The Anti-Calvinist Rant

Here's a comment from Mike R. in this post on my comment blog : Hello my name is Mike.  I live in Seabrook Tx.  I have been attending a large church in the Houston area for about a year or so.  I have visited other churches but quickly realized they were reformed or Calvinistic.  I have been reading and listening intently to the new pastor and other speakers since visiting this new church to determine their views and beliefs on Calvinism but have not been able to hear any catch phrases that would be a dead giveaway.  It's almost as though they are riding the fence on that topic.  I hear the gospel preached.  I see people respond but still not certain.  Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated.  Mike  ps this is my first post. And here's my reply (the longer version I tried to email him, not the shorter one on my comment blog, but I added a few extra notes here and updated it a bit): Hi Mike, Thank you for your comment and questi...

Here is footnote #4A (part 8 of the whole series inspired by Only.me80's comment) on John MacArthur's sermon about Limited Atonement, quoted in  part 4 .   (Also see  part 1 ...  part 2 ...   part 3 ...  part 5 ... part 6 ... and part 7 of this series .) *4.  MacArthur said: "...  God enables to believe those whom He has chosen... those who would believe because they were given life because they were chosen."   N otice the Calvinist order: First the Calv-elect are chosen for salvation, then given life, and then, lastly, they believe in Jesus.   And so, therefore, the Calv-elect are saved and born-again after  they were elected but  before  they believed in Jesus (born again so that they  could  believe in Jesus) - meaning that , in Calvinism, people are  saved by election ,  not  by faith in Jesus.   My ex-pastor,  October 2014:  "God elected, God chose, God drew, God...

I'm planning on publishing posts every other week for awhile, but I'll occasionally publish one in between.  So here is footnote #3 on John MacArthur's sermon about Limited Atonement that I quoted in  part 4 .   Apparently, it's gonna take quite a long time to get through all my footnotes, something I didn't plan on when I first started writing this series which was  inspired by a comment from a Calvinist reader called Only.me80 (see  part 1 ) .  Yes, this whole long series sprang from that short little comment.  And  here is  part 2 ...   part 3 ...  part 5 ... and part 6 .   *3  Notice the phrasing MacArthur used:  " the sinner cannot will to believe on his own, since he can only believe if God enables him to believe."   It's not just "cannot believe," but  "cannot will to believe."    And he used this kind of phrasing earlier too:  "if they'll only will to believe." ...