“Calvinists tell you that before God created anything, He preordained every last event in every person’s life,” writes a preacher online. “If that were true, people don't sin because they chose to sin but rather God chose them to sin! They say that because God is ‘sovereign,’ He isn't God unless He controls every last detail.”
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 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?!"
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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."
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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."
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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.
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"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.
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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.
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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!"
(new article tomorrow)
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