Christian Testimony: Cyrus - "Why I Converted from Islam to Christianity"

Here is Cyrus' Testimony (7 minutes): "Why I Converted from Islam to Christianity"

This is one enjoyable guy.  So fun to listen to.  And I am glad he shared his story, showing how God works in some of the most interesting, amazing ways.  

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List of Calvinist Preachers, Authors, Theologians, Websites, etc.

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).  [FYI: I added a note at the bottom of this post on May 5, 2021.]    And 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 Calvinists," 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 tried to figure it out based on the statements of faith of the groups/churches they belong to, the books they write, the t...
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Leaving Calvinism: Comments from Ex-Calvinists #11

Here is the last of the ex-Calvinist testimonies.  The first one is from this post:  X-Calvinist Corner .   (It's an Arminian website, but I am not Arminian.)  I am going to highlight some of the comments that stood out to me the most.  If you want to read everything that everyone said, click on the link above: Dana Steele writes: I grew up in a Calvinistic Baptist church from age 11.  The 5-points of Calvinism (TULIP) were taught regularly with great enthusiasm ... But it wasn’t until college that I began to understand and embrace the “Doctrines of Grace” and TULIP more fully....  I also learned to love the doctrine of election because it meant that God loved me personally and specifically in a unique way.  Though it made me a little embarrassed to think that God did not love everyone this way, I was content to leave this as a mystery.  Who am I to question God?  I was just glad I was one of the lucky (I mean chosen) ones. ... [As ...
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Troublemaker? (#1 The Gospel; #2 Stealth Calvinism)

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Should I be making such a fuss over Calvinism, calling it out as strongly as I do?      Every time I wonder if I'm too strong, too harsh, in my criticism of Calvinism - if I should be gentler, more tolerant, more "let's just put our arms around each other's shoulders and sing Kumbaya around a campfire" (which, trust me, I'd  love   to be, because I'm not someone who enjoys rocking the boat, offending people, or fighting about things) - I just think again about what (and how ) Calvinism teaches about God, the gospel, Jesus's sacrifice, and people's eternities... a nd I go, "Nope, can't do it!  No mushy tolerance or ooey-gooey Kumbaya for me.  No blurring the lines." "Oh, but can't we all just get along?," asks the kind-hearted, well-meaning Christian .  "It's not really that big of a deal, is it?  Aren't we supposed to be unified as a church and not be divisive?   And aren't we all basically saying the sa...
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Things My Calvinist Pastor Said #15: No Altar Calls, And Replacing "Believe" With "Repent"

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(This "Things My Calvinist Pastor Said" series is a breakdown of this much longer post:  "We Left Our Church Because of Calvinism,"  which was written last year but updated July 2020.  All memes were created with  imgflip .) Updated October 2023 15.    Our pastor never does altar calls and never asks people if they want to ask Jesus in their heart or choose Jesus as their Lord and Savior.  Instead, Calvinists emphasize the need to "repent."             As I mentioned in the last point, w ith Calvinism in general, there are no altar calls, no "Do you want to ask Jesus into your heart, to choose Him as your Lord and Savior?"                They say it's because they don't want people thinking they're saved just because they "walked the aisle" or "prayed a prayer."  But I know it's because they don't want people thinking they have a choice.  Because that would contr...
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What God did to reach all people

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[This is taken from my post  "As evil as it gets: Calvinism on babies and the unreached"  (but it's a little updated for this post).  I'm breaking that longer post up into shorter pieces, to focus on one topic per post.  I left the same lettering from the original post.  I'll intersperse  this series  with the  Alana L series   and  Troublemaker series .] It's been too long since I added a post to this "As evil as it gets" series (since May 16th), so I figured it's time to add another one.  The previous post in this series - "Calvinism on unreached people" - exposed the Calvinist belief that all unreached people are predestined to hell even though they never had the chance to hear Jesus's name or the gospel.  They never got to decide whether to accept or reject God, Jesus, and the gospel, but it was decided for them by Calvi-god that they'd be non-elect and go to hell.   And according to Calvinists, the unreached are...
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"Neo-Calvinism vs. The Bible" - Andy Woods

This is just a quick post to share a series from Andy Woods against Calvinism: Neo-Calvinism vs The Bible | Andy Woods Ministries I've only listened to the first three so far, but I found this one quite intriguing:   Neo-Calvinism vs. The Bible 003 | Andy Woods Ministries In that one, he gets a little into the Catholic roots of Calvinism and the errors of Calvinism related to prophecy.  As he says, Luther didn't believe Revelation was inspired by God (and he considered it satanic to take end-times' prophecy literally), and this explains why many Calvinist churches don't address prophecy much.   And he also says that Calvin believed in amillennialism.  And to me, this would explain why the EFCA - which I believe has been taken over by Calvinists - removed the belief in premillennialism from their statement of faith, allowing for pastors to preach things like amillennialism. He also gets into the damage that Lordship Salvation - with John MacArthur at the for...
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God's Greatest Priority (and why there's a hell)

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Calvinists believe that God's greatest priority - His primary reason for making people - is to get more glory for Himself, and that He gets it through ordaining sin and predestining people to hell (among other things).  They think that this is why people are in hell: for God's glory, that He gets glory when He shows off His justice by punishing sin and evil.  And so He needed sin and evil and non-elect people to punish or else He couldn't fully display all His attributes to get praise and glory for them.   [But remember that - in Calvinism - people don't actually get to choose whether or not they want to believe in Jesus.  God decides for them.  He decides who won't believe and prevents them from being able to believe, and then He punishes them for not believing, even though they never had the chance or ability to believe, by God's decree.  This is a far different kind of "justice" than punishing people who actually deserve it, who had a choice. ...
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Tony Evans Preaches on Prayer and God's Will

I am always thankful for Tony Evans' preaching.  He understands the Word and God's character correctly.  He preaches a view of God and Scripture that accurately reflects truth, that affects us and our faith in practical ways, that fills me with hope, and that  makes sense ! Unlike Calvinism.  Unlike my Calvinist pastor.   I have been so discouraged by the constant hammering of Calvinism at our church - the sick twisting of Scripture, the damaging distortion of God's good character and amazing gifts, the hopelessness that Calvinism is - that I don't listen to our pastor anymore.  Because when I did, it would leave me angry for days.  (Angry ... but motivated to see what the Bible really says.  So that's a good thing.) And so I listen to Tony Evans' sermons online instead.  And it feels like a breath of fresh air.  Like I can breathe again.  Like I am not so crazy for disagreeing with Calvinism.  Because Calvinism is wrong! ...
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Ah, yes, praise God for hell-bound vipers!

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In a recent Reddit Reformed post, a Calvinist celebrates the birth and dedication of another  wretched, depraved, hell-bound viper-in-a-diaper   wonderful little innocent baby ! Of course, I myself believe that babies are wonderful little innocent blessings from God, and so  I celebrate the birth of all babies and congratulate parents on baby dedications. But I can... because I'm not a Calvinist. Calvinists, however, hmm?  I know they truly love their children and praise God for them, feeling like they are (I hope) blessings and sweet little bundles of joy.   But I wonder if Calvinist parents have ever read these quotes of Calvinists' own views and teachings about babies and young children.  (I've already shared many of these before, but a bunch are new.  FYI: I'll also repost this in smaller individual posts soon, bite-sized pieces.) Because if they did, then maybe they wouldn't be so quick to view them as sweet little bundles of joy, but ...
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Series by Andy Woods: "Neo-Calvinism vs. the Bible"

I've been listening through this series by Dr. and Pastor Andy Woods called Neo-Calvinism vs. The Bible, and I'm finding it really good and informative, covering a lot of aspects of Calvinism, from historical to practical to present-day issues, etc.  [I even like his dry, monotone, and slightly-repetitive way of speaking.  It's calming to my over-active brain, helping me really hear him and absorb what he's saying.] He's still adding to this series (and I've only listened up to 19 so far), but here are the links to all the videos he's got in the series up to this point, with a little bit about each one.  They're great to listen to while you're doing something like cleaning or cooking or driving or whatever.   The following are links to his website (but here's the playlist on YouTube ): Video #1:   About the mixed blessings of Calvinism, including how it helped shaped our American government, and about some of the serious issues of Calvinism and o...
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