9 Marks of a Calvinist Cult #7 (thought-reform)
[This series is "The 9 Marks of a Calvinist Cult" split up into smaller, individual posts.]
7. Mind-Control, Thought-Reform
Reforming people's thoughts is absolutely necessary for Stealth Calvinism (or even non-stealth Calvinism) to be effective. Strategic brainwashing. (A lot of how they control/modify our thoughts has already been addressed, so I won't repeat all that. Much.)
Controlling the language: Remember, whoever controls the language also controls the conversation and destination.
Calvinist pastors control the direction of the church by controlling not just the resources and staff, but also controlling the definitions of words, the theological language we speak. And by controlling the words (and verses), they can slowly modify our thinking and our perspectives on God and His Word, causing us to see everything through the lens of Calvinism - until we can't remember how to read the Bible in a clear, plain, commonsense way anymore.
In Chapter 2 (Scaling the Language Barrier) of Walter Martin's book "The Kingdom of the Cults" (The Revised, Updated, and Expanded Anniversary Edition, October 1997), we read this about religious cults (this is my paraphrased summary):
Terminology and definitions matter. When words are allowed to be redefined incorrectly - and those incorrect definitions are allowed to spread to people and throughout generations (because of our apathy or ignorance) - it can become a powerful weapon to enslave the masses. Cult leaders know this and use it to their advantage, hijacking language with their own definitions to slowly, hypnotically lead people in the path they want them to go.
Cultists are experts at taking texts out of their proper context, with no concern for the laws of language, logic, or proper biblical interpretation.
Religious cult leaders use the Bible's terminology and concepts, but in a very different way than how it was originally intended and how it's commonly, historically understood. They use the Bible's terms, but they secretly redefine them to fit their own theological framework.
This is why the cultist will often appear to be - and claim to be - in full agreement with you, because they are using the same words, same concepts, same verses. You just don't realize that they've got very different definitions and interpretations.
At first glance, a cult's redefinitions will appear to be in harmony with the historic teachings of the Christian faith. But this harmony is superficial at best - because it cannot hold up under serious biblical scrutiny when Scripture is read properly and in context and when words are correctly defined.
Cults take advantage of the fact that the average Christian is almost totally unaware of the "subtle art" of redefining terms. And much time is wasted debating about Scripture with cultists - talking in circles - when spending just a few minutes at first defining the terms would have disarmed them of one of their most powerful tools: theological term-switching.
The cultist's redefining and juggling of terms puts the cultist at an advantage because it frustrates the average Christian who can sense that something is wrong and that they're not really saying the same thing but can't quite put his finger on it. And so therefore, not realizing the words games the cultist is playing, he often falls silent for fear of ridicule or of continuing to talk in circles.
Briefly, for examples, here are some of their hidden - and wrong - definitions of some main words we use [correct definitions are in brackets]:
"Sovereign" means God controls/causes everything, even sin and unbelief. [Correct definition: God is the highest authority there is. This means He can decide how to use His authority, even if it means allowing people to have free-will. But Calvinists have decided that He cannot be sovereign if He doesn't preplan, cause, control all things, even sin and unbelief. They decided that He cannot be a sovereign God if He allows people to make their own choices. However, ironically, this means that Calvinists are in authority over God because they have decided what God can and cannot do as God. Who's sovereign now!?!]
"Predestination" means God has preplanned which sinners go to heaven, and He causes all things to work out just as He planned. [Correct definition: God has preplanned what happens to people who become believers, and anyone can believe. And if they do - if they choose to put their faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior - God promises (predestines) that they will reach glory in the end, bring Jesus glory, and have their bodies redeemed one day. That's what predestination is! It's not about who believes or how they believe, but about what happens after someone believes. And anyone can.]
"Election" is the same as Calvinist predestination, about God predestining who goes to heaven." [Correct definition: Election is about God choosing people not for salvation but for certain roles, jobs, and responsibilities after they get saved. God doesn't choose who is going to believe, but He does choose that everyone who believes gets the responsibilities and blessings reserved for believers. Note: Sometimes "election" is really just about Israel, about them being chosen by God to be Jesus's bloodline and the first to receive the gospel and being given the job of spreading the gospel (until they rejected it, causing God to turn to the Gentiles instead).]
"Faith" is something God injects into the elect to make them believe in Jesus. You have to be given faith by God in order to believe in Jesus. [Correct definition: Faith is our decision to believe in Jesus, to trust Him, take Him at His word, and submit ourselves to Him.]
"Grace" is divided into two kinds. There is "saving grace" for the elect, meaning that God has chosen them to be saved and causes them to be saved. And there is "common grace" for everyone else, for the non-elect, meaning that God gives them food and water and sunshine while they are alive on earth. He gives them breath and keeps them alive until they die and go to their predestined eternal damnation in hell for being the unbelievers He created and caused them to be. [If that's a grace-filled God, I'd hate to see what a grace-less God is like! Correct definition: Grace is when God gives us what we don't deserve. And God gives all of us not only earthly blessings and providence, but He also offers all of us the gift of eternal life. We don't deserve it, but He offers it anyway as a free gift - paid for by Jesus's blood - because He loves us all and wants us with Him in eternity. And anyone can accept this undeserved gift of eternal life.]
"Depravity" and "spiritually dead" means that we are so spiritually wicked and lifeless that we don't have - and cannot have - the desire or ability to seek God, want God, or believe in Jesus unless God causes us to. And He will only cause the elect to do this by bringing their dead hearts to life and injecting them with faith which causes them to want to believe in Him, which causes them to "choose" to believe in Him. And those whom He doesn't regenerate stay depraved and spiritually dead, meaning that they can never have the ability to believe or the chance to be saved. [Correct definition: Mankind is sinful, and our sins separate us from God, and we cannot work our way to heaven. We needed a Savior to make salvation possible for us. "Depravity" and "spiritually dead" are not about us having an inability to believe, but about us having an inability to save ourselves. Our sins separate us from God and so we need Jesus's sacrifice to make salvation possible for us. And it's possible for all because Jesus died for all, God offers salvation to all, and all of us have the ability to believe. It is our choice to believe in Jesus or not, to accept or reject the offer of salvation.]
"Hardens" means God causes the non-elect to refuse to believe in Him because He predestined them for hell. [Correct definition: "Hardens" is punishment for first hardening our own hearts against God and His truth, even after God has been patient and long-suffering with us.]
These are some of the main words they get wrong, and it directs their whole theology. Calvinists will keep their definitions of these words hidden as long as possible, hoping that we think they are using them the same way we are so that we don't pushback against them. Then they can slowly lead us deeper and deeper into Calvinism without us even realizing it.
But if you can get even just these few words correct, you are well on your way to defeating Calvinism.
Preconditioning and Strategic Ordering: Besides preconditioning us to feel ashamed if we disagree with them, Calvinist pastors and theologians methodically precondition us to read the Bible in a Calvinist way, without us realizing it, through things like first implanting their Calvinist definitions into our minds (without calling it Calvinism) and then leading us to strategically-chosen verses that appear to support it (when taken out of context or misinterpreted).
(I don't think they all necessarily intend to be deceptive or manipulative or in error, but they truly think this is the truth and the best way to teach it. Their hearts are in the right place, but everything else is not.)
Such as, a Calvinist pastor will often begin by preaching his Calvinist views of predestination and election (but he'll call it the "biblical view"), and then he'll lead us to verses that contain the word "predestined" or "elect" and say, "See! There it is, just like I said, and so you have to believe it, even if you don't like it. Because it's 'biblical truth.'"
He will stealthily, subtly, subliminally implant his Calvinist definitions in our minds, and then he'll help us "discover" Calvinism in the Bible, as if it's really there. ("Oh, wow, how smart you are to see these 'truths'! And how humble you are to accept them!") And we believe him because we never thought to question his definitions. And because it feels good to learn the "deeper truths of Scripture," to join the spiritually-superior level of the great "giants of the faith."
Or maybe he'll begin by preaching Calvinism's "total depravity" - but to trap us, he'll make it seem at first like he's just talking about being sinful. And since we all agree mankind is sinful, we unwittingly agree to his use of "totally depraved," not knowing that he has a different, hidden, Calvinist definition. And then he strategically leads us through carefully-chosen and Calvinisticly-interpreted verses, taking us from "total depravity" to "unconditional election" to "limited atonement, etc., until we've gone all the way through the Calvinist TULIP without ever realizing he's teaching Calvinism.
You see, all the points of TULIP lead into, flow from, and support the other points. And so if he can get us to bite onto the first one (to accept the Calvinist idea of "total depravity"), he can easily lead us into the next one and the next one and the next one. If you agree with one, you have to agree with the next. And the fact that all the points of TULIP support each other so well makes the whole theology seem more solid and biblical than it is.
[But this also means that if you disprove one point, you disprove them all. Because they all need each other to survive. They all rise and fall together. See "Is Calvinism's TULIP biblical?". (And once again, for the record, I agree with Calvinists that true believers cannot lose their salvation, just not for the reason they say.)]
[Personally, I think their whole faulty TULIP is built, primarily, on their wrong definitions of "sovereign" and "dead in sin/total depravity." They started with their wrong views of these and then interpreted Scripture accordingly.
As I said, sovereign really just means that God is the highest authority there is. There is no one above Him that He has to answer to. He gets final say over all. But Calvinists have decided that sovereign must mean that God has to preplan and control everything - every speck of dust, every sin, every person's response to Him - or else He couldn't be God.
But I say that telling God how God has to act in order to be God is a dangerous thing!
(And a God who can be dethroned by one rogue speck of dust is no God at all.)
(Here's a challenge: Try to find a verse in the Bible that defines the word "sovereignty," especially one that defines it as "God preplans, causes, controls everything".)
And in Calvinism, being "dead in sin (total depravity)" doesn't just mean that mankind is separated from God because of sin, but it means that we have no ability to make decisions to seek God or believe in Jesus unless God makes us do it, and He will only make the elect do it (which leads to their wrong definition of predestination).
Being "dead in sin" is biblical, but their views of it are not.
Calvinists use Genesis 6:5 ("The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was evil all the time.") to support their view of total depravity, saying "See! Man's heart is so wicked all the time that he can never want God or seek God unless God makes him do it."
But what's the context of that verse? It's talking about the time right before the Flood. And who filled the earth at that time? The Nephilim, some sort of half-fallen-angel, half-human hybrid. (See Michael Heiser's The Unseen Realm, a documentary about the spiritual powers and how God organized them and allows them to operate, 71-minutes long.) That's why they were so wicked all the time, and that's why God had to flood the earth, to wipe them out.
The "wicked thoughts all the time" verse is about the people of that time. It's not meant to be a commentary on the condition of all men at all times or about how we're "so depraved" that we can't seek God or believe in Jesus without God making us do it. Remember, always read verses in context.
And remember that Calvinism and context cannot coexist. Calvinism is bad theology built on a foundation of unbiblical definitions and assumptions. And when the foundation is wrong, the sum total of it all is wrong.
But once again, to be fair: Calvinists are not being deliberately deceptive here. They themselves are victims of these errors, convincing themselves that their definitions are accurate and that they're correctly interpreting Scripture. And because they believe it so much themselves they can more easily convince us to agree with them, even if we vaguely sense something is wrong.
That's why it takes so much time and effort to talk people into Calvinism, to educate them into it - because we sense something is wrong but can't figure out what. See "Why is Calvinism so dangerous?".)]
Unbelievably, here's a whole sermon series by Rob Jansons on how to preach Calvinism covertly, literally called "Covert Calvinism". And he does exactly what I said - strategically teaching through the whole TULIP without calling it Calvinism, leading people into Calvinism one disguised petal at a time, complete with Calvinist definitions and carefully-chosen verses interpreted Calvinisticly.
And don't just take my word for it. Read the sermons. Or even just the descriptions to the sermons, which includes: "[this is] a prelude sermon to a covert series on Calvinism... This is the 'Total Depravity' sermon without using the stock theological labels. It is the first sermon in the series and it's covert because too many of our [listeners] will shut down their receptors when they hear the words 'Calvinism.'... [This sermon] focuses on God the Father choosing us to be his children. It uses biblical, not theological, language to teach about election."
Basically, the plan is "indoctrinate them with Calvinism without telling them, and then once they're hooked, reveal to them that they are now Calvinists."
This is how Calvinists reform our thoughts under our radar.
An important side-point: This is an excerpt from my post "Calvinism: False Gospel or True (but warped) Gospel?":
I think [contrary to a non-Calvinist who believes that Calvinism is not a false gospel because he thinks Christians couldn't fall for a false gospel] that the Bible does show that the Church, true believers, can and do fall into false gospels.
Paul warns and condemns the church of Galatia about this when he writes: "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel - which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ." (Gal. 1:6-7)
The "gospel" the Galatians began believing in - after coming to faith in Jesus - was that in order to be saved they needed faith in Jesus PLUS Jewish laws and customs (circumcision, in particular). Clearly this is a different way to salvation (faith plus works), a false way. And yet true believers were falling for it.
As Paul says, "You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?... Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?" (Gal. 3:1-3)
They clearly started in the faith believing the true gospel, but then were bewitched - tricked - into the false gospel of "faith plus works."...
True Christians can fall for false gospels later, but it doesn't mean they lost their salvation or were never really saved to begin with. And I think this is the case with many Calvinists.
So what is the gospel, according to Scripture, and why would I say Calvinism is a false gospel?
1 Cor. 15:1-4: “Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you… that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures…”
The gospel is that Jesus died for our sins, was buried, and rose again, and through His death we are saved. And yes, Calvinists believe this at a most basic (limited) level.
But who is the “our” in “our sins”? What is the fuller picture of the gospel, of Jesus’s death, “according to the Scriptures”:
1 John 2:2: “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.”
John 1:29: “… ‘Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the whole world.”
1 Timothy 2:3-6: “This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, who gave himself as a ransom for all men …”
1 Timothy 4:10: “… that we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all men…”
Romans 5:18: “Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men.”
Here’s where Calvinism goes off-track and becomes a false gospel. The Bible says that Jesus died for all people so that God could offer salvation to all people because God wants all people saved. But Calvinism says “No! Only the elect.” This doesn’t just warp the gospel; it changes it (the gospel, Jesus’s death) into something it’s not, into a plan of salvation for only a few pre-selected people even though the Bible says no such thing. In fact, it says the opposite. This is not the same kind of “good news.” It is a different kind of “good news,” limited to only a few people, contrary to what the Bible says. And if it’s contrary to something Scripture clearly says, I think that’s enough to make it false.
(Calvinism’s errors are not about things the Bible is unclear on, true mysteries. Calvinism’s errors are about things the Bible clearly says. The Bible clearly says one thing, but Calvinism goes “Nope! It doesn’t mean that.” This makes it not just warped, in my opinion, but false. A direct attack on God’s Truth.)
And not to mention that 1 Cor. 15:2 says, “by this gospel you are saved.” According to this and other verses, belief leads to salvation. Salvation is a result of belief. (And anyone can believe.) But Calvinism reverses it, making belief the result of salvation. In Calvinism, salvation leads to belief (for a few preselected people).
In the Bible, it's “by this gospel you are saved.” But in Calvinism, it's “by election you are saved before the beginning of the world, and then you will believe in the gospel.” So technically, in Calvinism, since salvation happens before belief in the gospel and faith in Jesus, then it technically means that people are saved without the gospel and faith in Jesus. Calvinism is not a gospel of "salvation by faith in Jesus." It's a gospel of "salvation by election before faith in Jesus."
I think this is warped enough to be a different way to salvation. A different gospel. A false gospel.
Either Jesus died for everyone (what the Bible says)... or He didn't (what Calvinism says). Either belief leads to salvation (what the Bible says)... or salvation leads to belief (what Calvinism says).
These cannot be the same gospel, the same salvation, the same way to be saved. They just can't. Can they?
But once again, this doesn’t mean most Calvinists are not saved. I think most Calvinists are Christians who don’t realize they’ve been bewitched into false teachings about Christ’s death, His work on the cross, and how to be saved. And if they did realize that Calvinism is an attack on God’s truth, they wouldn’t have fallen for it. But sadly, they’ve been tricked and educated into thinking it’s just “deeper truths,” when it’s really different “truths.”
[And if Satan truly is the father of lies and deception and half-truths - and if Calvinism really does tell lies and deceptions and half-truths about God, His character, His Word, Jesus's death, the way to salvation, what faith is, etc. - then are we not compromising with Satan and furthering his work if we compromise with Calvinism? Are we not calling his deceptive half-truths "the true gospel" if we call Calvinism "the true gospel... just warped"? How warped does something have to be before it goes from true to false, from the truth of God to the lies of Satan? Isn't reversing "belief leads to salvation" and attacking Jesus's death (limiting what He accomplished, who He died for, who can be saved) warped enough to make Calvinism a false gospel? If not, then what is?]
"It's not that important": Another way Calvinist pastors get us to let our guard down so that they can reform our thinking is to claim that Calvinism is a non-critical, second-level issue that we shouldn't divide over. They'll say that we shouldn't fight about the "finer points" of Calvinism, that we should put it on the back-burner, in the background (and they'll promise to do so), so that we can focus on the "more important" first-level issues.
However, as that "church reform" article from Founders Ministry says it: "The third principle of reforming a local church involves both the demolition of misguided theological notions and the laying of a biblical foundation anchored by the doctrines of grace [Translation: Replace all other theological views with Calvinism.] ... What doctrines are we talking about? The doctrines that are worth dying for are foundational, biblical doctrines, not secondary ones [See! These will never be and can never be "secondary, back-burner" issues for them.] ... We speak first of all of the doctrines of grace [that's code for Calvinism]. Teach your people that they are utterly depraved and dead in their sins without God. Teach them that God chose the elect for salvation from the foundation of time out of his own mercy and desire..."
And notice what it says in the introduction to that plan: "In reality, Calvinism is nothing more than biblical Christianity... These [Calvinist] doctrines are foundational to a God-centered theology. They are the heart of historical, orthodox Christianity."
To Calvinists, Calvinism IS the gospel, the Bible, the sum total of Christianity.
"Saint" PJ also affirms this in his 9Marks article that I linked to earlier: "... preach the Bible, not Calvinism. Of course, if Calvinism is true, then as you preach the Bible you will preach Calvinism."
And a golden calf of Calvinism - Charles Spurgeon - says it in one of his sermons too: "And I have my own private opinion, that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and him crucified, unless you preach what now-a-days is called Calvinism... It is a nickname to call it Calvinism. Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the gospel, if we do not preach [Calvinism]."
To Calvinists, Calvinism is nothing short of the gospel. The gospel and Calvinism are the same thing to Calvinists.
So do you really think they would ever or could ever let Calvinism be a secondary, back-burner, not-that-important, shouldn't-cause-division issue? No Calvinist worth his salt would do that.
Make no mistake, they will always be pushing Calvinism because they think it's synonymous with the Bible. But if they think we'll resist it, they'll call it a "secondary issue" and "finer points" and they'll promise to put it in the background, in favor of "more important issues." But no good Calvinist pastor will ever let this truly be a background issue, not when they think it's Christianity itself. And so all they'll really do is go underground with it, undercover, so that they can spread it in more inconspicuous ways.
Indoctrination classes: Calvinist pastors will also try to reform our thinking directly, by taking people through what I call "Calvinist Indoctrination" classes (but they might call it "Bible study" or something like that), often starting with key people, elders, those in leadership, and maybe even (as we looked at earlier) with prospective new members, ensuring their brainwashing before they even get into the church.
For example, the 9Marks' article Build Fences Around Your Flock emphasizes the importance of keeping "the wolves" out of your church, which (reading between the lines) includes those who don't hold to Calvinism. It says "One of the first questions we ask each prospective member is: 'What is the gospel?' We want to make sure every member understands the gospel. If it becomes clear they don't understand it, we immediately pause the interview and move the candidate into a class called 'Christianity Explained.'"
And, lo and behold, the "Christianity Explained" class uses a book by Calvinist Mark Dever - head of 9Marks - to teach the Calvinist version of Christianity and the gospel. This is nothing more than a Calvinist Indoctrination Class that prospective new members who don't see things in a Calvinist way are required to take before being allowed into the church.
And so obviously, if you don't hold to Calvinism, you are a wolf who puts the flock at risk and will not be admitted into membership. As the article says, "our sheep aren't safe if we've allowed false teachers to slip in among them."
[I find it very disturbing that in the 9Marks' articles I read about church discipline and church membership, they seem to believe that they (these Calvinist pastors) have the right to decide who gets into the Church and who doesn't, who gets to be baptized and who doesn't, as if they are the gatekeepers and the judges. But I think they're letting their power go to their heads. And I think they're mistaking local churches (small "c") for the worldwide Church at large (capital "C"), acting like whoever they let into their local Calvinist church is allowed in the Capital "C" Church and whoever they block from their local Calvinist church is not allowed in the Capital "C" Church. It's sad. And I think they'll have a lot of explaining to do for the damage they did to the Church when they stand before the Lord in the end. (Yes, there are definitely some clearly biblical lines that must be drawn and certain beliefs, sins, behaviors that need to be blocked from the Church. But Calvinism is unbiblical, which makes it a terrible "dividing line" to use to determine who's in the Church and who's not. And it makes Calvinist pastors terrible judges of who should be in the Church and who shouldn't.)]
And when a person goes through a Calvinist Indoctrination Class, Calvinist brainwashing is pretty much guaranteed. There's really almost no way someone can escape the Calvinist brainwashing when soaking themselves in big Calvinist theology books which weave such a tight theological web that few can escape it. After being strategically taken through their "systematic theology" classes, you won't be able to see the forest for the trees anymore.
[This is why I wrote a long letter to the pastors at our new (non-Calvinist) church when I heard them using lots of Calvinist quotes during sermons, to alert them to how easily Calvinism reforms our thinking if we're reading Calvinist theology books. See "A Crash Course in Calvinism (A letter for pastors) ... and (Calvinist quotes)."]
Listen to how the pastor in the "Reformed by the Word" article handles it when he began facing opposition to his Calvinist theology:
"By January of 1999, questions began to be raised by some in our congregation. In a deacon’s meeting, one of our deacons asked if I was a 'Calvinist.' When I asked what he meant, he really didn’t know. He just knew it was something bad. So, I asked specifically what I had taught that concerned him. Again, he didn’t know of anything. He’d just heard this word used about me. Clearly there was 'talk' going around. I decided the best way to answer his question would be to lead the deacons through a study."
And guess what? It works. In the end, the church chose to keep him as pastor. But it split the church and up to half the people left. And though he says it was difficult, he goes on to celebrate the fact that the church split, saying that it led to "great freedom" - because "the people who remained [there] wanted to be there. They wanted the truth of the Gospel. They wanted reformation."
And with the opposition gone, they "were able to begin the process, unhindered, of revising our constitution to bring it in line with Scripture [he means "in line with Calvinism"]... The process of basic reformation took another three years, and really it’s still going on. Like shaping your soul, the work of shaping a church takes years of persistence. You can’t do it in a five-year pastorate."
My experience: The Stealth Calvinist pastor who came into our church started with shaming, with reminders of how tiny, depraved, God-hating, and rebellious we are, and with subtle accusations of "you're being prideful and disagreeing with God if you disagree with my views" - manipulating us to side with him before he even revealed his theology, scaring us into not wanting to disagree with him.
And then, when we were broken down in humility and shame and were malleable, he began implanting into our heads his Calvinist definitions of things like sovereignty, predestination, election, depravity, etc., and then he led us to (out-of-context) verses that appeared to support it, essentially going "See, there it is! Just like I told you. Now you have to believe it."
And he always asked "What does the text say? We always have to go back to the text!", making it sound like he was being true to the Word... but then he'd slip in his Calvinist interpretations. And he constantly quoted from Calvinist theologians (in one sermon, he never even used a Bible verse, just lots and lots of Calvinist quotes). And he began flooding the library with Calvinist literature.
Along with this, he was leading small-group studies of Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology with the elders and other key people, ensuring that they all became Calvinists.
And then, since that's not enough, he created "sermon-based" groups for the common people (even though we already had independent Bible study groups). And he continually stressed the importance of everyone joining one. These groups study and discuss not just the Bible itself, but his sermons, the Bible through his teachings. Everyone gets a list of the same questions about things he said in his sermons, and these questions - surprise, surprise - have a built-in Calvinist bias from the beginning, the assumption that Calvinism is true. (And from what I hear, attendance is taken and reported to the church. Unlike how it was for the independent Bible studies before he came along.)
So not only are his sermons full of Calvinism, and the church full of Calvinist literature, and the elders (and other key people) required to take "Calvinist Indoctrination" classes, but now everyone in the congregation is asked to join mid-week groups that focus on his Calvinist sermons. (My husband and I resisted the "sermon-based" groups because we felt there was something wrong with the whole concept, even before we realized the pastor was slyly pushing Calvinism.)
And - I'm sure much to the pastor's delight - it worked. By the time we left the church six years after he got there, it had essentially become a fully-Calvinist church. Even if only the leadership knew it.
(I'm not sure if the average Christian knew they were in a Calvinist church because the pastor never really identified his theology as Calvinism. Those in-the-know, such as the leadership and those who knew what Calvinism was, probably knew it. But the rest of the people probably didn't. They probably just thought they were learning "biblical truths," as the pastor always called it.)
When we were leaving the church, we had a friend (who had various roles there) who had previously believed more in free-will but who had begun taking Systematic Theology classes with the pastor. And we sent this friend an email to warn him that Wayne Grudem was a Calvinist and that the pastor was immersing the church in Calvinism, encouraging him to be cautious, to research it for himself. We reminded him that we didn't leave the church for superficial reasons but because we really believe Calvinism is unbiblical. The strongest warning we could give.
We figured that out of everyone there, the one who already believed more in free-will would be the one most likely to heed our warnings, to recognize the errors of what the pastor was teaching. Maybe he would be someone we could "pass the baton" to. He was kinda our last hope to help the church.
But we knew it was over when he replied with "I was a little apprehensive about entering the Grudem class as I know the text is from a Reformed Calvinism perspective, and my training and understanding has not perfectly aligned with all 5 points of the TULIP. However, truth is truth because God is truth, and we must not fear truth." [I knew right then that he was a goner.]
He went on to quote a few verses about the truth making us free and about not quenching the Spirit and about it being God's Will that we rejoice in all things. And so "If I am moved or changed due to ‘examination’ of a Biblical Systematic Theology whether Calvinism, Dispensationalism, Covenant or other, then praise God. I know that I have room to grow and learn. While I open myself to something uncomfortable, I will rejoice, and pray and be thankful that God has chosen to allow my flawed and finite mind to wrestle with and gain more understanding of His perfect and infinite ways."
I appreciated his trusting, humble heart (but that's how Calvinists get you!), but I felt like it was the pastor's words coming right out of his mouth. And I saw how all those years of laying the groundwork - of stealth Calvinist tactics and manipulation - paid off. Well done, Stealth Calvinist Pastor!
My husband wondered if he should reply with something like "But what if it's not God's truth? What if you're being taught lies?"
I just shook my head and said, "He's gone. There's no point. He won't be able to hear it, not when he thinks he's learning 'truth' and humbly submitting to it."
This is how a Calvinist take-over happens. Slowly. Sermon by sermon. Person by person. Week by week. Month by month. Year by year.
Calvinist pastors gain our trust with things like "I'm a 'Bible man.' I teach right from the Bible. I have a high view of Scripture. I have a 'big-God, God-centered' theology. I went to seminary. I know Greek. I read big, meaty theology books..."
And we fall for it because we fail to question their definitions (we don't even realize we should question their definitions), and we don't read the verses they use in context for ourselves to see what it really says, and we don't recognize the manipulation they use to shame us into agreeing with them.
And before we know it, we're slowly becoming Calvinists too, even if we don't like it, because "it's what the Bible says."
They'll turn the heat up slowly, subtly, unnoticeably, until we're cooking in a pot of Calvinist theology.
We've seen it happen. We watched it happen over years. And sadly, it took us 6 years to truly understand what the pastor's theology is (he wouldn't reveal it as "Calvinism"), to realize how unbiblical and damaging it is, and to start speaking out against it.
And by that time, it was too late.
Learn from our mistakes. Speak up early and often and to as many people as you can, even if it's just to voice vague concerns. (Take a page from their book and go underground if you have to.) If you're feeling it, someone else is too. And so don't let Calvinists make you feel ashamed about your concerns or about speaking up. You have every right - and obligation - to doublecheck the accuracy of what a pastor is teaching. So don't let them shame you into silence.
Which brings us to the next point...
