Troublemaker? (#3 preach to all, but...)
[Click here for #1 (the gospel) and #2 (stealth Calvinism) of this Troublemaker series., which is interspersed with the Alana L. series. FYI: Since I want to take a break from writing and be offline for awhile, I preset all the posts to be published up into spring of 2026.]
3. Preach to all, but...:
Non-Calvinists believe that we need to preach the gospel to all people because anyone and everyone has the ability to believe and be saved, and we want to reach as many people as possible with the good news of God's love for them and Jesus's sacrificial death for their sins, so that they too can find forgiveness and salvation like we have.
Deuteronomy 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."
John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he sent his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
2 Peter 3:9: "... He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance."
Joshua 24:15: "So if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve ... But as for me and my household, we will serve the 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 10:13: “‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’”
Translation: "The gospel is only for the elect!"
[FYI: Calvinists have a very different definition of election/"the elect" than the Bible, with a built-in Calvinist bias. Biblically, election is about how God chooses to bless us or use us in His plans. It has nothing to do with salvation, but with service. But in Calvinism, election is about God choosing who gets saved and who doesn't. A very different definition! And so, to differentiate, it's why I started using the terms "Calv-election" and "the Calv-elect."]
And since Calvinists can't tell who's elect and who's not, they must preach to all. But make no mistake, the Calvi-gospel, Calvi-Jesus's sacrifice, and Calvi-god's love are only for the elect - the Calv-elect😉 - and not the reprobates predestined to hell by Calvi-god.
Arthur Pink (The Sovereignty of God): ""When we say that God is sovereign in the exercise of His love, we mean that He loves whom He chooses. God does not love everybody…"
John MacArthur (“Does God so love the world?”): “God's love for the elect is an infinite, eternal, saving love... this great love was the very cause of our election. Such love clearly is not directed toward all of mankind indiscriminately, but is bestowed uniquely and individually on those whom God chose in eternity past.”
Jarvis Williams (Desiring God, "For Whom Did Christ Die?"): "The verbal proclamation of the gospel makes known to the elect the salvation accomplished by Christ for them..."
Steven Lawson ("Salvation is of the Lord"): "... Jesus died a substitutionary death in the place of God’s elect.... Jesus’ death did not merely make all mankind potentially savable. Nor did His death simply achieve a hypothetical benefit that may or may not be accepted. Neither did His death merely make all mankind redeemable. Instead, Jesus actually redeemed a specific people through His death, securing and guaranteeing their salvation. Not a drop of Jesus’ blood was shed in vain. He truly saved all for whom He died... With oneness of purpose, the Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit into the world to apply this salvation to those chosen and redeemed."
A.W. Pink (Doctrine of Election): "It is to call the elect that the Scriptures are given, that ministers are sent, that the gospel is preached, and the Holy Spirit is here... it is unmistakably evident that the 'all men' God wills to be saved and for whom Christ died are all men without regard to national distinction." ["All kinds of people" - not all individual people]
John MacArthur (2010 Shepherd's conference, see in the first video here, starting at 8:20), about why Calvinists should evangelize if God's already elected who would be saved: "... God loves the world, the specific people in the world, the specific human beings. I don't know who they are. Spurgeon said 'if you'll pull up their shirts and show me an 'E" stamped on their back and I know the elect, then I'll limit my work to them.' But since there is no such stamp, I am committed to obey the command to preach the gospel to every creature... But I don't think ["In my opinion...as I see it...according to me... I don't think"] it's a good solution to diminish the nature of the atonement and have Jesus dying for everybody..."
[Methinks someone doth think too highly of his own opinions, putting them above God's Word: “… 'Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the whole world'” (John 1:29) and "He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2:2).]
My ex-pastor (from his December 2, 2018 sermon on God's love for sinners): "For God so loved the world... What is 'the world'? Well, let me tell you what it's not... [it's not] a head-count of every single human being.... it is a realm...a dark realm of sin, evil, rebellion, corruption, and wickedness... So when John says 'For God so loved the world,' what he means and what he's saying is 'For God so loved the dark realm of wickedness and depravity,' and that His love breaks through that and pierces the darkness." [Calvinists will look for any other interpretation to "the world" than "all individual people," so desperate to prove that God does not love all individual people enough to offer everyone salvation. Sad.]
John MacArthur (The Doctrine of Actual Atonement, Part 1): "God did not intend to save everyone... God does limit the atonement.... I just can’t bring myself to believe that hell is full of millions of people whose sins were paid for in full by Christ on the cross.… I don’t feel very special if you say to me, 'Christ died for you, He loves you just like He died for the millions in hell.' That doesn’t make me feel very special.
So in Calvinism, the gospel is not for everyone. It was not intended to save most people, but only the Calv-elect... because Calvi-Jesus died only for them, refusing to waste his blood on those predestined to reject him.
Kumbaya.
[If Calvinists can find one verse that clearly talks about Jesus not wasting His blood on people predestined to hell - as clearly as the verses that talk about Jesus dying for the world/all people - then I'll start to listen to them more.]
“… 'Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the whole world'” (John 1:29)
"He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2:2).
I like what Dr. Tony Evans says in his Bible commentary about John 1:29: "... Only the sacrifice of Jesus could truly address the sin 'of the whole world' (1 John 2:2). For unbelievers, the problem is not that their sin hasn't been atoned for; the problem is that they are unwilling to receive the atonement that Jesus already made. The sacrificial death of Jesus Christ removes the judicial barrier caused by sin so that all people are savable."
And his comment on 1 John 2:2: "... [Jesus is] the atoning sacrifice...for our sins... [He] appeased God's just wrath against sin by his sacrificial death for the whole human race (i.e., unlimited atonement)."
How very different from the Calvinist teachings above!
The thing is, Jesus's blood was never wasted on anything, even if people choose to reject Him. It accomplished exactly what it was supposed to: buying salvation for all men so that we all have the chance to believe and be saved. Salvation is a gift, bought by Jesus's blood, offered to all, but we choose to accept or reject it.
1 Timothy 4:10: "... we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all men ..."
Sidenote: If you are just coming out of Calvinism or just want some great resources with a truly biblical interpretation of things, get these books from Dr. Tony Evans (as well as his Bible commentary):
Theology You Can Count On [A must-read for all the basics. Everyone should have this one as their basic theology book. It's practical and easy to read, and - trust me - when you read it, you'll go "Wow, that makes total sense and reflects the Bible's plain, clear teachings and upholds God's good, trustworthy character."]
Our God is Awesome: Encountering the Greatness of our God [This one was really healing to my soul after feeling it slowly dying under 6 years of Calvinist preaching.]
Totally Saved: Understanding, Experiencing, and Enjoying the Greatness of Your Salvation [This is the book that confirmed that I was right to doubt what my Calvinist pastor was teaching. If it weren't for finding this book, I may have succumbed to Calvinism.
Because as I began to disagree more and more with my Calvinist pastor and to believe that the Bible taught something completely different, I began researching all the popular pastors I could think of to see what they taught (I did this only after I figured out my own views, so that I wasn't tainted by the views of others)... and every one of them turned out to be Calvinist. And it was freaking me out, making me feel like I would have to accept Calvinism, like maybe I was the one who was wrong all this time, maybe I couldn't understand the Bible, maybe there was something wrong with my faith.
I felt myself falling into a pit of despair, possibly even faithlessness (my husband felt the same way too), because I simply couldn't believe that the God of the Bible was like the God I heard my Calvinist pastor preaching about. And I wasn't even sure anymore if I could trust myself to understand any biblical truth. I mean, if I had such different views all these years than all these pastors, then how could I ever be sure I could understand God's Word at all? And if the Bible was that confusing - if it seemed to say one thing but really meant another - then how could I ever trust it anyway? (I think this is one of the real dangers of Calvinism: It makes us either want to give up our faith because we can't trust a God like that... or it makes us feel like we must be so biblically-stupid that we have to trust the "experts" to tell us how to interpret the Bible - even if it sounds terrible - because we can't figure it out for ourselves).
Anyway, I was on the verge of losing hope, losing faith... but I had one pastor left to research before resigning myself to Calvinism: Dr. Tony Evans. And if he agreed with all these other pastors too, then I felt I'd have no choice but to believe I was wrong and they all were right... or to give up my faith altogether.
But then I read this book! Thank God! And I breathed a huge sigh of relief because he was saying the same things I was, the commonsense interpretation of the Bible as I had always understood it to be. And it gave me the strength and hope I needed to keep plowing forward, away from Calvinism. Dr. Evans will be one of the first people I hug in heaven!]
And here are two additional books you might like from him (as well as any of his other books):
The Promise: Experiencing God’s Greatest Gift – The Holy Spirit
The Battle is the Lord’s: Waging Victorious Spiritual Warfare
All of these are so easy to read and understand (unlike Calvinist theology books), and it will resonate as truth in your heart and mind because it matches the plain, clear, commonsense understanding of God's Word (unlike Calvinist theology books). These, along with his commentary, are must-haves for every Christian's bookshelf (unlike Calvinist theology books). And if you're coming out of Calvinism, they're a great start to getting back on track biblically and to refreshing your suffocating heart and soul!
And I also recommend anything from Billy Graham and Charles Stanley (not Andy Stanley, but Charles Stanley). And then there's this wonderful book from Anne Graham Lotz: Just Give Me Jesus, which is more for the heart than the head. But it was exactly what I needed to begin healing and to get back to the simple, beautiful truths of Jesus and faith.
And once again, you might like these videos from Soteriology 101, a great resource to understand what's wrong with Calvinism and what the biblical truth actually is: Calvinism for Beginners.
