When Calvinists say "But predestination!" (sermons)
[Subtitle: My Calvinist pastor's sermons, and my thoughts about it all!
This was mainly written for those in my ex-church, to see our Calvinist pastor's own words, and why I think he's wrong. In the series of posts following this one, I comment more on the things he preached and where he goes wrong.
Here are the rest of the posts in this series: My comments #1-4 (election) and 5-6 (Romans and sovereignty) and 7-9 (depravity, Book of Life, predestine) and 10-11 (shaming tactics, Feb. 2015) and 12-14 (dead, regeneration, born again) and 15 (total depravity, manipulation) and 16A (God's Will, babies) and 16B (sin, evil, suffering) and 17 (double-speak and the gospel).
The shorter version of this series - with a lot less quotes and a lot less of my thoughts, written for everyone and not mainly for those in my ex-church - can be found here.]
Calvinism centers around the Calvinist definitions of predestination and God's sovereignty - that God controls everything, even sin and evil and our decisions, and so He pre-picks who goes to heaven and causes them to believe in Him, but everyone else is destined for hell with no chance to believe or be saved (and so Jesus never died for them anyway).
And if we push back against this and say Jesus died for all people and God offers salvation to all people and that He lets us decide to accept it or reject it, Calvinists go "But God is sovereign and predestination is in the Bible, so you have to believe it!"
(I already have a "When Calvinists say 'But sovereignty!'" post, but I'll briefly include it here since it's so closely tied to predestination, being the reason for Calvinist predestination and all.)
And when Calvinist pastors and theologians introduce this topic, they'll often be strategic about it - first implanting their definitions of sovereignty and predestination in our heads and then leading us to verses about God causing/controlling something specific in the Bible and verses that have the word "predestined" in it, and then they'll say "See, God causes and controls everything and the word 'predestined' is in the Bible, so you have to believe that God controls/predestines people's eternal destinies."
And since we already had their definitions in our heads, we now read the verses in a Calvinist way, not even realizing there are other ways to read it.
And to really clinch it, they preach in such a way to make us feel like it's only bad, unhumble, truth-denying, God-dishonoring Christians who disagree with them... but good, humble, truth-affirming, God-honoring Christians accept it, even if we can't understand it and don't like it.
[I am sure that most Calvinist preachers have the best intentions by preaching what and how they do. I believe most are trying to share God's Word as best they understand it, saying even the "hard stuff" that they might not enjoy teaching about (but that, deep down, they probably really love teaching about because it's so lofty, "elite," and "hard-core") because they truly believe it is God's Truth.
I'm sure most Calvinists don't (but some do) necessarily intend to deceive, manipulate, gaslight, deflect, etc. But either way, that's still the effect it has, whether they see or admit to it.
And good intentions and their belief that it's Truth don't excuse the bad theology and the "stealth tactics" many use to get into and take over churches (see "The 9 Marks of a Calvinist Cult"). Good intentions cannot make up for unbiblical teaching and cult-like behavior.
But it can help us be more sympathetic to the Calvinists themselves who are not necessarily trying to hijack the Church with a cult but who are themselves trapped in it. They need help getting out of it too, not just condemnation. So take strong stances against the Calvinism, but be gentle and understanding with the Calvinists. (But keep in mind that Bible teachers are held doubly-accountable, and so I think it's entirely appropriate to be doubly-firm with them.)]
Since it's best to hear their teachings right from them, here are a bunch of things the Calvinist pastor at my ex-church preached. This will be very long because I want to give a full picture to my ex-church of what the pastor has been teaching all these years. This is what I've found so far after watching over sixty sermons.
I'll make some minor comments all throughout these sermons [in brackets and italics], but I'll comment on them more fully in the next posts.
1. In a February 16, 2014 sermon (his earliest reference to predestination that I've found so far), he said: "Salvation is a God-project from beginning to end, from all the way back in time when God predestines and elects His own…"
Just a hint of the Calvinism to come. At this point, he would've been pastor for about 4 months, infiltrating and slowly reforming our non-Calvinist church. (But it's the elders who are really the ones to blame for seeking out and hiring a Calvinist pastor without telling us that he's a Calvinist or that they're switching us over to Calvinism, as far as I remember.)
And by this point, I was just starting to notice some questionable things he was teaching that I hadn't heard before and to notice shaming/manipulation tactics, making those who might disagree with him feel ashamed but those who agree with him feel like humble, intelligent Christians. (As a licensed counselor I notice that kind of stuff.) And it made me go "Wait, what?" It made me alarmed enough to realize that I needed to listen very closely to what he was going to teach and to figure out exactly what his theology was and why it seemed off.
Preaching the true gospel - the true "good news" of Scripture - shouldn't require manipulation and shaming. And so if a pastor is using tactics like those, it's to get you to accept something you wouldn't normally accept if you had your wits about you.
If I had already known about Calvinism at that point or if he'd identified his theology as Calvinism, I'd have understood much quicker what he was really teaching or been able to look it up for myself. But I had to research it from scratch, without really knowing what I was dealing with, and so it would take many months to figure it all out fully.
[I think that's their plan, why they don't call it Calvinism upfront - because then we can't look it up right away to evaluate it for ourselves, giving them time to slip farther and deeper in. And by the time we realize what it is, many people are too deep in to get out. My family, however, left in 2019, almost six years after he became pastor and after having been there almost 20 years total. We just couldn't take it anymore. Six years of feeling our faith strangled by Calvinism was enough for us. And even though it's been almost five years since we left, we still feel the lingering damage it's done. See "Healing your soul from Calvinism's damage" to help start the process of healing. But you'll probably still feel the painful, damaging effects for years to come.]
But even before this, a friend and I both realized there was something not-very-shepherdy about the new pastor's personality, mannerisms, and teaching style. He's too my-way-or-the-highway, too smug and big-headed, too preachy (which is different from "preaching"). We could tell that he wasn't someone we'd ever want to go to for emotional help.
And for me, it started in a very early sermon when he admitted that he wasn't a patient person, that he doesn't have patience with people. I think he meant it like "Look how human I am too, just like you, and how humble I am to admit it," but as soon as he said that, I thought "Well, he just lost all those who are introverts, who are afraid of burdening others with their problems, who've been heart-wounded by others, who are too timid or insecure to reach out for help, etc." He lost me very early based on personality alone. (We know two families who left the church rather early on too because of his personality and teaching style. As one said, "When he became pastor, the heart went out of the place.")
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2. From his February 1, 2015 sermon on unbelief: "Why would people reject Jesus?... The answer from the Bible goes back to the stubbornness, blindness, perversity, depravity, wickedness of the human heart... The human heart is described as sinful, wicked, blind, dead, deceitful, corrupt, evil... because of this, the Bible says that unless God overrides our resistance and rebellion, we will not believe and we will reject Him.
And so the question is 'Why would anybody surrender to Jesus?' [Deflection.]
And the answer is: God's effective calling in your life. [He then goes on to quote Wayne Grudem, gushing over his Systematic Theology book.]... The only reason somebody responds to Christ is God chooses to override their rebellion and resistance, turn them around and drive them to Himself as Savior. The Bible is clear: He does not convict all. He is not an equal opportunity convicter. And He doesn't pursue all. But He does pursue some. [To support his view, he then goes on to use the verse about God opening Lydia's heart to Paul's message, using it as proof for Calvinist election and irresistible grace. I'll dismantle this later in another post. Also, looking back now, I totally would've been able - had I known then what I know now - to identify this as Calvinism, hard-core Calvinism. But back then, I didn't know what I didn't know. I just knew something was wrong. And so I spent many months trying to figure out what was wrong with what he was teaching and to figure out what the Bible really said, before I was even aware he was a Calvinist.]
... Americans have certain presuppositions and a lens by which we view the world. All cultures have blind-spots. And one of the blind-spots for Americans is 'individual choice is everything.' It always comes out at the top of our cultural values. [Manipulative-shaming and gaslighting, making you feel like you can't trust your own judgment or reasoning abilities because you're a blind-spotted American who loves "choice" too much. This puts Calvinists at an automatic advantage because if we disagree with them, all they have to do is say "See, blind spots!"]
... Now your question might be this: 'Why doesn't God draw everybody? And why doesn't He save everybody and open the eyes of every sinner and have mercy on them all?'... He does not. He does not. [Interesting, because John 12:32 says “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.” And Romans 11:32 says "For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all." And John 16:8 says "When [the Holy Spirit] comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment."]
You know what: When we ask that question, we are forgetting the biblical doctrine of sin. In light of the Bible's graphic description of our wickedness and cruelty and rebellion, the question, friends, is 'Why does He save anybody?' [So "Ignore those predestined to hell and just celebrate that you're one of those predestined to heaven! Hooray for you!"]
He says in Romans 'I will harden whom I want and I will have compassion on whom I want.' Americans hate that verse, but it's biblical. [Yes, but his interpretation of it is not. For what Romans 9 is really about, see "When Calvinists say 'But Romans 9!'" And here's a hint: It's not about the salvation of individuals.] And it's in the text. [Yes, but he takes it out-of-context, a very common, basic error of Calvinism. As it's been said: Context kills Calvinism. Calvinism and context cannot coexist.]
And the fact that God has mercy on anybody should cause all of us to fall on our knees in thanksgiving... The only answer why God draws anybody is His love, His mercy, His grace. The doctrine of election was not designed to cause controversy. It was designed to cause thanksgiving and to cause praise in God's people. [Gaslighting: "You shouldn't be upset about this. There's no reason to be upset about it. You should be happy about it. So don't listen to the alarm bells that are going off in your spirit right now, just humbly accept it and praise God for it." Very cult-like.]
... The Bible's teaching on our human condition especially outside of Christ [is that we are] hopelessly blinded and in slavery to sin unless God graciously opens human sinful eyes and summons them to Himself as Lord... That's the gospel: That there is a God who seeks hardened sinners, pursues them, turns them around, drags them to Himself, blesses them, pardons them, and justifies them. [Actually, I thought the gospel was "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). And "For what I received I passed onto you as of first importance: 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," (1 Cor. 15:3-4). But apparently, the gospel is Calvinism's election, Calvinism's TULIP. Silly me.]
... That is why the gospel is called 'good news.'" [For the elect only! But for the non-elect, it's bad news. Very bad news.]
... [Then he goes on and on about how wicked and depraved we all are and says...] When you begin to pile up the evidence and even get a glimpse of the depravity, wickedness, rebellion, and evilness of the human heart, ladies and gentlemen, the real question is not 'Why will so many go to hell?' The question really becomes 'Why will anybody go to heaven?' [Deflection.]
That's what we are missing when it comes to questions like [hell] or predestination. We want to ask, 'How come God isn't fair and gives everyone a chance?' [But] when you stack up the biblical evidence against the human race, the issue on that isn't 'Why didn't God give everyone a chance to go to heaven,' it's 'Why did God elect anybody?'
... Doctrines like predestination or salvation are designed to drive us to our knees in thanksgiving that there is a way left [for the elect only], that He does have mercy on some. Otherwise, we're all toast, literally. [So "ignore what happens to the non-elect and just thank God that you're not one of them!"]
... God, in His love and compassion, sent [Jesus to die on the cross]...out of love for His sheep." [When Calvinists say "His sheep", they mean only His sheep, which they define as only the elect.]
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4. From an August 16, 2015 sermon on predestination [By this point, after months of researching all the "off" things he'd been saying - all the hints of Calvinism he'd been dripping into sermons all along (but not revealing it as "Calvinism") and all the verses he misused and misinterpreted - I was quite angry about what he was teaching, alarmed at all the manipulation, gaslighting, and out-of-context verses, and concerned that very few other people seemed to be disturbed by it, that most seemed to like and approve of him. I'd even sometimes hear shouts of approval and "Amen" coming from the audience about the very things that horrified me the most. It felt like the Twilight Zone.]:
“How many sins does it take to be a sinner? The answer is zero because we’re born steeped in sin, because we inherit it from Adam and Eve and their rebellion. [So in Calvinism, we're not really punished for our sin, but we're punished for being human: "For the wages of being born is death."]
We call that the doctrine of internal depravity, inherited depravity… human beings are born infected and absolutely contaminated by sin on every level… We are under the power of sin… The unsaved person, outside of Christ - because they are slaves to depravity, every one of us born that way - is not able to seek God. Not only don’t they, they can’t… unwilling and unable... [He also says this in August 2019: "The reason no one seeks God is because no one is able to seek God... In Bondage of the Will, Luther says 'To say that we do not seek God is the same as saying that we cannot seek God.' So you see that free-will doesn't exist... The Bible says that human beings are so traumatized by God and His holiness that we suppress the very existence of God so that we don't have to deal with it..." But "unable" is not biblical. It's Calvinist. And it's critically fundamental to their TULIP theology - their idea that people are so "depraved" that they "can't" believe, and so God has to be the one who chooses who believes and causes them to believe. That's why they always include "unable" - their whole Calvinist theology depends on it. ("Inability" is only in the Bible when God hardens a person after they first hardened themselves, making their self-chosen decision permanent, as a punishment, which He then works into His plans and uses for His purposes.)]
... Once you begin to understand [how wicked we are], the question is not ‘Why aren’t more people elect? Why isn’t everyone going to heaven?’ What’s the real question? ‘Why is anybody elect? Why is anybody going to heaven?’ [Deflection. Manipulation.]
... Why do some sinners believe and some don’t?... This is going to make people in Western culture where choice is supreme, it’s going to make us uneasy. Why do some rebellious, enslaved-to-sin sinners repent and others stay hardened?
The answer from the Apostle Paul through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit [Translation: "So if you disagree with me, you disagree with Paul, the Holy Spirit, the Bible."] is one phrase: Because of God’s sovereign predestination, His sovereign election. It’s a doctrine of grace, a doctrine of mercy… God has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy, and He hardens whom He wants to harden. That’s a difficult verse in American culture. [It's only "difficult" because they misinterpret it. And this is manipulation, shaming, and gaslighting.]
But I tell you where it’s not difficult: Christians in the Middle East don’t struggle with this nearly as much. Muslims don’t struggle with this concept nearly as much as Christians. [Because Calvinism's god is not too different from Islam's Allah.]
… But in America – where ‘Have it your way’ is our national slogan and 'choice' always comes out on top of every survey of national values - freedom of choice is the air we breathe. We’re blind to how much it seeps in and is part of us. [Translation: "Anyone who disagrees with me is blinded and doesn't realize it."]
You read a verse like this, and it absolutely almost has a visceral reaction.
The definition of election, predestination, is that it's the Bible's teaching that as God looks out on rebellious, sinful humanity, He chooses to have mercy on some sinners and not others. [But once again, Romans 11:32 says "For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all." But if Calvinists can find their definition of predestination/election clearly spelled-out in a verse in the Bible, then I'll start to believe them. But see this 11-minute Soteriology 101 video - Provisionists believe in Predestination and Election - for a different explanation of predestination, one that actually makes sense, fits all of Scripture, and upholds God's loving, righteous, just, gracious, merciful, trustworthy character.]
… In other words, He’s not an equal opportunity convicter. [But once again, John 16:8 says "When [the Holy Spirit] comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment."]
We can’t make ‘What do I feel [about this]?’ our first response… it has to be ‘What does Scripture say?’ [That would be fine if that's what Scripture actually said - but it's not. But I guess if he says enough times that he's just teaching "right from the text, right from Scripture," then maybe we'll believe him and not notice how out-of-context he is or how wrong his interpretation is, right?]
… Dead people don’t choose. Dead people can’t choose anything. If you went to the cemetery today with a stack of menus and passed them out among the tombstones and said ‘Dinner’s on me. What do you choose?’, what would happen?... I can guarantee you that zero would order anything because dead people can’t pick. Dead people can’t choose anything [except, of course, to sin and reject God, in Calvinism] unless a miracle happens. And so therefore election is based on nothing we do... It’s why He sovereignly elects and gives grace and mercy to some. [It's a stupid and wrong analogy to compare spiritual death to physical death. But it works, tricking a lot of people into buying their nonsense.]
… [But some people object and say] 'Doesn’t election make God look bad?' Honestly, a lot of our visceral reactions to this stuff are emotional reactions, based of family and friends who aren’t saved. [So the problem is our emotions, not his theology, right?]
… But on the contrary, election does not make God look bad; it makes God look good. [Gaslighting: "Don't trust your assessment that predestining people to hell reflects badly on God."] In fact, election and even its opposite - hardening - both glorify God. God is equally glorified in the salvation of sinners as He is in the damnation of sinners. [Which should scare Calvinists, not elicit their praise. And of course, he's implying that if we deny Calvinism's "doctrine of election," we're denying God His glory. But in light of the fact that Calvi-god is equally glorified either way, Calvinists who are truly concerned most about God’s glory shouldn’t really care then if someone is saved or not, and they should actually rejoice in the damnation of the non-elect. And some do.]
… The elect get mercy. The unelect get justice. Nobody is treated unfairly. [Easy to say when you think you're one of the elect. But have you ever heard of "evanescent grace"?]
So remember that everything God does is for His glory. Everything. [Translation: "If you deny predestination, you're robbing God of glory."] We want to get God off the hook on this one, but God puts Himself right back on the hook on this one…
[About the “mystery” of God saying He wants all to be saved while simultaneously predestining people to hell] God is infinitely complex, and if God doesn’t give you a headache at times, you’re worshipping the wrong God. If you think you’ve got Him all figured out, you’re worshipping a God of your own imagination. [Translation: "So if you're struggling with and confused by what I'm teaching you - if it's making you doubt, dislike, or feel bad about God - then it's a sign that I'm teaching you truth." Wow! Tactics don't get much more cult-like than that!]
… Election is designed not for theological debate. It is designed to drive God’s people to their knees in humble thanksgiving and praise to their Maker.
… So why does God still blame us if He elects some and not others? The answer from Paul is ‘Who are you, a human being, to talk back to God?’ [Deflection. Shaming. Manipulation.]
… You know what the problem is with the question ‘Why does God blame us if no one can resist His will’? The problem is that embedded in that question is an accusation that somehow God isn’t good because He elects some and not others. [Massive shaming, accusing us of doubting God's goodness if we disagree with their view of predestination. And this is based on the Calvinist misinterpretation of and misapplication of Romans 9, their assumption that it teaches that God predestines the eternal destiny of individuals. But it does not. And so the verse the pastor refers to - "Why does God blame us..." - has to do with something completely different than "God elects some and not others."]
… There are 3 typical responses whenever the doctrine of predestination is preached:
#1: Anger/agitation - Because it goes against everything we are and breathe in American Western culture, in a liberal secular democracy where choice is everything, to be told that God is actually the one who makes the choice.
… #2: Avoidance - But let’s call that what it is: sin. If it’s taught in the Bible, no matter what it is, we need to take a good hard look at it. There’s a reason it’s there. God is not apologetic about it. He’s not embarrassed by [it]… So don’t avoid this doctrine. [I'm turning this around and telling Calvinists to take a good hard look at their theology, to compare what they've been taught to the plain, commonsense teaching of Scripture, and to research and consider what the "other side" says (give Leighton Flowers at Soteriology 101 a listen, one of the best "other side" resources online). As our pastor said, to avoid researching what Scripture really says is "sin." Besides, if Calvinism is so clearly biblical, then doing more research and considering the other side should only strengthen your Calvinism, right? Giving you more reasons to affirm it? So don't be afraid of digging deeper or of hearing opposing views.]
… #3: And the third response is acceptance. [No disagreement allowed, apparently.]
… When we see God in His glory in election and predestination, it’s actually a God-entrenched theology that exalts who God is and makes God the center of the universe and not us. [As if only Calvinist theology elevates God above man.]… One of the best books to recommend to you about this is Chosen by God by R.C. Sproul." [Of course! As always, ending with a recommendation of a Calvinist book!]
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5. In September 16, 2015: “God says in Genesis ‘I’m gonna make worshippers of every nation. I have my elect among every people group.’”
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6. In other sermons (not sure which), he once clearly said: "The Bible is clear that God loves people. He loves peoples. But He does not love all people, and He does not love all people equally. He elected some sinners to salvation, and He predestined some for eternal damnation."
And he said something like: "We tend to have a problem with the idea that God can choose who to save and who not to save. We don't like it. But the Bible clearly teaches it. The Bible calls it 'the doctrine of election, the doctrine of predestination'." [I'll address this more in my comments later - but for now, just know that both of these are about what happens to anyone who becomes a believer - after they become a believer - not about who becomes a believer and how.]
Update: I just found the one about God not loving all people, and here it is, from an October 12, 2014 sermon about God's love (notice the contradiction):
"Having established the truth of God's universal love throughout Scripture, the Bible goes deeper and says that not only does God love all people, not only does He love all individuals, but there is a flip side to it: He does not love all people alike... God does love the world, but He doesn't love all people alike... The Bible is very clear. God loves mankind. God loves people. God loves peoples. But He doesn't love all people and He doesn't love all people alike. He puts His affections on some and not others... He loves all people, but He does not love all people alike, for His glory. [Calvi-god loves all people, just in different ways. He loves the elect by saving them from hell, but he "loves" the non-elect by merely meeting their basic needs while they are alive on earth (common grace), by letting them live for a little while before sending them to hell for being the unbelievers he predestined them to be. That's what Calvinists mean when they deceptively say "God loves all people." (If that's love, I'd hate to see hate.)
And for the record: Calvinists teach that God is kind to the non-elect to show them a little pseudo-love and pseudo-grace before sending them to their predestined damnation, but the Bible itself tells us why God shows kindness to the unrighteous: "Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?" (Romans 2:4). This is very different.
God intends for His kindness to lead stubborn, unrepentant, storing-up-wrath-against-themselves sinners (verse 5) to repentance, to salvation. He intends for unrepentant people to see His kindness and, consequently, to turn to Him, repent, believe in Him, and be saved. That is His intention for all sinners, all unrepentant people. He does not intend for anyone to go to hell. He has not predestined anyone to hell. He desires that we – all of us sinners - see His goodness, seek Him, turn to Him, and be saved, not that most people burn in hell for all of eternity because He only really loved the elect enough to save them. (Oh, does Calvinism make me mad!!!)]
... [Then he preaches on Romans 9, human depravity, how terrible people are, etc., and he says:] After thousands of years of [human] rebellion, that God would be willing to elect any rebellious sinner to eternal life shows tremendous love and grace and mercy.
... [Then he goes into how God doesn't choose whom He saves by foreknowing who will choose Him, because if God waited for us to choose Him then no one would choose Him, because "dead people can't choose," and he quotes from Martin Luther's Bondage of the Will, and then he says:] Unless God chooses to open our eyes, we can't believe. Period!... Faith is a gift from God, but it's not a gift that comes to all sinners. It comes to some but not others. [Faith is not the gift; eternal life is. See "Is faith a gift God gives (forces on) us?"]
... [Then he quotes the verses about God having mercy on whom He wants and hardening whom he wants, saying that Americans hate these verses. And he adds:] Without the doctrine of predestination and election, no one would go to heaven... God elected, God chose, God drew, God opens your eyes, God saved, and because He did all that, you [some of you] were able to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and repent."
[Dr. Tony Evans defines "election" this way in his book The Tony Evans Bible Commentary (pg 15): "The sovereign prerogative of God to choose individuals, families, groups, and nations to serve his kingdom purposes as he so wills. Election is specifically related to service, usefulness, and blessings - not individual salvation. Jesus died for all human beings without exception and desires for all to be saved." I couldn't agree more!]
7. From a January 24, 2016 sermon: “We can’t seek God. We won’t seek God. We are God-haters. And unless God chooses to seek us and open blinded eyes, we are helpless and hopeless as slaves to sin… Not only are we unwilling to come to God, the sinner is unable to come to God unless God first seeks them. That is why we can’t seek truth.” [So if Calvi-god doesn't seek you, if he hasn't chosen you, you have no chance to be saved. Only the elect can and will have any desire to seek him because he first seeks them - and only them - making them want him.]
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8. From a February 28, 2016 sermon: "All people, all cultures, all generations are universally evil, spiritually ignorant, rebellious, wayward, worthless, morally corrupt, evil-mouthed, deceitful, full of bitterness, violent, miserable, and have no fear of God in their eyes. [Wow, we are horrible beings, aren't we? Weird that a holy, great God would create people to be so wretched and terrible. But as Calvinism says: "It was best for His glory!"]... We're dead in sin, slaves to sin, unable and unwilling to seek God... No one is righteous... We are depraved down to the core... utterly saturated, permeated, and consumed by corruption... No one is righteous.
Theologians over the years have tagged this with the phrase 'total depravity'... which means that sin has infected and corrupted us internally, down to our core, it has suffocated any hunger for God. Total depravity means sin has invaded our entire being and has poisoned our hearts and minds and cut us off from God and completely squelched any hunger for God. That's what total depravity means. [Depravity does not necessarily include "no hunger for God." That's a Calvinist idea to support "inability" and their TULIP. But if it did mean that no one could have any desire for God, which it doesn't, then why are men calling on the Lord in Gen. 4:26, especially when there's no indication that God caused them to?]
Because our human nature is corrupted by sin, because our depravity has permeated us to the core, unbelievers cannot grasp God's truth clearly. It is only the Holy Spirit who can give a person the ability to go 'I believe that. That's me. That is who I am.' Or 'That is who Christ is and that is the gospel.' [That's total inability, unconditional election, irresistible grace, and limited atonement all rolled into one: Calvinist predestination and election. And what he's saying is that only the Holy Spirit can give someone the ability to believe in God, that the Holy Spirit first indwells them, wakes them up spiritually, gives them faith, and then they believe in God. And He will only do this for "the elect." But this is a reversed order of what the Bible shows, which I'll explain later. Also, for the record, the Holy Spirit regenerates believers and helps believers understand the Word. He does not regenerate sinners or cause sinners to believe. See "The Holy Spirit and 'Dead People'".]
... No one seeks God... A non-believer - no one - is prompted by their own decision and interest to seek God. No one seeks God. In fact, we run the other direction... God is more terrifying than the devil, and that's why no one seeks God. [So first we don't seek because we're unable, but now we don't seek because we're terrified of God. Make up your mind!]
... Why does nobody seek God? Because no one is able to seek God on their own and the reason goes back to total depravity. [Calvinists build one bad idea on top of the other, having started with unbiblical ideas and definitions from the beginning.]... We are born slaves to sin, wickedness, depravity... God doesn't open all blinded eyes. God hardens whom He wants to and has compassion on whom He wants to... but He has mercy on some.
... According to Tim Keller in Romans for You: 'This means that anyone who is truly seeking God has been sought by God. We decided to put our faith in Him only because He had decided to give us faith.' [Conclusion: "So if you don't get faith, it's because God decided not to give it to you - because you were predestined to hell for His glory."]
... You don't understand the gospel until you realize you're the worst sinner you know." [Wow, so it's not just that we need to admit we're sinners in order to be saved, but now we need to admit that we're the worst sinner of all sinners in order to be saved. This requires more out of us than God does. I explore this more in this post later in the series.]
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“… God is sovereign over salvation… Some people say ‘Doesn’t God look through history, see who will choose Him, and then He elect them?’ I say, ‘That’s a nice theory but it’s backwards.’… Nobody seeks God. If God looked through history to wait and see who would choose Him, the answer would be ‘Nobody would choose Him. Nobody seeks.’
So why do some respond [to the gospel]? It’s because God chose them and He summons them and awakens them to the gospel… [This is backwards. Calvinists say that believing is a result of being born again. But the Bible shows that being born again is the result of belief.]
And [His choice] had nothing to do with anything they did… Some of you are sitting here right this minute getting angry. Some of you have avoided this doctrine. Some of you are murmuring in your heart, ‘This just doesn’t seem fair. It doesn’t seem just.’ If you have ever found yourself in the ‘That’s not fair’ camp, be careful asking God for what’s fair in your life. Be careful saying ‘God, I want what’s coming to me!’ That’s a dangerous road to walk down. [This is shaming, deflection, and strawmanning. It shames Christians who oppose the "doctrine of predestination," who get upset about it. It deflects by demanding that we don't ask the tough questions about what this doctrine does to God's character, scaring us from digging deeper into why this doctrine seems wrong. And it's a strawman argument in that it accuses us of fighting God, of questioning His fairness within predestination - when what we're really doing is fighting the Calvinist doctrine of predestination itself and what it does to God's character and truth. And another thing this pastor beautifully did - by warning "be careful of asking for what's fair" - is to subtly affirm Calvinism's other ideas of "we're so totally depraved that all of us deserve hell and so we should just shut up and be thankful God chose to elect anyone at all to salvation." In Calvinism, what's "fair" is damnation for all. Well done, Calvinist pastor! I'm sure all the humble Christians in the congregation hung their heads in shame, feeling terrible that they ever questioned God's "right" to predestine people to hell.]
… [Given our horrible sinfulness and rebellion against God], the question is not ‘Why doesn’t God choose everybody?’ The real question is ‘Why does God choose any of us?’ [Deflection. And the questions themselves are faulty because they're built on the Calvinist presupposition that God chooses who gets saved. Never answer Calvinist questions that are based on Calvinist concepts, because that will just suck you into their world. Dismantle the questions instead, exposing the built-in errors and biases.]
If you’ve ever wondered ‘Why doesn’t God give mercy to all?’, it’s a very short line from ‘God should give mercy’ to ‘God owes mercy.’ If mercy is demanded, it’s not mercy anymore. What’s really being said is ‘God owes us mercy,’ and you know what that is? It’s an accusation against God’s goodness. That’s what that is. [Massive shaming. And it's a faulty question with a built-in Calvinist bias that's unbiblical because God does give mercy to all: Romans 11:32 says "For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all." (He just allows us to accept or reject it.) And it's strawmanning because the real issue in Calvinism isn't "Why doesn't God give mercy to all?" But it's "Why, in Calvinism, does He say He wants all people to be saved while predestining most to hell? Why does He command people to believe but then prevent them from believing? Why does He command us not to sin but preplan/cause us to sin? How could a good, holy, trustworthy God 'ordain' sin and evil and unbelief, get glory for sin and evil and unbelief, and then punish us for the sin and evil and unbelief that He caused?" Etc. Those are the real issues, the real problems, among others. And all the manipulative Calvinist tactics of "Shame on you for asking questions like that" don't cut it. They don't provide suitable answers for such serious questions. But sadly, they do work, as proven by how many churches and Christians have been hijacked by Calvinism. We are a trusting, naive, gullible bunch of non-Bereans, aren't we?]
… If a wealthy person went into the inner city and said 'I’m gonna pick 25 young, poor people, and I’m gonna bless them with a full ride to any Ivy League university’… could we say he was being unfair to the people he didn’t give that gift to? The answer is: No. He has a right to bless whomever he wants to, and he’s good and grace-full for doing it. [Bad analogy - because this doesn't accurately reflect what happens in Calvinism. In Calvinism, God first created all the people to be in inner-city poverty, giving them only the desire to be in poverty and with no ability to get out of poverty themselves even though He commands them all to get out of poverty, and then He comes in and acts like He's "so gracious" to at least rescue a few, leaving everyone else in the inner-city poverty with no ability to get out... and then when His chosen ones are safely in their Ivy League dorm rooms, He blows up the inner city with a nuclear bomb to kill everyone He didn't choose because He decided from the very beginning to hate them and to get glory by destroying them. Now that's a more accurate Calvinist analogy!]
Predestination comes up in a number of books [in the Bible], and the question in our series has been not ‘what do I want the text to say’ but ‘what does it say’. [Actually, according to the concordance, the words "predestinate/predestinated" only comes up in two places in the Bible: twice in Romans 8:29-30 and twice in Ephesians 1:5,11. And both times it's talking about what God predestined for anyone who believes (read the King James Version): All believers will be conformed to Jesus's image and will be adopted as sons (which is defined in Romans 8:23 as having our bodies redeemed) and will receive an inheritance. It's not about God predestining who believes but about what will happen to those who believe, after they believe. But the more he says "What does the text say?," the more we think he's actually interpreting the text correctly, and the more we trust him, and the more we put our guard down and turn off our red-flag radar and stop thinking for ourselves. Be a Berean: Doublecheck his use of verses - in context - for yourself!]
… Every culture has blind-spots when it comes to the Bible, and one of ours is ‘choice’, and we superimpose it onto the text. And over the years, our filters go up and our prejudices become concrete – we get hardening of the categories – and pretty soon we can’t see what the text is saying anymore. [Gaslighting, making us doubt our abilities to understand and reason and think because of our "blind spots." And so, of course, we must go to the Calvinist pastor to help us understand and see things clearly. How do you think religious cults suck in so many people!]
And not only do we see it, but we resist it and get angry, instead of saying, ‘This is such a precious doctrine.’” [So if we get upset by what he teaches, it's “proof” that we're resisting God’s truth. Manipulative-shaming. And it's effective because we can't defend ourselves against something like this because our very attempts to defend ourselves will just "prove" to them how rebellious we are against "God's truth." According to Calvinism, there is no disagreeing with them, only acceptance and submission. Because disagreeing with them is disagreeing with God.]
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… [Election] has nothing to do with anything [people have] said or done, which leads to our first question: If God elects based on nothing that those people have done, is that just? That’s the question. [With built-in Calvinism.]
Now let’s be honest. This is a doctrine [predestination/election] that’s tough for us in the West. It makes a lot of us cringe. [He’s used the “Americans have a hard time submitting to authority, and so they have a hard time with God's sovereignty” tactic many times. Manipulative-shaming!]
... Romans 9 flies in the face of the cultural air we breathe. [Actually, when properly interpreted, it flies in the face of Calvinism.] Every culture has blind-spots when it comes to Scripture because of the cultural setting [and] assumptions and presuppositions… In the West, any survey of cultural values will show ‘choice’ at the top of the spectrum… It’s who we are... And the challenge of the text is 'What does the text say?' And THEN we can ask 'Do I like it?'
... I have to believe it, even if I don’t like it… If you believe Jesus, which I do, and if you believe the New Testament is inspired and fully inerrant and that Jesus says what He means and means what He says, then you have to believe in it, even if you don’t like it. [Translation: "If you disagree with me, you disagree with God."]
The first question is not 'Do I like a doctrine?' The first question is 'What does the text say?' [And yet Calvinists look right at what a text plainly says, what can be understood in a simple and commonsense way, and go 'Yeah, but there's a deeper meaning underneath what it says. A hidden secondary level which changes what we think it says. God didn't really mean that He wanted all people to be saved and no one to perish when He said that He wanted all people to be saved and no one to perish. He didn't really mean that He loved everyone when He said that He loved the world. He didn't really mean that Jesus died for all people's sins when He said that Jesus died for all people's sins, the sins of the world. He didn't really mean that we can seek Him when He commands us to seek Him. He didn't really mean that He wanted all people to repent and obey when He said that He wanted all people to repent and obey. It doesn't say what it seems to say. So let's see what Grudem and Piper and Sproul and MacArthur and Augustine teach us about how to understand what God says. Because it's not as clear, simple, or easy-to-understand as it might sound to you." Can you say "Cult!"]
… So the questions we’re going to address are 'Is God unjust?' and 'If God elects based on nothing the people have done, then how can He blame us on Judgment Day, since He’s the one who made the decision?' [Faulty question with built-in Calvinism. It presupposes that God chooses who get saved. This is how Calvinism traps you: it starts with one bad idea and then leads you in a string of bad ideas based on that bad idea. But it seems to make sense to you because you don't realize that the first idea was bad, that it started leading everything in the wrong direction. Go back and examine the starting point, the first worm they put on the hook to snag you. As I say in "Why is Calvinism so Dangerous?": Examine the worms. Always go back and examine the worms!]
… [In answer to ‘Is God unjust’:] Once you realize [how wretchedly, utterly depraved we are] the question is not 'Why doesn’t God elect everybody?' The question becomes 'Why does He elect anybody? Why does He have mercy on anybody?'… He is merciful. He is gracious [for electing anyone at all].
… Some Christians believe [that] God looks down through history and then He waits to see which sinners will choose Him and then He makes those the elect. [But] the Bible doesn’t teach that!
... And if He just waited to see which sinners would choose Him, no sinful human being - who is a slave to depravity, as we’re told - would choose God. Because we’re dead in sin… Dead sinners can’t pick people. Dead sinners don’t make choices. God elects from eternity past; He has mercy on some sinners and not others. [But once again, "For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all." (Romans 11:32).]
… The second question is ‘How can God blame sinners if He elects some and not others?’… That’s vexing… [No, it's not vexing. It's wrong. And it's a faulty question, built on the Calvinist presupposition that God elects people to salvation.]
D.A. Carson answers it by saying that there are two tracks that run through Scripture, and they are abundantly clear, and the Bible shows zero tension between them.
Track One is that God is absolutely sovereign, right down to when sparrows die and fall out of the trees. [Actually, if I'm not mistaken, the verse is about God knowing when sparrows die, not necessarily causing it.] He has decreed it. He has decreed the elect from the non-elect… He is sovereign over the lives and eternities of mankind and of the nations. God is sovereign and all-powerful. The Bible shows no backing off from that doctrine. [Right, but Calvinists misunderstand sovereign and "all-powerful". The Bible doesn't, but Calvinists do.]
And there’s this other track which is that human beings are fully accountable for their choices, even though we’re slaves to sin. We’re fully accountable and will give an account someday for our choices.
D.A. Carson says that the Bible shows no tension between the fact that God elects and that human beings are fully accountable… How do we handle that? I don’t know. I don’t know. [You'll understand much better if you have correct, biblical views of "God's sovereignty" and "human responsibility." If you can't understand it, it's probably because you've got Calvinist glasses on.] The Bible never attempts to solve this dilemma… it simply affirms the dilemma. [It's only a dilemma in Calvinism.]
And if we insist that predestination is not fair…then Paul’s answer is…'But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? Should that which is formed say to the One who formed it, ‘Why did you make me this way?’ Doesn’t the Potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?’ [Shaming. Manipulation. Gaslighting: "You, tiny human, can't understand. So don't bother thinking about it too much." And once again, see here for what Romans 9 is really about. And notice that this specific verse is talking about the roles/jobs God gives people, how He uses them in His plans, not about whether they are saved or damned.]
… Sometimes we get confused and think that if I can’t understand a doctrine intellectually then I'm not going to affirm it... And so, about election, even if we can’t grasp it or fully understand it…it is taught, and we can affirm it. [If you listen closely, you'll notice that when sharing their Calvinist "doctrines," Calvinists often say "The Bible teaches...", instead of "The Bible says...". The thing is, they can't say "says" because their doctrines are not clearly stated in any verse in the Bible - but if they cobble together enough half-verses taken out of context, they can make it appear that the Bible "teaches" it. Even though it never "says" it.]
… There’s a difference between affirming and fully understanding. And I’ve found that to be helpful. [He also brought up not being able to understand the Trinity and not being able to understand how Jesus can be both God and man. But neither of those “mysteries” affects people’s salvation or calls into question the character of God, as the Calvinist view of predestination/election does. And this is why we should – why we need to - challenge their view of election and push back against it, instead of being manipulated into accepting it. Their “mysteries" about this are created by their own bad theology. They are not true mysteries from the Bible. True mysteries are when God chooses not to reveal something to us. But Calvinist “mysteries” are created when they screw up things that God did clearly reveal, reinterpreting it to try to make it fit their presuppositions, assumptions, and philosophical naval-gazing and ruminations. They create the "mysteries" that they have to then try to solve. (Why do you think their systematic theology books are so huge?) And when they run out of answers and get painted into a corner, they always pull out "Who are you to talk back to God?" As if disagreeing with them is disagreeing with God.]
… So why does God blame us if He elects some but not others? Paul’s answer is 'Who are you to talk back to God?' [See! But if Calvi-god controls all we do, even what we believe and think and say, then isn't he just talking back to himself?]
… About God’s decision to have mercy on some but not on others, some people say 'That makes God look bad'… I call that 'get God off the hook' theology. But every time we try to get God off the hook, He puts Himself back on the hook and says, 'No, don’t soften it down. This IS who I am.'
… The answer, going back to our question 'So how can God blame us?' is: That’s an accusation, and we don’t have any right to accuse God. God has the right to elect some – which puts His mercy on display, the elect get God’s mercy. And when He hardens someone, His justice is on display. And we don’t have any right to accuse God. [See in a later post my comment about God's justice.]
… Romans 9 was designed to bring comfort to the saints. [Making a bad thing - their bad interpretation of Romans 9 - sound good!] The Sermon on the Mount should terrify us [because it warns of hell and being a false disciple], but Romans 9 should comfort us. And so often, we get it exactly backwards. Romans 9 is designed to say to you, 'There is a good, loving, benevolent, all-powerful God, and He’s in full control of the universe, and you can trust Him [if you are elect]. [If you trust a god who commands people to repent and believe but prevents most people from being able to repent and believe and who preplans all sin and evil, then commands us not to do sin and evil, then causes us to do sin and evil, then punishes us for doing the sin and evil he predestined us to do, then I pity you. You don't know what it's like to have faith in a truly good, trustworthy God.]
And if you know Him as Lord and Savior, nothing can remove you from His love. You are secure and are going to be with Him for eternity.' [But once again, have you ever heard of "evanescent grace", the Calvinist answer for why apparent Christians fall away?] It’s designed to comfort the saints. [The lucky few "salvation lottery" winners. But what about the rest of mankind?] And so often we miss this because we get angry or avoid the text.
… [But then people ask] 'Doesn’t God want all people to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4)?'
1 Timothy shows us the missionary, loving, merciful heart of God. But obviously, not everyone will be saved.… The question is 'How does that fit with predestination and election?'… The answer is that God does not decree everything He desires. [Yes, but in Calvinism, God doesn't just "not decree what He desires," but He decrees things that oppose His desires, His spoken commands. In Calvinism, everything that happens is His Will - even when He predestines someone to disobey His commands. This is far different than just not forcing everything He wants. It would be like the difference between a parent saying "I want my child to share that toy with his friend, but I'm not going to force him to share it" and a parent who says "I want my child to share his toy and I told my child to share his toy, but I'm going to force him to beat his friend with the toy instead of sharing it." And yet, amazingly, Calvinists can't see anything wrong with a god like that, with Calvi-god who says one thing (like "I want all to be saved; I don't want anyone to perish") but means another, a god who commands one thing ("Seek Me" and "Repent and believe, every one of you") but causes the opposite.]
… I have to go with: God’s ways are not my ways. He doesn’t always decree what He desires. [And I have to go with: "You are wrong! The problem is Calvinism, not God."]… Sometimes God decrees what He hates to accomplish what He loves… God has deeper reasons at times for decreeing opposite His desires. [In Calvinism, it's not just opposite His desires, but opposite His spoken commands. And how in the world can a god like that be trusted!?!]… God is much more complex than us, infinitely complex. [If Calvinists can use "You just can't understand it" to get us to accept their terrible idea that God reprobates people to hell and ordains sin/unbelief - that God can say one thing ("I want all people to be saved and to obey Me") but mean another ("I really want most people to go to hell and to disobey My commands") - then what terrible things can't they get us to accept with "You just can't understand it"!?! Because this is about as bad as it gets.]
… Election doesn’t keep people out of heaven. [Bull-crap!] Election makes sure there will be people in heaven. [Yes, at the cost of other people!] Because otherwise the darkness and depravity of the human heart would nullify any coming to faith. [Only when you define depravity as "inability."]
… Any time [Calvinist predestination/election] is preached, people react in one of three ways: they get angry about it, they avoid it, or they accept it. [No disagreement allowed.]
… And accepting it doesn’t mean full comprehension. It just means saying 'Ok, it says what it says ["what we Calvinists say it says"]. He is God; I’m not. I don’t get it, but it’s there, and I’m not gonna fight it anymore.' [Translation: "So don't try to figure it out, but just humble yourself and accept what I teach you, even if it sounds terrible and makes God look bad." One of Satan's best tactics to get people to buy into bad theology is to make them feel like it's the humble, godly, intelligent thing to do, while at the same time manipulating them into not exploring it deeper. How do you think Calvinism has spread as much as it has!]
… It’s about surrender and affirming any tough teaching in the Bible, even if I don’t [like] it or understand it, accepting it because I believe God has spoken clearly. He didn’t stutter in the Bible. And yes, there are things that are going to drive me nuts and irritate me and give me a headache… but the question is 'Do you believe the Bible is the Word of God?'” ["If you disagree with me, you disagree with God!"]
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11. From September 4, 2016: “To be alive is often to be on a brand-new journey, for good or bad, difficult or not. The question is ‘Do we really believe our theology, that God is sovereign, that He controls every detail of the universe, that He knows the good from the bad, that He has ordained it in our lives.'… God is all-powerful. He knows exactly what He is doing. He’s sovereign and in control of every detail of the universe, including our destinies.”
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12. From a Christmas 2016 sermon: “No one seeks God. There is nobody who seeks God. The only person who will repent and believe is the one God has sought out Himself.”
At this point, he once again went into how sinful and depraved we are... and how because of our depravity, the real question is not "Why doesn't God choose everybody," but it's "Why did God choose anybody?"... and how in response to this doctrine, we can only get angry about it, avoid it, or we have to accept it... and how merciful it is that God chose to save anyone at all when we're all so depraved that we all deserve hell.
He's given this same speech many, many times over the years. And looking at his list of sermons going back over a decade, it seems like he's somewhat got a set playlist of sermons that he cycles through every couple years or so. So for the price of this pastor, it seems this church gets the same few dozen sermons repeated over and over again, and it always comes back to Calvinist election and predestination.
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And in that sermon, he said: "God is in control... The whole testimony of Scripture is that human sin, angelic sin, disease, disaster, tragedy, plague, suffering, elation and celebration are all under the control of God, all ordained by God, and all accomplished by the sovereign Lord. Scripture doesn't provide any alternative explanation. God is in control. [Clearly, he doesn't merely mean God is "in control" of it all, but that He controls it all, even sin and unbelief.]
... [Some of you] cannot get past the troubling implications of this doctrine. [It's only troubling when you misunderstand it, like Calvinists do.]... The doctrine of God's sovereignty is not an easy one for me either... For one thing, if God is in control in the way I believe the Bible teaches [at least he acknowledged that it's how he sees it, his belief about it, which is more than his daddy does, so I'll give him credit for that], it must mean that I am not in control. And my sinful little self does not want to be told that. [He clearly means "Your sinful little self".] It turns out my sinful little self is quite infatuated with autonomy... The doctrine of God's sovereignty collides with my delusional love of me. [Translation: "If you disagree with me, you're putting your sinful little self and your desire for control above God."]
... [About how we must submit to the "doctrine of sovereignty" even if it collides with our feelings:] As someone who is reformed in their theology, I start with a high view of Scripture. And everything else is subservient to that high view of Scripture. [Translation: "I put the Bible first, so you can trust me. And anyone who disagrees with me doesn't put the Bible first or have a high view of Scripture." Warning: The more that a group of people has to claim that they "have a high view of Scripture" and that they are "just preaching right from the Bible," the more you should question what they teach. It's like how the more untrustworthy a person is, the louder and more often they proclaim "You can trust me, honestly." But those who are truly trustworthy don't have to say it because their character speaks for itself. God's Word should speak for itself, plainly and clearly and commonsensely. And so when a Calvinist has to constantly tag "high view of Scripture" and "right from Scripture" (and "Who are you, o man, to question God") onto the disconcerting, confusing, contradictory things they teach, it should raise your red flags.]
... If God has chosen you for salvation, He will make you holy... God purposes for you to be holy, and He will make you holy. And if you defy Him, the furnace of affliction will not be pleasant. He may hide His face from you or rob you of your joy. He may oppress you with an illness or torment you with a bodily injury. He may destroy your career or put you in dire financial straits. He may afflict your spouse with a disease or snatch life from your children. GOD...WILL...MAKE...YOU...HOLY!" [Well, I guess if Calvi-god can predestine people to hell - if he can hate them before he made them and create them to be non-believers to punish in hell for his glory - then he can surely kill the children of the elect in order to make the elect parents holy. (But what about God's plans for the kids? Were they only born to make the parents holy? Does that not sound a little narcissistic and "man-centered" to you: "It's all about MY holiness"!?!] And it's amusing that throughout this part of the sermon, he was virtually shouting and emphasizing words for dramatic effect. I think he clearly fancied himself an 1800's hellfire-and-brimstone preacher.
And this guy is only in his 30's or so, and yet he preaches with hoity-toity pride and smug self-confidence, clearly pleased with his knowledge, power, authority, and influence over people's minds. (But his authority is only really because of nepotism, handed to him by his head-pastor daddy who preaches the same way). It's really creepy. And it's how I imagine the Pharisees were.]
15. The preacher's son sounds just like his daddy. His father taught him well. Daddy would be so proud. Here are parts of daddy's September 12, 2021 sermon about the devil being "God's devil":
[In reply to a quote from non-Calvinist pastor who - after 9-11 - said that "9-11 was of the devil, God had nothing to do with it", he said:] "Why should a Christian cringe at that statement? Because God had everything to do with 9-11. If He didn't, then He's not God. Period! That doesn't mean that He's the one who instigated flying airplanes into buildings and all, but God signed the authorization papers!
I was interviewed the morning of 9-11...and asked 'Where was God on 9-11?'... And I said something along the lines of 'Well, I guess He's in the same place He was on 9-10. He's on the throne! Let us never forget that God was not caught by surprise today. He is the one orchestrating world events. He gave life and breath to those 19 men who were murdering thugs. He knew exactly what was going on. He was directing the whole thing.' ["Orchestrating and directing" is what he really means, that 9-11 and all tragedies/evils are preplanned by, caused by, orchestrated by, directed by, controlled by God. And notice that it contradicts when he said earlier "that doesn't mean that He's the one who instigated flying airplanes into buildings and all, but God signed the authorization papers!" Calvinists do this all the time. They first make it sound like they mean "God allows our evil choices," but then they slowly and strategically reel you into what they really believe: that God preplanned, caused, controlled our evil choices and that we couldn't have chosen anything different. Calvinists try to sound "free-will," but they're not. (FYI: Calvinist Compatibilism is one of their attempts at this, wrapping "meticulous divine determinism" up in "free-will" language.) They never mean just "allows." They always mean "preplans, causes, orchestrates, directs, controls, etc." that everything happens exactly as God planned it and causes it to happen. (FYI: Biblically, God does orchestrate and direct things - but the difference is that He lets us choose first what we will do, whether we will obey or disobey, and then He works what we choose into His plans. We are not forced to do what we do, but He can work whatever we choose into His plans and bring good out of it. But in Calvinism, God has to be the one who preplans/controls everything we choose - whether we obey or disobey - to work His plans out, and we had no option or ability to choose anything else, even when it comes to sin and evil. These are very different Gods! One is still good and trustworthy and is big-enough and wise-enough to handle whatever we throw at Him, but the other isn't.)]
Satan carried it out. Satan is accountable, those men are accountable... but they didn't do it somehow separate from God's authority or jurisdiction. God signed the authorization papers! Like it or hate it.
God had everything to do with 9-11. He has everything to do with any other tragedy. God never, ever, ever tries to get Himself off the hook when it comes to worldwide tragedies. He takes full credit for Noah's flood or any other major tragedy you see in life. [For God to cause a flood that takes people's lives is far different than for God to cause people to commit murder, breaking His command against murder.] Because God wants you to know that He is the one running the show. He is the one who signs the authorization papers for anything that happens on our planet.
... God uses wicked agents, people, to do His deliberate plan. [It's biblical for God to "use" wickedness and to work our bad choices into His plans, but it's not biblical for God to "ordain/preplan/cause" wickedness and wicked desires, to give people no chance to choose anything else, and to then punish people for doing what He preplanned/caused them to do. But that's what happens in Calvinism.]
... We often agonize over things like predestination and human accountability, but the Bible shows no tension whatsoever around predestination and human accountability [Sure, the Bible doesn't have tension with it. The tension comes in when Calvinists misunderstand these things, when they create an unbiblical view of them.]
... How's that fit together? I don't have a clue. But there you have it. God has a sovereign, divine plan that even includes how people respond and yet those people are still fully accountable.
... God has purposes for allowing and ordaining satanic and demonic conflict at times... And the point is that the devil is God's devil. He exists, he functions, he operates, only under the authorization papers and sovereign hand of an all-powerful God who is using him for His ends and purposes..." [Once again, "using" Satan's actions is one thing, but preplanning, causing, controlling Satan's actions is another.]
[He also preached a "the devil is God's devil" message on July 23, 2023: "The devil is God's devil... Everything Satan does is under God's sovereign power... Satan and his angels are exactly on schedule, doing exactly what God intended for them to do."]
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16. In a February11, 2024 sermon about being born again, he said: "If anybody is going to end up in the kingdom of God, a person must experience new birth. [Jesus] is stating a fact, not giving a command... It may surprise you. There is no command to be born again in the Bible. In fact, there is no explanation how to be born again in the Bible... because it's not up to us. It is a supernatural miracle and work of God that He gives to some... The new birth is a sovereign work of God. It is not something we choose to do for ourselves. [At this point, he brings up John 3:8 about how the wind blows wherever it wants to and says that it's how the Spirit saves people too, that the Spirit regenerates whomever He wants to and passes by others, and there's nothing we can do about it. But that's not what this verse means. Jesus is not saying that the Spirit chooses who gets saved. He's saying that work of the Spirit in spiritual birth is an invisible thing, like how the wind is invisible. He's contrasting invisible spiritual birth to visible physical birth. That's all this verse is about: the invisible compared to the visible. Not about who gets saved or how they are "chosen." Ridiculous.]
... What must occur for us to enter the kingdom of God is, in fact, something we are unable to do ourselves... The verb 'to be born' is passive in the Greek. It means we don't play any role in the new birth. It's why there is no command given, no explanation how to do this. Jesus is just declaring a fact. And just like we had nothing to do with our physical birth - I mean think about it, how much did you have to do with being born again? how much choice did you have in the whole process of physical birth? - the point is that it's the same with spiritual birth. [Sound legit, right? Convincing? But hang in there, I'll explain more in the comments later. But here's a tidbit: Yes, we can't make ourselves born again (that's the Spirit's job), but He makes us born again in response to what we can do: Believe in Jesus (that's our job). And anyone can believe. We believe, and then the Spirit makes us born again. But the pastor here makes it sound like since we can't make ourselves born-again, then we also can't believe, that the Spirit has to cause that to happen too. But this is wrong! So wrong.]
... So once again, the reason we have no role in the new birth is [because] we are born, the Bible says, steeped in sin, slaves to sin, spiritually dead, enemies of God, unable to seek God - which means we can't pray enough to get into heaven, or attend church enough, or do enough good things, or give enough money, or keep enough rules, to override the darkness and depravity of the human heart. [Yes, but none of these are the one thing God requires that we do to be saved, the one job He gives us: believe! 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.'"]
The only way to get to heaven, says Jesus and the apostles, is if God chooses to give someone new life. [No, the only way to get to heaven is belief, faith: "... 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). "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). But if Calvinists can find even ONE VERSE that clearly says that the only way to be saved is if God chooses to give someone new life - that God picks who to give new life to and causes that person to believe, that we can't believe unless God makes us believe - then maybe I'll start to believe them.]
.. It is a sovereign gift of God given to some. And like the wind from our perspective, God's Spirit blows where He chooses. And the unmistakable sign that someone has been born again is that they have the ability to repent and believe the gospel. [I'll address Calvinism's "regeneration before belief" in the comments later. And like in most of his sermons, he ends with recommendations of Calvinist books: R.C. Sproul's and D.A. Carson's commentaries on this topic.]
[If anyone from my old church is reading this, compare that sermon - Feb. 11, 2024 - to these two things from John MacArthur: Blog Post - What Jesus Meant by “Water and the Spirit” (gty.org) and You Must Be Born Again (gty.org). It seems like he's just basically parroting MacArthur's ideas, getting much of his stuff right from MacArthur's writings, saying many of the same things in the same order and using many of the same verses interpreted in the same weird ways. So not only are you getting the same couple dozen sermons over and over again, but it seems you're getting other people's sermons regurgitated.]
And here are three other sermons, among many, where he preached regeneration before belief:
2. From September 16, 2018 sermon: "What exactly does it mean that we're dead in sin? I've seen some [people] stress 'Well, that means we're cut off from God. We're separated...' [You mean like Isaiah 59:2: "But your iniquities have separated you from your God..."] That's not what it means to be dead in sin. You're dead! There is no ability for a corpse to respond. [So then why would God tell "dead people" to seek Him and to choose life: Amos 5:4: "Seek me and live ..." and Deut. 30:15,19: "See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction... Now choose life, so that you and your children may live." Dead people can respond. That's why God gives commands and options. If God gave commands and options to people whom He knew couldn't respond unless He controlled them, He'd be a deceptive jokester or a lunatic, talking to Himself and playing with dolls.]
It's not just a falling out. It's more than that... It's that every human being spiritually is enslaved to sin, self, and Satan. To be spiritually dead means that the religious, moral, unsaved person is unable and unwilling to respond to any initiative that God may have in reaching out to them... We're born blind and dead in sin... How in the world can a dead-in-sin, blind heart ever seek God, know God, or enjoy God, if we're enslaved to sin and unable and unwilling to come to Him? [We can because "dead" doesn't mean "unable."]
At this point, he goes on to talk about how God sovereignly chooses some but not others. And then he says: In the final section [of the Bible passage], God is talking to the redeemed, to those who are born-again, saved, converted, regenerated - and all of this leads to the ability for them to turn from their sins and be repaired by the gospel." [So Calvinists are "born-again, saved, converted, regenerated" BEFORE repenting and believing. They are born-again before responding to the gospel and putting their faith in Jesus. Think that over. I mean really think about it.]
3. And from his January 14, 2018 sermon on amazing grace: "Once someone has a grace-encounter with the Holy Spirit, they still have to choose to repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ... So you still have to make that choice, but the key is that you can't make that choice unless God wakes you up. That's why theologians will talk about, really, regeneration precedes saving faith - because you can't believe until God wakes you up. But there still is that role, you still have to make that saving choice.
... This is what it says God wants to do with His saints: He doesn't just give them mercy, and He doesn't even just give them grace. Then He says 'I want to show them off. I'm gonna take a child of wrath, who is spiritually dead, a rotting corpse, and I'm going to resurrect them and make them a son or daughter... and then I'm gonna say 'Look at what I have done!''... That's what God's amazing grace does.
... Do you know Christ? Is your name written in the Lamb's Book of Life? Are you on your way to the new heaven and earth, or are you on your way to the lake of fire? That is the question that every human being has to face. We're born dead in sin, enslaved to the world, the flesh, and the devil. That's the bad news. But the good news is that God is rich in mercy and grace and He delights in opening blinded eyes and He does it all through grace. [This is not an appeal, a call, or a challenge to believe in Jesus and be saved. It's just information on what happens to you if you're elect, and it's asking you if God already made you believe or not.]
[And then in prayer at the end of the sermon:] Father, thank You for Your grace and mercy... Thank You that there are many here today who have chosen, through the Holy Spirit's power, to place their faith in Jesus... May You continue to do Your work in the area of summoning the dead to life."
In Calvinism, faith in Jesus (belief in Jesus and the gospel) comes last, after being saved and born again. And so therefore, neither belief in Jesus nor the gospel can save anyone. Only election saves. The elect are saved and born again before they can believe in Jesus or the gospel - which, think this through, technically means that they are saved without, apart from, the gospel and faith in Jesus.
Do you realize what this actually does to Jesus's death and the gospel?
In Calvinism, the gospel and faith in Jesus are superfluous, inconsequential, ineffective - because they come last and do not affect whether someone is saved or not. The elect are saved before the gospel, and the non-elect can never respond to the gospel.
From his February 25, 2024 sermon about John 3:16: "The God of the Bible wants you to know that He is overflowing with love for lost, perishing sinners, moral failures like you and I. [He fails to specify that in Calvinism, it's some sinners, preselected sinners. Sure, Calvi-god loves "sinners" - "He loves people. He loves peoples" - but Calvi-god "does not love all [sinners], and He does not love all [sinners] equally."]
... When John uses the phrase 'The world' he is being provocative in at least two ways. One: To remind the Jewish people that God's love extends beyond just one ethnic group... God's love is so broad that the gospel is for all peoples regardless of race or gender or background or nationality... John is reminding his readers that God loves all peoples ["peoples" means "people groups," not all individual people, so don't be deceived about what he's really saying], all races, all genders, all nationalities. [Just not all individual people.] His love is not confined to one ethnic group, one tribe.
And the other reason 'the world' is provocative is that it reminds us that God's love pierces the dark realm... the word 'world' - 'cosmos' in the Greek - has a very negative connotation [but only in some verses, not in all. Look up "world" in the concordance and you'll see that it actually has many different meanings, depending on context.]... it is the realm of Satan, sin, and death... God's love is so powerful that He sent His Son, on mission, into the dark realm of Satan, sin, and death to rescue [some] perishing sinners.
... Whoever believes in [Jesus] will not perish... But John 3:16 does not say...that everyone is able to believe.
... God so loved the world - that dark, demonic realm - that He sent His only Son into that realm, on mission, so that anybody who is believing in Him [in Calvinism, that's "only the elect," those God predestined/causes to believe] will not perish in hell but have eternal life in the new heaven and the new earth. That is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen?
[And then he prays:] 'Father... may today be the day You give the new birth to a number of people here today...'" [So clearly, the only "lost, perishing sinners" who can be saved are the ones God chooses to give new life to, the one God causes to believe. And as he said, not everyone is able to believe.]
18. In an April 21, 2024 sermon, he said: "... Jesus is the Savior of all who hunger for God, hunger for eternal life, and hunger to be free of their sin, skepticism, and doubt... Jesus is inviting anybody (and His invitation is always phrased that way) who has a spiritual hunger in their soul...to come to Him for eternal life... That's the point of [Jesus's] sermon: Whoever wants to come, whoever wants to eat of His Flesh, whoever takes the bread of life, will know God. [Note that he's not saying "Anybody, period! Anybody and everybody", but he's saying "anybody who hungers for God," which, in Calvinism, is "only the elect" because only the elect can and will hunger for God. And Calvinists say things like "Jesus invites anybody" and "God commands everybody to repent" but they strategically hide "but only the elect can respond." Deceptive!]
[But now - after spending 20 minutes of his sermon emphasizing "anybody" - he switches it to what he really means, qualifying the "anybody" to mean only the elect:] But also running through this sermon - beyond this dominant theme of how to be saved by believing in Jesus as the Bread of Life - Jesus is also interweaving a subtheme, a deliberate teaching of who can be saved...: those whom the Father draws [which, in Calvinism, is only the elect. Calvi-god does not draw the non-elect].
... The Father must enable someone to come to Christ. [He goes on to say that "draws" in John 6:44's "unless the Father draws them" is defined as "forcibly drags." But from what I understand, looking at the Greek in the concordance, it's not about "forcibly dragging" someone as though they have no ability to resist, but it's about being "drawn by an inward power," about God speaking to our hearts, calling us to Him, winning over our hearts. No one could come to the Father unless the Father calls to our hearts and draws us. No one could find Him unless He wanted to be found. And guess what? He calls and draws all people, John 12:32: "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." But we can resist and ignore the call. Just because those who come to Him had to first be drawn/called by Him doesn't mean that those were the only people God called to Him or that they couldn't resist - just like how when someone accepts an invitation to a party, it doesn't mean that they were the only ones invited or that they were forced to show up, that they were forcibly dragged there and could not resist. The only reason the Father can be found by us is because He wants to be found, because He enabled mankind to find Him. He enabled us all to find Him, but we can resist.]
... And again the question is not 'What do I want the text to say?' It's 'What does the text say?' [Just because he keeps saying "What does the text say?" - something he says so much that they made a church-merch t-shirt out of it - doesn't mean the text actually says what he says it does. But it sure does make you think so, tricking you into thinking that he's accurately interpreting and applying Scripture. And you'll notice that he talks only about what happens to the elect, not the non-elect. Okay, so those who are "drawn" are saved, but what happens to those not drawn? When Calvinism sounds good, it's usually because they are sharing only the good side, from the perspective of the elect, while hiding the bad side, the perspective of the non-elect.]
... God has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy and He hardens whom He wants to harden. [Once again, see "When Calvinists say 'But Romans 9!'" to see what Romans 9 is really about.]
... What is the doctrine [of election]? Well, here's the biblical doctrine: It is the Bible's teaching that unless God chooses to override - that's key - our sin, our resistance, our wickedness, our rebellion - that we are unable to see, savor, and treasure Christ as Savior. [If Calvinists can find this definition of election in the Bible - go ahead and look, I'll wait - then I'll start to believe them. But they'll never find it clearly spelled out like this anywhere in the Bible. This is a definition they add into the word "elect/chosen," into Scripture. But all election means is that God decides which roles, responsibilities, and blessings to give to which people. It has nothing to do with individual salvation. And whenever anyone chooses to believe in Jesus - and anyone can - they become one of the elect who will be given the responsibilities and blessings that God has set aside for all believers. God doesn't choose people to be believers, but He chooses all believers for certain jobs and blessings. And anyone can believe.]
... No one seeks God. No one seeks God. [Here he goes into how our wickedness and depravity prevents us from desiring to seek God. Therefore, obviously, the conclusion is that "total depravity" necessitates "unconditional election" and "irresistible grace" - Calvinist predestination. But may I recommend my post "Is Calvinism's TULIP biblical?"]
... One of the most helpful books on this topic is Martin Luther's Bondage of the Will. [In every sermon on this topic, he recommends a Calvinist author or book or commentary.]... And at one point Luther says this: 'To say man does not seek God is to say man cannot seek God. So you see that free-will does not exist. And nothing good or upright is in a man for he is declared to be unrighteous, ignorant of God, and a despiser of God." That's me. That's you. At birth. [So "does not " equals "cannot"? If so, then Calvinists must agree with "A man who does not attend church cannot attend church. A man does who not help the poor cannot help the poor. A man who does not tell the truth cannot tell the truth. If God does not heal a disease, it means He cannot heal a disease. If God does not stop a storm, it means He cannot stop a storm." It's a big, unbiblical leap from "does not" to "cannot." (If they can find "cannot seek" in the Bible, then I might start to listen to them.) And to point out one more thing: Being unrighteous has nothing to do with our ability or lack of ability to want, seek, find, believe in God. It's about how we cannot ever earn heaven on our own because of our sin, which is why we needed Jesus to help us, to pay for our sins, which He does for all.]
... To help put this in a positive way: Election keeps nobody out of heaven. What this doctrine ensures is that there will be some in heaven." [Okay, but what about reprobation, which is Calvi-god ensuring that there will be many more in hell? See the Calvinist Hogwash posts about the reprobate, hell and justice, and rejoicing about hell.]
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And then the pastor referred to Isaiah 6 about God making the hearts of the people calloused, using it to support His idea that God (arbitrarily) chooses whom to harden. But Isaiah 6 is not about God picking random people to harden or about not giving them a chance to believe, but it's about God choosing to harden those who willfully, consistently resisted Him despite His loving care of them and patient calling to them, as seen in Isaiah 5.
Just like with Pharoah, the hardening was a punishment for rejecting Him. "What more could I have done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad? Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard...", Isaiah 5:4-5.
The pastor then referred to the New Testament's reference to Isaiah 6 (John 12:39-40), saying that the New Testament writers use it to teach the idea that God picks whom to blind and harden. But once again, if you read it in context, you'll see that John 12:37 explains the reason for the hardening: "Even after Jesus had done all these miraculous signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him."
Verse 37's "they would not believe" resulted in verse 39's "they could not believe." Hardening is (according to the definition in the concordance) a punishment for first choosing to resist/reject God. It's God giving people what they wanted, what they chose: a hard heart. Permanently.
And then the pastor connects it all to Ephesians 2 and the idea of being "dead in sin," enslaved to sin - and he clearly defined "dead in sin" incorrectly, teaching that it means unbelievers are unable to believe in God because of sin, which is why God has to cause us to believe in Him. (But on the contrary, biblically, "dead in sin" really just means that we are separated from God because of sin and that we can't close the gap ourselves, which is why Jesus had to die for us to pay the penalty for our sin, to close the gap for us.):
"The context of Ephesians 2 - in fact, the whole New Testament - is that of enslavement [to sin]. Jesus said the same thing, that he who sins is a slave to sin, meaning that the unsaved, the unregenerate, cannot see spiritual truth, they have no appetite for the things of God, they hate God's authority - that's our natural state - and they are unwilling and unable to commit to God... And the only hope - hear this, because that's what this miracle [of the blind man] is about and what this message is about - the only hope is if God in His mercy, just like Jesus with this [blind] guy, chooses to open blinded eyes, just like Jesus did in this miracle... Exodus 33:19: 'The Lord God says, 'I have mercy on those I've chosen to have mercy on, and I will have compassion on those on whom I choose to have compassion.' That is the gospel. [Really!?! That is the gospel!?! Calvinism's election/predestination is the gospel!?! Silly me, I thought the gospel was "For God so loved the world that He sent His one and only Son (to die on the cross for our sins and then rise again), that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life." And look up Exodus 33:19 in context to see what it's talking about.]... We thank God when He opens blinded eyes... And the unmistakable sign that God has opened someone's blinded eyes and they have come to saving faith is that they're desperate for a Savior and that they understand their desperate condition. That is the unmistakable sign that they've been saved or are in the process of being saved." [Notice that salvation comes before repentance and belief. I'll address this later.]
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"Those given to [Jesus] by the Father before the foundation of the world will hear His voice and they will come and they will follow Him. (Read Revelation 13:8 in the KING JAMES VERSION to see what was from - not before - the foundation of the world.)... The point is that they don't become His sheep because they follow Him. They follow Him because they're already His sheep... The Shepherd takes the initiative... All credit, all glory, goes to the Shepherd. He seeks out His sheep who already belong to Him... We tend to make the sinner the focus of salvation. But according to the Bible, the glory doesn't belong to the sinner but to the Savior. [Notice the manipulation, how he makes it sound like you steal Jesus's glory if you believe people can choose to believe in Him.] He is the one who initiates and He is the one who chooses.
... Romans 9 says that God has mercy on whom He wants to and God has compassion on whom He wants to. That's exactly what Jesus is saying here when He says the Father has given Him certain sheep. [No, Romans 9 is not about God choosing who gets saved; it's about God extending the gospel and the offer of salvation to the Gentiles because the Jews rejected it.]... It's called the doctrine of election, the doctrine of predestination, [which is] the Bible's teaching that unless God chooses to override our sin and wickedness and rebellion, we are unable to follow Jesus.
[At this point, he goes into how terrible we are and how hopeless our condition is.]... Once we're reminded, friends, of our wickedness from the Bible, and our depravity, and our corruption, and our sheer propensity to evil, and how prone we are to selfishness, self-deception, dishonesty, pride, bitterness, anger, lust, laziness, envy, the real question is not 'Why doesn't God elect everybody?'... What's the real question? It's 'Why does God, in His infinite love and mercy, elect anybody?' [Funny - because, in Calvinism, His love and mercy is not so infinite. It's really quite tiny and limited.]
As we said, election doesn't keep anybody out of heaven [Bullcrap.]. Election makes sure there will be people in heaven. Jesus gathers His sheep. It's a beautiful metaphor." [No, it's not so beautiful after telling us how "sheep" is meant to be an insult, a commentary on how stupid we are. In this sermon, he also emphasizes that Jesus died for His sheep, meaning only His sheep, meaning only the elect. And he ends by saying that we have to make sure we are one of His sheep. But this is completely pointless after a whole sermon about how we cannot decide to be one of His sheep. What a waste of time and breath Calvinist sermons are. This pastor - and the elders who sought him out and hired him - has ruined our previously wonderful church! Heartbreaking!]
Another Calvinist sermon about predestination. The same things and same out-of-context verses he's preached over and over again for years.
[My 21-year-old son said that it would be fun to make sermon Bingo cards to pass out, filled with all the points and phrases the pastor repeatedly uses, such as "The real question isn't 'Why doesn't God elect everybody," but it's 'Why does God elect anybody?" and "we are depraved, rebellious, wicked, and unable and unwilling to believe" and "The real question isn't 'Do I like this it,' but it's 'What does the text say?'" and "In Western culture, our top value is freedom of choice, and so we have a hard time accepting God's sovereignty over all things" and "When we try to get God off the hook for sin and suffering, He puts Himself right back on the hook" and "Who are you to talk back to God?" and "If God waited for people to choose Him, no one would" and "Election keeps nobody out of heaven" and "Augustine, Grudem, Sproul, Carson, Luther, etc. says X,Y,Z, and you should read their books" ... BINGO! That would be fun.]
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21. And just for fun, did you read about his Easter sermon where he exposed the Easter Bunny and terrified kids with ideas of poisoned applesauce: "Calvinist pastor pulls back the curtain on Easter, ruining childhoods everywhere"? Ah, what a blessed Easter Morning at church!
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22. From his June 24, 2018 sermon about how God loves perishing sinners (and I don't think I even need to point out the inherent contradictions in this): "Once a person is truly converted and born again - because it's a God-project from beginning to end, starting way back in eternity past with God electing and predestining His saints - you cannot ever lose your salvation. [I agree we can't lose salvation, just not for the reasons Calvinists say.]... We have to warn people there are perishing sinners. [Why? To what end if they're non-elect?] If you don't know Christ, you are a perishing sinner. [Thanks for the horrifying news, but there's nothing we can do about it if we're non-elect.]... John 3:16 doesn't say everyone is able to believe. The Bible is clear that God hardens some and softens some... You either, by divine design, are hardening as the Scriptures are unpacked or you're softening. Both are by divine decree. So this is not saying that everyone will believe. It's not saying that everyone is able to believe... Repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ so you might be saved." [So despite the title of this sermon, God really only loves the elect perishing sinners enough to save them, to soften them and make them believe and be saved.]
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23. Along these same lines is this, from his October 28, 2018 sermon: "The Bible teaches that when a person repents and believes the gospel, the Holy Spirit has been playing a huge role in their lives behind the scenes... Jesus describes the new birth [to Nicodemus] as being, quote, 'born of the Spirit.' It's something the Holy Spirit does. In the terms of theological discourse, we call it monergism. It's something the Holy Spirit alone does to the enslaved person. So we're going to look at Romans 8...
The Holy Spirit frees us from slavery to sin... Romans says every human being born was born into a form a slavery...slaves to sin... When the Bible says we're born slaves to sin, it means that non-Christians, unbelievers, 'religious' people, are under the controlling power of sin and self, and are hopelessly caught in that net unless the Holy Spirit chooses to release them... [Slaves to sin] can't submit to God's law, unwilling and unable...
Paul knew that God does not open all blinded eyes... God has mercy on whom He wants and He hardens whom He wants. And Paul says that his great hope for the unsaved person is that God might give them the gift of repentance... like the Lord opened [Lydia's] eyes to respond to Paul's message... That's how someone is set free.
Tim Keller - popular author, insightful writer, pastor - says this, quote 'This means that anyone who is truly seeking God has been sought by God... We decide to put our faith in Him only because He decided to give us the gift of faith.' [FYI, faith is not the gift.]... Someone who's saved has the ability to seek God and to run after Him. [Then he goes on to quote from J.I. Packer's Knowing God and recommends that everyone reads that "classic."]
... Make sure you have repented and believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. [So... make sure you do what only Calvi-Holy-Spirit can do to you? Yep, makes perfect sense!]
[When the pastor said "And Paul says that his great hope for the unsaved person is that God might give them the gift of repentance," he was referring to 2 Timothy 2:25: "Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth,". Calvinists think this means that God decides/causes who repents and believes. I, however, think this is a case of God deciding to not hand someone over to their self-chosen resistance to the gospel, to not harden them in their self-chosen rejection of Him.
In the concordance, "hardens" is a punishment for continually resisting God even though He's been patient and long-suffering with you. It's God making your self-chosen hardness permanent. God gets to decide to either harden someone over to their self-chosen resistance to Him or to grant them more time to change their mind, to see the truth. (Notice that it says "leading to a knowledge of the truth," not "to believing the truth." Having knowledge of truth does not automatically mean someone believes it and is saved. If it did, then the demons would all believe in Jesus and be saved, too.) I think this verse is about hoping that God will not harden those who reject Him but will give them another chance to repent and see the truth.
But it's up to them if they will or won't repent and believe. Notice in verses 21 and 26 (KJV): "If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor... And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil..." God decides to grant (or not grant) resistant people more time, more chances to change their mind, but it's up to them how they respond, if they will change their mind or not.]
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24. And another along the same lines, from his July 8, 2018 sermon on the doctrine of sovereign election:
"The Bible teaches that God sovereignly chooses some and not others... Why is it that some sinners soften and repent and seek God, and others harden and rebel and have no interest in God?... Because God chooses to give some sinners saving faith and soften them, and God chooses to not give other sinners saving faith and to harden them... This is the doctrine of predestination, what the Bible calls the doctrine of election. [No, it doesn't. There is no phrase "doctrine of election" in the Bible.]
... The first question when it comes to Bible study is not 'Do I like this?'... The first question is "WHAT DOES THE TEXT SAY?" If this is not your first question, your first burden, there is concern if you really know Christ as Lord and if you honor Him. If all you accept is the stuff you like and what is convenient for you and emotionally comfortable for you, then there is a real question whether you know Christ, if His Spirit lives in you...
In verses 14-21 (of Romans 9), Paul deals with the accusation that predestination makes God unjust, that it makes Him guilty of bias, prejudice, discrimination, favoritism, not being a nice guy... This doctrine is especially difficult for American culture...because our baseline cultural narrative is freedom. It is our top value in Western culture: freedom, choice... It is the cultural air we breathe. It's the cultural glasses we look through and bring into the text, and we're not even aware of it. And then we read a passage about hell or judgment or election or predestination or whatever, and immediately we recoil because our whole edifice, our whole presuppositional system, rules it out...like 'the text can't mean that!'
... 'Is God unjust' is an accusation that God is not good. It is an accusation disguised as a question... The accusation is that 'God is unjust, unfair, not nice, this is wrong, He can't elect somebody over somebody else or harden one but soften another, what's going on, this isn't American!'... That's the accusation.
... [And the Bible's answer is] God is not unjust to have mercy on some and not others - because of the wickedness, depravity, and innate rebellion of mankind. In other words, we have forged our own damnation, and therefore, God cannot be guilty of partiality, of favoritism, of prejudice, of discrimination. Because He's dealing with a planet of rebellious, sinful, wicked human beings. [Whom He created to be that way, in Calvinism.] And so anything He does for them is merciful. [Is it really mercy to first create people to be wicked sinners and then to save some of them, changing them to believers? To predestine sin and then forgive sin?]
... [Here he goes on and on about how wicked, depraved, and rebellious humans are.] Once you grasp the...wickedness, evil, corruption, rebellion on the human heart, the real question is not 'Why didn't God elect everybody?' The real question is 'Why does He elect anybody?' [These are bad questions with a Calvinist-bias from the start, presupposing Calvinist election. And so if you get trapped into these questions the way they are worded, you are on your way to Calvinism. Don't answer questions like these. Expose the error and Calvinist bias in them.]... God elects some out of love. The elect get mercy. The unelect get justice. Nobody is treated unjustly, not even those who are damned. Nobody! [Damned for being the non-elect unbelievers Calvi-god predestined them to be, with no ability to choose to be anything else - yep, nothing unjust about that!😉] And God is glorified in all.
... The creation has no right to question the Creator's ways... You have no right - I have no right - to call God unjust. How dare I! How dare you!... [God says] 'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy; I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.' By the way, that's God's prerogative... God hardens whom He wants to harden and has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy... Who are you, adult; who are you, teenager; who are you, kid; who are you, a mere human being, to talk back to God?
... [Then he goes into denying free-will, saying that God doesn't elect people based on foreknowing their free-will choice, because if God waited for people to choose Him, no one would choose Him because we are all depraved and no one seeks God, blah, blah, blah.] ... God made the first move. He elected some wicked sinners to salvation and not others...
[Some people ask] the question 'But doesn't God want all people to be saved?... [The answer to that is] that God doesn't choose/decree to do everything He desires. [Yeah, but that's not what's happening in Calvinism. Not decreeing what He desires would be God wanting all people to be saved but not forcing all people to be saved. But in Calvinism, God says He wants all people to be saved when He's really predestined most to hell. That's God decreeing the opposite of what He desires, not simply "not decreeing what He desires." And that's a big difference. It's like the difference between God saying He wants no one to murder but letting people decide for themselves to murder (instead of forcing them to not murder)... and God saying He wants no one to murder while predestining people to murder. Big difference!]
... Election keeps nobody out of heaven. It assures that there will be people in heaven.
... When you preach on this, there are usually 3 responses to the doctrine of predestination: anger... avoidance... appreciation.
... Appreciation is the fact that if you are saved, God chose you, had mercy on you, turned you around, gave you a new heart, put His Holy Spirit in you, and then dumped a boatload of blessings on you, promising you eternal life on a new heaven and new earth - it's staggering. That's what election is designed to foster: thanksgiving and worship. [As long as you pay no attention to the fate of the non-elect.] Because God owes it to nobody.
... We need to be very careful how we speak about God and His ways [Yes, we do, pastor!]...especially when it comes to doctrines and passages and things we don't like in the Bible.
... Don't ever accuse God of being unjust or of not being good. It's a serious sin. You may not understand His ways. His ways may hurt you. They may confuse you. You may find yourself right this moment going through a dark thing and you don't understand what in the world God is doing, but don't say that He's unjust or ungood. Just because you don't understand a doctrine is no excuse to speak ill of God or to take a clear teaching in the Bible and mangle it to say something I'm emotionally comfortable with. [So Calvinism first turns God into an unjust, ungood God, but then they accuse you of accusing God of being unjust and ungood when you call it out. Very manipulative and shaming!]
... If you are saved, thank God for His mercy on you, that He turned your stone heart - your hard heart - around, and gave you a new heart to chase after Him... If you're unsure if you're saved or elect, ask yourself some questions. [Here he lists some "signs" you are elect, like believing the gospel, desiring to be holy, seeing signs of life in yourself, wanting to be baptized, being part of a church, believing Jesus is the only way to the Father. And he says to ask yourself this:] 'Am I the worst sinner I know?' If you're saved, the answer is 'Yes, you're the worst sinner you know."
[I address this sermon more in this post - "But predestination!" (#15: total depravity, manipulation) - particularly the last line and why it would backfire in evangelism.]
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25. From his July 17, 2016 sermon: "There is no one who seeks God. None! Every human being is wicked, depraved, rebellious, unable and unwilling to seek God... [Then he talks a lot about God's sovereignty, especially in "choosing" people and in salvation, and he says:] We know in the West that freedom of choice - choice, Burger King theology: 'Have it your way' - is our #1 cultural value in the West. And so these chapters [Romans 9, 10, 11] are a struggle for many in the West, not so much for believers in the East... But these chapters, because of their emphasis on the sovereignty of God, are a struggle.... [Then he goes into the idea of "We don't have to like it, but we have to accept it because it's what the Bible says".] The question is not 'Do I like this teaching?', but it's 'What does the text say?'
... There are Jews being saved every day, those whom God has chosen... And here's where the doctrine of sovereign election comes in, for Jews and for Gentiles. [His use of Jews/Israelites in this sermon is meant to represent how God deals with all people.]... God chooses to have mercy on some, and God chooses not to have mercy on others. He chooses to soften some and not others. In the West, we want to say 'Why isn't He electing everybody?' But the biblical question, in light of human depravity and rebellion, is 'Why does God elect anybody?'
... God is equally glorified, the Bible says, whether in the damnation of the wicked or the salvation of His people. Because either direction you go, God's attributes are on display: either His justice and holiness, or His mercy and grace. [Translation: "Mercy and grace are only for the elect."]
... God's Plan A was not to save every Israelite but that there would be a remnant that would be saved... So what is God's plan? God's plan is that the gospel would go to the nations. So what is the gospel?... It's the good news that God is reconciling lost sinners to Himself through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. [So the gospel is not an offer of salvation for all people; it's simply the news that God will save some, the prechosen elect people. So you'd better hope you're one of them!]
... The first reason that more Jews are not being saved but that some are is sovereign election... This is divine design that God causes some to stumble over Messiah and be blind and not see it. Why? It goes back to something very important. It goes back to God's glory, to God getting the credit and it not coming to us...
This is not easy stuff, and it's no easier for a preacher than for lay people, believe me - especially when you're sitting there soaking on it all week and seeing your own sinfulness and your own depravity and realizing that you're saved, the mercy God has had on you. And yet He says 'I don't have mercy on all, I have mercy on some but not others.'
Friends, the doctrine of election, of predestination, is designed to drive us to thanksgiving and worship. It's not designed to divide churches or be controversial. It's not controversial in many parts of the world. It is in the West where choice is everything. But in more traditional cultures, in tribal cultures, where decision-making is not an individual thing but a corporate thing, it's not nearly as offensive." [Well, hooray for the mob-mentality!]
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26. From his September 10, 2023 sermon on Jonah. Notice that the whole thing is basically one big contradiction, talking out of both sides of his mouth, double-speak, shaming us for running from God and telling us we need to repent, but then informing us that God Himself decides if we turn to Him or not:
"Why does Jonah run from God? Why are some of us this morning running from God? At the root of all disobedience, before you have poor behavior you have poor belief. That's at the root of all disobedience. [Actually, in Calvinism, God's Will is the root of all things. And we can't resist or change what Calvi-god wills.] The root of Jonah's disobedience and your disobedience and my disobedience is a mistrust in the goodness of God. [Gee, mistrusting the goodness of a Calvinist god who ordains/preplans/causes all the evil and sin that he commands us not to do and yet punishes us for doing - that's just crazy!]
Jonah did not believe God had his best interest at heart... And it's a reminder, friends, that all sin is rooted in a belief that God's way is not the best way. [What is "God's way" in Calvinism: What He says He wants, or what He "ordains" even if it's disobeying what He says He wants? Calvinists say, when it comes to God's sovereignty over sin, that He decrees that we disobey His decrees. So then, which one was His real decree: the thing He said He wanted or the opposite thing He caused?] That's why, when it comes to repentance, the first thing you need to repent of is wrong belief, before wrong behavior. [Well, only if Calvi-god so wills that we repent of the wrong beliefs he willed at first, of course.]
... These are the lies we tell ourselves: We convince ourselves that if I obey what God says, if I do what He's laid out, I'm gonna be miserable. We convince ourselves that if I submit to God's Will, I'm gonna miss out on life and be miserable. [Ironic because, in Calvinism, everything that happens - even sin and disobedience and how we feel about it all - is God's Will.]
... Maybe you're running from God this morning?... We've all done the Jonah thing. And the message from Jonah is that if I try to run away from God, lots of things are going to happen, and they're all bad. [All ordained by Calvi-god, of course, even our running.]
... We also see at the end of the book of Jonah that God provided the vine and the worm and the scorching wind. And so it's very interesting to see the emphasis here that God is in complete control of the circumstances we are in. Whatever you are going through right now - good, bad, or otherwise - the Lord is in the details. ["In control of" is one thing (being in authority over), but Calvinists really mean "God controls all things" which is very different. Calvinists take verses about God controlling and causing some things and turn them into an all-encompassing "doctrine" about how God controls/causes all things, including sin and evil and our eternal destinies. That's a huge unbiblical leap. And it's an attack on God's righteous character.]
...(Quoting Jonah 2:9) 'Salvation comes from the Lord.' Many scholars point out that is probably the key verse, the hinge verse, in the whole book. Salvation comes from the Lord... Tim Keller [Calvinist!] believes verse 9 is the key verse for the book and he writes this, quote: 'It means if someone is saved, it is wholly God's doing. It is not a matter of God saving you partly and you partly saving yourself. No! God saves us. We do not and cannot save ourselves. That is the gospel.' And that is the message of Jonah: Only God elects. Only God sovereignly draws. Only God sovereignly convicts us of sin. Only God sovereignly opens blinded eyes. [So "you need to stop running from God" but "only God can decide if you do that or not." Contradictory. Talking out of both sides of his mouth. And for the record: No, the message of Jonah is not that God sovereignly controls whether we are saved or not. It's that God is merciful and wants all people to repent and be saved, that He made it possible for all people to repent and be saved, even wicked sinners. The message of Jonah is precisely the opposite of Calvinism, because Jonah teaches that no one is hopeless, no one is beyond God's saving grace, no one is predestined for hell. Anyone can be saved because God loves all and wants all to be saved and offers salvation to all. But it's our choice to repent and believe, or to not. That's the message of Jonah. What a horrible twist to make it about Calvinist election instead, a terrible corruption of God's Word and heart and the gospel (*more on this below)! And for another record, if Calvinists bothered to look up Jonah 2:9 in the concordance, they'd see that in the Old Testament, the word "salvation" does not refer to salvation from sin, but it refers to God delivering people from things like distress, war, servitude, enemies, etc. Yet, Calvinists make it about eternal, save-your-soul-from-hell salvation and then say "See, it says salvation belongs to God, meaning that God controls who gets saved" and then they quote Calvinist theologians to "prove" it. Bogus!]
... These kinds of stories, in a weird way, are an encouragement that God, when He puts His affections on somebody and draws them and makes them one of His own, He's committed to them and He uses them, in spite of themselves. [But, in Calvinism, that's not a "when" but an "if" - IF God loves you and chooses you to be saved and causes you to believe. And let's face it, He won't do this for most people, in Calvinism. And so there is no comfort in this for the majority of people, the non-elect. There is only comfort for the elect. And even then, no one can know for sure if they are truly elect until the end of their lives. So, really, there's no comfort in this at all for anyone while we're alive on earth. See my post "MacArthur on Calvinism's (lack of) Assurance of Salvation."]
... Do you know Christ as Lord? Have you been reconciled to God? Isaiah 59:2 says this: 'Your sins have cut you off from God.' The Bible says the moment I am born, the moment of conception even, I am born into sin, with a disposition to sin, and I am born under judgment with Adam's guilt imputed to me, and if something doesn't happen [to me, by God] I am going to perish and go to hell, that we are under the wrath of God and enemies of God... Repent and believe Jesus is the Messiah. Have you done that? [I don't know, ask Calvi-god. It's up to him.] Every week in churches sit people who are not reconciled to God. It is the most important thing in the world to get right, to know God. [This pastor always words it like this: "The Bible says that in order to be saved, we need to repent and believe. Have you done that?" But I've never heard him word it like this: "Do you want to do that? Do you want to be saved, to repent and believe and call on Jesus? If so, you can do that right now." He doesn't ask if we want to do it, and he never gives an altar call to invite people to do it right now. (He says he doesn't want people thinking that walking an aisle saves you, but I'm sure it's just that he doesn't want people thinking they have a choice about being saved.) He always just asks "Have you done that?," as if asking "Has God made you do it yet? Has He caused you to repent and believe, to realize you're one of the elect?" Calvinism doesn't save any sinner from hell; it only makes the elect - those already destined for heaven - realize they are elect.]
... [One lesson we learn from Jonah is that] it's one thing to believe in God; it's another thing to trust this God with the circumstances He's appointed for me. [In Calvinism, tragedies and evils and sins are not just allowed into your life by Calvi-god, but they are specifically appointed for you by Calvi-god. But a god who appoints evil (preplans, causes, controls) is very different from a God who allows and uses the evil He doesn't preplan/cause. These are two very different Gods. And One can be trusted while the other one can't.]
... [In a biography about missionaries and all the trials, tragedies, evils, and struggles they went through] they battled fear and fought unbelief and wrestled with doubt and struggled to trust God until they learned the secret of how to flourish despite the circumstances... 'They finally dealt with the fact that they needed to delight in the will of God and not just submit to the will of God.'... That's a huge difference. When they quite murmuring and quit fretting and quit doubting and quit complaining and started rejoicing, it turned their life around.' [Calvinists believe that everything is ordained by God, even sin, evil, and all suffering, and then they make people feel like they must rejoice about it all because it was all deliberately from God, "His Will." But I think God allows, not necessarily ordains, things that He doesn't want. And so lots of our pain and tragedy and suffering is not what God wanted or appointed, but it's what He allowed because He gave us free-will.
We are allowed to make real decisions, even sinful ones, and Satan is allowed to influence things and fallen nature is allowed to run its course within boundaries... and so bad things happen that God doesn't want. But He allows it because He knows He can bring something good out of it, for the good of His glory, His kingdom, and our lives and eternities. And that's why we can trust Him anyway, even in the painful circumstances.
I think the real "secret" to flourishing is to trust God anyway, even when we hurt, to praise Him in spite of the pain, tragedy, heartache, and evil in the world - not necessarily to praise Him for them, slapping on a fake "good Christian" smile, acting like it's all hunky-dory with us: "Bring me the pain if that's what You want, Lord. I can handle it. It's all good. I love it!"
Instead, the writers of the Psalms teach us to pour out to God all our pain, doubts, fears, frustrations, or anger - honestly, fully, real and raw, not stuffing it or hiding it or polishing it up all nice and shiny and acceptable-looking. But at the end of it all, they always come back to "But in spite of all this, I know You are good, and I trust You anyway."
That is how I want to honor God - not by slapping on a fake smile, acting like I'm thankful for the pain, evil, and sin He supposedly "ordained and appointed" for me - but by opening up my heart to Him honestly, laying it all down at His feet, even the unpleasant and "unacceptable" things, collapsing into His arms in my pain and weakness and heartache and doubt and fear, trusting Him to work something good out of everything, even the tragedy and evil caused by a fallen world full of fallen people. Because I know He is good and He cares and He is over-and-above it all.
Psalm 34:18: "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."
Psalm 51:17: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”
Romans 8:28: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
God never wanted sin and evil and disease and tragedy to happen (these are consequences of the Fall, ruining His perfect creation), so why would we praise Him for it?
Non-Calvinists trust Him to be a good, loving, faithful Father even though people are allowed to make their own decisions, even wicked ones, because we trust that He didn't want or cause the evil to happen to us, that His heart broke for us when it happened, that He was with us in the pain and will carry us through it, and that someday He'll avenge all wrongs, vanquish all evil, punish all evildoers, set all things right again, and work all the bad into something good.
But Calvinists praise God for the sins, evils, and tragedies of the world. Calvinists believe He gets glory for causing the evil things people do. And Calvinists believe they have to trust God even though they're taught that He preplans, causes, controls all the wicked things people do, all the evils that happen to us, all the sinful things He commands us not to do but causes us to do and will someday punish us for. Calvinists are taught to call this kind of god "loving, just, righteous, holy, good, and trustworthy." No wonder Calvinism kills people's faith!
(Also see this post of mine: "Are Tragedies Gifts from God?" And listen to a favorite song of mine: Praise the Lord by The City Harmonic.]
... Are you running from God? If so, it's not going to go well. If you're running from God, take a lesson from Jonah, you're going to make a mess and it's gonna hurt more, until you do it God's way." [Since Calvi-god sovereignly controls whether or not we're running from God, this is a nonsensical, pointless, inconsequential sermon.]
*Note about "the gospel":
So far in his sermons, I've counted at least three times he defines the gospel as Calvinist election.
From this one: 'It means if someone is saved, it is wholly God's doing. It is not a matter of God saving you partly and you partly saving yourself. No! God saves us. We do not and cannot save ourselves. That is the gospel.' And that is the message of Jonah: Only God elects. Only God sovereignly draws. Only God sovereignly convicts us of sin. Only God sovereignly opens blinded eyes."
From his February 2015 sermon: "The Bible's teaching on our human condition especially outside of Christ [is that we are] hopelessly blinded and in slavery to sin unless God graciously opens human sinful eyes and summons them to Himself as Lord... That's the gospel: That there is a God who seeks hardened sinners, pursues them, turns them around, drags them to Himself, blesses them, pardons them, and justifies them."
From his May 2024 sermon: "The context of Ephesians 2 - in fact, the whole New Testament - is that of enslavement [to sin]. Jesus said the same thing, that he who sins is a slave to sin, meaning that the unsaved, the unregenerate, cannot see spiritual truth, they have no appetite for the things of God, they hate God's authority - that's our natural state - and they are unwilling and unable to commit to God... And the only hope - hear this, because that's what this miracle [of the blind man] is about and what this message is about - the only hope is if God in His mercy, just like Jesus with this [blind] guy, chooses to open blinded eyes, just like Jesus did in this miracle... Exodus 33:19: 'The Lord God says, 'I have mercy on those I've chosen to have mercy on, and I will have compassion on those on whom I choose to have compassion.' That is the gospel."
Really, that is the gospel!?! No mention of Jesus's death or resurrection or of God loving people or of our need to choose to believe in Jesus, to call on Him - just the Calvinist doctrine of election/predestination, that God chooses who gets saved and makes them believe.
That's the gospel in Calvinism?
Silly me, I thought the gospel was "For God so loved the world that He sent His one and only Son (to die on the cross for our sins and then rise again), that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life."
1 Cor. 15:3-4: "For what I received I passed onto you as of first importance: 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,".
Romans 6:23: "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Romans 3:23-24: "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ."
Romans 10:9,13: "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... Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."
John 3:16: "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."
If someone can't even get the simple gospel right then they have no business being a pastor. And I don't care whatever else they do get right. If they get the gospel (and God's character) wrong - the most important part of Christianity - then it doesn't really matter that they get some minor, secondary things right. Like Paul said, "of first importance." If Calvinists cannot understand the "first important" message, then they should be disqualified from teaching God's Word.
Calvinism's "gospel" is only good news for the elect. But the Bible's gospel is good news for all people: God loves all people and Christ died for all our sins so that anyone can believe in Him and be saved.
Luke 2:10: "But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people."
Romans 11:32: "For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all."
2 Peter 3:9: "... He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance."
Ezekiel 33:11: "Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live..."
From his April 17, 2022 sermon, which he begins with "The great theologian, one of my heroes, John Calvin...": "The gospel at its core is about the radical depravity of the human heart from the moment of conception. You might say, 'I don't like that!' I may not either, but the first question when it comes to the Bible is not 'What do I like and what don't I like?' The question is 'What does the text say?' And the abundant testimony of Scripture is that human beings are born in rebellion against God, wicked, depraved, needing help... [it's about] our sinfulness, our alienation from God and our desperate need to be reconciled to God lest we perish in the fiery judgment to come.
"What do you think about heaven? Because guess what? It's going to be better than we can ever imagine. So what do you believe about it, and how has it impacted your life now? When we set our minds on the glory of heaven, the things of earth [the things we focus on now and take pride in now] will grow strangely dim...
In heaven, we're going to be fully exposed to God, fully known. Even all the stuff we try to hide from others will be exposed before Him. But guess what? We're going to feel more love than we ever have - because the Bible says God is love. And the amazing thing is, God's always fully known you, and yet He's always fully loved you. This love has been there all along. God has always known all of you and always loved all of you. You don't need to hide from Him. One day we'll be standing before God in heaven, fully known and fully exposed, but because of Who we're standing before, we'll never feel more love than that.
Heaven, the throne room of God, will be full of His holiness and His glory and angels praising Him, and yet we'll be able to approach His throne with confidence. How? Because on that day, we'll be approaching God not with our resume full of our good deeds... but with Jesus's resume, His blood shed for you, His righteousness. I can't enter God's presence because of any good I do but only because of what Jesus did for me. I plead His blood. The blood He shed as a substitute for me. I don't believe in myself or my ability to be good - because I'm not good enough even on my best day - but I put my faith in Jesus who died for all our sins. I believe in Jesus. Do you? Or have you just been trying to believe in yourself? Because you don't have to anymore. I... believe... in Jesus!
Guess what? Heaven is filled with people who know they don't deserve to be there either on their own - but in Christ, it's more than enough. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. So who will get to heaven? The people who put their faith in Jesus Christ! Is your name written in the Lamb's Book of Life? For those who know it is, rejoice! Jesus is our reward. But for those of you who don't know if your name is written there, what's stopping you from putting your full faith and trust in Jesus as your Savior?
Jesus says that in His Father's house are many rooms. And guess what? One of those rooms can be yours. God's still taking reservations. Have you made your reservation? Pray with me if you want to do that, if you want to put your trust in Jesus as your Lord and Savior: 'God, I believe in You. I'm sorry I've been trying to live life for myself, without You. I believe You sent Your Son, Jesus, to die the death I deserve. I believe He rose again to give me life, and I want that life. I want to receive that life from You. I believe. And help my unbelief. Right now, I put my faith and trust in You, Jesus. Amen.'"
How different this is from the contradictory, confusing, pessimistic, shaming Calvinist sermons that barely talk about God's love (and when they do, it's about His love for "peoples/nations," but not for all people of all nations), that present Calvinist election as "the gospel" (Good news: If you're elect, you're saved!) and that simply ask if you repented and believed yet (if God caused you to do it) but that don't give any kind of altar call, no chance or appeal to actually choose to do it.
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28. From his March 19, 2017 sermon about why there's suffering and evil in the world (referring to Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs): "The secular assumption is that ‘normal’ people – whatever that means – don’t do things like that. They’re not cannibals and sadistic killers. Something went wrong with him. That’s a secular assumption… [because] from birth we’re born corrupt and evil. And so it’s a secular assumption to think that something has to happen to make us really evil. Any of us are capable of that kind of horrific evil. Hannibal Lector answers [the question 'What made you like this?'] very biblically...‘Nothing happened to me. I just am. I’m evil.' That’s the biblical worldview.
Let me go a little further. This is why infants, children, and toddlers disobey by nature. I have 2 [young grandchildren] living in my house… They are a delight. They are sinful. I am watching my older one – 2½ years old – and he is really pushing the envelope these days. He’s a precious little guy but, my goodness, his heart is already twisted and dark… This is why children, infants, toddlers, and kids need discipline. It’s why they need spankings. It’s why they need boundaries. And it’s why we need to enforce these things." [Why? To what end? Nothing can affect what Calvi-god "ordained" for them, and nothing can change them before he does.]
... [About why the world is full of suffering and evil:] This is NOT PLAN A. This is not the way it was set up. This is the result of human sin and rebellion. [This is a huge contradiction to the other times when he's preached that everything that happens is what God wanted, planned, and ordained, such as when he said this in his August 2015 sermon, printed below, #31: "[We] rush to get God off the hook for human suffering [by saying things like] 'Well, this is not what He really intended; this is not really Plan A.'... And every time we do that, God puts Himself back on the hook and says, 'I am in charge, thank you, and I will run the universe as I see fit, and I don't owe you an explanation.' So in one sermon, sin and suffering is God's Plan A, but in another sermon, it's not. Remember, never take what Calvinists say at face-value. What they say in one place, they deny in another. What they deny at first, they later affirm in covert ways.]
… We ask, 'Why did God allow any of this in the first place? He could have stopped Adam and Eve. He could have stopped the consequences.' That’s true. Why did God allow/permit/ordain evil and suffering on our planet? [Deceptive use of "allow/permit," leading us to assume that he means God lets us make our own truly-free choices. But what Calvinists really mean is that God "allows/permits" only what He first decreed.]
The short answer is: Nobody knows. He never says. I think the best guess from church history goes back to Saint Augustine…who said something along this line, 'At the end of the day, when you look at the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, you can only come to one conclusion about why suffering and evil exist: because God determined He would gain greater glory by bringing good out of suffering and evil than if it never existed in the first place.'
And he argued that simply from the Bible’s teaching that God does everything for His own glory. And evil and suffering would not exist if God did not ordain it to exist. He is not guilty, but clearly He permitted and allowed them, and since He does everything for His own glory, He had to determine He would get more glory by allowing them onto the world stage and then redeeming out of it than if it never existed at all.”
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29. From his March 2, 2014 sermon about finding hope in hard times: “God is on the throne! Random evil doesn’t just happen to people. Random loss doesn’t just occur in our lives. God is in control of each aspect of every detail, right down to our salvation, right down to our health, and jobs, and employment, and our spouse and our children and our livelihood.
… God is sovereign over history… Arthur Pink wrote a book called The Sovereignty of God, and he said that the sovereignty of God – His absolute control of every atom of the universe - is designed to inspire hope… Random evil doesn’t just occur. God is sovereign over history.
… God is sovereign over our losses… No matter what God has taken away from us, God is sovereign over loss. Why is this such a big deal? You see, too often we want to do what I call 'get God off the hook' theology. We want to get God off the hook, saying 'God didn’t do this.' I remember a pastor after 9-11 who got up the next week and banged on his pulpit and said 'Look it, 9-11, planes going into buildings - God didn’t do this!!!'
We want to get God off the hook, and every time we try to, God puts Himself back on the hook in the Bible and says, 'Yes, I did!'
… God is sovereign over those who seek to harm us. Who of us hasn’t been harmed by somebody?... We’ve had people betray, lie, steal, vilify, slander, and do unspeakable things to us. Some of us have undergone horrific abuse at the hands of parents or aunts or uncles or brothers. God is sovereign over those who seek to harm us.
That could not be said more clearly than [in the Bible] where it describes Antiochus Epiphanes and what a wretched, evil, brutal man he is… and the point of the text is that it was God who brought him to the world stage… [And like in Joseph’s life] it was God who ordained [all the bad that happened to him]. [And so likewise, "It was God who brought your abuser to you, who ordained the horrific abuse they did to you." Filthy hogwash! (... okay, taking a deep breath now, calming myself down...)]
God is sovereign over those who seek to do us harm. That means, friends, that there is no such thing as random evil or random acts of tragedy.
By the way, I think that those who get this best are the English Puritans… they understood about God using evil people in our lives [Calvi-god first decrees it, then orchestrates/causes it, then "uses" it.]… that God does it for a reason, for example, to bring us to faith in Christ, or to refine us, or to help us become holy, or to strip us of pride, or to be able to comfort others who’ve gone through similar circumstances… John Flavel in The Mystery of God’s Providence says '… In all the sad and afflictive providences that befall you, eye God as the author. Set before you the sovereignty of God…' Amen!?!” [No! Not Amen! Not with the way Calvinists define sovereignty.]
[And so according to Calvinism, it's supposed to be more comforting that God preplans and causes evil - evil which He commanded us not to do and will punish us for - than that He allows it to happen, allows men to make terrible decisions He doesn't want. Sick!]
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30. From his October 27, 2019 sermon on forgiveness: "How you handle and respond to mistreatment - when someone has hurt you, wounded you, lied about you, betrayed you, abused you - or me - how I respond directly reflects what I really believe about God deep down inside.
The ability to forgive...requires a proper understanding of who God is and His providence in our lives - it's critical - and of God's authority in your life. Look it, for anyone to say -and we've all said it or thought it - for any of us to say that we're not going to forgive, what we're really saying is this: 'God, You had NO RIGHT to bring that into my life.'
... The Bible teaches that God sometimes strategically uses sinful people in our lives to refine us and humble us, to do His good work in our lives.
It's not a very appealing teaching, necessarily. And it's not very common to read it or hear it in the American evangelical world. You almost get the sense that if anything is unpleasant your life - whether disease or illness or betrayal or a turn of career or health or whatever - listen to the evangelical talk and what you'll typically hear is 'Satan's out to get me. The Evil One's been working overtime to get me.' Maybe. But Satan only exists under God's authority. [In Calvinism, God is not just "in authority" over Satan, but He controls Satan's will and actions.]
... One of the things the Puritans got really, really well was God's providence, God's sovereignty, God's authority... They understood that God sovereignly chooses to use evil people and sinful people in our lives as believers, if we know Christ, ON PURPOSE to humble us and teach us dependence on Him. Not every evil person that comes against you is automatically completely of Satan. God is orchestrating events and He's still sovereign over the process. [Remember that, in Calvinism, "sovereign" means God controls - not just is "in control" - of all sin and evil.]
... Biblical forgiveness is an affirmation that God is good and that He has A RIGHT to use ANYBODY in our lives for His purpose, His glory, and for our good... Sometimes He will use evil, sinful people to get us where He wants to get us." ["And a God who causes that much evil can totally be trusted!" Hogwash!]
[Listen here to Calvinist James White try to explain how God "ordains" child rape for His glory, saying that if God didn't ordain it then it would be meaningless, but if God did ordain it then it has purpose and makes Him more trustworthy.]
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The Puritans remind us that we don't need to get God off the hook when it comes to evil and suffering... [We] rush to get God off the hook for human suffering [by saying things like] 'Well, this is not what He really intended; this is not really Plan A.'... And every time we do that, God puts Himself back on the hook and says, 'I am in charge, thank you, and I will run the universe as I see fit, and I don't owe you an explanation.'
[As I said, he later contradicts this in his March 2017 sermon when he said that all the sin and suffering and evil in the world is "...NOT PLAN A. This is not the way it was set up. This is the result of human sin and rebellion."]
... Are you trusting God in the midst of your past, present, and future in whatever He has ordained and appointed for you as far as suffering, tragedy, abuse [he totally faltered and paused after saying "abuse", as though he realized how people would respond to him saying that God preplans, directs, orchestrates our abuse, a terrible moral sin - that it's God's "Plan A" for our lives - and then he rushed to bury it by listing these next ones really quickly] or trials or difficulties or illness or disease or betrayal? [Betrayal would be another moral sin. If you listen closely, Calvinists will almost always start by teaching that a sovereign, all-powerful God "ordains" natural disasters and illness (as this pastor did earlier in his sermon) - and then once they get you to accept it, they subtly slip in moral evils later, as if since He causes the one He must also cause the other, as if they are the same kind of "evil." But they are not! Don't fall for this Calvinist bait-and-switch.]
... Or are you murmuring against Him?... You may get an answer someday about why you were abused or why you lost a child or why a spouse walked away. [You may get an answer!?! Do you understand what this is saying? That God deliberately preplanned, orchestrated, and caused the abuse, young deaths, divorce, betrayal, adultery in your life, for a reason. It would be one thing for God to allow these things to happen because of free-will, but this pastor already threw out the idea of free-will and instead teaches that "we have to conclude that God is in full control of every detail of the universe, including the suffering, evil, and tragedy in our lives... for His own glory and the advancement of His name among the nations" And now he includes abuse, young death, and divorce among the things God controls/causes, for His glory and name.]
But, friends, answers at the end of the day don't provide a whole lot of comfort. What provides comfort are promises from God's Word. [Trusting a god who preplans and causes moral evils he commands us not to do and who then punishes us for doing what he "ordained" us to do... that's funny!]
... Do you perhaps need to repent of your murmuring and the chip on your shoulder against God, and surrender today and say 'Lord, I don't understand the way You run the universe, and I don't necessarily like it, but You're God and You're good.' It'll make all the difference in your path to healing. All the difference."
... Some of our hearts this morning are breaking. Find refuge and hope in a good and holy God who says 'I have all things under My control. Everything that's going on in your life, or has gone on in your life, or will, I know about and have ordained for you. And you can find comfort and hope and trust Me.'
I guess that as long as we deflect from the hard questions and ignore the fate of the non-elect, it's all good! As long as we don't ask "But how can Calvi-god command people to believe while predestining most to hell, and how can he command us not to sin but then cause us to sin and then hold us accountable for sin," then we can enjoy those sunsets, focus on the good, and praise him more easily for the blessings he gives the elect, right?
... #1) God is good all the time... Our God is a loving God and He is good to the core of His being, no matter what happens in the world... He is good and even what He does is good, even when cancer strikes, even when I'm lied about, even when we lose a child, lose a job, lose a dream, tragedy strikes, we lose somebody we love. God is good. [The Puritans] say that the real question is not 'Why do we suffer so much?' The biblical question is 'In light of our rebellion, why is God so good to us?'
... #2) God is all-wise, all-knowing, and all-powerful, and He doesn't owe us any explanations... [God's] providence means He's all-powerful, all-wise, and He governs all things... But providence is more than God just having advanced knowledge... God's providence means His sovereign, wise leading and active directing of all things for His glory, and of all events, everything, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Friends, this is tonic to a weary soul, to know that a good God is all-wise and all-powerful, that whatever He's doing, no matter how much I'm confused by it, is ultimately being done for my good and His glory, even when the timing of what He's doing results in painful circumstances, in sorrow, in weeping, in heartache, in loss.
... If you're in the midst of deep water right now, pain, suffering, a season of grief and loss, are you trusting God with your pain and suffering? Are you rejoicing or are you murmuring?... The Bible reminds us that God is good, and fully in control of everything, the good, the bad, and the ugly. What sustains true born-again Christians in the face of horrific natural and moral evils is not explanations but God's promises." [Would you trust the promises of Calvinism's god who ordains, governs, directs all the evil we do even though he commands us not to do it and will punish us for it? Should we trust a god like that? Why? How is that a "good" god? How much more would it take to become a bad god?]
... He exerts not merely a general influence but actually runs the world which He has created. [I have no problem with the idea that God is over all things or that He incorporates wicked rulers into His plans. I have a problem with the Calvinist idea that God has predestined them to be wicked in the first place, that He gave them no chance to be any other way. God doesn't cause them to be wicked; He just incorporates their self-chosen wickedness into His plans.] The Bible teaches that God has what we might call 'complete operational jurisdiction' over His entire creation, over nations, over kings, over emperors, over rulers, and over our lives... Indeed, our God is in heaven and He does whatever pleases Him.
... [The doctrine of God's providence] is a huge source of comfort to the people of God because it is a regular reminder that whatever's going on in our lives, even if it's painful, it is being directed by an all-knowing, good and loving and wise heavenly Father, who does everything for His children out of His love.
... If you have any doubt that God is in absolute sovereign control over all things, if you have any doubt that He has complete operational jurisdiction over His universe, just notice how many times God says 'I will do this' or 'I will do that' [in Jeremiah 24:6-10]. [So because God has plans and does things means, in Calvinism, that everything that happens is because He caused/planned it. Since all monkeys are animals, all animals are monkeys.].
... Truth #1 that should bring great comfort...if you know Jesus as Lord and Savior...whatever has happened to you or is going on right now in your life, a great comfort from Jeremiah 25 is that God is sovereign over nations, He is sovereign over rulers, He is sovereign over your life. Nothing happens in the weather, nothing happens on the political stage, nothing happens in your life, in your marriage, in your family, in your finances, nothing, nothing, nothing that God does not have absolute operational jurisdiction over. And that's a huge comfort to the people of God.
... [Truth #2 is this:] The Puritans remind us that God often uses the ungodly, the evil, in order to specifically discipline, refine, chastise His saints, as much of a jolt as that may be to 21st century ears. And if we don't see that...we will miss God's loving hand of providence in our lives, we will focus on the injustice of what happened, and we will end up moving in a direction that is extremely unhealthy spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically. ["So don't think about how unjust it was that someone abused you or hurt you or that your spouse had an affair, but think about how loving Calvi-god was to ordain it in your life in the first place. Comforting!"]
Bottom line is this, how I respond to any mistreatment, how you respond to any mistreatment from anybody, righteous or unrighteous, my response shows my view of who God is... And unless I humble myself and seek Him, I'm going to get bitter and perhaps invite further discipline, if I don't understand what He's doing. God sometimes uses unjust people to discipline, refine, and humble His saints in ways that, frankly, leave us baffled, may leave you baffled in your own life or watching a loved one or watching a child or watching a parent or a friend or neighbor or somebody else. It's baffling, and it goes back to who is God and do we trust Him.
The third truth we learn here, which almost now will seem completely contrary, is that God will punish those who do the evil to us. God will punish them. The Bible serves us notice that no matter what God's Will might be for the decisions and choices of others and how those choices impact our lives, that in the end, all human beings are accountable for their moral choices and what they do to other people.
... This is where this sermon starts getting really, really weird... And by the way, this is a very sanitized presentation of what Nebuchadnezzar did. You gotta think of something like the Nazis, Isis. This is a brutal invasion...slaughter...pillaging, destruction, killing...and who did it!?!... God says three times 'He's my servant and he's doing exactly what I ordained him to do.'
...The mysterious providences of God. There are times when after studying a [Bible] passage, you will look up and have a bit of a headache... It is God's Will, in verse 9, for Nebuchadnezzar to attack, pillage, and enslave the people of Judah...but then in verse 12, it is God's Will to punish Nebuchadnezzar for enslaving and attacking His people.
... In other words, there are times when God will seem to will things in one direction...but then it will - and I'm going to use the word in quotes, because I don't understand it - it will 'appear' God wills something in the exact opposite direction simultaneously. Here we come to something that theologians throughout history call 'the two wills of God'...meaning that when God wills something on one level, He will appear to will its opposite on another level at the same exact time.
An example of this is the doctrine of predestination. In 1 Timothy, God desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. But in Romans 9:18, the apostle Paul writes that God has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy and hardens whom He wants to harden, in the context of they don't have salvation. So in one level, it is God's Will for all people to be saved. On another level, we're told at the same time that God chooses to have mercy on some and to pass over others and harden them.
... Do you find it strangely comforting that God's ways are mysterious?" [Gaslighting: "It's good that you can't understand this, isn't it? That you can't figure out why it's still good even though it sounds so terrible?"]
[At the end of the sermon, he reads a quote from Calvinist Lorraine Boettner - "Amid all the apparent defeats and inconsistencies of life, God actually moves on in undisturbed majesty" - and he gushes over this and highly recommends immersing yourself in this kind of writing for finding comfort in a troubled world.]
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34. From his November 10, 2019 sermon about Job, about trusting God when He doesn't make sense in our times of confusion, pain, suffering, and uncertainty (he started this sermon with a true-life story of a young father who died early of cancer): "God is in full control of His universe, including suffering and tragedy... Too often when Bible-believing Christians in the west see tragedy, see calamity or experience it in their own lives, we want to immediately go to blaming Satan or his demons, that anything uncomfortable, anything painful, anything that smacks of suffering, uncertainty, betrayal, pain, misery, automatically comes only from Satan.
... As western evangelicals, our immediate default is to try to get God off the hook. 'God could not have been involved in that tsunami... in the events of 9-11... in my cancer... in the death of that child, and on and on.'... You may not like everything you hear this morning...but I'm not going to try to fix it up... I am supposed to get [it] accurate as the Author intended. And Job is very clear that God is in full control of the universe, including suffering and tragedy. And when I want to go to default and get God off the hook for suffering and tragedy, it's interesting that - in the Bible - God always puts Himself right back on the hook... He alone sends and withholds calamity... God is in full control of His universe, including suffering and tragedy. And frankly, He's not interested in trying to get off the hook.
... God allows and appoints suffering for His own good reasons... What caused all of [Job's] tragic disasters?... God allows-slash-appoints tragic disasters. These are really two sides of one coin. Saying 'God allowed it' is too soft. God clearly is orchestrating what is going on here [Job's tragedies]... and He ordains suffering for His own good reasons.
... Why did all these horrible things happen to Job?... [Some Christians say] Satan alone caused these disasters...that God turned everything [in Job's life] over [to Satan]... But it's clear Satan is certainly behind these events, but he had to ask permission to touch Job, and it's God who signed the authorization papers. That is a very key piece of theology a lot of people miss. [No, it's a key piece that Calvinists get wrong. Only in Calvinism is "signing the authorization papers/allowing" the same thing as "orchestrating/controlling/ordaining/appointing, etc." Biblically, God did turn Job over to Satan, within boundaries. Satan decided which disasters hit Job. Satan caused them. And God let it happen. This is not "orchestrating," unless you're a Calvinist. God can and does "orchestrate" how to incorporate into His plans what Satan and people choose to do, to work good out of it, but this doesn't mean He orchestrates what Satan and people do. Two very different things! "Causing all things to work together for good" is not the same thing as "causing all things." Unless you're a Calvinist.]
... [After 9-11, one pastor said] 'Listen, God had nothing to do with 9-11. Nothing!'... And I sat back and cringed, because what he was really offering theologically was far worse. Why? Because if God had nothing to do with 9-11, then where was He on 9-11? [So Calvinists think it's better if God orchestrates - fully preplans and causes - all tragedies and evils than simply allows people to make evil decisions on their own. Calvinists would rather have a God like that, convinced it somehow makes Him more trustworthy. And notice that, in Calvinism, if God doesn't fully orchestrate/control evil, then it must mean He is totally absent and uninvolved in it, totally out of control. A false dichotomy, presenting those as the only two ways God could possibly operate in the universe.)
... God is running the universe, and He knows what He's doing, even if we're absolutely confused and grieving at the moment... God ultimately allowed and orchestrated these disasters. [To most people, "allows" and "orchestrates" are not the same thing, but to Calvinists, they are. In Calvinism, God "allows" only what He preplans and orchestrates, exactly as it happens, even things He commands us not to do. Calvinists contradict the basic commonsense understanding of "allows," and so it's deceptive whenever they use that word.]
... God doesn't want to get off the hook... In the end, the devil is God's devil. Satan is a puny pawn in the hand of an almighty, holy God. And even though he thinks he's waging war, in the end he will find out he did exactly as God sovereignly decreed, under God's sovereign decree. And that God is good and Satan is evil... Now I don't know how to put all that together [because his theology is wrong!] and it gives me a headache, but I do know that if your theology doesn't give you a headache sometimes, it's probably a product of your own creation." [Gaslighting - trying to trick you into shutting off your alarm bells and accepting something you know sounds wrong.]
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35. From his April 22, 2018 sermon: "Did the Fall ruin God's plan?... To answer that, you have to go back to foundational texts like Ephesians 1:11: 'God works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His own will.' [To work something out - to work all things together - is different than the idea of God preplanning, orchestrating, causing all things.]... That means everything! There's nothing outside that... As R.C. Sproul so eloquently puts it, 'There is not one maverick molecule in the universe where God is not sovereign.' Nothing is operating outside of His sovereign decree. That means that nothing happens in the universe, not even in the origin of sin and evil, without God not only allowing it but ordaining it. [It's biblical to say God is sovereign over all, that He is over all things, but Calvinists mean that God meticulously preplans and controls all things, that He decreed all things to happen, even sin and evil. Very different.]
... God ordained and intended for the Fall, otherwise it wouldn't happen. [No. He foreknew it would happen and planned ahead on how to incorporate it, to redeem it, to work it into good, but He didn't "ordain" it as in preplanning that the Fall would happen, giving Adam and Eve no choice but to sin. Also, it's a false dichotomy to say "either God ordained the Fall or else it wouldn't happen" - because it assumes it couldn't be any other way, that God couldn't have allowed people to make their own choice to disobey, couldn't have foreknown what they would voluntarily choose, but that He simply had to preplan and orchestrate it.]
... Why? St. Augustine has said, 'God has done everything to glorify Himself.' So in His great wisdom, He had to have made a determination that by ordaining evil and then overcoming and conquering it, somehow He would be more glorified in the end. [It's glorifying to overcome the evil He first dreamed up and orchestrated!?!] There is no other answer biblically... So the Fall did not ruin His plan. [No, of course not, because in Calvinism, the Fall was His plan.]
36. From his January 12, 2020 sermon: "The Bible is saying the Father killed His only begotten Son, and in doing so, the Son became a divine substitute to take on the sins of His people. [All throughout this sermon and all others, the pastor makes sure to emphasize "His people," meaning only the elect, not all people of the world. Calvi-Jesus died only for the elect.]
... The very fact that God the Father was completely sovereign over the death of His Son - His torture, His suffering, His atoning death and all the details surrounding it - is a powerful reminder that God is sovereign over every detail of our world and our suffering in particular. It is a huge comfort to the people of God - that if God is sovereign over the details of His Son's suffering, He's certainly sovereign over the details of my suffering. [Yeah, but Calvinism calls God's goodness and character into question because "sovereign," in Calvinism, doesn't just mean "in authority over," but it means "preplans, causes, controls, orchestrates, directs, etc.", meaning that God preplans, causes, controls, orchestrates, directs all the evil, sin, and tragedy that happens in this world and in our lives, including betrayal, abuse, affairs, divorce, disease, and all the things Satan does, etc.. As he preached on July 23, 2023: "The devil is God's devil... Everything Satan does is under God's sovereign power... Satan and his angels are exactly on schedule, doing exactly what God intended for them to do." And despite Calvinist howls of denial, this makes God no different than Satan, which is not comforting.]
In other words, suffering doesn't just happen to us. Nothing has ever just happened to you, or nothing is just happening to you. Whatever fiery trial you're going through right now, know that your Heavenly Father - just like He oversaw His Son's death and everything that was involved and yet was involved in the whole thing - is intimately and lovingly involved in every detail of your circumstances right now, or in the past, or in the future. [Earlier in the sermon, he explained what he meant by "oversaw": "The Father didn't just oversee the death of His Son, but the Father planned, ordained, predestined, organized, pulled off the killing of His Son." And so this, therefore, is how the Father is intimately, "lovingly" involved in our fiery trials, by planning, ordaining, predestining, organizing, pulling-off them. According to Calvinism.]
... God alone is ultimately the one who assigns both the pleasant and the painful in our lives, for our good and for His glory... Until [we] get that, friends, we're never going to find joy...or the peace that passes all understanding." [If you've been shamed or manipulated into thinking you must find joy and peace in a god like the Calvinist god, then I'm sorry for you. And I hope you ask God to help you take off the Calvinist glasses so that you can get to know Him as He really is in His Word.]
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37. I want you to see these two sermons side-by-side, so you can see the obvious contradictions and doublespeak of Calvinism, the things they reveal in some sermons but hide in others to make Calvinism sound better than it is:
From his November 19, 2017 sermon: “Jesus invites every single human being, every single sinner – they’re one and the same: every single human being, even single sinner – to come follow Him. Meaning what?... to surrender to Him as Lord, to obey His teaching, and to accept His claims.
… The summons of the gospel, friends, is not ‘invite Jesus into your heart.’ It is not ‘accept Jesus as your personal Savior.’ Those phrases are not in the Bible. The summons is 'God commands everyone everywhere to repent.' [So he removes the idea of personal, voluntary, human choice/response/responsibility to make it merely "God commands everyone to repent" - which in Calvinism contains the idea that "but that doesn't mean everyone can repent. God will only cause the elect to repent, but the non-elect have no ability to repent, by God's decree. But God still commands them to repent so that they will be guilty for not obeying His command to repent so that He can then 'justly' punish them in hell for it, just like He predestined." Calvinists believe that God commands things that He made impossible for the non-elect to do precisely so that He can punish them for disobeying, even though it's His fault they couldn't obey. And they think this is okay, that God is still a holy, gracious, merciful, just, trustworthy, loving God in spite of it. Oh, it makes me mad! The damage it does to the gospel and God's character and people's faiths and eternities! It's no wonder there are so many atheists out there.]
… [to make disciples, tell a new believer this:] ‘Let me take you through a book of the Bible and maybe J.I. Packer’s Knowing God.’" [Of course! A major Calvinist resource!]
[Ironically, he also says “If we follow a Jesus of our own imagination, we are putting our eternal destiny on the line and we are inviting judgment and damnation on us.” So if Calvi-Jesus is different than the Bible’s Jesus – different goals, different purpose, a different heart for people – does that mean Calvinists are inviting judgment and damnation on themselves, putting their salvation on the line?
You know, if non-Calvinists are wrong in our views of Jesus and God and the Bible, no harm, no foul, really. Because if Calvinism is true, then we had no ability to think otherwise. We were ordained by God to think and teach as we do, to fight against Calvinism, by His decree and for His glory, and we couldn't have done anything differently.
But if Calvinists are wrong, then they themselves - by their own erroneous beliefs, misguided humility, disguised pride, and acquiescence to the smooth-talk of the silver-tongued serpent - are doing enormous damage to God's Word, God's character, the gospel, Jesus's sacrifice and ministry, and people's faiths and eternities. And they are doing this on their own, apart from God's decree and "sovereign causation," bringing "unglory" to God's name. That should be terrifying - because they, not God, will be responsible for the eternal damage and consequences of their wrong beliefs and teachings. Scary.]
Okay now, with that sermon in mind, read this sermon to see what he really means, to see how deceptive Calvinists are when they say things like "Jesus invites every single human being...to come follow Him." (Incidentally, this is the week we resigned, after his Mother’s Day "dead babies are in hell" sermon the week before. See in the next point.):
From May 19, 2019, after saying that Lydia was not saved until God opened her heart to the gospel [see "Lydia (Acts 16:14) Totally Destroys Calvinism's Total Depravity" for why this is wrong]: “God opened her heart to the gospel. Why does it emphasize this? Because the Bible is clear that left to ourselves, our hearts are darkened and blinded, dead in sin, unable to respond to the things of God unless God chooses to open blinded eyes and give saving faith. [Essentially, this makes Calvi-Jesus a deceiver for "inviting every single human being to follow him" - because he knows very well that Calvi-god made it impossible for most people to do it. It makes him a cold-hearted mocker of the non-elect.]… Jesus is for everybody… The gospel is global. It’s universal. It’s not for one people. It’s for all peoples, all nations, all ethnic groups. [There it is! "Everybody" doesn't mean "all individual people." It just means "all kinds of people, from all ethnic groups."]
Also in this sermon, on a different note, he says: "The doctrine of providence…is the reminder, very encouraging reminder, that God is in full control of the good, the bad, and the ugly… He’s fully good, fully powerful, He’s in the details, and you can trust Him… What a comfort when we’re struggling, when tragedy strikes, when a child goes wayward, when we lose a job, when our finances shift, when a dream dies, when a spouse dies, when a child dies, what a colleague betrays us or cancer strikes or we’ve lost our way, that God is sovereign, He’s good and He’s holy ["good" and "holy" lose all meaning when God's the reason Satan does what he does], and He’s loving and He’s merciful [to the elect], and He’s guiding us and He’s in the details with all the good, bad, and ugly. I’m gonna close with a quote from the Heidelberg catechism [Calvinist!]…: ‘Hear this, O saints of God, and be encouraged: All things come not by chance but by His fatherly hand.’”
Then he ends the sermon in prayer by praying that we may see that God is sovereignly in control of the details and that we wouldn't bristle at it but embrace it and rejoice in it.
38. Our pastor believes that babies who die go to hell, but it's often said in a roundabout way:
From his December 1, 2017 sermon: "Isaiah is telling us in very strong language, very clear language here, that our sins have cut us off from God, from the moment of conception, of birth, and then once we start committing sins, it even adds to it. They separate us from God... We are sinners by conception, then by birth. Sinners by nature, and sinners by choice.... [After adding the idea that sinners need a Savior, he says] You say, 'I don't like that message.' My response: 'I didn't make this up...I didn't write this. My job is simply to bring it out and help you understand what the text says. It's up to the Lord to help you welcome and accept this and embrace it and love it.'" [Translation: "It's God's choice if we believe or not."]
February 3, 2019: "Do you understand that hell is your default destination from the moment of conception?"
From July 16, 2017: "From the moment of conception in the womb, we are desperately wicked, hopelessly selfish, in utter rebellion against God, and the human heart and mind is darkened... The unsaved man, the unsaved woman, the unsaved child, the unsaved teen is cut off from God and under judgment... Romans 3: we are unable to seek God, nobody seeks God... there's no such thing as a seeker according to the Bible. Everybody's a fleer... We are under a divine death sentence from the moment of conception, and unless something happens, we will face the living God [and] judgment and damnation."
"Every single human being is a sinner by birth, by choice [which, in Calvinism, just means that you choose what God predestined you to choose], and by nature [your Calvi-god-given nature], and is cut off from God... Let me say that again...Every single human being is a sinner by birth and by practice and is cut off from God. That is true of little children. That is true of babies. That is true of teenagers and adults.
There's this concept in the evangelical world of an age of accountability, that somehow people before a certain age - sometimes it's two, sometimes it's six, sometimes it's twelve - aren't guilty before God. Friends, that is not taught in the Bible anywhere, as much as it may be favorable in evangelical bantering. For 35 years I've tried to find that in the Bible. If it is true, it isn't taught in the Scriptures. The teaching over and over and over again is that from the moment of conception, we are guilty before a holy God. We are under the judgment of God. There is no free pass. The Bible never teaches some kind of age of accountability.
If you have any doubts, Psalm 51:5, David says 'I was born a sinner from the moment my mother conceived me.' Romans 3:23 says that all have sinned, not only those over nine years old, or twelve years old, or over four years old. All have sinned and fall short of God's standard. 1 John 1:8: 'If we claim to be without sin, we have deceived ourselves and the truth is not in us.'
... We are born at war with God...in rebellion against Him and His laws. We bristle at authority. Everybody bristles at authority. We break His laws every day. We deserve judgment and hell. And the Bible says that the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked and beyond cure. And it started at conception.
... The only way to be saved, justified, reconciled to God, is to repent and have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ... Every single human being is cut off from God... The only way to be saved, made right, justified before a holy God, is to repent of our sins, turn around and go the other way, and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." (Translation: "Babies who die before they can repent are in hell, permanently cut off from God. Remember, no one gets a free pass.")
Once again, this was his Mother's Day sermon. Mother's Day! I was livid! Fuming! And I've never even lost a child. But my heart broke for those who did and who had to hear that garbage. He may as well have just gotten up there and said, "Hey, all you grieving mothers, I hope you know that your dead baby is in hell. Happy Mother's Day!"
We resigned from that church a week later. (And here's the letter we sent the elders months before, hoping we could make a difference so that we didn't have to leave - a letter which the elders did nothing about. And here's a post with more comments on this from other Calvinists: "But predestination! (#16A: God's will, babies)".)
But it's no wonder he'd believe that babies go to hell when this is how he thinks of them, from his January 24, 2016 sermon on the wrath of God: "Truth-suppression begins very early in life. Children have no interest in truth…zero. Babies, toddlers, cute little kids, my cute grandkids, they have no interest in the truth. What is a child’s primary interest in life? ME! [As it should be at that age! Babies can't think about others yet - that's a learned thing. All they can do for the first few months/years is think about their needs. It’s called "survival instinct". They can't care for or fend for themselves yet, and so they have to depend on us to do it for them.] It’s the All-Great Universe of ME! They don’t want to know the truth [because they can’t even understand the concept of truth yet!]. Frankly, I think if they were big enough, sometimes they would vaporize us. If you look at the rage in a child, toddler, baby that is screaming because you’re imposing truth on them…
... Why am I born such a good truth-suppressor? Because I’m born sinful. Not just a little bit, we are born incredibly depraved to our core… desperately wicked. We are slaves to sin… We are born rebellious, and we don’t want authority over us… the heart is desperately wicked… deceitful above all things… We can’t handle the truth and so we suppress it.”
Oh, those awful, horrible babies! Nasty little evil things!
[And for the record, about his Mother's Day sermon: 1 John 1:8 wouldn't apply to babies because babies can't claim anything about themselves since they have little to no self-awareness yet.
And yes, Romans 3:23 says that all have sinned, but I believe there are verses that show that God doesn't hold our sins against us until and unless we are old enough to know what we're doing, to choose between accepting or rejecting Jesus, such as Deuteronomy 1:39 which refers to a time when children become old enough to tell the good from the bad, and Isaiah 7:16 which talks about an age when people are old enough to choose the right and reject the wrong, and Ezekiel 16:20-21 when God calls the sacrificed children "My children," and Jeremiah 19:4-5 when He calls the sacrificed children "innocent." And then there's also 2 Samuel 12:23, Matthew 21:16, Matthew 18:6-14, and Matthew 19:14. (And notice how often the Bible says that we are condemned for rejecting/resisting Jesus. But babies cannot reject or resist anything yet.)
I think the Bible shows an overall picture of God loving children and covering their sins with His grace before they are old enough to repent and decide for themselves to believe in Jesus. So yes, we are all sinners, but God can cover our sins - with Jesus's blood for those old enough to accept it, and with His grace for those not old enough or conscious enough (mentally-handicapped people) to accept it.
(Calvinists can't believe in an age of accountability because that would affirm the idea of human choice, of people making decisions about Jesus. And in Calvinism, salvation is not about our choice but about God's choice for us.)
And Psalm 51:5 in the KJV - the more accurate translation - does not say that David was sinful from birth, but it says that his mother conceived him in sin, which could mean that his parents were doing something considered sinful when he was conceived (such as maybe the way they were having sex or the time/day they had sex, maybe on a forbidden day) or maybe he's talking about being born into a sinful world. Either way, there is no hint in the KJV that David is calling himself sinful from birth.
None of these verses support infant damnation. (Also see my post "Do babies go to heaven or hell? A critique of Calvinism's answer.")
Also for the record, our pastor must have gotten backlash for that sermon because shortly after it, he wrote a post on the church blog where he backpedaled, saying that he's not sure if babies go to heaven or not, but that maybe they do. Pathetic. So I sent an email saying that we knew exactly what he was teaching in that Mother's Day sermon and that how dare he now think he can pull the wool over our eyes, tricking us into thinking he didn't teach what he did. Shameful.
Our pastor also once wrote a blog post about how God "commands" spanking, and that it has to hurt. The whole "spare the rod, spoil the child" thing. I, however, sent in a comment about how I believe God commands disciplining our children, not necessarily spanking them. I believe the "rod" is a tool of correction, guidance, authority, not necessarily something to hit them with. (And I told them that they picked an awful picture for the blog post, that the picture of the young, scared child huddled on the ground is disturbing because it looks like he's hiding a dark secret of abuse. But the church never printed my comment. Go figure!)]
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39. And it's not only dead babies who are predestined to hell, but also all those who never heard the gospel:
From his June 22, 2014 sermon: "[Nature] screams out there's an Almighty God. So we call this 'general revelation.' Theologians call it 'natural revelation.' There is a certain amount of information about God that comes through creation and nature... But 'special revelation' is the information about God that can only be known through the Bible... [General revelation] is not enough information in order to lead someone to Christ as Savior. It is enough information to indict them on Judgment Day, but it is not enough information to save them."
And again in a July 2015 sermon on what happens to those who don't hear the gospel (his reference verses were Romans 1:18-25): "General revelation is enough to indict us, but it's not enough information to save us... We must call on the name of Jesus to be saved... Lost sinners must hear the gospel and call on the name of Jesus... Those who've never heard are liable and they will face judgment someday..."
And again in January 2016: "General revelation can’t lead you to Christ. It’s enough to inform you about God and to indict you, but it’s not enough to save you. That’s why Paul says that no one will have an excuse on Judgment Day... It’s exhilarating to be outdoors, but it’s not enough to lead you to saving faith. That’s why God gave us the Bible.... So what about those who never heard the gospel?... All people suppress the truth in their wickedness. That’s everybody on the planet…all people, to the most primitive tribal person you can imagine on the most remote island. Everybody suppresses the truth that there is an almighty, personal God they are accountable to… Unless the gospel is preached [to them], they can’t believe.”
And again in July 2018: "What about the innocent native who never heard of Christ? Well...there's no such thing as an innocent native. All of us are born into sin and depravity... All people suppress the truth because of their sin and wickedness... All people know there's a God [because of general revelation]... so all people are without excuse... Those who never heard of Christ are damned for two reasons. One: They are born rebels and they sin throughout the course of their lives. And two: They're sinning in a floodlight of God's revelation of Himself."
In Calvinism, general revelation is only enough to make the non-elect damnable (and all those who never heard of Christ are non-elect), not enough to lead them to salvation.
(So why on earth would we thank God for His creation and for how creation points back to Him if it's the very thing that damns most people to eternal hell and torment? That's sick.)
For more against this, see this post "'But predestination!' (#16A: God's Will, babies)".
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40. From his April 7, 2019 sermon, after talking about a Bible passage where God caused/did things, “God did it, God did it, God did it”: “The reason God must open doors for ministry is because of the Bible's teaching that the human heart is spiritually blind, that the human condition is one in which we are dead in sin and unable to seek God or to respond to the things of God. That comes out over and over, but especially in Paul's writings.
... There's a deadness to the person outside of Christ, and unless God opens eyes, unless God opens a heart, unless God opens a region, nothing of the gospel is really going to take root there.... Results are up to God. Our job is proclaiming the gospel, [but] it's up to God to open or close doors... God supernaturally opens hearts and geographical regions - it's both in the Scriptures, we see.
... God supernaturally opened the door [in a particular Bible passage]. On the other hand, the Bible teaches God sometimes sovereignly closes doors. He closes some hearts and geographical regions for reasons known only to Him. Both are done for His glory, by the way... God opens doors, He closes doors, He does all things for His glory.
... Who pierces hearts? God does. For some reason, God pierces no hearts [in certain missionary endeavors.]... God is the one who opens eyes. God is the one who closes eyes. To God be the glory. And this should bring a freedom in our evangelism [and] in our mission endeavors. Otherwise, someone like [a missionary who had no converts] would come home and feel like an utter failure. But the reason he didn't - and the reason he doesn't have to - is because he understood the sovereignty of God. And it’s God who gives the results.
… Any time the gospel’s preached, there’s going to be opposite reactions. [Some people resist it, and some believe it.]… God is the one sovereignly opening and closing doors, for His glory… Remember that the results belong to God… J.I. Packer, in his classic Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, writes this: ‘It’s a Christian’s job to share the gospel. It is God’s job to open people’s hearts.’ Meaning that whether someone ends up believing or not, that’s God’s call.
And what many miss is this is a very liberating thing when you share the gospel. We don’t have to take it personally. We do, but we don’t have to. God sovereignly opens some regions and hearts to the gospel, and He sovereignly closes some hearts and regions to the gospel. And ladies and gentlemen, that is needed tonic to the Western church which has become so man-centered… It is God only who gives results. And that is something the Western church needs to embrace, remember, and rejoice in as the gospel goes out. [Rejoice that Calvi-god caused people to reject the gospel, for his glory? That's sick!]
Father, this is a remarkable chapter - from Paul’s sermon reminding us ‘God did it, God did it, God did it, God did it, God did it,”… and from seeing how You open blind eyes…”
Also in this sermon, on a different note, he says : “God doesn’t do random. Not in your life. And not in your ministry… Some of us here desperately need this reminder today because we’re going through something that really discouraging us. You may have a child wandering from Christ. You may have a marriage that’s tanking at the moment. You may have a diagnosis that’s just floored you. You may have a job situation…and evangelistic situation…a financial crisis. Something has got you down, something has got you challenged, something has got you doubting whether God is good [Yeah, it’s called “Calvinism”], whether God is still in control – and you look at a sermon like this where God is the subject of virtually every verb: God doesn’t do random.”
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41. And from his June 26, 2022 sermon about Joseph and forgiveness: "Today we are going to be talking about one of the hardest things a human being can be called on to do, and that is to forgive someone who's abused them. Some of you have been horrifically abused and treated horribly by somebody. All of us have been betrayed at some point in our life, intentionally targeted, treated unjustly, someone has been cruel to us. And the question is 'How do you forgive them?'
... Some of us are sitting here today and the pain is so very deep about the way we've been treated by somebody. Any time we're physically abused, verbally abused, emotionally abused, lied about, oppressed, taken advantage of, wrongly blamed - the list can go on - here's the decision we face: 'Will I become bitter and hold a grudge, or will I choose to forgive and let it go?'
And here's the key: My choice at that point - how I choose to respond to someone who has abused me - shows what I really think about God... All of our bitterness is ultimately traceable to resentment of God. Why? Because it was God who brought these circumstances into our lives in the first place, painful as they may be... And if I'm going to say 'I will not forgive this person. I'm going to hold it over their head,' then what I'm saying is 'No matter what You decided, Lord, no matter how You arranged this, You're the one that's guilty. And I am bitter and resentful towards God.'
... [After he talks about the evils and abuse Joseph faced and quotes Joseph's line about "What you meant for evil, God meant for good," he says:] It doesn't just say God used it for good. No! God arranged this for good.
'All of this,' Joseph said, 'God did it to me. God did it for all of us... God ordained that you (the brothers) would do your evil actions - and yet He's innocent; you are guilty - and yet God intended it for good in my life. And yet God is somehow innocent, and yet He ordained the whole process.'... God is fully sovereign and in control, and He is good," [The "somehow" is kinda revealing, isn't it? Calvinists know how badly their beliefs reflect on God and His character and that they really have no answer for it, no way to adequately mesh God's "sovereignty" with human "responsibility" without making it seem like God Himself is responsible for all evil and sin. And so they have to resort to a pathetic "somehow."]
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42. I also heard about a time (this is hearsay, so keep that in mind, but I don't doubt that it happened exactly like this) when a woman came up to our pastor after a sermon like the ones above and asked point-blank if he was saying that God is really responsible for the childhood abuse she experienced. And the pastor hemmed and hawed, apparently unwilling to come right out and say what he really meant.
And apparently, as I've come to find out recently, there's been a bunch of people who've left the church since he came in, some because of his Calvinism and some because of his personality/teaching style (and some because of both) - his rude, proud, domineering, controlling, ungracious, legalistic, impatient, uncompassionate, unloving personality and teaching style (and his bad handling of certain situations). (My words, not theirs.)
As I said in the very beginning, due to his "it's my way or the highway" attitude, I think he should've been a professor or a book author, not a "shepherd" of hearts and faith.
But maybe that's just me... and all these others who left because of him too. (How many more people have to leave that church over him before the church wakes up and realizes something is very wrong?)
And the next posts will include my additional, more in-depth comments about the things in these sermons.
Yes, there is a lot more to comment on than what I've already said.
(Calvinism is exhausting.)
