As Solomon testifies in Ecclesiastes 9:11, "I returned, and
saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the
strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding,
nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them
all."
*****
"If
you were Muslim, for example, you'd say, 'The will of Allah be done,' " says Preacher Richard Jordan. "In fact, the name Islam itself means 'submission.'
Submission to the will of God. 'Whatever happens, Allah determined it.' Do you
know average Christendom thinks the same way about the God of the Bible?!
"Calvinism
is simply the Christian veneer upon the paganist fatalism that comes from
heathendom. That's where it comes into the Islamic religion and Christianity.
It's the idea that God controls every event—that there's this pre-arranged,
pre-ordained, pre-laid-out map of life and everything that happens, God
determined it. Folks, God has not pre-determined everything that's going to
happen on this planet at every given moment."
In
the Book of Jeremiah alone are several examples of God Himself making this
point clear. In Jeremiah 7:31, Jehovah God says of the pagan practices that
were being carried out in Israel, "And they have built the high places of
Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and
their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into
my heart."
What He's saying is it wasn't His intention they do any of the evil things they did.
What He's saying is it wasn't His intention they do any of the evil things they did.
Similarly,
Jeremiah 32:35 reads, "And they built the high places of Baal, which are
in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to
pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it
into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin."
"God's
saying, 'I didn't talk to them about it, I didn't purpose it, it wasn't
something that came in my mind for them to do,' " explains Jordan.
"That doesn't mean He didn't foreknow it or wasn't acquainted with it
ahead of time. What He's talking about is He didn't purpose for them, He didn't
ordain for them, He didn't predestinate for them. He didn't pre-determine for
them that they'd do it. If He did, explain what exactly does that verse mean?!"
*****
*****
While
preachers like Billy Graham, who popularized the phrase "divine
providential appointment," have long-encouraged people to think whenever
anything good happens, "Surely God must have been behind
that," nowhere in the Bible—either in Israel's program or the grace
program operating today—is there demonstration of God teaching people through events.
“Circumstances are simply not God's means for teaching,” says
Jordan. "When God wants to communicate with someone, He does it with words. "He doesn't use situations
and happenings. In I Kings, for example, Elijah hears all this noise from the
thunders, the wind and the earthquake and there's no voice of God, so He sits
down in the cave and God comes and speaks to him in a 'still small voice.'
"You
and I have that in a Book that sits in our lap. That's why we talk about the
Bible versions issue. That's why it's so important. You don't need to go, 'Oh,
God, show me what you want me to do.
Just give me a sign.' You know what He says back? 'I already have.'
"You're
complete in Christ and you have the complete, total revelation of His will in
His Word and when you really, truly get a hold of that it LIBERATES your life
from the bondage of religious tyranny and questioning and always living by
defining yourself and your relationship with God and others in ways that He
doesn't."
*****
Unbelievably, the Calvinist mumbo-jumbo
that has riddled our country for centuries maintains an ever-growing foothold in Christian worship and study.
It's
crazy stuff and yet some of the biggest names in Christian history bought into
this pure pagan heresy: Charles Spurgeon, George Whitefield, John Eliot, Karl
Barth, Jonathan Edwards, Blaise Pascal, Noah Webster, William Carey, John
Bunyan, John Knox, Lyman Beecher and Francis Schaeffer.
"Largely
forgotten today, George Whitefield was probably the most religious figure of
the 18th century," writes the editors of Christian
History magazine in their 2000 book, 131 Christians Everyone
Should Know. "Before his tours of the colonies were complete,
virtually every man, woman, and child had heard of the 'Great Itinerant' at
least once. So pervasive was Whitefield's impact in America that he can justly
be styled America's first cultural hero. Indeed, before Whitefield, it is
doubtful any name, other than royalty, was known equally from Boston to
Charleston."
As
for evangelist Charles Spurgeon, the book says of his fame, "No chapel
seemed large enough to hold those who wanted to hear the 'preaching sensation
of London.' He preached to tens of thousands in London's greatest halls—Exeter,
Surry Gardens, Agricultural. . . His sermons were published in the Monday
edition of the London Times, and even the New York Times."
*****
*****
Calvinism
gets its name and theology from John Calvin, a 16th century
scholar from France who, upon studying law as a young student at the University
of Orleans, dipped into Renaissance humanism and studied Plato and Aristotle.
Originally
a Catholic, Calvin derived his doctrines from the teachings of Augustine, the
Roman Catholic theologian from the 4th century who, at an early age, fell under
the influence of Neoplatonic philosophy and was a major early proponent of
studying the Bible allegorically rather than literally.
Not
only is Calvin regarded as a leading figure in Puritanism but, "his ideas
have been blamed for or credited with (depending on your view) the rise of
capitalism, individualism and democracy," says the Christian
History book.
*****
"Most
of American culture has been so influenced by Calvinism that there's much about
Calvinism engrained into people's thinking and philosophies of life that they
don't even know where it came from," says Jordan.
"The old idea of 'manifest destiny' and the 'rugged individualist' comes
right out of that pit. It's nothing but pagan nonsense."
At
its base, Calvinism contradicts not only the Word of God but God's intrinsic
nature as a loving Father whose desire is that all men be His children,
accepting His gift of eternal life to be with Him in heaven forever.
Of
course, even Calvin himself contradicts himself in his different written
commentaries.
In
one commentary, he states, "As Scripture then clearly shows, we say that
God once established by His eternal and unchangeable plan, those whom He long
before determined once for all to receive into salvation and those who,
on the other hand, He would devote to destruction. . . By His just and
irreprehensible, but incomprehensible, judgment, He has barred the door
of life to those He's given over to damnation."
Then
in another commentary, regarding I Tim. 2:4, he writes, "Paul demonstrates
that God has at heart the salvation of all because He invites all to
the acknowledgment of the truth."
In
his commentary on the famous verse John 3:16 ("For God so loved the world,
that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not
perish, but have everlasting life"), Calvin assures, "Such is also
the import of the term 'world, which He formally used. For though nothing would
be found in the world that is worthy of the favor of God, yet He shows Himself
to be reconciled to the world when He invites all men without exception
to the faith of Christ, which is nothing else than entrance into life."
You
just wonder how in the world the guy can say such opposite things and not get
that he's changing his story. The worst part of it is he makes a liar out of
God.
*****
Jordan
explains, “Theologians love to extrapolate and extrapolate; and premise and
premise and premise; and use their logic and extend everything out. The result
is they deduce from the plain words in the Bible all sorts of hare-brained
ideas constructed from their own faulty logic and philosophy. They arrive at
their conclusions by totally and completely ignoring dispensational truth along
with the Word of God in general.
Take
Calvin's business about God choosing some people for salvation and others for
damnation. He arrives at this from the twisting what the Apostle Paul wrote in
Romans 8:28-30:
[29] For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
[30] Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
[29] For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
[30] Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
In
the passage, the word "foreknow" comes from the Greek word
"progonosco" (pro is before and gonosco means
"to know something").
"It
means to know it, to recognize something in advance," explains Jordan.
"It's exactly what our word 'foreknowledge' means. But Calvinists change
that meaning and say it means 'to forelove something'—you love it beforehand.
Foreknowledge does not mean foreloved or foreordained. It doesn't mean God
determined ahead of time what was going to happen; that's he's predetermined
everything that happens on this planet at every given moment.
“The
word ‘know,’ or gonosco, is often used in Scripture in the sense of
‘intimate acquaintance.’ In fact, in passages like Matthew 1:25, where it
explains that Mary didn't 'know' Joseph, it's talking about the fact the couple
didn't have sexual relations until after Christ was born.
“In
Matthew 7:23, when Jesus Christ says, ‘I never knew you:
depart from me, ye that work iniquity,’ He's not saying He doesn't have
knowledge of a person, precisely because God knows everyone on the earth. What
He's saying is He doesn't have regard for the person.
“The
word foreknow and the word know are not the same word in the Bible,
as Calvinists wrongly conclude.
*****
That's
why the Westminster Confession of the mid-1600s, produced by English-speaking
Presbyterians and given official status in England, makes absolutely no sense.
The
confession, referred to as a "theological consensus of international
Calvinism" in Merriam Webster's "Encyclopedia of World
Religions," states that "some men and angels are predestinated unto
everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death," and yet
"neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of creatures."
"Calvinists
constantly double-talk to deceive people away from using common sense," sums
up a preacher. "They insist that free will makes man the cause of his own
salvation but then it's not of your own free will to choose or reject the
gospel. That statement doesn't even make sense.
"They
teach that a sinner is of himself neither capable nor willing to believe the
gospel and therefore 'the elect' are so influenced by divine power that their
will is overcome and changed by the 'saving irresistible grace of God'?! It's
all hogwash!"
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