this, one that teaches that we are saved/born-again/Spirit-filled apart from belief in Jesus? And that we don't even really get a choice, that we can't "choose" to put faith in Jesus because faith simply happens to us, if we are elect?
The thing is, Calvinists don't believe faith is something we do, that it's about believing in Jesus. They believe faith is something God injects into people to make you believe (faith before belief), and so if He doesn't inject you with it, you cannot believe. They misunderstand what faith is. (See "Is Faith A Gift God Gives (or forces on) Us?")
But ... I wonder ... if the elect cannot respond to the Gospel until after they are chosen and regenerated and born again, if their salvation is secure before they ever heard the Gospel or responded to it, then what good is the Gospel anyway? What does it really do?
It doesn't really lead to the salvation of the elect, for they were elected/saved from the beginning of time, before they ever heard the Word, and they are regenerated/born-again before understanding and responding to the Gospel. And the Gospel cannot lead to the salvation of the non-elect because they are predestined for hell and so Calvi-Holy-Spirit will never regenerate them or help them understand/respond to the Gospel.
So what good is the Gospel really, in Calvinism? What does it accomplish?
Calvinism makes the Gospel superfluous, inconsequential, completely unnecessary and ineffective! And yet, people (good Christians even) are still drawn to it, like flies to poop.
And whose poop do you think that is? Who would want to spread a theology like this, to make the Gospel ineffective, unnecessary?
Reprobates (in Calvinism) are those who are born non-elected, rejecting God, predestined for hell. How can the elect go from being predestined for heaven before time began to being born as a reprobate who is destined for hell? How can a reprobate ever change from being predestined for hell when they're born ... to being destined for heaven later? So when exactly does a person's "election" kick in? And do Calvinists even know what "predestination" means according to their own theology (they definitely don't know what it means according to the Bible)? Strange!
Calvinism doesn't make sense! And it makes less and less sense the more they try to explain it.
A big problem in Calvinist thinking is that they believe that "accepting/believing in Jesus" is "working for salvation." And since we can't work for salvation, they think it means we can't choose to believe in Jesus, to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior. They think that in order for salvation to be all God's doing, man can't do anything, not even accept or believe on his own. They convince you that you're being unhumble and taking credit for your salvation if you believe that we have a choice, that we can choose to believe in Jesus. (So we can't decide to believe in Jesus, but we can decide to be unhumble and take credit for our salvation!?! Oh my goodness, I'm so tired. Calvinism makes me tired.)
But how can accepting a free gift that was made available to us because God planned for it, made it possible, sacrificed His life for it, and offered it to us possibly be considered "working for or trying to earn salvation"? All we did was accept what He did. Willingly, gratefully accepting a gift we know we could never create or earn for ourselves - eternal life in heaven - is an act of humility, of thankfulness, of love.
But leave it to Satan to convince people that it's unhumble to accept Jesus's death on our behalf - when the very reason Jesus died was so that we could accept His death on our behalf!
But leave it to Satan to convince people that it's unhumble to accept Jesus's death on our behalf - when the very reason Jesus died was so that we could accept His death on our behalf!
Leave it to Satan to spread the idea that we can't choose to believe in Jesus because it's a "work" - when the Bible tells us that choosing to believe in Jesus is the one "work," one responsibility, that God gives us to do if we want to be saved: Acts 16:30-31: " 'Sirs, what must I do to be saved?' ... 'Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved ...'" and John 6:28-29: "Then they asked him, 'What must we do to do the work God requires?' Jesus answered, 'The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.'" (If Calvinists tell us that we can't do the one thing God said we need to do to be saved, then how can anyone be saved the Calvinist way?)
Leave it to Satan to come up with a theology that uses God's Word to destroy the need for God's Word, that convinces people that we are saved before believing in Jesus and that faith is something that just happens to us, something that God has to give us!
Can you see why I call Calvinism "satanically brilliant"?
(How's that sleeping bag feeling? Warm and cozy?)
5.
The Bible says ... God expects us to seek Him in order to find Him, to find new life in Him.
But Calvinism says ... God commands us to seek Him but no one can seek Him unless He makes them seek (and He only makes the elect seek/find/believe in Him).
Deuteronomy 4:29: "But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him, if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul."
Hebrews 11:6: "... anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him."
Jeremiah 29:13: "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart..."
1 Chronicles 22:19: "Now devote your heart and soul to seeking the Lord your God."
Psalm 14:2: "The Lord looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God."
Isaiah 55:6: "Seek the Lord while he may be found ..."
Proverbs 8:17: "... those who seek me find me."
Those verses seem pretty simple and straight-forward, right?If God tells us to seek Him, He expects us to seek Him, meaning that we can and should seek Him. If God says "seek," you seek. Simple, right?
But Calvinists don't do simple and straight-forward. (It's not "theologically-elite" enough for them. And why would anyone come to them for answers if we can all understand Scripture on our own?)
Calvinists think that just because God commands us to seek Him doesn't mean we can seek Him. In fact, they think it's impossible for man to seek God, which is why He has to make the elect do it. And they have at least two big mistakes that led to this wrong thinking:
1. They think "spiritual death" is the same as physical death.
2. They interpret Romans 3:11 - “no one seeks God” - as "no one can seek God," as if it’s impossible for people to seek God (because they are "spiritually dead like a dead body") unless God causes them to. [But that's not what the verse says. Look it up in context and read the whole chapter, and look up the context of the original, first-use of it. Is it talking about mankind's inability to seek God, or about something else?]
But do you really think God would tell us over and over again to seek Him (and believe in Him and obey Him) if He made it impossible for us to do so - and if He made the non-elect never able to do so? Is He deceptive like that, pretending we have a choice when we don't? Does He play word-games and mind-games with us?
Calvinists think so.
The "Dead Men Don't Seek" fallacy: Calvinists "prove" their idea that no one can seek God by saying that we are "dead people" spiritually, and like physically-dead bodies who can't do anything except lay there all dead, we can't do anything spiritual either except lay there all dead. "Dead people" can't seek God. They can't even want God or think about God - and they definitely can't believe in God - unless and until He makes us do it. (And Calvi-god will only make the elect do it!)
Do not let Calvinists convince you that they believe in the "depravity" of man, which is a biblical concept, as in "we are all separated from God, we all sin, and we cannot save ourselves."
What they actually believe in is "Total Inability" (but they call it "total depravity," making it sound more biblical). They believe that at the Fall of Adam and Eve, we became "so depraved/so dead" that we lost the ability to think any good things and to make any spiritual decisions on our own (find me the verse that teaches this!). And so now we are born "so dead" spiritually that all we can do is sin all the time and resist God/godly thoughts. It's impossible for us to want, seek, or believe in God unless He first regenerates us with the Spirit (changing our dead spirit to a living one) and then causes us to do those things. Well, the "elect" only, that is. God will only cause the elect to want Him, seek Him, and believe in Him.
And everyone else is predestined to remain dead, only able to sin and reject Him, and to go to hell. Because God predetermined it to be that way. Because Calvi-god gets glory by deliberately putting people in hell, with no chance of salvation. [See "Is Calvinism's TULIP Biblical?"]
[Let me interrupt here with a warning: Calvinists have a very tightly-woven theology where if you accept one point they make, you have to accept them all, because they all interlink. They lead you one step at a time into Calvinism. Such as, if you accept that "spiritual death" means "total inability," then you agree that man has no ability to seek God on his own, and so then you have to agree that God has to cause people to seek, which means that those He causes to seek have to seek/believe but those He doesn't cause to seek can never seek/believe, which means Calvinists are right about predestination, which means Calvinism is true, which means you have to accept that "God is sovereign" means that He controls everything, including our sins and whether we go to heaven or hell, and that everything that happens is because He wanted/planned/caused it to happen and that nothing different could have happened, and that He causes it all for His glory and so "Who are we, O men, to question Him?"
They hook you with one little worm, and then reel you in bit by bit. But you need to go back and examine the worms. You need to question their idea of "spiritual death" and compare it to Scripture to see if it's right. Because if the foundation is wrong, it's all wrong, regardless of how tightly-woven and interconnected their points are. Always go back and examine the worms!]
We are not physically dead, just spiritually dead, which means we are separated from God because of sin. But our brains still work, and God expects us to use our living brains to seek Him and find Him.
Acts 17:27: "God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us."
[Besides, if we're so totally dead (unable to do anything, even think or decide) before Calvi-god brings us to life, then the non-elect can't reject God or rebel against Him or be disobedient either - because "dead bodies" can't hate, rebel, or disobey. They can't do anything, remember? And so, therefore, when Calvi-god sends the reprobate to hell, they are being punished for doing nothing. Because "dead people" can only do nothing.
Of course, Calvinists will then backpedal and say that the non-elect do make decisions - according to their nature - to sin, reject God, disobey, do evil, etc. As long as it's choosing evil, the non-elect make all sorts of decisions. In Calvinism, we are able to decide lots of things, except one: to choose Jesus as our Lord and Savior. It's satanic crap. (Not sorry.)]
Do you know why God can expect us to seek Him, even if we are spiritually separated from Him because of sin?
Because He created us with the knowledge of Him in our hearts, and He has put enough of Himself in nature to point the way to Him, to show us He's real and that we need Him, and the Holy Spirit convicts us all of sin, and Jesus draws all people to Him (though most resist Him).
"... [God] has also set eternity in the hearts of men." (Ecc. 3:11)
“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” (Romans 1:18-20)
“When he [Holy Spirit] comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment:” (John 16:8, also see "The Holy Spirit and 'dead people')
"But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." (John 12:32)
God gives us every opportunity to know He's real, to seek Him, to find Him. Because He wants us to. All of us.
"This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth." (1 Timothy 2:3-4)
"... He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:9)
"Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live...'" (Ezekiel 33:11)
How much clearer could God have made it!?! I don't even have to tell you how to interpret those verses because you can all see it for yourselves, as plain as the nose on your face.
"Dead men can't seek God," so says the Calvinist.
Yeah, well, "Seek me and live ...", so says God in Amos 5:4.
God says "Seek me and live," which means they are not alive yet, which means they are "dead." God is telling "dead people" to seek Him, to find life in Him. And God expects "dead people" to seek Him because He knows that our brains still work. I guess "dead people" can seek. God says so.
And likewise, Deut. 30:15,19 says "See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction... Now choose life..." If they have to choose life then it means they are not "living" yet. Therefore, they are "dead." And God told these "dead people" to choose life. I guess "dead people" can choose to live. God says so.
[Calvinists will simply say that God commands the non-elect to seek/believe in Him (even though He made it impossible for them) so that they (appear to) break His command, giving Him "just cause" to punish them for their sin. Basically, Calvi-god needed/created a legitimate-sounding reason to send them to hell (they "disobeyed" his command to seek him, repent, and believe, and so now they must be punished) - even though he predestined them to hell before they were even born and prevented them from believing. Sure sounds legit to me!]
If we're gonna try to find a meaning for "spiritually dead," then let's use the Bible as our guide instead of our own philosophical ideas. And in the Bible, "dead" people are told to seek God, to choose life. And it's possible to do this because "spiritually dead" doesn't mean brain-dead; it just means we are separated from God by sin. And God tells us how to bridge that gap: by choosing to seek Him, to believe in Jesus, to accept Jesus's sacrifice for our sins.
If God tells us to seek, but Calvinists say we can't seek, who do you think is right and who do you think is wrong? Who are you gonna listen to?
[For more on this, see "Things my Calvinist pastor said #2: 'You're like a dead body'".]
[Another verse to consider, added 2023: "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life... he has crossed over from death to life. I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live." (John 5:24-25). Notice that the people get life after hearing and believing, which means before hearing/believing they are "dead," which means "dead people" can hear and believe, and then after believing they are brought to life (not before, as Calvinists say). And as best I can tell, considering what the concordance says, the first two uses of "hear" in those verses are merely about sensing the words that hit our ears. So "hear and believe" is about sensing the words and then believing them. And "the dead will hear" is about spiritually-dead people sensing the words that hit their ears. Therefore, spiritually-dead people (which we all are, at first) can hear the Word and believe. But, according to the concordance, as best I can tell, the third use of "hear" - "those who hear will live" - is a different kind of "hear." It means to yield obediently to the voice we hear - not just to sense/listen to the words, but to really hear, to take it in, to accept it and abide by it. So taking all this together, these verses don't mean, as Calvinists think, that only certain "elect" people can sense the voice/call of God (after the Holy Spirit brings them to life first) and understand the Word and believe in it; it means that all dead people can "hear" the Word, the call of God, but only those who choose to believe in it, to yield obediently to it, will be saved (and only after believing are they brought to life, given eternal life). This contradicts the Calvinist view that dead people can't hear/believe and that only certain preselected people are brought to life before hearing/believing in order to make them hear/believe.]
[Note, regarding Romans 3:10-11: "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God."
That verse says that sinful men don't seek God, not that it's impossible to seek God. When read in context, Romans 3 is saying that we are all sinful and that sinful mankind is self-centered and won't generally desire/seek the things of God. It's saying that all of us - Jews and Gentiles - are separated from God because of sin, and so all of us need a Savior. It's saying that we can't do anything to save ourselves, that we have no righteousness of our own to earn our salvation, and neither can our bloodline save us.
(Specifically, this is a warning to the Jews of that day, informing them that they are just as sinful and separated from God by sin as the Gentiles are, and that their bloodline and obedience to the Law will not save them. They too need Jesus. That's the message of most of Romans. But Calvinists change Romans into a tale about "the elect," about God predestining certain people to heaven and the rest to hell. If you let them tell you how to read Romans, you will be a Calvinist.)
And since mankind is sinful and self-centered, God had to be the one to get our attention, to make Himself known, to call all people to believe in Him, and to make salvation possible. He wants us to see what's missing in our lives, to desire Him, to seek Him, and to accept the gift of salvation He offers to all. And if we refuse Him - even after all He's done for us and all the chances He gave us - He will hold us accountable for our rejection of Him, because He has made Himself abundantly clear through His creation, and so no one has an excuse for why they don't believe (Romans 1:20).
(But if you were non-elect and couldn't believe, you'd sure have a great excuse, wouldn't you!)]
About "God calling people": To sound biblical, Calvinists will agree that God calls "all people" to believe in Him. But they believe He gives two different kinds of calls: an irresistible "save your soul" call for the elect that they have to respond to ... and a general call to the non-elect that they cannot respond to. (But He called, they refused, and so they "deserve" their eternal punishment in hell.)
So do not misunderstand what Calvinists mean when they say "God calls all people to repent and believe." They want us to think they are saying that it's possible for all people to hear/respond to God's call, that it's possible for all people to repent and believe (which is biblical).
So do not misunderstand what Calvinists mean when they say "God calls all people to repent and believe." They want us to think they are saying that it's possible for all people to hear/respond to God's call, that it's possible for all people to repent and believe (which is biblical).
But what they really believe is that God calls to all, but only the elect will respond because He causes only the elect to hear, respond, repent, believe. But the non-elect will resist the call because He does not give them the ears to hear it. He hardens their hearts so that they can't respond, so that they don't want Him. He gives them the unregenerated-nature that makes them "want" to reject His gift of salvation, and so that's all they can do. But because they "wanted" to do it, they are responsible for it, not Him, thereby "earning" their punishment in hell.
So Calvi-god calls to people who don't have ears to hear!?! He hardens the hearts of those he created unable to believe in the first place!?! They "reject" a gift that was never really offered to them!?! And he punishes them for wanting to sin even though he made them want to sin!?!
And yet Calvinists are surprised that we "don't understand Calvinism."
But if you have to make up two of everything to make the Bible fit your view - two loves, two wills, two sources of sin, two different calls, etc. - then it's because your view is wrong and it contradicts the clear, simple teaching of Scripture.
6.
The Bible says ... Satan blinds eyes, but Jesus takes the veil away when we turn to Him. And "receive" and "believe" (in the concordance) are active, not passive. We do them. "Receive" means to reach out and grab ahold of what is being offered to you (salvation). And "believe" is to let yourself be persuaded by something (the truth) and to commit to it.
But Calvinism says ... God blinds eyes (prevents the non-elect from believing in Him) and opens eyes (causes the elect to believe in Him). Faith is something done to us, not by us.
2 Corinthians 4:4: "The god of this age had blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." [Calvinist version: Calvi-god causes Satan to blind the non-elect so that they can never see the Truth, so that they go to hell for Calvi-god's glory. Question: If the non-elect are already born without the ability to believe, why the need to blind them? If he didn't blind them, would they somehow believe, contrary to what he predestined? NOTE: "The minds of unbelievers" is a mistranslation. It should be "minds of them which believe not" (KJV). The first is a noun, making it sound like it's who we are, that people are created to be unbelievers. But the second is a verb: "believing" is something we choose to do or not do. This is not about blinding non-elect people so that they can't believe in Jesus; it's about Satan blinding those who choose to not believe, who choose to resist Jesus, so that they cannot understand spiritual truths. See "A random verse that destroys Calvinism (and Is the ESV a Calvinist Bible?)"]
2 Corinthians 3:16: "But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away." [In Calvinism, "anyone" means "the elect." And keep in mind that Calvinism actually reverses this verse. This verse says that first we turn to the Lord and then the veil is taken away. But in Calvinism, the veil has to be taken away from the elect first, by the Holy Spirit, so that they can turn to the Lord. Note: This passage in Corinthians is actually specifically about the veil over the Jewish people because they put their faith in keeping the Law. If they insist on believing that keeping the Law earns them salvation, there will always be a veil over the truth that salvation is found only in Jesus.]
Romans ...
1:5: "Through him and for his name's sake, we received grace and apostleship..." (In the concordance, "received" is active, not passive - the person reaches out and grabs what is offered to them. It's not forced on them or instilled in them while they wait passively, as happens to the elect in Calvinism.)
5:11: "... but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation" (We actively grab onto the reconciliation that Jesus makes possible.)
5:17: "... how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness" (active, not passive, reach out and grab it)
8:15: "... but you received the Spirit of sonship ..." (active, not passive)
10:4: "... Christ is the end of the law, so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes." (In the concordance, "believes" is to let yourself be persuaded by something and, consequently, to commit to it. It's NOT "to have someone else [God] cause you to believe.")
Ephesians 1:13: "... Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit." (Having let yourself be convinced of the truth and choosing to commit to it, you were saved and received the Holy Spirit.)
John 1:12: "Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God" (All those who reach out and grab onto Him and the salvation He offers, who allow themselves to be persuaded that He is the way, the truth, and the life, who choose to commit to Him - these are the people who become children of God. For more on what the concordance says, see "According to the concordance, it's NOT predestination".)
Calvinists believe that "faith" is a gift that Calvi-god has to give and that he only gives it to the elect. And they base this, in part, on Ephesians 2:8-9: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this not of yourselves but it is the gift of God, so that no one can boast."
I used to think faith was the "gift" in this verse too. Until I dug deeper. And now I believe that "salvation" is the gift spoken of in this verse, not faith. (Once again, see "Is Faith A Gift God Gives (or forces on) Us?") And it's offered to everyone.
But Calvinists believe that the gift is faith, and that God "forces" it on the elect but withholds it from everyone else. And so if He doesn't give you faith, you can never believe in Him.
And they also use verses like Acts 16:14 and Luke 24:45 to support their view that God "forces" the elect to see/believe the Truth, that He gives certain select people the "gift of faith."
Acts 16:14 talks about God opening Lydia's heart to believe Paul's message. Calvinists say this means God caused her to believe in Jesus. But - big mistake - they assume that the message she heard was the Gospel and that God opened her eyes to believe it and be saved. But this isn't in the text. The text simply says that her eyes were opened to the message Paul gave. And I believe that it very well could be that his message was about the need for believers to be baptized (the same message he gave to some disciples in Acts 19, a few chapters over), because the very next thing she does is get her family baptized. Besides, if you look at the verses before, you'll see that she was already a worshipper of God, a believer. So this is most likely a case of God helping a believer take the next step, and not one of God causing a non-believer to believe.
After I pointed this out to my ex-pastor who loves using the Lydia example as "proof" of Calvinist predestination/election, he made sure to add something like this to his next sermon about it: "Yeah, it says here that Lydia was a worshipper of God, but she wasn't really saved. Not until God opened her eyes."
Really, you don't say!?! Tell me more, O Wise One, about things that aren't in the Bible!
(For more on Lydia, see "Things my Calvinist pastor said #8: Man is oblivious to sin, Lydia wasn't a believer". )
And Calvinists will point to Luke 24:45, about God opening the minds of the disciples to understand the Scriptures. But once again, this isn't causing unbelievers to believe. It's opening the minds of those who already believe to help them grow in their wisdom and faith.
The thing is, Calvinists read into verses things that aren't there. So if a verse talks about something like God opening someone's eyes, they think it must mean that He caused them to believe, that they couldn't believe before that, that He didn't open other people's eyes, and that if He doesn't open your eyes then you can't believe. But all of that is reading into the Bible things that aren't there. It may simply be that God helps us learn and grow and take the next step on our faith journey, a journey that He invites all people to take, a journey that anyone can join if they want to. It may just be that all the information we need to know is right in front of us, but that God tries to help us see it if we have a hard time seeing it ourselves.
Have you ever met someone that you know you met before, but you can't remember who they are or where you know them from, but then someone says something that suddenly makes you remember everything? Was the information you needed withheld from you before that? Were you being deliberately kept in the dark by some mysterious force? Or did you have all the details you needed somewhere in your head to figure out who it was, but you just weren't able to figure it out without a little help?
Just because a verse says that God prompts someone or "opens their minds" to help them understand something doesn't mean that He kept them blind before opening their minds or that not opening your mind means He prevents you from seeing the truth. It might just be that God gives us a little help sometimes to see the things we should be able to see but that we have a hard time seeing for some reason or other.
7.
The Bible (and the concordance) says ... That when God "hardens" hearts, it is retribution for first hardening your own heart, for resisting God for so long even after He's been patient and long-suffering with you.
But Calvinism says ... God arbitrarily chooses whose hearts to harden against Him (non-elect) and whose to turn to Him (elect), with no input/responsibility on our parts.
Romans 9:18: "Therefore, God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden." [Calvinists say "See, God hardens whomever He wants. We have nothing to do with His choice of whom to harden and whom to elect." But in the concordance, "hardens" is retribution for first hardening your own heart, for resisting God. And so, yes, we do have something to do with whether we are hardened or not. God further hardens those who choose to resist/reject Him. He confirms their decision and then uses it for His purposes. Plus, and this is critical, Romans 9 is about Israel as a nation, about God handing them over to their hard-hearted rejection of Jesus and giving the Gospel to the Gentiles instead, because the Jews didn't want it. But then the Jews cried "not fair!" because they thought the Gentiles shouldn't get salvation. They thought the Jews were the "special" ones and should get God's favor and salvation just because they were Jews. That's what Romans 9 is about. God is telling them that He can give the Gospel/offer salvation to whomever He wants to, to whomever is willing to receive it (and the Gentiles were), and that He can take it away from (and punish) anyone, even Jews, if they resist/reject it. But if you let Calvinists convince you that Romans 9 is about God choosing individual people for salvation or hardening individual people for hell, you will be a Calvinist. Examine the worm!]
And notice the order of unbelief in John 12:37-39 - "they would not believe" resulted in "they could not believe." Because they would not believe in Jesus, God hardened them so that they could not believe. But they chose to not believe first. And so God gave them what they wanted, what they chose: a hard heart.
And in Ezekiel 20:21-25 and Romans 1:21-24, the people rebel against God, so He lets them become hardened and defiled, handing them over to their own sinful rebellion. They earned their hard-heart by choosing first to rebel against God.
A simple study of what the Bible says and what the concordance says about many of the words Calvinists hinge Calvinism on will defeat Calvinism.
Such as, Calvinists always use God hardening Pharaoh's heart as "evidence" that God chooses whom to harden, without any influence on our parts. But a simple reading of the early chapters of Exodus shows that early on and through the first several plagues, Pharaoh hardened his own heart. And then eventually God made Pharaoh's self-chosen hardness permanent (retribution for first hardening his own heart). God knew Pharaoh would harden his heart, and so God made a way to incorporate Pharaoh's hard heart into His plans. But God did not harden Pharaoh's heart apart from Pharaoh choosing to willingly harden his own heart first.
However, to make it fit Calvinism (after I brought this up in a letter to the elders), my ex-pastor tried to explain it this way in his sermons: "Yeah, I know it says that Pharaoh hardened his own heart, but it was really that God hardened it first, before Pharaoh hardened his own heart."
(Note: See #88 in "The Calvinist ESV: New verses Added #60-88" for a look at how the KJV, which is usually the most accurate, mistranslates Exodus 7:13, making it sound Calvinist when it's really not.)
On a different note, let's consider 2 Peter 3:9 for a moment. This verse says that God is patient with us, not wanting anyone to perish but wanting all to come to repentance. But what's patience for if He Himself hardens the hearts of the non-elect so that they cannot believe and if He Himself determines/controls when the elect believe? Who is He patient with? Himself? Does this make sense!?!
And notice in Romans 11:4-5 how God "chooses" His people. "... 'I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.' So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace." The people chose whether they would serve Baal or not. Then God chose those who did not worship Baal. The people's choice of whom they worshipped affected whether God chose them or not. (But what did He choose the 7000 for? If you go to 1 Kings 19:14-18, you see that He chose them, reserved them, not to be believers, but to be spared from death so they could be prophets alongside Elijah. Election is about God choosing someone for a job, a task, not about Him predestining individual people for salvation.)
And for further biblical proof that we choose to harden our own hearts, see Zechariah 7:11-13: "But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and stopped up their ears. They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the Lord Almighty had sent by his Spirit through earlier prophets. So the Lord Almighty was very angry. 'When I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen,' says the Lord Almighty."
Umm, yeah, does anyone hear "God controls/causes everything people do" in these verses?
I didn't think so!
And why would Calvi-god get angry with them when he himself caused them to resist him? That's just silly. So he causes people to do things and then he gets angry about it? He "patiently waits" for people to come to him when he himself decides if and when they come to him?
And notice in Romans 11:4-5 how God "chooses" His people. "... 'I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.' So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace." The people chose whether they would serve Baal or not. Then God chose those who did not worship Baal. The people's choice of whom they worshipped affected whether God chose them or not. (But what did He choose the 7000 for? If you go to 1 Kings 19:14-18, you see that He chose them, reserved them, not to be believers, but to be spared from death so they could be prophets alongside Elijah. Election is about God choosing someone for a job, a task, not about Him predestining individual people for salvation.)
And for further biblical proof that we choose to harden our own hearts, see Zechariah 7:11-13: "But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and stopped up their ears. They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the Lord Almighty had sent by his Spirit through earlier prophets. So the Lord Almighty was very angry. 'When I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen,' says the Lord Almighty."
Umm, yeah, does anyone hear "God controls/causes everything people do" in these verses?
I didn't think so!
And why would Calvi-god get angry with them when he himself caused them to resist him? That's just silly. So he causes people to do things and then he gets angry about it? He "patiently waits" for people to come to him when he himself decides if and when they come to him?
In order to be a Calvinist, you have to look right at a Bible verse that clearly, plainly says one thing and go, "Oh, but it doesn't really mean that! There's a secret layer of meaning that only we Calvinists know, and it changes what the verse is really saying."
Yep, sounds legit to me! Sign me up for this "knowledge of the secret layers" so that I too can understand what God meant to say when He wrote the words that He didn't really mean!
8.
The Bible says ... We are to evangelize because it's how people will hear the Gospel so that they can believe. By hearing the Gospel, we can believe, and by believing, we inherit eternal life.
Romans 10:14: "How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?"
John 20:31: "But these are written that you may believe ..."
But Calvinism says ... Evangelize because God told you to, even though God's already decided where everyone will go. The elect will be saved and the non-elect will be damned, no matter what, but we still have to obey God's command to spread the Gospel.
Makes no sense! Calvinism says that we are elected/born-again before we can even respond to the Gospel, that we can't respond to the Gospel or believe in Jesus unless God first regenerates us and gives us the Holy Spirit. They say that we need to evangelize and to spread the Gospel in order to help the elect people who don't yet believe realize that they are elect (to "believe" and be saved). They say that God predestined that the elect would hear the Gospel and believe, but that the non-elect will never be able to "hear" the Gospel and believe.
[But, I wonder, what happens if we don't evangelize? Would the elect fail to realize they are elect and fail go to heaven? In Calvinism, do our efforts to evangelize (or our failure to evangelize) really make a difference in anyone's eternal destinies? If it does, then how "predestined" can things be? If it doesn't, then why share the Gospel or evangelize? And if it's all predestined anyway and if everything we do is controlled by God, then even our failure to evangelize would be predestined/caused by God too, for His glory. And so therefore, evangelizing and not-evangelizing are equally caused by God and glorifying to Him. So why bother? Calvinism shoots itself in the foot when it comes to evangelism, among many other things.]
It is important to know that the Calvinist gospel is only for the elect, not for all people. Calvinist theologians have even said things like "If we knew who the elect were - if they came with marks on their backs - then we'd know who to share the Gospel with. But since we don't know, we have to share it with all."
Does this not anger you!?! Do you not realize what this says!?!
It's saying that if Calvinists knew who was non-elect, they wouldn't even share the Gospel with them - because the Gospel is not for the non-elect. The non-elect have no hope because Jesus didn't even die for them and because God won't let them repent and believe.
Contrary to how Calvinists make it sound, the Calvinist gospel is not about saving anyone from hell - because the elect were never on their way to hell and the non-elect can never be rescued from hell. The Calvinists gospel is merely about helping the elect realize that they're already saved, that they've always been headed to heaven (even before they repented and believed) but that they just didn't know it yet.
My ex-pastor - a die-hard dogmatic Calvinist - was really big into missions. And I couldn't figure out why ... until I read some articles he wrote. His whole reason for missions (besides the fact that God told us to do it) is to "make God famous." He believes that God's greatest and basically only goal is to be famous among the people, to get more glory for Himself. (But even evil people are "famous," for all the wrong reasons.) And so when he evangelizes, it's not to spread God's love to all people or to help all people find healing and salvation in the Lord. It's to "make God famous" (and to help the elect realize they're elect).
It's sad to me to think about the pathetic, twisted, half-gospel that people are getting through Calvinist evangelism: that "you too can be saved ... if you are one of the elect" and that God is really only about Himself and has predestined the non-elect to hell for His glory.
Now to be fair, my ex-pastor believes in calling people to repent of their sins (while believing that only the elect can and will repent). But he doesn't do "altar calls," asking people if they want to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior. He says it's because he doesn't want people to think they're saved just because they "walked the aisle." (But I bet that's not the reason at all. I bet the real reason is because he doesn't want people thinking that they have a choice about salvation, about Jesus. Because that goes against the very heart of Calvinism!)
But how can you challenge people to repent without giving them the opportunity to do so, to express their willingness to make Jesus their Lord and Savior? Calvinists believe in calling people to repent but not calling them to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior. I don't get that. It doesn't make sense. How can we choose to repent but not choose to believe in Jesus?
Calvinists talk like they are so humble for thinking they have absolutely no control over their salvation, that "it's all God's doing" ... but then they go and act like they have some sort of control/influence over other people's eternal souls, like "We have to evangelize, spread the Gospel, and call people to repent or else people won't get saved."
So then, do we get a choice about obeying God's command to evangelize but we don't get a choice about obeying God's command to believe?
It doesn't make sense. It's nonsense. It's "Alice in Wonderland"-type nonsense!
And how humble are Calvinists really, if they say we can't do anything to be saved, not even believe, and if they say that whether or not we believe is up to God ... when God Himself tells us that believing is the one work He gives us to do to be saved?
Acts 16:30-31: " 'Sirs, what must I do to be saved?'... 'Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved...'" and John 6:28-29: "Then they asked him, 'What must we do to do the work God requires?' Jesus answered, 'The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.'"
Once again, if Calvinists tell us that we can't do the one thing God said we need to do to be saved, then how can anyone be saved the Calvinist way?
Calvinists answer the "Why pray?" question with "God ordains the means as well as the ends," meaning that God predestined the prayer as well as the answer to the prayer.
But if we don't pray, isn't that what was predestined and caused by God?
To make it seem like prayer is more important in Calvinism than it really is, Calvinists will say that prayer is about showing our dependence on God, about humbling ourselves before Him, about connecting with Him. And yes, that's all a part of it.
But I also believe the Bible clearly shows that prayer does have an effect on what happens. I believe God has chosen to work with and through mankind's cooperation and prayers, to a degree. Prayer is what activates God to do His Will. And without it, God doesn't always intervene. Prayer is not just for show; it really does matter and make a difference and affect what happens.
Oh, really!?!
I mean, really, seriously ... think that over for a few moments. Think about how "everything is predestined and will happen exactly like God planned" meshes with "but you need to pray or you won't get what God planned to give you." Does it make sense? (Or is it straight outta Wonderland?)
(For more on this, see my Bible Study lesson on Prayer and see "Prayer, Faith, and God's Will", about the times prayer doesn't seem to "work.")
Okay now, back to evangelizing, to spreading the Gospel: The Bible says, "But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." (John 20:31) The very reason God gave us the Scriptures was so that we could learn about Jesus and believe in Him, and that by believing, we could inherit eternal life.
In the Bible, hearing to Gospel leads to believing which leads to being saved.
But in Calvinism, being saved (before time began) leads to hearing the Gospel which leads to believing. Well, for the elect only, of course.
Which one are you gonna side with? That we're saved because we believe ... or that we believe because we're saved?
"... Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved" (Acts 16:31)
"... believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." (Romans 10:9)
"... whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16)
"... to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God" (John 1:12)
"Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved..." (Mark 16:16)
If you're interested, here are some sermons on prayer from the pastor I trust most to be the most biblically accurate (and enjoyable and practical): Dr. Tony Evans. Even though I've been a Christian for over 35 years, I never cease to learn something new from him. He's been such a huge blessing to me as we came out of Calvinism, helping restore my faith and a proper biblical perspective. He will be one of the first persons I seek out in heaven to hug.
9.
The Bible says ... God shows His love and His justice by sending Jesus to the cross to pay for our sins.
But Calvinism says ... God shows His love by saving the elect (and by caring for the non-elect on earth) and He shows His justice by damning the non-elect to hell for their sins/unbelief.
Calvinists know the Bible says "For God so loved the world ...", and so to appear biblical they say "Of course, God loves everyone." But secretly, they believe in two different kinds of love: a "salvation" kind of love for the elect and a mere "kindness" kind of love for the non-elect. He shows His love to the elect by predestining them to heaven, but He shows His "love" to the non-elect merely by providing for their needs while they're on earth (before sending them to eternal hell for being the unbelievers He caused them to be).
See, now they won't feel like they're lying when they - in their strategic efforts to trap you - say "Yes, I believe God loves everyone." You see, they want you to think they mean God loves everyone the same way, with a saving "Jesus died for you" love. They want you to think they see things the same way you do, the way the Bible plainly says it: "For God so loved the world ..." They want you to think this so that they can hook you, so that you let your guard down, so that they don't set off any red flags until you're hooked. And then, once you're hooked, they begin to slowly reel you deeper into their Calvinist view of God's love, that He loves people differently: by saving some and by merely giving food and water to others while they're on earth before sending them to eternal hell for being the unbelievers He caused them to be. (If that's love, I'd hate to see hate!)
But in the Bible, God doesn't say He shows His love in two different ways, based on whether you are elect or not. He Himself clearly told us the one main way He shows His love to sinners: He shows His love by sending Jesus to the cross to pay for our sins.
Romans 5:8: "But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
Unless only the elect are sinners and unrighteous (1 Peter 3:18) and ungodly (Romans 5:6), then Jesus died for all people. For "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). All are sinners. And Jesus died for sinners.
But for Calvinism to work, there has to be two kinds of sinners: those Jesus died for and those He didn't. Those who are born as unrighteous, ungodly sinners headed to heaven and those who are born as unrighteous, ungodly sinners headed to hell. But I don't see any verses like that in the Bible, that clearly say that there are two different kinds of sinners and that God shows His love to us in two different ways. The Calvinist has to infer it. And it's their inferences that lead them astray.
Instead, what I see in the Bible, plainly and clearly, is that we are all sinners who are headed to hell, that we all need a Savior, that Jesus died for all, and that anyone can believe and be saved because God loves all and wants all to be saved.
"for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23)
"For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all." (Romans 11:32)
"But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)
"Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men." (Romans 5:18)
"For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men." (Titus 2:11)
"The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, 'Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29)
"He is the anointing sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world." (1 John 2:2)
"But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." (John 12:32)
"This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, who gave himself as a ransom for all men ..." (1 Timothy 2:3-6)
"... He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:9)
"... Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." (Acts 2:38)
"Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." (Romans 10:13)
"And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit." (Ephesians 1:13)
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16)
Do I even need to tell you how to interpret these ... or are they quite clear on their own?
Are there "deeper, hidden" layers underneath these verses that contradict their plain, commonsense, on-the-surface meanings ... or should we take them at face-value?
Do we need to spend months studying huge Calvinist theology books to learn what God really "meant to say" ... or does God mean what He says and say what He means?
If you have to side with one of these - what God plainly said or what Calvinists tell you God meant to say - which will you choose? Which will you believe?
And contrary to Calvinism which says that God predestined people to hell because He needed sinners to punish in order to show off His justice and wrath against sin to get glory for it, praised for it ... the Bible never says God exercises His justice by predestining people to hell for sin. (Find me one verse - just one - that says this!) He Himself tells that He shows His justice by sending Jesus to the cross to pay for our sins.
“God presented [Jesus] as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished- he did it [sent Jesus to the cross for our sins] to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” (Romans 3:25-26, emphasis added)
God Himself said that to demonstrate His love and His justice, He sent Jesus to the cross to die for our sins, to buy salvation for all men. (If we end up in hell, it's by our choice to reject God's offer of salvation, not because God predestined anyone to go there.)
Why is this so hard to understand!?!
Everyone has a pre-paid ticket to heaven available for them. But we have to reach out and grab it. And if we don't, it's not because God predestined us to hell or because He wanted to punish us to fully show off His attributes. It's simply because we rejected the free gift of eternal life that God offers to all people. If we refuse to let Jesus's death pay the penalty for our sins, we have to pay the penalty ourselves: eternal separation from God. Hell!
Calvinists, can you not see that you've been tricked - through things like "It's for God's glory. God is sovereign and can do what He wants. It's humble to accept this. Who are you, O man, to talk back to God? Did God really say...?" - into believing that God preplans all sins, then tells us not to sin but causes us to commit the sins He preplanned, and then punishes us for committing the sins He forced us to commit, but since "He is sovereign" and "it's for His glory" then it must be okay? Can you not see how this destroys God's character, Word, trustworthiness?
And who do you think it is that wants us to believe this nonsense?
Stunning! Horrifying!
[Just for fun: I have no idea who made this (or who Tyler Vela is, other than that he's a Calvinist), but here's an amusing 2-minute video, featuring Beaker from the Muppets, demonstrating Calvinist "humility": "Jesus Died for Me Me Me"
Notice what he says about God's love: essentially that a generalized, all-encompassing love for mankind isn't good, isn't meaningful, but that it's so much better for God to have a specific, focused love on only a few people.
(And notice how he throws out the accusation of "universalist" if you believe Jesus died for all. He says that can't be true because there will still be people in hell. This is a mistake in their thinking because they start from the basis that people cannot choose, and so we can't choose to reject Jesus's offer of salvation. Therefore, those people must be in hell by God's choice, because they never got the offer of salvation, because Jesus never died for them. Because if Jesus died for you, you WILL BE saved, no chance of rejecting it because we have no choice.)
If Tyler has siblings, I wonder if he'd have been okay with his parents choosing to love and care for only one sibling while choosing to hate him and let him starve to death, for no real reason other than the parents wanted to focus their love on one specific person. I mean, if he's okay with God doing it, then shouldn't he be okay with his parents doing it? Aren't we supposed to try to be like God? To love people the way He does?
But I guess Tyler Vela can be okay with all this because he's one of the few lucky "chosen ones" after all. He won the "salvation lottery." Hooray for him! (Too bad for the rest, though. Sucks to be them!)
And I just want to point out one amusing thing here. Tyler says he doesn't know why God picked him. Calvinists say it's a "mystery" why God chose to save them specifically, out of everyone else out there, that they don't know why they were chosen, they just were (and they act all super-humble about it). And they accuse us non-Calvinists of thinking that we are better than, smarter than, more humble than our unbelieving neighbors because we saw our need for a Savior and did something about it, whereas our unbelieving neighbors couldn't and didn't. Basically, we must think we're better than them if we were smart enough to figure it out, but they weren't.
But the funny, ironic thing is: If Calvinists don't know why God chose them, then they cannot claim that it's not because they are "better" than, "smarter" than, or "more humble" than their neighbors. They could have been "chosen" for those very reasons (for what they shame non-Calvinists for), for being "so smart, so humble, so much better than" those who didn't get chosen - they just don't know it because God didn't tell them that those were the reasons.]
Update 2023: I just found this video showing that Tyler Vela has recently renounced his faith in Christ. Sadly, it seems that many public Christians who've recently left the faith were Calvinists. Coincidence?
I recently posted a comment about this in the comment section of "Calvinism Obscures the Simple Gospel" at Soteriology 101, and I want to share - just because - the reply Brian (a very intelligent non-Calvinist) gave me and my reply to him (slightly edited for clarity):
My comment: Just throwing this out there (I might have said it before, can’t remember): I recently read an article that the Calvinist in the “Me Me Me” video (in the link above) – Tyler Vela – just renounced his faith in Christ. I wonder what happened to that wonderful, saving, “specific” love that Calvi-god had for him. He must’ve gotten evanescent grace instead. Sad.
Brian's reply: Heather, my view of Tyler V. is that he is a good example of someone who can be very knowledgeable of Scripture and Christian history and theology, but with no firm assurance of Christ living within by the Holy Spirit. There can be a false assurance of self-produced feelings like – “My theology is correct and in agreement with so many smart men who claimed to be Christian that I must be a Christian too”, or “When I knew I needed to escape the terrible life I was living, and was told to follow Jesus to find that escape, I had a special feeling when I was baptized in His name, so I thought I was a Christian for sure.” But Tyler came to believe that God was not working in His life as he thought God should be, and after experiencing a life trauma, he gave up believing that the Christian God exists at all. This made his former doubts now confirmed by experience, in his thinking. Very sad.
My reply to Brian: That is really sad. And I can totally understand the desire to want to wash my hands of faith, of God, when everything falls apart, when God doesn’t do what we think He “should” do. “Shoulds” can be dangerous things. We blame God for failing us when it’s really our expectations of Him and of faith that failed us, because they were out of line to begin with.
After I learned about what my mother did (what she was later arrested for), it was almost the straw that broke the camel’s back. The anxiety and stress and heartbreak was so strong, so overwhelming, that I wanted to give up my faith (and I wouldn’t have minded giving up on living too). It was like “You’re not coming through for me, God. It would be so much easier and less heartache to not have to rely on You or wait for You, to rely only on myself.” It was one thing to feel that life and my mother had let me down, but it was another to feel like God was letting me down too. It was almost too much. (It was only by His grace that I made it through those first several months/years. I’m still not over it, but I’m still here and it’s gotten easier, so that’s good.)
I wanted to be done with it all. I wanted to bail on God before He hurt me more [of course, God wasn't really hurting me, but it felt like it because He didn't seem to be doing anything to help, didn't seem to care]. Do you know what I mean? It’s like people who sabotage relationships to protect themselves from pain – quit before you get hurt. But all I kept coming back to was “To whom shall I go, Lord? You alone have the words of eternal life.” (One of my favorite lines in the Bible, along with my favorite prayer “I believe, Lord, but help my unbelief.”) I’ve spent years clinging to faith in spite of my expectations and circumstances falling apart. And I know it’s not easy to do, so my heart goes out to Tyler.
Thankfully, for me, before my severe traumas, I had already learned how much I could trust that God is real and that the Bible is trustworthy in spite of my feelings and doubts – through things like years of research and some very clear answers to prayer and some supernatural experiences (levitating someone through “light as a feather, stiff as a board” – it’s demonic, don’t do it, but I was young and stupid – and a season of clearly demonic harassment like feeling electricity engulf my body when I was waking up and once even fully awake, and feeling an invisible force choking me when waking up, and feeling an invisible presence walking up my bed towards me several times while I was wide awake, etc.)
I’ve had enough experiences with the supernatural world to know for sure that there is a spiritual world out there, that there are angels and demons, that God is real. And if God (and His Word) is truly real, good, and trustworthy, like I believe He is, then I choose to cling to Him in spite of my shattered expectations and broken heart. This world is not all there is, and the best is yet to come. Till then, I cling to Him through the good and the bad. To whom else would I go?
Sorry, I’m rambling, but my heart breaks for hurting, broken people, and it opens up my wounds all over again. If I could spare anyone from the kind of deep pain I’ve been through, I would. I wish no one ever had to feel pain, despair, and hopelessness that deeply. I’m really sorry for Tyler. (There are tears in my eyes as I write this.)
The sad thing is that Calvinism erodes people’s faith in God as a good, trustworthy, faithful, loving God, and so they don't have that to fall back on when the pain comes. They have been brainwashed into seeing Him as Someone who causes and is glorified by sin and evil as much as by good, Someone who could just as easily damn people to eternal torment as save them, Someone who randomly picks a few to save but prevents the rest from being saved because He created them to hate and to punish (for doing what He ordained/caused) for His glory and pleasure. If that’s the kind of God He really is - one who causes and is glorified by sin and evil - then why in the world would we turn to Him for help and comfort when sins and evils hurt us? Why would we seek refuge in a God like that? No wonder Calvinists bail on God when the painful trials hit, when their expectations are shattered. It’s sad.
I’m sorry for Tyler having to go through those kinds of feelings. That’s a really difficult, heartbreaking struggle. May he eventually realize that it’s not God who let him down, but it’s the Calvinism that did.
Thanks for sharing your insight, Brian. God bless.
10.
The Bible shows that ... "Sovereignty" means that God is the highest authority there is.
There is no one above Him and no one He is accountable to. (I say it's perfectly fine to end a sentence with a preposition.) He has the power to do whatever He wants. And as seen in the Bible all over the place, part of what He wants is to allow us to make decisions, within any boundaries He sets up. He wants us to want Him, to willingly choose to love and worship and obey Him, not to be forced to or programmed to. (Anyone else singing "I Want You to Want Me" from Cheap Trick right now? If you weren't, you will be now. Ha ha ha!) Forced love can never be true love.
And being sovereign and all-knowing, He knows ahead of time what we will choose to do and how He can work it all into something good, to accomplish His over-arching plans. He also knows how to "manipulate" circumstances to encourage us to get on the path He wants us on, but He doesn't over-ride our free-will. He calls us to obey and believe and leads us in the paths He wants us to take, but the final choice is ours. (Such as when He blinded Saul on the road to Damascus, calling Saul to become Paul. He didn't override Saul's right to decide, He just made a very strong case for why Saul should believe in Him, making Himself so clear that Saul was self-compelled to become a believer.)
He holds all things in His hands, is aware of everything, and knows how to work everything into His plans. He decides what to cause (but never sin or evil), what to allow (our own choices, consequences, demonic activity), what to override, how much freedom to give us, where the boundaries are (for us and angelic beings, good and evil), etc. And He knows how to take everything that happens and everything we decide (good or bad, obedience or disobedience), mix it all together, and turn it into something good, into something that helps accomplish His over-arching Will/plans. (Remember that in Job's story, God didn't cause the tragedies that hit Job. God let Satan pick the tragedies, within boundaries. God doesn't always "cause." Many times, He simply "allows." God can be "in control" without actively controlling everything.)
He is a big, wise, complex God!
But Calvinism says ... "Sovereignty" means that God is so "in control" that He preplans and causes everything that happens, even sin and evil and unbelief, for His plans and glory.
In Calvinism, for God to be "sovereign" He has to preplan and actively control everything, even the movement of every particle of dust in the air (or else He can't be God). In order for His plans to work out, He has to preplan and cause everything we think and do, even the very sins He commands us not to do, the sins He died to save us from, and the unbelief in those who go to hell, even though He calls us to believe in Him over and over again (and then He punishes us for the sins and unbelief He caused).
He holds all things in His hands, is aware of everything, and knows how to work everything into His plans. He decides what to cause (but never sin or evil), what to allow (our own choices, consequences, demonic activity), what to override, how much freedom to give us, where the boundaries are (for us and angelic beings, good and evil), etc. And He knows how to take everything that happens and everything we decide (good or bad, obedience or disobedience), mix it all together, and turn it into something good, into something that helps accomplish His over-arching Will/plans. (Remember that in Job's story, God didn't cause the tragedies that hit Job. God let Satan pick the tragedies, within boundaries. God doesn't always "cause." Many times, He simply "allows." God can be "in control" without actively controlling everything.)
He is a big, wise, complex God!
But Calvinism says ... "Sovereignty" means that God is so "in control" that He preplans and causes everything that happens, even sin and evil and unbelief, for His plans and glory.
In Calvinism, for God to be "sovereign" He has to preplan and actively control everything, even the movement of every particle of dust in the air (or else He can't be God). In order for His plans to work out, He has to preplan and cause everything we think and do, even the very sins He commands us not to do, the sins He died to save us from, and the unbelief in those who go to hell, even though He calls us to believe in Him over and over again (and then He punishes us for the sins and unbelief He caused).
Yep, makes perfect sense!
[Calvi-god is actually a small, weak, flat, two-dimensional god when you think about it, because he can only handle what he himself causes. He can only work out his plans if he himself preplans and micromanages everything, if he controls every factor and every step along the way. If there was even one piece of dust outside his control, it would throw him off his axis. But a god that can be dethroned by one rogue particle of dust is no god at all! That is a small, small god.]
Did you know that the NIV has the word "sovereign" in it almost 300 times, but it's not in the KJV anywhere? Where the NIV says "Sovereign Lord," the KJV simply says "Lord." For some reason, they felt the need to add it to Scripture. [And so when a Calvinist says "'accept Jesus in your heart' is not in the Bible", tell them "Neither is 'sovereign,'" and see what they say. See "Is 'Accept Jesus in your heart' unbiblical and dangerous?"]
The real definition of "sovereign" refers to the position of power a person is in, that God is in. But Calvinists have changed it to how God uses His power, to their ideas of how He must use His power in order to be considered God.
Calvinists build their whole theological framework on the belief that "sovereign" (a word that isn't even in the KJV) must mean "micromanaging everything, preplanning and controlling and causing everything that happens." They believe that since God is "all powerful (omnipotent)," it must mean that He always uses His power all the time to control everything. Or else He's not an all-powerful, sovereign God.
But don't let them trap you with their (wrong) definitions of "sovereign" and "omnipotent." Worms, worms - examine the worms!
Calvinists build their whole theological framework on the belief that "sovereign" (a word that isn't even in the KJV) must mean "micromanaging everything, preplanning and controlling and causing everything that happens." They believe that since God is "all powerful (omnipotent)," it must mean that He always uses His power all the time to control everything. Or else He's not an all-powerful, sovereign God.
But don't let them trap you with their (wrong) definitions of "sovereign" and "omnipotent." Worms, worms - examine the worms!
"Sovereign" simply means that God is the One who is in the position of ultimate authority over all. And so, being the One who is over all, He gets to decide how to exercise His sovereign control and how to use His power, which means He can decide to voluntarily restrain Himself, to curtail His right to micromanage all things in order to allow us to have free-will, the right and responsibility to make our own decisions.
Sovereignty does not mean what Calvinists think it does - that "God has to use His power all the time to preplan/control/cause everything that happens." This is adding things to the definition of sovereignty that don't belong there. This is Calvinists telling God how He has to act/be in order to be God.
Part of the problem is the Calvinist's "either/or" mentality. Watch out for this, because this is how they trap you. They'll say things like "Either God is sovereign or else we are" ... "Either God is in control or else we are" ... "Either God is omnipotent or else He's not." And because you know that we are not sovereign or "in control" and that He is omnipotent, you automatically (and rightly) side with "God is sovereign and in-control and omnipotent."
But the fatal mistake - the thing that gets us - is that we never question their definitions of "sovereign" and "in-control" and "omnipotent." We don't realize that they have special, hidden, (unbiblical) Calvinist definitions of those things (which is exactly what they want). We simply agree with them that "God is sovereign, in control, and omnipotent" ... and before we know it, we end up becoming a Calvinist too, just like them. Because what good Christian is going to deny those things? ("Sovereignty" is often the first step in trapping Christians into Calvinism, the first worm on the hook.)
Part of the problem is the Calvinist's "either/or" mentality. Watch out for this, because this is how they trap you. They'll say things like "Either God is sovereign or else we are" ... "Either God is in control or else we are" ... "Either God is omnipotent or else He's not." And because you know that we are not sovereign or "in control" and that He is omnipotent, you automatically (and rightly) side with "God is sovereign and in-control and omnipotent."
But the fatal mistake - the thing that gets us - is that we never question their definitions of "sovereign" and "in-control" and "omnipotent." We don't realize that they have special, hidden, (unbiblical) Calvinist definitions of those things (which is exactly what they want). We simply agree with them that "God is sovereign, in control, and omnipotent" ... and before we know it, we end up becoming a Calvinist too, just like them. Because what good Christian is going to deny those things? ("Sovereignty" is often the first step in trapping Christians into Calvinism, the first worm on the hook.)
When you misunderstand "sovereignty," your whole theological view will be wrong from the very beginning because you are trying to force Scripture to fit your view of sovereignty, instead of simply correcting your view of sovereignty to fit Scripture.
To be fair, I think most Calvinists are trying to be humble when they view "sovereignty" as "God controls and causes everything." They are trying to lift God up as high as they can and to lower humans as low as they can.
But if their view of "sovereignty" and of how God acts goes outside of what Scripture says, if it contradicts Scripture and turns Him into a monster, and if they refuse to consider that they might be wrong, then how humble are they really?
(See "What Does 'God Is Sovereign' Mean?" And see Tony Evan's sermon "Connecting With God For A Breakthrough" for a good biblical view of man's responsibility and God's actions. And for a couple posts on how Calvinists manipulate people and spread Calvinism, see "Saint PJs Deceptions and Manipulations" and "MacArthur's Manipulations" and "A not-so-imaginary conversation with a Calvinist" and "Calvinism 101...".)
Update May 2023: I'm gonna expand a little here (okay, a lot) to compare Calvinism's view of sovereignty against the Bible's view, so you can see how wrong Calvinists are. (This will include a bit of what I already said.)
If God is in control over everything, it must mean that He controls everything (even people’s decisions and sins), that He always does everything He wants and that everything that happens is because He preplanned/wanted/caused it to happen. So when people sin or end up in hell, it’s because He willed it, wanted it, planned it, and caused it. And nothing different could have happened because they had no choice.
This is where Calvinists go wrong. They start with their assumption that being sovereign and all-powerful must mean that God always uses His sovereign power all the time to control everything ... or else He couldn't be God. In their mind, being "in control" means "controlling everything." And so if there was one moment, one choice, one sin, one piece of dust that God didn't control, He wouldn't be God.
They simply refuse to accept what the Bible shows: that in His sovereignty (His right to decide how things will go), God has decided to self-limit His use of power and control to a degree, to give us the right to make real choices that have real consequences. (Note: I have to say "real choices" because Calvinism teaches fake choices, like a computer "choosing" to do what the programmer programmed it to do or a puppet "choosing" to do what the puppet-master makes it do. But is that really "choosing" anything?)
God can be "in control" over all (watching over all, deciding what to allow and what to not allow, deciding how to work things into His plans, etc.) without controlling/causing everything.
Yes, God has plans. And there are things He does sometimes regardless of us. But there are a great many times and ways that He has decided to work out His plans (His Will) in cooperation with mankind, through our prayers, obedience, decisions, etc. And He gives us the right to decide to join Him in His plans (obey Him) or to refuse His plans (disobey Him). And whatever we decide - obedience or disobedience - He can work it into His plans.
But if we refuse to obey Him then we miss out on the blessings we could have gotten if we had obeyed as He wanted us to, as He called us to. God doesn't choose what we decide. Our decisions and sins were not predestined. He gives us the choice, let's us decide, and (since He already knew what we'd decide) He figures out how to work it into His plans.
[Calvinists make the mistake of equating "foreknowledge" with "fore-planning," saying that if God foreknew something it's because He fore-planned it, and if He fore-planned it then it has to happen that way. But that's changing the definition of "foreknowledge." Foreknowledge is simply knowing beforehand. Whatever we choose, God knows it beforehand and can work it into His plans. And if we had made a different choice, He would've known that too and would've worked that into His plans. His foreknowledge doesn't determine our decisions, but our decisions determine what He foreknows.]
He's like a brilliant master Chef (humor me here) who can take whatever ingredients we bring to the table and still turn it into something amazing, adjusting the steps as needed to incorporate what we bring while still accomplishing His over-all plans - whereas the Calvinist god has to preplan every ingredient, every step, every detail and has to cause it all to happen exactly the way he planned it because if even one tiny ingredient, step, or detail happened that he himself didn't preplan, cause, control then the meal would be a disaster and his plans would get foiled and he'd cease to be a chef. (Which God is bigger and wiser and more powerful?)
In Calvinism, God commands things but then, in His "sovereignty," He causes people to break His commands. How can this be? How can God command us to not sin and to believe in Jesus, but then cause people to sin and reject Jesus?
In order to make Calvinism seem biblical, Calvinists will answer this with "Well, God has two Wills, you see. There are revealed ones, like when He says it's His Will that we don't sin and that all people believe and be saved. But then there's hidden unspoken ones, like when He "ordains" that we sin and that non-elect people reject Jesus and go to hell. God can decree that we disobey His decrees, for His purposes and glory."
They really think that by simply appealing to two Wills (which contradict and oppose each other), that it makes it okay, that it makes their views biblical. But it does not. Their views are wrong, and they destroy God's character, making Him duplicitous, untrustworthy, schizophrenic, and the cause of the sin, evil, and unbelief that He commands us not to do.
(What does Matthew 12:25 say? That a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. Calvinism makes God a divided God who contradicts/opposes Himself, who thwarts His own plans. But Calvinists will try to shame you into agreeing with them by saying things like "Who are you to talk back to God or to decide what God can and cannot do? He is sovereign and can do what He wants. His ways are so far above our ways. We cannot use human logic to define God. Etc." They want you to shut off your critical thinking skills so that you don't pay attention to any red flags you sense about what they're teaching. Very cult-like.)
But Pastor Dr. Tony Evans (whom I think is one of the most biblically-accurate pastors out there) presents a view of God's Will that is biblical, that keeps God's character intact. He says that God has an unconditional Will for some things and a conditional Will for other things. (See the first ten minutes of this sermon: How to get your prayers answered.)
There are things God's planned and decided to do regardless of us, unconditionally, such as create the world, send Jesus to die for our sins, offer salvation to sinners, renew creation in the end, etc. He does these things regardless of what we do or don't do. But then there are things He's planned to do on the condition that we do our part, and this is where we get the "if you ... then ..." verses from. "If you obey, then I will bless you. If you disobey, then you'll face bad consequences. If you believe in Jesus, then I will give you eternal life. Etc." (These kinds of verses only make sense if God gave us a real right to decide. And He did. Which is why the Bible makes sense.)
This isn't like Calvinism where God has two opposing, contradictory Wills about the same issue (sin, salvation, etc.), where He says He wants one thing but causes the opposite. But it's God having two different kinds of Wills for different situations: in some situations, He decides to do something on His own, but in others, He decides to let us make decisions and then He responds accordingly.
This is not a divided God. But it's a God who wants something to happen and made it possible for it happen but who lets people decide what they want, if they want to do or not do things His way (and then He lets us have the consequences of our decisions). And so if people go to hell, it's not because He caused it based on some secondary, secret, contradictory Will of His. It's because He has decided to make salvation conditional on our belief, on our choice. He offers salvation to all and makes it available to all, but we only get it on the condition that we accept it, that we believe.
I don't base my views of God's sovereignty on my own assumptions of how God must be/act in order to be God (as Calvinists do). I base them on what the Bible says about Him, on how He reveals Himself to be in His Word. And the Bible says:
1. Time and time again with the Israelites, God lays out the “blessing path” and the “curse path,” and then tells them to choose which path they want to take. (Deuteronomy 30 for example.) He has the plans - the destinations - clearly set for both choices, but He leaves it up to the people to decide which path they take. And these are real choices, not the illusion of having a choice.
[If God's already decided what we choose and if He forces us to do what He preplanned, why would He pretend we have options and can make choices? And what would it do to His character if He pretends we have the ability to make choices when we don't, if He really preplans/causes/controls it all (even our sins and unbelief), if He commands us not to sin but causes us to sin and then punishes us for it? Could we trust a God like that? Calvinism destroys God's good, righteous, faithful character. And this is a main reason we must fight against it with all we've got. If we destroy God's good, righteous, faithful character, what've we got left? Nothing better than the sinful, untrustworthy, human-like gods of the ancient world.]
2. We get a clear picture of how God works when we look at how God called the Israelites out of Egypt and took them to the Promised Land. His predetermined Will and plan was to take the Israelites from Egypt right to Canaan. But because He created us with free-will, He allowed the people to choose if they wanted to follow Him or rebel against Him. And they chose to rebel. But His Will was still accomplished by leading the next generation into Canaan, the ones who were willing to follow Him. He will work His plans out one way or another, but we miss out if we don't obey. (Likewise, His ultimate plan is to have people with Him in heaven for all of eternity. And that plan will still be accomplished, but we have to choose if we will accept or reject the pre-paid ticket to heaven, if we will follow Him to the Promised Land or not.)
3. In Exodus 23:32, God tells Israel to make no covenant with the people in the land of Canaan after they take possession of it. But in Joshua 9, we read about the Gibeonite deception and how they did make a treaty with these people, believing that they were from a distant land. Joshua 9:14 says that in this instance, Israel “did not inquire of the Lord.”
God’s Will and plan was that they didn’t make a treaty with these people. And I believe God would have warned Israel about the deception ... if they had prayed about it. But they chose to not pray about it, so God’s Will didn’t happen in this case.
Prayer matters. Prayer makes a difference in our lives. Prayer invites God to carry out His plans, to get involved in our lives, to guide us, etc. And He won't always do it unless and until we pray. Matthew 6:10 instructs us to pray that God's Will gets done, but why pray for it if it's the only thing that ever happens (as Calvinists say)? In Luke 22:32, Jesus says He prayed that Peter's faith would not fail - so clearly it was God's Will that Peter's faith remained strong, but Jesus still had to pray for it. (And if Jesus had to, how much more do we?) Job 42:8-10 shows that God's Will and plan was to forgive Job's friends, but He waited on Job to pray for it before He did. Prayer invites God to do what He planned, and He won't always do it unless and until we pray. He gave us the responsibility to pray, to decide whether we want His Will done or not. And James 4:2 says that we don't have certain things because we don't pray for them. There are things God is willing to give us and do for us, but we do not get them unless we pray.
You see, God has given a certain level of dominion/responsibility to man, the right to make decisions that affect things. And with this comes the right to decide if we want Him or not, if we want His input and help or not. And so if we choose to do things on our own, to run ahead of His timing, to stray outside His Will, to sin, to not pray for guidance or help or comfort or whatever, etc., He will allow it, in deference to our free-will. Because that's how He set things up. Free-will is what He decided is best for His over-all plans and glory, and with free-will comes the right to make our own decisions, even bad ones, even rejecting Him. But no matter what we choose, He can still accomplish His ultimate goals (by incorporating our disobedience, postponing His plans, moving on to someone else who will obey, etc.), but we miss out if we don't do things His way. So our disobedience doesn't ultimately hurt His plans - He finds ways around it, to incorporate it, to make something good out of it - but it does hurt us and the life we could've had.
God's conditional Will (what He desires for us) doesn’t just happen because He is all-powerful and can make it happen. (Just because He can doesn't mean He does.) We have to pray for it, to seek it. And to obey! God leaves the responsibility with mankind to put His conditional Will into motion with our prayers and obedience.
But if Calvinism is true, then everything that happens is God's Will, even sin. And therefore, there is no need to "ask anything according to His Will." Because His Will is all that ever happens, with or without us asking for it. And therefore, in Calvinism, if we disobey, sin, fail to pray, fail to share the gospel, reject Him, etc. ... it's all "God's Will" anyway, because everything that happens is because He willed it, preplanned it, causes it, controls it, for His glory. Therefore, our disobedience is as much "God's Will" as our obedience is. Unbelief is as God-caused as belief is. Evil is as God-glorifying as good is.
In Calvinism, that is. But not in the Bible. (What a mess Calvinism makes of God's Word!)
4. In 1 Samuel 13:13, Samuel tells Saul that if Saul had kept God's commands, then God would have established Saul's kingdom permanently.
If Calvinism is true that God preplans/causes all that happens, then He preplanned/caused that Saul would disobey and lose the kingdom (because that's what happened) and so it would be a lie to say that something different could have, would have, happened, that there was an alternative path that hinged on Saul's choice.
Was Samuel and God lying? Or is Calvinism not true?
I'm going with "Calvinism's not true!"
In this example, Calvinists might just answer that God decreed that His decree (His plan that Saul would get the kingdom) didn't happen. That He commanded Saul to obey but then caused Saul to disobey.
So God (in Calvinism) not only decrees that we disobey His decrees, but He also decrees that other decrees of His don't happen!?!
Calvinists will say that God decrees (preplans, causes) everything that happens, but then in cases where God's plans didn't happen, they'll say He also decrees what didn't happen. They'll say He had two decrees (two Wills): one Will was that Saul got the kingdom, but the other was that Saul disobeyed and lost the kingdom. God decreed that His decree didn't happen. He decreed that Saul disobeyed His decree.
How very Alice-in-Wonderlandy!
Can they not see how messed-up this is? What this does to God's character and Word? And then which decree is His real decree: the thing He says or the thing He causes? And how can we trust any decree (command) God gives us if He might really want us to do the opposite? And why should we put any effort into obeying His decrees if He's just gonna cause us to do whatever He wants anyway, even causing us to do the opposite of what He said He wanted us to do?
Calvinism destroys God's character and His Word. How can Calvinists not see that!?!
God does not preplan what we do. He does not give us commands that He secretly wants us to break. He does not give us offers and promises that He never intended to fulfill. He does not preplan/cause our decisions, our sins or unbelief.
But He does know the outcome of whatever choice we will make, and He knows how to incorporate it into His plans. He knew that if Saul obeyed, his kingdom would have been established. And He knew that if Saul disobeyed, his kingdom would be taken away and go to David. And He could have worked either of those into His plans to bring Jesus into the world.
["But," you might say, "didn't God have to cause it to work out the way it did so that certain biblical prophecies could get fulfilled?" Well, don't you think that if God foreknew that someone would make a different decision and that He'd work His plans out in a different way, then He would have made sure that the Bible's prophecies reflected it? The Bible wasn't written first, before God knew what was going to happen - which would leave Him scrambling to make sure things happened the way the Bible predicted it. No. God knew first what would happen, and then He made sure that humans recorded it accordingly. And so if He knew things would've been different because someone made a different decision, He would've made sure the Bible was written to reflect it.]
God knows where all our potential paths will lead, and He knows how to work it all into something good, into His plans. But He lets us decide. And then He decides how to work our choices into His plans. He is wise enough, powerful enough, and sovereign enough to work many variable factors into His plans, unlike Calvi-god who can't manage any other factors than what he himself preplans and causes.
5. In Acts, Paul is headed to Rome as a prisoner on a ship when they come against a hurricane-like storm. And after many days at sea, Paul tells the discouraged, scared men, “Men, you should have taken my advice not to sail from Crete, then you would have spared yourselves this damage and loss. But now I urge you to keep up your courage, because not one of you will be lost; only the ship will be destroyed. Last night an angel of the God whose I am and whom I serve stood beside me and said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul.... God has graciously given you the lives of all who sail with you.’ ...” (Acts 27:21-24)
And then a little later, when the sailors were trying to escape from the ship in the lifeboats, Paul tells them, “Unless these men stay with the ship, you cannot be saved.” (Acts 27:31)
Obviously, God wanted to spare the men from having to go through this storm, so He gave Paul the insight and wisdom to warn them. But they didn’t listen. And then, when they decided to sail from Crete anyway, God graciously decided that none of their lives would be lost in the storm.
It was His Will that they all lived ... but only if they stayed with the ship.
He had a plan (a conditional Will), but they had to follow Him in the plan. If God was going to spare their lives regardless of what they did - if they couldn't change or affect His plan - there'd be no reason to warn them to stay with the ship. But their actions and choices had an effect on whether or not they stayed safely inside God’s Will, whether or not they got the blessings that come with obedience. He invited them to obey and to follow His plan and be saved. But if they didn’t, it was on their own heads. God does not force His Will and plans on us. We have to follow Him in it through our obedience ... or else we pay the price of disobedience.
This is how it is with salvation. God has given us the ship that will save us: Jesus’s sacrificial death on our behalf. And He has promised that we will be saved... but only if we stay with the ship. God sets the plan, the destinations, and gives us the choice, but we have to decide: God's way or not? Follow Him or reject Him?
[Calvinists have ways of manipulating you into agreeing with their view of sovereignty. They say that if you believe God doesn’t control everything then you're saying that He can’t control everything or that He controls nothing. They make you feel that believing in free-will - that we have the ability to choose and that our choices and prayers affect things - is the same as saying that God is weak and powerless, that we are stronger than Him, that He relies on us. They shame you into agreeing with them by making you feel that believing in free-will reduces God to a dependent weakling while elevating mankind to a supremely powerful being.
But we are not reducing God when we say that He allows people to make choices. We are not saying He is not sovereign and all-powerful. We are simply saying that He has chosen - in His sovereign position as Supreme Ruler who can make whatever rules He wants - to voluntarily restrain His use of power in order to give men the right to make real choices that affect things.
Calvinists are the ones who limit God, saying that He's only capable of handling things if He Himself preplans it all and causes it all. They have decided that God can only be God if He is always controlling everything. Telling God how God has to be in order to be God is a dangerous thing!]
6. In 1 Kings 22 (which I looked at in the “Sovereignty and Free-Will Working Together” post), God asks for a volunteer to entice King Ahab to go into battle where he will be killed. And a demon steps forward and says that he will entice Ahab by being a lying spirit in the mouths of the false prophets.
God wanted Ahab dead (He could've killed him instantly, but He chose to do it through other means). And so He looked for a plan that would cause Ahab to go to his own death. Notice that God didn’t cause the demon to lie nor did He cause Ahab to believe the lies, but He did bring them together: a lying spirit and a person who wanted to believe the lies. He gave the demon permission to spread lies through the false prophets, knowing that Ahab would believe the lies and go into battle and be killed. But God did not force Ahab to believe lies. Ahab didn't have to believe lies - but he would believe them because that's what he wanted to do. And so God allowed him to be presented with lies (through the demon), and then He let Ahab believe them and choose to do things that would lead to his death.
What's interesting about this story is that God even gave Ahab a true prophecy through the mouth of a godly prophet: that he would be killed if he went into battle. And yet Ahab still chose to listen to the lying prophets, even though he knew that the godly prophet was speaking for the Lord. God didn’t hide the truth from Ahab in order to make him believe the lies. Ahab was just so set on going into battle that he would only listen to what he wanted to hear. Ahab willfully chose the lies. In fact, Ahab had already made up his mind about what he was going to do before getting Micaiah’s counsel. He wasn’t going to listen to the word of the Lord, no matter what it was.
God didn’t make Ahab believe lies or go into battle. He just put the choice before Ahab: believe the lies or believe the truth. And He made Ahab choose. But since He already knew what Ahab would choose, He knew the demon would be successful.
7. We've looked at these verses before, but they are so important to understanding that God does not always force what He wants, that He gives us real choices and lets us choose to disobey Him or to do things without Him, that His Will can be disobeyed (and notice that these are all things God Himself says):
1 Kings 20:42: "He said to the king, 'This is what the Lord says: 'You have set free a man I had determined should die.''" [God determined something would happen, but it didn't happen. How is this possible if God determines everything that happens and nothing different could have happened? Once again, Calvinists would say, "Well, God sometimes decrees that people disobey His decrees." And they say it with a straight face - as if it makes sense and doesn't damage God's character.]
Hosea 8:4: "They set up kings without my consent; they choose princes without my approval." [If God ordains/controls all that happens, how can anything happen without His approval? Calvinists would simply say, "Oh, well, God can ordain things He doesn't approve of, for His mysterious plans." With a straight face.]
Jeremiah 19:5: "They have built the high places to Baal to burn their sons in the fire as offerings to Baal - something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind." [It would be kinda difficult for God to predestine/cause something that He never thought of commanding, wouldn't it? And how would Calvinists answer this? I'm actually not sure. I never heard one try. Instead, they always switch topics or bring up a different verse that they think "proves" God "ordains/causes" all that happens, such as a verse about God causing a storm. But ... this is critical ... causing a storm is nowhere near the same thing as causing someone to do something evil that He commanded them not to do. Causing a storm does not destroy His righteousness, faithfulness, and justice. But causing sin - and then punishing us for it - does.]
Ezekiel 13:22 (KJV): "Because with lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad ..." And the CSB version puts it this way: "Because you have disheartened the righteous person with lies (when I intended no distress)..." [In Calvinism, God would be the one who preplanned and ultimately caused people to lie to the righteous people. He would have preplanned/intended to cause the righteous people to be disheartened, contradicting His claim that He never intended to do that. And so either God lies or Calvinism lies. Which one do you think it is?]
Isaiah 30:1: "Woe to the obstinate children," declares the Lord, "to those who carry out plans that are not mine..." [If all plans are God's plans, how can anything happen that He didn't plan? Calvinists might simply say, "Well, God has two different plans. In one plan, He didn't want the people to do what they did. But in the other plan, He caused the people to do what He didn't want them to do, for His glory and mysterious reasons. And He's so far above us that we can't understand it. He is the Potter and we are clay. How can the clay talk back to the Potter or understand the Potter's ways? Blah, blah, blah. Gobble, gobble, gobble."]
Exodus 13:17: "When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country. For God said 'If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt." [I don't even need to tell you how this totally contradicts and disproves Calvinism, their idea that God preplans, causes, controls everything we think and do. You can see it clearly for yourselves. Calvinists can't, but you can.]
And why would God give "boundaries" to people, Satan, and nature (such as putting a boundary around the one forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden, and putting a limit on how far the sea can move in Job 38:11, and putting a hedge around Job and limits to how much Satan can do to him in Job 1) if God alone controls every single movement that everyone and everything makes? Boundaries are only needed when there is freedom to move within those boundaries.
Summing it up
Calvinism teaches that sovereignty means that God preplans and controls everything that happens, exactly the way it happens, even our sins and decisions about Jesus ... and nothing different could have happened. They'll say we "freely" choose to do what He predestined us to do. (But there's nothing "free" about it. They don't mean you actually decide for yourself or that you have real free-will. They just mean that God changes your desires so that you desire to do what He predestined you to do, and so He doesn't actually have to "force" you to do it. You do it because you "want" to. Like how giving someone a magic love potion makes them "want" to love you. It's bogus!)
But in the Bible, God does not preplan and cause (force) us to choose what we do (sin, evil, lie, reject Jesus, etc.). We are not locked into one option. He lets us decide how to act and believe, to choose among various options. And since He already knows what we'll choose, He knows how to work it into His plans. This is how His sovereignty works in conjunction with our free-will choices. (While He doesn't force us to decide what we do, He can force us to make our choice. He can put us in situations that force us to decide whether to obey or disobey, to act out what's in our hearts. But this isn't the same as preplanning and causing what we choose.)
God does not always force whatever He wants, even though He has the power to. But He has decided to voluntarily restrain His use of power over us, giving us the right and responsibility to make real choices, as seen time and time again in the Bible.
God has made the truth, the gospel, salvation, available to all. He offers all of us the gift of eternal life. But He lets us decide to accept it or reject it. And in the end, we get what we chose eternally: life with Jesus or life without Jesus. And since He lets us decide for ourselves, no one can say He is unjust when someone goes to hell. He didn't predestine anyone to hell or cause anyone to reject Jesus. They chose to do it themselves, in spite of His many attempts to reach out to them in love.
"Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?'" (Ezekiel 33:11)
"... He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:9)
"He is the anointing sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world." (1 John 2:2)
"For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men." (Titus 2:11)
"This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, who gave himself as a ransom for all men ..." (1 Timothy 2:3-6)
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16)
How much clearer could God have been?
11.
The Bible says ... God is glorified when people praise Him, trust Him, believe in Him, preach the good news, obey Him, etc.
Psalm 29:1-2, 86:12, 96, 115:1- glorify God for His lovingkindness and truth, Isaiah 42:12, Matthew 5:16, John 15:8, Romans 15:9- glorify Him for His mercy, 1 Cor. 10:31, 2 Cor. 4:15- spreading grace and thanksgiving glorifies God, 2 Cor. 9:13, 2 Thess. 1:11-12
But Calvinism says ... It glorifies God to cause sin and unbelief and to send people to hell.
But Calvinism says ... It glorifies God to cause sin and unbelief and to send people to hell.
Find me one verse that says this!!! Just one!!!
This is simply Calvinists trying to find a "good" explanation for why Calvi-god causes sin, evil, and predestines people to hell: It's "for his glory," and so that makes it okay. They start with their erroneous beliefs, build their view of God on top of it, and then find ways to make their erroneous beliefs sound good.
But find me the verse that says this. Seriously.
God can use evil for His glory, but He cannot and does not cause evil for His glory. He can preplan to work our sinful choices into His plans, to make something good out of it (because He knows ahead of time what we will choose to do), but He cannot and does not preplan that we commit the sins.
Calvinists will inevitably go to "God caused Assyria to attack Israel" to "prove" that God causes us to do what we do, to be evil or good, to sin or obey, to be believers or non-believers, saying “See, God causes all things that happen, even causing people to be wicked for His purposes and glory. But then He still holds them responsible for it. We don’t have to understand it; we just have to accept it, because He is God.” (They've all been trained to do this.)
But the easy answer here (which they refuse to see) is that God didn’t cause Assyria to be wicked people and to do wicked things (Can you find a verse that says He did?). He just worked their self-chosen wickedness into His plans, almost like saying “You want to be wicked? Fine! Then go be wicked over there by Israel for awhile, to punish them for their waywardness. And then when you’re done, I can punish you for being the wicked people you chose to be.”
And He can rightly, justly do this because He didn’t make them be wicked; He just worked their wicked choices into His plans. (Kinda like cops setting up an undercover sting where cops use a criminal's bad choices to help them catch other criminals. They didn't cause the criminal to be a criminal or to do bad things, they just incorporated the criminal's decisions into a plan for good, to get justice done.)
Likewise, they bring up how God used wicked men to put Jesus to death. But can you find one verse that says God caused them to be wicked? Or did He just let them be the wicked people they wanted to be and then put it to good use, working it into His salvation plans?
But the Calvinist will always use these examples to “prove” that Calvi-god causes sin but punishes people for it, and that it’s okay because he is “sovereign.”
But if God causes everything for His glory, every evil and sin, then Calvinists would have to conclude that murder glorifies God ... and abortion and child abuse and suicide and rape and every other sin out there.
And they actually do conclude that these things are ultimately for good, for God's glory. Listen to this clip of Calvinist James White defending his belief that child-rape is caused by God, because if it wasn't caused by God then there would be no purpose in it.
So, in Calvinism, it's so much better to have a God who causes child-rape than for Him to simply allow someone to make that evil decision on their own, because at least we can know it has a purpose then, that it's a "meaningful" rape!?!
What the @#$%!?! (Oh, my blood is boiling! Don't get me started!)
(And chill out, dude ... cuz all I said was "What the at sign, hashtag, dollar sign, percent". 😉)
Yeah, that totally makes Calvi-god worth trusting and loving, now doesn't it!?!
(What is wrong with Calvinists that they can't see the evil in this? What a strong hold Satan has on their minds!)
Serious question: If all evil is caused by God for His glory, why should we take a stand against any of it? Why be concerned for those going to hell, for those struggling with addictions, for those being abused, for those being aborted? Wouldn't fighting against the evil in the world actually be fighting against the things that God is "causing" for His "glory"? How dare we interfere with God's right to get glory however He wants to!?!
One dogmatic Calvinist said this about why Calvi-god causes evil: "Because it glorifies him to cause evil." And so I asked, "But if it glorifies him to cause evil, then why should we fight against it?" And he said, in all seriousness, "Because it glorifies him when we fight against evil."
So, let me get this straight: God causes evil for His glory and then He causes us to fight those very evils for His glory? Causing evil and fighting evil are both equally glorifying to God?
Ultimately, in Calvinism, you would have to conclude that all evils are really good, God-glorifying, and God-pleasing. In Calvinism, there really is no line between good and evil. (Who do you think wants to spread the message that God causes evil for His glory and so it's good? Because it's sure not God.)
But what is it again that Jesus said about a house divided in Matthew 12:25-26: "Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand?"
But yet Calvinists would have us believe that it's okay for God to first cause evil and then cause people to fight that evil, all for His glory. But this is simply God fighting God, making plans to thwart His plans, using His glory to fight His glory. (Makes sense, huh?) And according to Jesus, a kingdom that fights itself cannot stand; it comes to ruin. (Once again, who do you think wants this kind of message to spread? Because it's sure not God.)
Leave it to Satan to use God's glory against God! To use humility against Christians, convincing us that "humble" Christians accept God's "sovereign right" to cause sin and evil! And to get a bunch of well-meaning Christians to fight for and spread the idea that God is the kind of God who is glorified by child-rape and putting people in hell!
Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!
12. (We're getting closer to the end. It's gonna go faster now.)
Calvinism says ... "Predestination/election/chosen" verses are always about God predestining people for salvation.
No wonder they have so much support for their view.
No wonder they have so much support for their view.
But the Bible shows ... "Predestination/election/chosen" verses are about God predetermining other things, such as predestining that believers will grow to be more like Christ, be redeemed, get an inheritance, bring God glory, or about God choosing the generation that would be the first to get salvation through faith in Jesus, or about God choosing people for certain jobs, roles, responsibilities, etc. It's never about God predestining certain people for heaven.
A sampling of verses Calvinists use to "prove" Calvinist predestination [and what they really mean]:
A sampling of verses Calvinists use to "prove" Calvinist predestination [and what they really mean]:
Ephesians 1:11-12 (KJV): "In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: that we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ." [The inheritance believers get - and I would add the glory believers will bring Christ - is what was predestined, not whether or not we were chosen for salvation. Anyone who trusts in Christ will get an inheritance and bring God glory.]
Romans 8:29-30 (KJV): “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son … Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called; and whom he called, them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified.” [God predestines those whom He “foreknows” (true Christ-followers) to be conformed to the image of His Son. This is not about God predestining certain “elected” sinners to salvation. It’s about God determining the destination of a believer’s path, the direction our path heads after we choose to believe in Jesus – to grow to be more like Jesus and to eventually be glorified.]
Ephesians 1:4: “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight …” [God determined that those who are “in Him” (who believe in Him) would be "holy and blameless" in His sight, because anyone who puts their faith in Jesus accepts His sacrificial death on their behalf, letting His blood pay for their sins and wipe their slates clean. Anyone who chooses to be “in Jesus” will be holy and blameless in God’s sight.]
Ephesians 1:5: "he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ." [Calvinists use this to say that God predestined who would be "adopted," who would be saved. But the concordance says "adoption" is NOT about being brought into God's family by spiritual birth, but it's about God promising to "adopt" into His family anyone who believes. Anyone and everyone who chooses to believe in Jesus will be accepted into God's family and will experience the full benefits of being a child of God. And this "adoption" will be fully realized at the redemption of our bodies: "Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies" (Romans 8:23). Paul defines "adoption as sons" as being "the redemption of our bodies," not "the salvation of our souls" as Calvinists would claim. God has not predestined who goes to heaven, but He has predestined that all believers - all His children - will one day experience the fullness of our adoption at the redemption of our bodies.]
2 Thessalonians 2:13: “But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers loved by the Lord, because from the beginning God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth.” [The verse does not stop at "God chose you to be saved." This is not about individual people being chosen for salvation. It's about God choosing that particular generation to be the first to be saved through belief in Jesus, as opposed to the generations before that who were saved through their devotion to God, as evidenced in their adherence to the Law. It’s about God choosing the method of salvation, not who gets saved. And to be even more accurate, the word “saved” in this verse - according to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible with Vine's Expository Dictionary - isn’t even about eternal salvation, heaven and hell.* It’s about God promising to save true believers from the wrath He will pour out on the ungodly at the end of this age. This isn’t a Calvinist “predestined for heaven” verse at all. It’s about God choosing to switch the method of salvation at that time to faith in Jesus specifically, and it’s about God choosing to spare true believers from His end times wrath. Big difference!]
John 15:16: "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit..." [This is not about people being chosen for salvation, but about Jesus choosing His disciples and appointing them the task of taking the Gospel to the world.]
Every verse Calvinists use to support Calvinist predestination/election (that God chooses who goes to heaven and who goes to hell) is actually about something else. You have to look at each verse in context to see what's really being predestined, who's being "chosen" and what they're being chosen for. And it's never "predestined to heaven or hell."
So do not let them sucker you into Calvinism when they go "See, the Bible has the word 'predestined' in it. And 'elect." So you have to believe in Calvinism."
My ex-pastor once said something like "We tend to have a problem with the idea that God can choose who to save and who not to save. We don't like it. But the Bible clearly teaches it. The Bible calls it 'the doctrine of election, the doctrine of predestination'."
Really!?! And which verse would that be? Which verse uses the phrase "doctrine of election" or "doctrine of predestination"?
Predestination and election are biblical concepts, but not the way Calvinists define them. And it makes all the difference! (Examine the worms.)
(See "Predestined for salvation? Or for something else?" for more on that.)
1 Thessalonians 5:8-9: "But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. For God did not appoint us to wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ." (Both of those "salvations" are about escaping the end-times wrath.)
Romans 13:11: "... because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed." [Not only do Calvinists misunderstand "salvation" (making it all about the predestined eternal salvation of our souls), but those who think we can lose our salvation, that we have to maintain it till we die, misunderstand it too, leading to problems in their theology. They would see a verse like this and say "If our salvation is 'nearer,' it means it's not here yet, that we haven't actually obtained it yet. Therefore, we need to keep working towards it till we get to the end of our lives, which means that we can still lose it along the way, because we don't actually have it yet. We can lose our salvation by sinning, and so we have to always ask forgiveness for every sin we commit. If we die with one unforgiven sin, then we lost our salvation." I knew a friend like this, who said that you could be a perfect Christian all the way till the end, but if you yelled out a cuss word during a car accident and died right then, without asking forgiveness, you'd go to hell. Big problems arise when we don't know the correct definition of words. In this case, "salvation" is not about eternal salvation but about being spared from end-times wrath. This contradicts both the Calvinist's and Arminianist's theological views.]
Hebrews 1:14, 9:28: "Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?" and "... he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him."
1 Peter 1:5: "who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time."
2 Peter 3:15: "Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation..."
Some of these could sound like proof for Calvinist predestination ("God chose you to be saved," "appointed to receive salvation," "those who will inherit salvation") ... until you understand it the right way. It's not that God chooses certain sinners for eternal salvation. It's that God chooses to spare believers from His end-times wrath. Big difference. And it really knocks the legs out from under Calvinism.
13.
(Hang in there, almost done!) And lastly, I think the Bible holds God's wrath, glory, and love in balance. But Calvinism overemphasizes God's wrath/glory and underemphasizes His love.
As I said, they believe God doesn't even really love all people, only the elect. They believe it brings God glory to predestine most people to hell, to cause people to be unbelievers so that He can get glory for exercising His justice/wrath against sin. And since it's about His glory, we just have to accept this Calvinist teaching. Because we are too tiny to understand it.
(But of course we can't understand it. You can't understand an unbiblical, imbalanced, illogical, contradictory theology!)
Yes, God's glory should be held up high. The highest. But to do this, Calvinists reduce humans too low, lower than what God says. They base our value only on the "glory" God gets through us. (And for the record, God does not cause people to be unbelievers so that He can punish them in hell for His glory.)
A major error of Calvinists is that they take a biblical concept and extend it too far, beyond what Scripture teaches. If the Bible shows God plans and causes one thing, Calvinists think it's even more biblical to say God plans and causes all things. If God is sovereign, then it's even better to make Him so sovereign that it does away with free-will. If it's humble to submit to God and trust that He is in control over all, then it's even more humble for Calvinists to submit to the idea that God actively controls/micromanages everything, even sin and evil. Etc.
But once you go outside of what the Bible says, you are creating a false theology, your own god. And refusing to take God at His word is definitely not glorifying to Him!
[And do you wanna hear something interesting? According to John Calvin (in his Institutes Book 1, Chapter 14, Section 15), Satan's goal is to extinguish God's glory. Yet according to Calvinism, God causes everything that happens for His own glory. So if God controls Satan, as Calvin and Calvinists believe, then God is causing Satan to try to extinguish God's glory, for God's glory. Interesting. Self-sabotaging. Schizophrenic. And yet, what does the Bible say? That a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. So either God cannot stand because He is divided against Himself ... or Calvinism is wrong.]
But God Himself believes we have value and loves us tremendously, enough to send Jesus to die for all of our sins, no matter how "low and insignificant" we are in comparison to Him. Just so we could have a relationship with Him in heaven. Because He wants it. Because He wants us. God doesn't love us because we deserve it, but because He wanted to. Because that's the kind of God He is.
If God Himself says that we matter greatly to Him, that we're worth the price of Jesus's blood (not because of anything we are or do, just because God values us that much even if we don't deserve it), then how much does it glorify Him for Calvinists to spread the idea that God only really cares about Himself and His glory, and that we have no value other than the glory God can squeeze from us?
(See my posts "Are We Only Here For God's Glory? What About His Love?" and "Is God Only Concerned About His Glory and Being Famous?")
Here is an excerpt from my "Letter to our elders regarding Calvinism growing in our church", regarding this very thing:
Another reason I don't care for our Calvinist pastor's preaching is that it's all information for the head, theological academic stuff. It's not preaching for the heart, for the hurting heart, for life. There's no encouragement in there, no "God loves you and you matter to Him," no "let's figure out how to get through these hard trials of life together," etc. It's always just more theological and academic information for the mind.
Calvinist teaching is always loaded with how depraved we are, how insignificant we should feel before God, how virtually worthless we are apart from the glory God gets through us, about how God has predetermined everything, about how we have no effect on God or on our lives, about how our choices are not really our choices because we are just acting out the parts God's already written for us, about how our eternity has already been decided for us and we can't change it, and about how God causes everything but we are still accountable. And how we don't have to understand how that works, we just have to accept it ... or else we'll be dishonoring God. (Which is kinda ironic because if we bring God dishonor it would have to be because He caused us to bring Him dishonor. Because, according to Calvinism, God causes everything.)
But sometimes, we just need to be reminded of how much God loves us, how valuable we are to Him, how He can and will help us through this hard life. But when the sermons are all about God being so far above us, about how low in the dirt we should view ourselves, about God only being concerned with His own glory and how we should only be concerned with that too ... well, it's really hard to connect with a God like that, to want a relationship with a God like that, to feel like He wants a relationship with us.
Sometimes we don't need another theological beating. Sometimes we just need a heavenly hug.
And it's interesting because in this link, the writer tells us that a Calvinist pastor usually avoids messages about how God loves you and Jesus died for you. They have to avoid these because they don't know, according to their Calvinism, if God loves everyone in the audience or if Jesus died for everyone in the audience. Because, according to Calvinists, God only loved the elect and Jesus only died for the elect. So you won't hear those general "God loves you" kinds of messages from them.
Calvinists are not about God's love. They're all about God's glory, our insignificance, His ultimate control, our complete inability to do anything. Calvinists like to remind us regularly about how we are only here for God's glory, so that He can glorify Himself through us. I have no problem with God being glorified and with bringing Himself glory in what He does (that's only appropriate), but sometimes it's nice to hear that He made us because He loves us, because He wants a relationship with us, not just because He is looking for another way to bring Himself glory.
I don't think God made us just for His glory. I think He also made us for His enjoyment. Because He wants people to love, and He wants people to love Him. Because it brings Him joy. I found a verse - 2 Corinthians 5:4-5 - about one of the reasons why God made us, and this passage doesn't say it's only all about His glory: "... we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now it is God who made us for this very purpose ..."
To me, this sounds like the very reason God made us was so that we could have eternal life in heaven with Him. He wants us in heaven with Him. And that is the reason He made us. Even though He is glorified through everything, I think one reason He made us is because He wanted us, not just because He needed to glorify Himself more. And a God who truly loves us and wants a relationship with us is a God I want to get close to and to love too.
What is it that Paul prayed about for the Ephesians?
"And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." (Ephesians 3:17-19)
God is not just about using us to get more glory. God was completely complete in Himself before we ever came along. He needs nothing from us.
But He does want us! He wants us to know His love fully, deeply. Knowing His love is what will fill us completely with the fullness of God - not reducing ourselves to such tiny, insignificant worms who are only here because God wanted to bring Himself more glory.
God made us out of love! God wants us to come to Him, to spend eternity with Him, because of love!
Calvinist teaching is always loaded with how depraved we are, how insignificant we should feel before God, how virtually worthless we are apart from the glory God gets through us, about how God has predetermined everything, about how we have no effect on God or on our lives, about how our choices are not really our choices because we are just acting out the parts God's already written for us, about how our eternity has already been decided for us and we can't change it, and about how God causes everything but we are still accountable. And how we don't have to understand how that works, we just have to accept it ... or else we'll be dishonoring God. (Which is kinda ironic because if we bring God dishonor it would have to be because He caused us to bring Him dishonor. Because, according to Calvinism, God causes everything.)
But sometimes, we just need to be reminded of how much God loves us, how valuable we are to Him, how He can and will help us through this hard life. But when the sermons are all about God being so far above us, about how low in the dirt we should view ourselves, about God only being concerned with His own glory and how we should only be concerned with that too ... well, it's really hard to connect with a God like that, to want a relationship with a God like that, to feel like He wants a relationship with us.
Sometimes we don't need another theological beating. Sometimes we just need a heavenly hug.
And it's interesting because in this link, the writer tells us that a Calvinist pastor usually avoids messages about how God loves you and Jesus died for you. They have to avoid these because they don't know, according to their Calvinism, if God loves everyone in the audience or if Jesus died for everyone in the audience. Because, according to Calvinists, God only loved the elect and Jesus only died for the elect. So you won't hear those general "God loves you" kinds of messages from them.
Calvinists are not about God's love. They're all about God's glory, our insignificance, His ultimate control, our complete inability to do anything. Calvinists like to remind us regularly about how we are only here for God's glory, so that He can glorify Himself through us. I have no problem with God being glorified and with bringing Himself glory in what He does (that's only appropriate), but sometimes it's nice to hear that He made us because He loves us, because He wants a relationship with us, not just because He is looking for another way to bring Himself glory.
I don't think God made us just for His glory. I think He also made us for His enjoyment. Because He wants people to love, and He wants people to love Him. Because it brings Him joy. I found a verse - 2 Corinthians 5:4-5 - about one of the reasons why God made us, and this passage doesn't say it's only all about His glory: "... we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now it is God who made us for this very purpose ..."
To me, this sounds like the very reason God made us was so that we could have eternal life in heaven with Him. He wants us in heaven with Him. And that is the reason He made us. Even though He is glorified through everything, I think one reason He made us is because He wanted us, not just because He needed to glorify Himself more. And a God who truly loves us and wants a relationship with us is a God I want to get close to and to love too.
What is it that Paul prayed about for the Ephesians?
"And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." (Ephesians 3:17-19)
God is not just about using us to get more glory. God was completely complete in Himself before we ever came along. He needs nothing from us.
But He does want us! He wants us to know His love fully, deeply. Knowing His love is what will fill us completely with the fullness of God - not reducing ourselves to such tiny, insignificant worms who are only here because God wanted to bring Himself more glory.
God made us out of love! God wants us to come to Him, to spend eternity with Him, because of love!
"For God so loved the world..."
My heart is aching for some good, godly encouragement about God's love. For some practical messages about how He'll carry us through the hard times and how His love for us spurs us on to love Him more, etc. I don't need more academic information, especially when it's loaded with Calvinism. My soul is drying up at this church. Ugh! But that's my own personal thoughts about this. And yet, I know I'm not the only one thinking it. Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!
My heart is aching for some good, godly encouragement about God's love. For some practical messages about how He'll carry us through the hard times and how His love for us spurs us on to love Him more, etc. I don't need more academic information, especially when it's loaded with Calvinism. My soul is drying up at this church. Ugh! But that's my own personal thoughts about this. And yet, I know I'm not the only one thinking it. Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!
(Added May 2023) Does the Bible emphasize only His glory? Does it say that He only cares about Himself and how much glory He can get from us? Does it say that God causes people to be unbelievers so that He can put them in hell for His glory? (Find me one verse - just one - that says this!)
Let's see what the Bible says about the kind of God He is and what's on His heart:
1 John 3:16: "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us...." [Did He die only for His glory? Or did He die because of His love for us?]
Ephesians 2:4: "But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions..." [Why did God give us life in Jesus? For glory? Or for love?]
1 John 3:1: "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!"
1 John 4:9,16-18: "This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him.... And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like Him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear ..." [God showed what? Love. We rely on what? Love. God is what? Love. Whoever lives in what? Love. We have confidence because what is made complete in us? Love. What drives out fear? That's right: love.]
Romans 8:37-39: "Now, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons ... neither anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Seems like God's love for us is a pretty big theme in the Bible, one of His main reasons for creating and dying for people.
And He doesn't just love believers ("the elect," as Calvinists would call it), but He loves all people:
John 3:16-17: "For God so loved the world ... God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him."
1 John 4:19: "We love because he first loved us." [And when did He love us? When we were still sinners...]
Romans 5:8: "But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." [Are we all sinners, or are only the elect sinners? If Jesus died for sinners, then He died for all.]
Luke 19:10: "For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost." [Were we all lost before being saved, or just "the elect"? If we were all lost, then Jesus came for us all. But ... an interesting conundrum ... if Jesus came for the lost and if (in Calvinism) Jesus came only for the elect, then it means only the elect were "lost". (And then what would that make the non-elect?) But if, as Calvinists believe, the elect were predestined to heaven before they were ever born - if they were always saved, always on their way to heaven, never on their way to hell - then it would mean they were never lost at any point in time, which would mean that Jesus didn't come for them - because Luke 19:10 clearly says He came for the lost. Can you see the conundrum? Likewise, Luke 5:32 says "I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." And so if Jesus came to call the unrighteous and if (in Calvinism) Jesus came to call only the elect, then only the elect are unrighteous. But contradictorily, if the elect were always saved before the beginning of time, then they were always "righteous" in God's eyes, which means that Jesus didn't come for them because He didn't come for the "righteous." Can you see it? I know this is twisting Scripture a bit, but maybe we should use it on Calvinists to beat them at their own game. It's a catch-22. Ask them if the elect were always considered righteous in God's eyes, if they were always "found". If they say "no," they'd essentially be saying the elect were not always saved, not always predestined to heaven, which would contradict (their misuse of and misunderstanding of) Eph. 1:4 and Rev. 13:8. But if they say "yes," then hit them with Luke 19:10 and Luke 5:32, showing that Jesus came for the lost and the unrighteous (which the elect never really were), and watch them squirm. Just for fun.]
Ezekiel 33:11: "Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?'" [God wants all people, even the wicked, to repent and be saved. That's how much He loves us all.]
2 Peter 3:9: "... He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance."
Romans 11:32: "For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all." [In His mercy, He offers eternal life to all people. It's up to us if we accept it or not.]
God loves all people. And we know this because the Bible tells us so.
Of course, I don't mean that He's always pleased all the time with all people equally. I'm not talking about God's feelings towards us and what we do. He does feel differently towards us when we do evil compared to when we do good. But I'm talking about God's over-arching saving love - a love that wants all people to be saved, even wicked people; a love that loves sinners so much that He wants to save them from their sin. God loved all people enough to send Jesus to die for us all, so that we all could have eternal life in heaven. His love paid the penalty for all our sins and so eternal life is offered to all, but it's up to us to accept or reject it. And if we reject it, we go to hell.
This is far different than the Calvinist god who only loved "the elect" enough to save them but who created the non-elect so that he could hate them and cause them to reject him and go to hell so that he could get worshipped for showing off his justice by punishing sin ... a god who (according to my Calvinist pastor) loves himself most and worships himself, and so he must do whatever he can for more glory and worship for himself, even if it's predestining people to hell (and by golly, we'd better be okay with that because "it's for his glory"!) ... a god who preplans/causes all sin, evil, and unbelief because it pleases him and glorifies him (but then he punishes the people for what he caused).
Is that really "glorifying"? Is that really "justice"? Can a god like that be trusted? And would a god like that - who loves himself above all, who uses people as mere tools for getting more glory for himself, who is glorified by causing all our sin and evil and unbelief - care at all about our feelings, about healing our broken hearts or comforting us in our pain or soothing our fears?
The Calvinist god wouldn't.
But the God of the Bible does:
Isaiah 61:1: "The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me... He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted..."
Psalm 34:18: "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."
1 Peter 5:7: "Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you."
Isaiah 40:11,29,31: "He tends His flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in His arms and carries them close to His heart; He gently leads those that have young... He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak… Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not be faint.”
Isaiah 41:10,13: "So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with My righteous right hand… For I am the Lord, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, ‘Do not fear; I will help you.’”
The God of the Bible doesn't just care about Himself, but He truly cares about us too. All of us. All that we go through. All that we struggle with. And He is not only about His glory, but He is also about His love. It was His love for us that held Him on the cross, that made Him die in our place to offer us life. And it's His incredible, huge, self-sacrificial love that humbles us and makes us want to love Him in return.
[Some of my favorite songs: Oh, What Love by The City Harmonic and I Am by Crowder and Hallelujah Christmas by Cloverton and Sweetly Broken by Jeremy Riddle and Secret Ambition by Michael W. Smith. How could you not love a God like this, a God who loved us this much even though we are so human?]
But Calvi-god is only about himself and his glory, a glory he gets by causing sin and evil and unbelief (but then he punishes us for it). And this imbalance - this Calvinist misunderstanding of God's character - destroys His righteousness, holiness, justice, trustworthiness, love, mercy, grace, goodness, the gospel, His Word, etc. That's some serious collateral damage! A heavy price for a little bit of extra "glory".
Question: Would a "glory hog" like Calvi-god share his glory with pathetic little meat-puppets like us? Would Calvi-god, who only cares about getting more and more glory, even causing evil and sin to get it, share any of that hard-won glory with tiny humans who are mere tools for getting more glory for himself?
No, he wouldn't.
But the God of the Bible would: "He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ." (2 Thess. 2:14)
The God of the Bible calls us to eternal life through the gospel so that we can share in Christ's glory. He doesn't only care about Himself, about getting more and more glory. He cares about people too. He loves us so much that He's willing to share some glory with us. Not because we deserve it, but because that's the kind of God He is - a good, generous, loving, self-sacrificial God, a God who's not glorified by causing evil but who's glorified by defeating evil, by saving us from evil.
The Calvinist god is glorified by evil, but the God of the Bible is glorified in spite of evil. The Calvinist god wants people in hell, but the God of the Bible wants to save people from hell. The Calvinist god causes sin, but the God of the Bible died to save people from sin. The Calvinist god is glorified when people do evil and reject him, but the God of the Bible is glorified when people do good and accept Him. The Calvinist god loves only himself and "the elect" whom he caused to love him, but the God of the Bible loves all people and offers eternal life to all people, but He lets us choose to love Him back or not.
Can you see the difference? It's a very big difference.
[And on a different note, how can Calvi-god - who hates his enemies, the non-elect - tell us to love our enemies and pray for them (Matt. 5:44)? And if he predestined wicked people to commit the sins they do and go to hell, why would Jesus pray for them (Luke 23:34)? Wouldn't that be praying against His own predestined plans and Will, against what He caused for His glory (if Calvinism were true)? And 1 Cor. 13:6 says that love does not rejoice in evil, yet Calvi-god rejoices in causing people to sin and reject him because it brings him glory. Wouldn't this then mean that Calvi-god is not love, which would mean that he's not the God of the Bible because the God of the Bible is love (1 John 4:16)? And if Calvi-god rejoices in evil and if he only loves the elect, shouldn't Calvinists do so too, especially since Eph. 5:1 and 1 John 2:6 tell us to imitate God, to walk as Jesus did? Why would Calvi-god tell us to not gloat when our enemies fall and to not rejoice when they stumble (Prov. 24:17) if he himself predestined/causes them to fall and stumble for his glory? Shouldn't Calvinists rejoice in whatever he causes for his glory? Just some things to think about, showing how contradictory and nonsensical the Calvinist god is.]
Calvinists think it's humble to believe that God preplans and causes all evil, sin, and unbelief for His glory, that He would damn people to eternal hell for His glory.
But I think it's much more humbling to believe that even though we are tiny, fallen, broken creatures who could never do enough for Him in return - and even though many people will reject Him and all that He offers, all that He did for us - God still loves us and wants a relationship with all of us. And He wanted it badly enough to come down to our dirty sinful world, wearing a fragile fleshy body, in order to die on the cross in our place. Mocked, spit at, whipped, rejected. In order to pay the penalty we owe. Because He knows we can never pay it ourselves. To offer us all forgiveness, salvation, eternal life. Because He wants us in heaven with Him. Because He loves us. Just because He does.
A God who loves us that much and who asks us to love Him back - who offers us everything for nothing - is a God I want to love, worship, serve, obey, glorify.
Whereas Calvi-god just makes me want to throw up.
Wrapping it up, coming to the end now:
The Bible can be read and understood by all. It's quite clear and consistent in its teachings. It makes sense.
But Calvinists have turned the Bible, the Gospel, into something only for Calvinists, as if it's a code - full of secret definitions, hidden messages, and double meanings - that only Calvinists can know and understand.
But Calvinists have turned the Bible, the Gospel, into something only for Calvinists, as if it's a code - full of secret definitions, hidden messages, and double meanings - that only Calvinists can know and understand.
But Calvinists don't "know the code." They made up the code and then reinterpreted the Bible to fit. They started with their own presuppositions and then built their theology around it, reinterpreting verses/words to fit and explaining away/twisting the multitudes of verses that contradict Calvinism.
And they precondition us to interpret verses in a Calvinist way by first telling us "what the Bible teaches" and how to understand it (their interpretation of it), and then they lead us to the (out-of-context) verses that "prove" it, helping us "discover" Calvinism in the Bible.
They tell us that predestination is in the Bible, then they tell us how to define it, then they lead us to Romans 8 and Ephesians 1 and they point out the words "predestined" and "chosen" (which we've already been preconditioned to interpret Calvinisticly), and then they say "See! Told ya so. I was right." And we fall for it because we didn't research for ourselves to see what was predestined, who was chosen, and what they were chosen for, etc. In fact, we don't even think we need to research it because the Calvinist already told us what it all means.
We're suckered into it because we want to be humble and to honor God. We're suckered into it because we're trusting, thinking that they've reached a higher level of theological insight/knowledge than us and so they must know what they're talking about. We're suckered into it because we don't do our own research, but instead we let someone else tell us what to think.
But their theological view falls apart when the Bible is read in context, when words are interpreted correctly, and when you keep in mind the whole of Scripture and God's revealed character throughout.
In the end, Calvinism creates many more questions (unanswerable questions) than it answers, and it creates tons of illogical contradictions about Scripture and God's character. (Why do you think it takes them hundreds of pages to explain the Calvinist gospel, when the book of John did it in a few verses?)
In the end, Calvinism creates many more questions (unanswerable questions) than it answers, and it creates tons of illogical contradictions about Scripture and God's character. (Why do you think it takes them hundreds of pages to explain the Calvinist gospel, when the book of John did it in a few verses?)
This is why they have to always come back to "You don't have to understand it. You just have to accept it because it's what the Bible says."
Umm ... No, it's not!
Calvinism is dangerous because it's a lie, because it twists God and His Word totally out of shape until it presents a whole different God, a whole different gospel.
It destroys the Gospel, God's character, God's Truth, Jesus's sacrifice, people's faith, people's relationship with God and trust of God, etc. It withholds salvation from a great multitude of people, saying that Jesus never even died for them and that there's nothing they can do about it. It says that God is glorified for causing sin and causing people to go to hell, when actually Jesus died to save us from sin and hell. It uses God's Word against Him. It uses the Gospel to destroy the Gospel. It uses humility to manipulate Christians. It causes us to question what God says in His Word. (After all, if God told Adam and Eve that He didn't want them to eat the forbidden fruit but then He caused them to eat the fruit because it was His "secret Will" that they sinned, then how can we ever trust what God commands us to do? When His real Will might actually be the opposite of what He commands?)
If all this doesn't make you deep-down-in-your-soul angry, if you don't see how Calvinism twists Scripture and damages God's character and truth, then you either don't really understand Calvinism or you don't really understand the Bible.
I'm sorry, but there's no polite way to say it.
And how could we ever trust a God like that!?!
But here's the good news: You don't have to. Because Calvinism's god is not the God of the Bible. Calvinism is not the Gospel.
Calvinism is a house of cards built on a foundation of Jell-O. And if you take out one card, the whole thing falls apart. If you disprove their idea of "total inability" or "sovereignty" or "predestination" or "dead," etc., then the whole thing unravels. Because each point hinges on all the others. They're all built on top of each other.
[However, as I pointed out earlier, all of Calvinism's ideas and points interlock so tightly that it appears to be a very strong house - solid, well-put-together, consistent - which makes it appear to be truth. And this is how they get you, because it looks so solid. From the outside.
But this is why you must go deep inside the house and closely question/examine every "card" they use: every point they make, every term they use, every illustration they use, every question they ask you, every verse they refer to, etc. Only then, as you begin to pull on the cards, will you be able to see how illogical, self-contradictory, and contrary to Scripture it really is. (This is why they have to resort to manipulation and shaming - to prevent you from pulling on the cards. Because when you do, it all falls apart.)]
So go ahead and pull on a few cards.
Ask a Calvinist a few more questions about their contradictions and the things that don't make sense.
Ask them to explain their answers more - because the more they answer, the more they trap themselves and contradict what they first said, what they wanted you to think they were saying.
Read the verses they use in context, in the whole paragraph (preferably the KJV, but for sure not the ESV), using commonsense and looking at the plain, clear teaching of it in order to see what it's really saying (and look up words in the concordance too, to see the original meaning of it).
[Calvinist preachers say "The Bible teaches such-and-such Calvinist concept." But you need to look at what the Bible actually says. I believe Calvinist preachers deliberately use the word "teach" because they know the Bible doesn't outright say their Calvinist ideas. But if Calvinists piece together enough half-verses taken out of context and redefine words and break things into "two different types of ..." and add double layers, then they can make it appear to "teach" what they think it does, in contradiction to what the Bible plainly says. Don't let them convince you of their ideas of what the Bible teaches, but instead look at what it actually says.]
Dig a little deeper and see what happens. See if their answers get more logical, or more convoluted. See if their theology sounds more biblical, or less biblical. See if they give you solid answers that make sense, or if they have to resort to deflection, distraction, shaming, and manipulation. See if God's character gets better looking, or worse looking. See if He becomes more trustworthy, or less trustworthy. See if the house of cards stays stable, or if it starts to crumble. (Want to see a master of manipulation and deflection? See "MacArthur's Manipulations.")
Don't just accept Calvinism because it appears so solid or because all their points interconnect tightly. Pull on a few cards and see what happens. Examine the worms! (And if you need to, see "Healing your soul from Calvinism's damage".)
So now, given all that we've looked at here, can you really say that this issue "doesn't matter"? Do you really think that Calvinism and the Bible are teaching the same thing?
If they aren't, then which one's wrong? Which one's right? Which one will you believe and defend?
Phew, you made it to the end! I'm proud of you, that's quite an accomplishment. Now stand up, walk around a bit, and let the blood flow back into your legs. And go get yourself a piece of cheesecake or chocolate pie or whatever you like; you deserve it.
And now for more of reading pleasure, here are the links in this post:
And here's a post about us leaving our Calvinist church
"12 Tips on how to think critically about Calvinism."
"Calvinist Tactics Exposed" from Beyond the Fundamentals
"Calvinist Tactics Exposed" from Beyond the Fundamentals
"Connecting With God For A Breakthrough" (Tony Evans)
Listen to this clip of Calvinist James White defending his belief that child-rape is caused by God
In this link, the writer tells us that a Calvinist pastor usually avoids messages about how God loves you and Jesus died for you.
