Why I Won't Believe In Predestination, in Calvinism!

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Because I refuse to believe that anyone is beyond the reach of Jesus!  I refuse to believe that Jesus didn't die for everyone, that He didn't die for all sins, that He doesn't love everyone, that there are people without hope!

If other people want to believe that, then that's their problem.  But I refuse to believe it because ... I don't think it's what the Bible teaches.

I believe Jesus died for all, that every person can find hope and healing and salvation in Him.  I believe He loves all people and wants a relationship with all of us.  I believe that His death made salvation available for all people, but it's up to us to decide if we will accept Him or reject Him.

Calvinism - the idea that God has already predetermined who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, and that there's nothing we can do to change it - is a Bible-altering, faith-damaging, soul-deadening theology.  And I've had enough of it!  It makes me sick to hear how it destroys Jesus's sacrifice and God's love and God's grace, to hear that God causes unbelievers to reject Him but then holds them accountable for rejecting Him, to hear that God doesn't love all people the same, that Jesus didn't die for all people, and that it somehow brings God glory to predestined most people for hell.

It's sick!  It's insanity!  And it completely destroys the love, justness, righteousness, and grace of God.  It destroys the Gospel!

I think about this when I watch my favorite Christian movie "Do You Believe?"  After getting sick to my stomach with all the research I've been doing into Calvinism and after dealing with years of Calvinist preaching from our Calvinist pastor (whom I won't listen to anymore), it's so good to watch this movie.  Because it shows that we're all broken, yet we all matter to God.  That there's hope for all of us.  That no one is beyond His love.  No one is outside the reach of His healing hand, His saving grace!

No matter the life you've lived, the sins you've committed, the pain you carry in your heart, Jesus has already paid for your sins on the cross so that you can find hope, healing, forgiveness and salvation in Him.  If you will accept it!  If you will accept Him into your heart as Lord and Savior!  


I remember when I went to go see Unbroken: Path to Redemption (the rest of the story to Unbroken) at the theater awhile ago.  (Go see them, both of them!  Great movies!)  We're watching this broken, hurting man struggling with his fears and anger and hopelessness, and I couldn't help thinking, "How can anyone believe that there are hurting, broken souls who are beyond the reach of Jesus, that there are people who were deliberately created to never find eternal hope or healing, to suffer eternally!?!"

What a horrible, horrible theology Calvinism is!  That some people - most people - are created by God to be lost and broken, to hurt forever, never to be found and healed.  That Jesus doesn't love all people.  That He only died for the "elect," not for everyone.  That if you are predestined to hell, you can't do anything about it because Jesus's grace was never meant for you, and that your eternity in hell was determined by God because it will bring Him glory somehow.  

I refuse to believe that!  And I think it does a grave injustice to the Gospel.  It destroys God's grace.  It turns God into the cause of evil, of sin.  It turns God into a liar.  It turns God into a monster.  And ... it's simply not what the Bible teaches.  

I believe every person is loved and pursued by God.  Every person's sin was covered by Jesus's death.  That's the Jesus I believe in and love and worship!  

Every person matters to Him!  Eternally!

He is holding out His hand to all of us.  He cares for and about all of us.  He is calling to all of us.  But will we hear and respond?

Forgiveness, healing, grace, faith, and salvation are available to all.  But will we accept it?

Jesus cares more about where you're going than where you've been!  He wants you with Him in heaven.  He loves you with an amazing love, enough to die in your place so that you can live with Him in heaven.  He's reaching out His hand, saying, "Grab onto Me!  Believe in Me!"    

Will you reach out and grab His hand?

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Introduction Here's a great new video from Alana L.:   5 Signs Your Loved One is Becoming a Calvinist    I've been wanting someone to make a video like this for awhile now - to help people recognize Calvinism when they hear it, to help them realize it's a big deal that they should take seriously and research, and to help them know why it's wrong and how it spreads. Those who've studied against Calvinism know how very tricksy it is.  But those who  don't know anything about it, or how to recognize it, or how it takes over, or how it sounds like it's teaching one thing when it's  really  teaching something totally different, or how it twists or misinterprets Scripture... well, they  are sitting ducks, fish in a barrel, who become easy targets for a Calvinist pastor (especially a stealth Calvinist pastor) who slowly and strategically indoctrinates them into this twisted theology, before they ever see it coming.   [Note: I am not judging the hearts of Calvin
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I  found a lot more names to add to my list of known Calvinists (found in my various  "How to Tell if a Church, Pastor, or Website is Calvinist"  posts).  But instead of adding this huge list to all those posts, I am going to put it here, and I'll just provide a link on those posts to this one.  [FYI: I added a note at the bottom of this post on May 5, 2021.] So here it is, a "master list" of known Calvinists to help you be careful and discerning about who you listen to and where you get your theology from.  There are plenty more Calvinists out there, but these are just the names that I ran across the most.   These are either definite, self-professed Calvinists or "most likely Calvinist," in my estimation.  (I haven't heard of most of them, but it's good to know their theology before I do.)   After finding these names in various places online, I looked up each person to see if they are Calvinist.  If they did not self-identify as a Calvinist, I
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(Oh, how we love nonsense in our country!) We women are fighting so hard to be like men, to downplay femininity, to be perceived as more masculine, to overtake any "men's realm" we find.   Because it’s “cool” and “progressive” and “strong.” But do we not realize that we are not “leveling the playing field” so much as we are destroying ourselves , the things that make women special? Women can be strong, too.   And they don’t have to be like men to do it.   Trust me, I know.  I've had four children, one by c-section and three by natural, drug-free homebirth (with over 15 hours of labor for each one).  And then I work in the home every day, all day long.  No pay.  No vacation time.  No weekends off.  No bonuses.  No overtime pay. But I do it because my family and I value my position, my role.  Even if the world doesn't. W e women can be strong and capable and accomplished in our own ways. We can be strong in our feminine grace.   We can be confi
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This was originally on the end of my post "If Calvinism is true, then God is a liar."   But I think it deserves its own post (I recently updated it a little bit, March 2021): I read something once about how very few people end up freeing themselves from the clutches of Calvinism because of the strong hold it has on people.  I think this is partly because ... 1.   We (I am talking as if I were a Calvinist here) would have to admit that we were misunderstanding Scripture this whole time, and no one wants to admit they could be wrong. 2.   Calvinism appeals to us prideful intellectuals.  (And prideful intellectuals have the greatest aversion to admitting we could be wrong.)  It makes us feel special, like we alone understand the "deeper, hidden meanings of Scripture," while the simple-minded Christians can't understand it.  Calvinism (with all of its contradictions, word play, round-about reasoning, and multiple layers of meaning for verses) gives us "de
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"But predestination!" (16B: sin, evil, suffering)

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In this series, I'm examining some things that Calvinists (especially my ex-pastor) say about predestination.   Here's the whole series on my other blog:  the pastor's sermons  ("When Calvinists say 'But predestination!'"), and my comments  1-4 (election)  and  5-6 (Romans and sovereignty)  and  7-9 (depravity, Book of Life, predestine)  and  10-11 (shaming tactics, Feb. 2015)  and  12-14 (dead, regeneration, born again)  and  15 (total depravity, manipulation)   and  16A (God's Will, babies)  and  16B (sin, evil, suffering)  and  17 (double-speak and the gospel) . Sixteen B (I broke #16 up into two halves, so picking up where we left off in the last post...) And now, moving on from the bulk of my comments to the bulk of the Calvinist quotes, showing you Calvinism in its full glory.  (And you thought you were almost done, that you already read the bulk of the Calvinist quotes.  Oh, no, we're just getting started.) Buckle your seatbelts, ladies and
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I giggle making these.  Helps me blow off steam. Only if you're elected ... So you're a Calvinist? Except for you ... "I love being a Calvinist" First I'll tell them ... Said Jesus Never! We Calvinists say ... The bookcase Researching John Calvin Snap Out Of It The Pro-Calvinism Meme Absolutely Sure ... Calvinist Lunatic If you want people ... Another Predestination Sermon It's called "Calvinism" Lucky Dude "All" Means "Some" God "In Control" "Total depravity" (AKA "Total Inability" - a concept NOT found in the Bible anywhere!) It's be
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Understanding God's Will #13, 14, 15 #13: But aren’t you limiting God’s power when you say that He’s not in total control of everything?               No, I don’t think so.    And yes, He is in control of everything as far as everything that happens to us has to go through Him first.    And I am not saying that He’s not all-powerful.    I believe that He is indeed all-powerful.    If He chose to wipe out the earth in a second, He could.    He could do whatever He wants to do.   He could control every movement we make, if that's what He wanted to do.   But I don’t think that He  does  do whatever He wants to do or control every movement we make.  Because that's not how He wanted things to be.    I think that when He created the world, He decided to make man with a free-will that He (generally) will not override, even though He can.  Because He wanted people who would choose to love Him and worship Him, not who  have to  because they have no choice.             And i
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