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 learning the "deeper truths of Scripture," that they're being humble, intelligent, God-glorifying Christians for embracing these "hard truths," that they're honoring God by submitting to His "sovereign authority," feeling like they've joined the upper-level of the spiritually-elite (which now includes most of their spiritual social-circle too). And they've been programmed, through subtle manipulation from the pastor over the years, to view anyone who disagrees with the pastor as "unhumble, resistant, arguing with God, disagreeing with the Bible, divisive, etc."
By this time, it's too late to turn the ship around. It's too late to save your church.
And so if this issue (the Calvinism that took over your church) is brought to light, most likely it will lead to a church-split of some kind. Or it might end with you being one of the only ones to leave the church while everyone else supports the pastor (as it was for us). Nevertheless, it's your job to speak up, to do what you can to sound the alarm for as many people as possible. And as quickly as possible.
Time is of the essence. (If we hadn't waited and researched for 6 years before speaking up, maybe we could have reached more people.) And so even if you aren't sure yet what Calvinism is, even if you have only an inkling that something is wrong but you're not sure what, start telling people. Start telling them that you think something is off, that you all need to listen more closely to what the pastor is teaching and to compare it all against the Bible for yourselves. (If you sense something is wrong, most likely there are others who do too. But we're all afraid to speak up, feeling like we're the only ones who sense a problem. And so we all keep quiet, and the Calvinism spreads.) Pass out cards or send emails with the websites I list below to as many people as possible, telling them to look them up and to listen for if anything sounds familiar. And I recommend doing this before the pastor catches on, or else you could find yourself being shamed into silence or threatened with church discipline for being "divisive". (But honestly, if what the pastor is teaching is biblical truth, it should hold up under scrutiny, right? So he shouldn't have anything to worry about if people explore his Calvinist theology deeper or read things against it. If he's preaching clear, biblical truth then all the research we do should only convince us more of the accuracy of his theological views, right? So he should have nothing to fear. Unless ... Calvinism is wrong.)
And if you think the pastor is a Calvinist, DO NOT accept any offer of his to take you through their "Calvinist indoctrination" books (my wording, not theirs), to "help you understand the gospel better." Instead, ask him what authors/books he recommends, and then go home and do a search for them online with the words "Calvinist, Calvinism, or Reformed" to see if others identify them as Calvinists.
And, as Kevin essentially says in the video, do not be afraid to be "divisive" about this issue. If there is anything worth being divisive about, it's about the fundamental truths of God's Word. You are not hurting the body of Christ by trying to expose/resist Calvinism. You are trying to help it, trying to remove the cancer that has taken over the body of Christ.
It was sad to me that - even though I left comments on the church blog against Calvinism (until they stopped allowing comments, because of me) and even though we sent long letters to all the elders about our concerns about Calvinism before we left the church and even though we told those who asked us why we left that it was because of the pastor's bad theology, his Calvinism - after we sent our resignation letter, we got a note from the office thanking us for "leaving quietly." How sad that we left so quietly, that we didn't do more to warn the people in the congregation about what was happening right under their noses. Maybe if we weren't so quiet for so long, maybe things would have ended differently. (And since we left, they have joined up with 9Marks and The Gospel Coalition. I bet the congregation has no clue where they're headed. But little do the leaders know that I didn't leave all that quietly. This whole blog - where I have been shouting as loudly as I can about the dangers of Calvinism - is all because of them. So, thank you to the stealthy Calvinist pastor who took over our church and to the Calvinist elders who sided with him. None of this would have been possible without you!)
Do not roll over and allow a backwards, unbiblical theology to supplant God's Truth. If Calvinism is a false doctrine that destroys the Gospel and God's character (which I believe it is) then we must fight it. We must not compromise God's Word or allow false doctrine to spread without a fight. As Kevin points out in a different video, Calvinists will use your politeness, niceness, and tolerance against you, as an opportunity to shove their Calvinism in more forcefully. Don't make it easy for them. If there's anything worth being divisive over, it's this!
After all, if we don't speak up and sound the alarm, who will?
MUST-VISIT Websites against Calvinism:
Idol Killer (Here is his YouTube channel. My husband started recently watching him, but I have only seen him once. FYI: In his Statement of Faith, it sounds like The Idol Killer believes we can lose our salvation. I do not agree that true Christians can lose their salvation.)
*NOTE:
And if you don't think pastors would really be deceptive about their Calvinism (this is from another post of mine):
For a Calvinist who’s a pro at playing word games and hiding information, see this post (I removed the link, see FYI below) about a pastoral candidate who outright lied - by omission and deflection - when he was asked directly if he is a Calvinist and told he wouldn't be hired if he was. Even though he is a strong 7-point Calvinist, he skillfully played word-games with their definition of Calvinist ... and ended up getting hired. (He says he's a 7-point Calvinist, and yet he "wasn't sure how to answer" them when they asked if he was a Calvinist. And so he asks them to define "Calvinism." And since they only pointed out a couple things that supposedly don't fit for him, he claims that he's not a Calvinist then, by that definition. Even though he identifies himself as a 7-point Calvinist. That's deception - deliberate deception - if ever there was.) He ought to be ashamed of himself, knowing they didn't want a Calvinist pastor but weaseling his way into the pulpit by lying. And he knew he was doing it. And then he brags about it. Shameful! (Interestingly, if you look up his YouTube channel, he calls himself "Saint PJ." I'm not sure what to make of that.)
[FYI, added Oct 2021, I very recently tried to click on this link to read his article again, and instead of being able to see the article, I got a red X and a warning that my connection isn't private and that hackers might be trying to steal my information. Suspicious! This is why I saved a copy of it and wrote thoroughly about what he said, because I expected something like this to happen. In case you want to try to find it, it's at gospelize.me and the article is called "Are you a Calvinist? If you are this interview process is dead right here," written by PJ Tibayan. I did find it in another place though: "Preach the Bible, Not Calvinism". And there is a different version of it on his website: "Are you a Calvinist? If you are this interview process is dead right here.". I may be wrong, but I believe that he has altered posts after I linked to them, which may be why there are two different versions. Maybe there were two versions to begin with, I don't know, but it sure seems to me like they got altered after I linked to them. My comments here will refer to things found in one or the other of his posts. And see this post for my review of his article.] And what a lie it also is to say that MacArthur is not a Calvinist, when he's a Calvinist of the highest order! And it's not "fighting over terms/words" to figure out if someone is a Calvinist. It's finding out their foundational theological views, which is totally appropriate to do, especially if they are going to be leading your church. I have noticed that it's usually Calvinists who condemn others for "fighting about words," who warn those who disagree or who question them to not be divisive, to put aside "petty differences," to "be unified, like God calls us to be." Of course they are going to do this - they want to take over the church but can't do it if people oppose them, expose them, or leave. Yes, God wants the church to be unified, but not around a false doctrine that destroys God's character, flips the gospel upside down, minimizes Jesus's sacrificial death, and that blocks most people from heaven.
FYI: If you ask a pastor if he’s a Calvinist and he replies with a question, such as “Well, you believe in grace, don’t you?” or “You believe God is sovereign, right?” or “How do you define Calvinism?” (or if he says "I'm not a hyper-Calvinist" or "I'm not a Calvinist; I'm reformed" or "I just believe what the Bible says but I wouldn't call it Calvinism because I don't go by any -ism" or "I prefer to call it 'the doctrines of grace,'" or any other such nonsense to deceive you), then you can safely assume he's definitely a Calvinist - a strong, educated, dogmatic Calvinist who knows not to forthrightly admit it because it will scare you off before he's had a chance to hook you. (Calvinists do not blame their bad theology for scaring people off; they blame us for misunderstanding Calvinism or for being too unhumble to accept it. This is why they feel they have to draw us in slowly, skillfully, with deceptive word-games ... because we might be scared off because of our own pride or ignorant stupidity - not because we understand perfectly well what their theology really teaches and know that it's wrong, that it contradicts the Bible and turns God into a monster.)
If someone has to use deception, cover-up, and word-games to slowly reel people into their theology - if they have to be careful of revealing too much too soon so that they don't scare people off - then how great can their theology really be? And besides, what are Calvinists really afraid of? That they might scare off one of the elect? That they might scare away someone who was "predestined" to become a believer and a Calvinist? How "predestined" can things be if Calvinists have to be so careful about not scaring people off? How sovereign is their Calvi-god if his plans can be thwarted by how a Calvinist presents their theological views to people? Calvinists actually belie their own theology by thinking they have to be so careful and skillful in how they present it to others, as if how they present it really has an affect on what has been predestined.
