Why is Calvinism so dangerous? #4 (Born again or Believe first?)
[In this series, I'm breaking the long post "Why is Calvinism so dangerous?" into bite-sized pieces.]
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.]
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.
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 (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"?
