Who Are Calvinists REALLY Worshipping?

"... true worshippers will worship God in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks.  God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth."  (John 4:23-24, emphasis added)







Calvinism teaches a different Gospel.


 1.  The God of the Bible truly loves all people and truly wants all people to be saved (John 3:16, 2 Peter 3:9, 1 Timothy 2:4, Ezekiel 18:32)  

 Calvi-god does not.  He only really loves the elect and only truly wants the elect to be saved.  Or as my Calvinist ex-pastor said, "The Bible says God loves people.  He loves peoples.  But the Bible is clear that He doesn't love all people and that He doesn't love all people equally."  (Oh, it makes my job so much easier when they just come out and say what they really think, instead of sugar-coating it!)
  

But Calvinists will say Calvi-god still "loves" the non-elect, just with a "gives them food and sunshine" kind of love, not a saving love.  And he "wants" the non-elect to be saved.  It makes him sad they aren't in heaven.  But he predestined them to hell anyway for his glory and purposes.  Even though it makes him sad.  ("Boo hoo!  Let me wipe away my big crocodile tears.")  

So he does "want" them in heaven.  He just wants them in hell far more.

 That's some amazing love Calvi-god has, isn't it!?!

Also, I just ran across a Calvinist article today that asks the question, "If God wants everyone saved, why isn't everyone saved?"  And he says (paraphrased) that it can't possibly be that people have free-will to choose, because that would mean that man's free-will is stronger than God's Will.  And, as he says, nothing can thwart God's Will.  God's Will always happens.  

 And so, since he already tossed out free-will, excluding the very biblical idea that people have free-will simply because God gave it to them because He wanted it to be this way (which is not saying "men are stronger than God" - that's Calvinist manipulation), he says that it must be that God has something else He wants more than saving all people - which is that He wants more glory for Himself by showing off both His mercy (by saving some people) and His justice (by damning others to hell).  

 And this is why all people aren't saved, so that God can get more glory by showing off His justice when He predestines people to hell.  (My Calvinist ex-pastor says the same kind of filthy, stinky, rotten garbage!)

 Frickin' hogwash!  (I'm sure you're tired of this expression by now, but I can't use the real "F-word," out loud at least, so this will have to do.)


But ironically, his answer still means that God didn't get something He wanted, which still means that God's Will was "thwarted."  The Calvinist tossed out "free-will" for this reason, but his answer still lands him in the same predicament, which is that God's Will (for all to be saved) didn't happen.  He didn't answer the problem or solve the riddle.  He just kicked the can down the road with something akin to "Well, God didn't get what He wanted because there was something He wanted more.  His Will didn't get done because He had another Will which thwarted His first one.  So He actually did get what He wanted, even though He didn't get what He wanted.  And His Will got done, even though His Will didn't get done."  

 Make sense?

 Nope!

 It's nonsense.  And it's amazing what a complex web Calvinists will weave, full of rambling philosophizing based on their own assumptions and verses taken out of context, all so that they don't have to say "God really did give men free-will."  (And maybe so that they don't have to believe they are actually responsible for their own choices and actions!?!)




[And if they do say we have "free-will," it's fake.  Don't believe them.  They will say that we make the choices we want to make, according to the desires of our nature.  But what they hide is that God determines which nature you get, and you cannot change the nature He gave you.  So if He gives you the "sinner/unrepentant" nature, it comes only with the desire to sin and reject Him, which means you can only make the choice to sin and reject Him, all the time, because that's the only desires you have, according to your God-given nature.  And they call this "freely making choices you want to make."  Once again, frickin' hogwash!  (Not sorry!)  Oh, the lies they tell!  The mind games and word games they play to try to convince themselves that they're not saying what they really are - that God causes sin, evil, and unbelief but punishes us for it.  But, I digress ...]
            There is no biblical support for the idea that God chose to save a few people so that He could show off His mercy.  
            But Romans 11:32 tells us that God has bound all men over to disobedience so that He could have mercy on them all.  
            (And no, Romans 9:18 - "Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden." - isn't saying that God predestined people to heaven or hell.  It's about God choosing whom to assign big roles to and whom to give little roles to.  And ultimately, it's about God choosing Israel to be the bloodline that brought Jesus into the world.  It's NOT a passage about God predestining people for heaven or hell.)


            And there is no biblical support for the idea that God shows off His love in different ways, that He showed love to the elect by predestining them to heaven and that He showed love to the non-elect by giving them food and sunshine.  This is Calvinist garbage!  
            In fact, God Himself tells us in Romans 5:8 how He shows His love: "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 so-called "elect" sinners?  Romans 3:23: "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."  God says He shows His love by having Christ die for sinners.  Not some sinners.  Not preselected sinners.  But "sinners."  And we are all sinners.)


            And there is no biblical support for the idea that God chose to predestine most people to hell so that He could show off His justice.  
            But God Himself does tell us how He has chosen to show off His justice, and it's not by predestining people to hell.  It's by sending Jesus to the cross to pay for our sins.
            Romans 3:25-26: "God presented him 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 to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus."
            Where in that verse does it say anything about God showing His justice by predestining people to hell!?!
            That's right ... nowhere!  



What horrible damage Calvinism does to God's character - His love, mercy, justice, grace, glory, etc.!

 God shows His mercy, love, and justice not by predestining some to heaven and most to hell, but by sending Jesus to the cross to pay the penalty for all of our sins, so that we could live ... if we choose to believe in Jesus, to accept His sacrifice on our behalf and make Him our Lord and Savior.  And this choice is available to all!

 Some people who commented on that article get it.  Some pointed it out as Calvinism right away.  And I particularly liked these comments (edited for length):

 From Mary LaGro:  "Well!  What a disturbing article which offers little hope for most of mankind!  What a horrible price Christ paid on Calvary only to save those the Father wanted saved.... No, He provided the offering in His own son for all!  This article will serve one purpose...confuse the heck out of any seeker to the point they might decide they are not chosen, so filthy and lost in their sinful nature as they struggle daily with it even as Christians do, so why bother seeking if they are not chosen? ... You have done nothing with this article but cheapen God's grace and mercy and confused many who are possibly seeking, and it is pure shame on the producers of this forum to print it.  You need to go back and have a serious look at what the Bible teaches.  This sickens me that you have a position in which you could answer questions for many who are seriously seeking and perhaps on the cusp of breaking through and in one single moment, you gave them over to the evil desires and hopeless feelings that they are aren't worthy, chosen and are forever given up to a hellhound journey in eternity.  Wow!  What a very scary place you have placed yourself in!"

 From Glenn Krobel: "... Hard nosed Calvinism is dangerous because it denies the heart of God, turning him into a dispassionate ruler who takes equal pleasure and glory in the death of the wicked as with the salvation of the saint.  Even though it teaches many good truths, ultimately on this point of denying that God empowers and allows volitional free will in salvation, it doesn't square with the bible.  And, many of its proponents seem to carry the attitude that if you don’t buy into their system you have an intellectual deficiency.  So it’s very hard to correct."

It's unfortunate that The Christian Post chose to run this hopeless, faith-destroying piece of pathetic, false, God-dishonoring garbage.  But it shouldn't surprise me because I've already been wary of them for awhile and because Calvinism is everywhere and spreading.  So if it's not in your church yet, keep your eyes open.





2.  The Jesus of the Bible died for all men and all sins, so that all people could be saved (1 John 2:2, John 1:29, Romans 5:18, Hebrews 2:9, Romans 10:13)  

 Calvi-Jesus did not.  Calvi-Jesus only died for the elect because he wouldn't die for those who are predestined to reject him.  That would be a waste of his blood, making his sacrifice ineffective, according to Calvinist philosophy.  



Hey Calvinists, find me one verse in the Bible that clearly says any of this garbage!  



Calvinists trade in what God clearly, plainly said in His Word for their own rambling philosophizing, creating a theology full of contradictions, and complicated, secret "double-meanings" to words, and hidden layers to verses, and verses taken out of context, etc.

  

Does God not mean what He says or say what He means?  Did He intend that we have to go through months and months of studying the teachings of Calvinist theologians in order to understand what He supposedly really meant to say in His Word?


3.  The God of the Bible tells us to seek Him in order to find Him, to choose whom we will serve.  (Deuteronomy 4:29, Joshua 24:15, Jeremiah 29:13, Acts 17:27, Psalm 14:2, Hebrews 11:6, Isaiah 55:6)   

 Calvi-god says we can't seek him or choose whom we will serve.  Calvinism basically says that man is so dead inside they just lay there like a dead body, unable to do anything, to the point that their brains don't even work, and so they can't think about God, want God, seek God, or choose God unless they were elected and until God regenerates them with the Holy Spirit and causes them to seek/"choose" Him.  

 Calvi-god says "I'll make you alive first, and only then can you seek me."  

 But the God of the Bible, in Amos 5:4, tells the people, "Seek me and live."



[And notice in the verse at the top of the post that God seeks those who worship Him in spirit and truth.  It doesn't say God causes them to worship Him in spirit and truth, but that He seeks those who are already doing it.  This means the people have chosen to do this themselves, and then God seeks them out.  But if Calvinism is true that God causes people to worship Him, why would He seek those who are worshipping Him if He hasn't yet caused them to worship Him?  But if He already did cause them to worship Him, why would He then need to seek them?  It doesn't make sense.  Just like Calvinism!]
4.  The God of the Bible is a just God, giving us the choice between obedience and disobedience.  And He responds to us according to our choice.  (John 7:17, Deuteronomy 30:15-20) 

 Calvi-god controls all we do, causing us to be either obedient or disobedient, based on what he's predetermined for us, but then he punishes us for the disobedience he causes.  

And Calvinists think this is okay - that anything Calvi-god does is okay - because he is sovereign and can cause anything he wants to, for his glory, even abuse, sin, unbelief, etc.








5.  The God of the Bible is glorified when people obey Him and worship Him.  

 Calvi-god predestines and controls everything that happens ... for his glory.  And so therefore, Calvi-god is glorified by causing sin and causing people to go to hell.  Therefore, in Calvinism, evil is essentially good.  

Listen to Calvinist James White say that God has to be the cause of child rape or else it's meaningless.  So ... he'd rather have meaningful child rape caused by God than have "meaningless" evil happen because God let men make their own bad choices?  

 That's sick!  That's truly sick!

 Also see "Do Calvinists Really Believe God Causes Sin?  Let Them Speak For Themselves!"   



6.  In the Bible, you are responsible for your choice to make Jesus your Lord and Savior or not.  Salvation comes by hearing the Word (Romans 10:17) and by believing in Jesus (Acts 16:31, Romans 10:9-10, 13), choosing Him as your Lord and Savior.  

 In Calvinism, you have no part in your decisions.  Calvi-god makes your decisions for you and only when he wants it to happen.  You can't "choose" Jesus as Lord and Savior because salvation has already been pre-decided for you by Calvi-god, and there's nothing you can do to affect whether you are saved or not.  And if you are unelected, you can never believe or understand the Gospel because you can never get the Holy Spirit because Calvi-god didn't pick you and Calvi-Jesus didn't die for you.  (So what good is the Gospel really!?!  Why is it needed!?!  What does it accomplish if it has no effect on whether you are saved or not!?!)


7.  In the Bible (Ephesians 1:13-14 and 4:30), after you choose to believe in Jesus, to put your faith in Him, you get the Holy Spirit to help you on your walk with Him and to seal you for the day of redemption (I believe this is the rapture, and I believe it's coming SOON!).

 But in Calvinism, the elect get the Holy Spirit before they believe, and only then can they understand/respond to the Gospel.  The elect don't get the Holy Spirit because they believe; they get the Holy Spirit in order to believe.  So in Calvinism, first you get elected (saved) by Calvi-god, then the elect get the Holy Spirit, then they believe, then they can understand the Gospel.  (Talk about flipping Scripture on its head and making the Gospel superfluous and unnecessary!)

 And this is just a small bit of the lies Calvinism teaches.  









God is supposed to be worshipped in spirit and in truth.  

 And so this makes me wonder ...

 If Calvinism is filled to the brim with lies about who God is, what Jesus accomplished on the cross, and how to be saved, then exactly who is that Calvinists are really worshipping?

2 Corinthians 11:14:  "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."
I mean think about it.  Really.  Who else is slithery enough to trick a bunch of well-meaning, humble, God-loving Christians into spreading a theology that ultimately teaches that God causes all sin and evil but punishes us for it, that He hates most people and wants most people in hell, that Jesus only died for a very few people, that evil is ultimately good and God-glorifying, that God deceives people in His Word by not meaning what He says or saying what He means, that we can't choose to believe in Jesus on our own, etc.?  

 Who is really being worshipped through these Calvinist lies!?!


Most Popular Posts Of The Month:

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...
Read more

Why Is Calvinism So Dangerous? (re-updated)

Image
Because it  appears  to teach biblical truth while actually teaching  the opposite  - while using  manipulation and cult-like tactics to suck you in!  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.  ...
Read more

Is The ESV (English Standard Version) a Calvinist Bible?

Just in case anyone missed this post (the longer title made it easy to miss the "ESV" part) ... "A Random Verse That Destroys Calvinism (And "Is The ESV a Calvinist Bible?") In that post, I write about a bunch of verses that I believe were intentionally translated to be more Calvinistic or based on manuscripts that were too corrupt to be trusted (click on it to see the verses).   And why would I think that the translators of this Bible version would do that? (From that post...) The ESV and ESV Study Bible are majorly preferred by Calvinists.  In fact, it's often considered "The Calvinist Bible."   Why?  And why would translators of a Bible make these kinds of Calvinist tweaks to Scripture? Wayne Grudem and J.I. Packer were editors on the  ESV Study Bible   (this is for the ESV Global Study Bible).  Grudem and Packer are both popular, strong, dogmatic Calvinists.  Very Big Names in the world of Calvinism.  Grudem in the General E...
Read more

When Calvinists say "But predestination!" (shorter, basic version)

Image
[Finally, the much-shorter version - I said shorter, not short😉 - of my "But predestination!" series.  The longer version - full of many more Calvinist comments, my Calvinist ex-pastor's sermons, and my replies to them - can be found by  starting here .  But in this simplified version, I'm simply sharing the basics.  And I'll do a tiny version soon too, cutting out almost all quotes and memes.  But, oh, they add so much that it's hard to cut them out. ] At the heart of Calvinism is predestination and God's sovereignty (among other things, like "total depravity"), which according to Calvinism essentially amounts to: "God preplans and controls everything, even sin and evil and all our decisions, and so He pre-picks who goes to heaven and who goes to hell.  He causes the 'elect' to believe in Him and be saved, but He made sure the 'non-elect' have no chance or ability to believe and be saved because He predetermined they'd ...
Read more

How to Tell if a Church, Pastor, or Website is Calvinist (simplified version)

(For the extended version of this post, which I recommend, click here .  It is loaded with lots more information.  This simplified one is just the highlights.  And feel free to copy this and share it with others, to help them learn to identify Calvinism when they see it.  Just make sure to share the link to this blog so that they can find the original post.  Thank you.  New : For the super-short version, click here .  And FYI: I found a couple times when the Calvinist author of an article I linked to changed their article after I linked to it.  So if their article doesn't seem to match what I said about it, it may be because they altered it. ) We just left our church of almost 20 years because of the dogmatic Calvinist pastor who recently came on board.  ( Read my "Letter to Our Elders Regarding Calvinism Growing in Our Church" here.)   And I was thinking about what precautions I might take to make sure we didn't end up in another...
Read more

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 ...
Read more

A Random Verse That Destroys Calvinism (And "Is The ESV a Calvinist Bible?")

(For just the "Is the ESV a Calvinist Bible" part of this post, click here .) In my normal Bible reading today, I came across a verse about "singleness vs. marriage" that destroys Calvinism in a few short words: "But the man who has settled the matter in his own mind, who is under no compulsion but who has control over his own will, and who has made up his mind not to marry the virgin - this man also does the right thing."   ( 1 Corinthians 7:37, NIV ) When you get past all the layers Calvinism wraps itself in to disguise the bad parts, it ultimately teaches - at the heart of it all - that God causes/controls  everything , even controlling our wills and causing our sins.  (But He then punishes  us  for the things He caused us to do, which would make Him unjust, no matter how much Calvinists try to deny it and cover it up.  See  this post  for some links about that.)  Calvinism ultimately teaches that everything we do is because God p...
Read more

When Calvinism Infiltrates Your Church

A note I recently added to my posts on "How to tell if a Church, Pastor, or Website is Calvinist" : On a personal note : After having seen firsthand how Calvinism stealthily infiltrates and takes over a church, I want to share with you something that Kevin from Beyond the Fundamentals said in the video   "Stealth Calvinism in Oklahoma"  (my paraphrase): "By the time you realize what's going on and start looking up information about Calvinism online, it's too late."   Calvinist pastors who set out to take over non-Calvinist churches are banking on the fact that most people don't know what Calvinism is, giving the pastors plenty of time to weave in Calvinism in sneaky, subtle, tricksy ways before people catch on to (and research) the red flags.  (*See note at bottom about deceptive pastors.)  By that time, too many people in the church have been suckered into Calvinism (without realizing it's called Calvinism), believing that they're just...
Read more

The Cult of Calvinism

Here are links to a few posts that reveal the cult-like side of Calvinism: "Why Calvinism is a Cult" "Calvinism is a Counterfeit Christian Cult" "Calvinism, Cults, and Control" I left a comment at Hoppers Crossing Christian Church about their post "Calvinism, Cults, and Control."  I will also print my comment here for your information: I was reading your post "Calvinism, Cults, and Control" (2/02/20) and so much of what you said fits the Calvinist church we recently left.  Here are some of the cult-like things that happened after a Calvinist pastor took over our non-Calvinist church: 1.   From the beginning, he started laying the groundwork that disagreement with him (about his Calvinist view of predestination and God's sovereignty, in particular) was not allowed and that anyone who did disagree with him was unhumble and disagreeing with God.   Things like (paraphrases): "Humble people have no problem with God's sovereignty...
Read more