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Why I Am a Calvinist, Part 1-4 of 8

by Phil Johnson – Grace to You

Why I Am a Calvinist, Part 1

. . and why every Christian is a Calvinist of sorts.  


Part I: Is Arminianism damnable heresy?

I love the doctrines of grace and don’t shy away from the label “Calvinist.” I believe in the sovereignty of God. I’m convinced Scripture teaches that God is completely sovereign not only in salvation (effectually calling and granting faith to those whom He chooses); but also in every detail of the outworking of Providence. “Whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified” (Romans 8:30). And He makes “all things work together for good to those who love God, [i.e.,] to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). Quite simply, He “works all things according to the counsel of His will” (Ephesians 1:11).

That’s what people commonly mean when they speak of “Calvinism.” When I accept that label, I am not pledging allegiance to the man John Calvin. I am not affirming everything he taught, and I’m not condoning everything he did. I’m convinced Calvin was a godly man and one of the finest biblical expositors and theological minds ever, but he wasn’t always right. As a matter of fact, my own convictions are baptistic, so I am by no means one of Calvin’s devoted followers. In other words, when I accept the label “Calvinist,” it’s only for convenience’s sake. I’m not saying “I am of Calvin” in the Corinthian sense.

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Thou hast good reason to “hate evil”

Devotionals by Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“Ye that love the Lord hate evil.”
– Psa_97:10

Psa 97:10  O you who love the LORD, hate evil! He preserves the lives of his saints; he delivers them from the hand of the wicked.

Thou hast good reason to “hate evil,” for only consider what harm it has already wrought thee. Oh, what a world of mischief sin has brought into thy heart! Sin blinded thee so that thou couldst not see the beauty of the Saviour; it made thee deaf so that thou couldst not hear the Redeemer’s tender invitations. Sin turned thy feet into the way of death, and poured poison into the very fountain of thy being; it tainted thy heart, and made it “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” Oh, what a creature thou wast when evil had done

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What Theology is This?

Pastor Steven J. Cole
Flagstaff, Arizona

Dave Hunt’s Misrepresentation of God and Calvinism

As I read Dave Hunt’s latest book, What Love is This? subtitled, “Calvinism’s Misrepresentation of God,” I felt both profound sadness and righteous anger. I was sad because many unsuspecting and uneducated Christians will believe that Hunt is accurate and thereby miss out on one of the richest spiritual gold mines available, namely, the life and writings of John Calvin and his heirs in the faith. I was angry because Hunt deliberately misrepresents and slanders both Calvin and Calvinism, and in the process grossly misrepresents God Himself. I know that his misrepresentation is deliberate because many Calvinists, including myself, wrote repeatedly to Hunt as the book was being written, pointing out his errors and asking him to stop misrepresenting what we believe. But sadly, he stubbornly ignored our corrections and went full steam ahead.

The resulting book is a first magnitude theological and spiritual disaster. If you rely on the supermarket tabloids as your reliable source of news, you’ll probably find Hunt satisfying for your theology. It will give you the same sort of sensational slander as the tabloids, only it is presented as if it were biblically and historically based. But if you want to grow in your knowledge of the living God, I advise you to leave this tabloid theology on the shelf.

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Let us not only think of ourselves

J.C. Ryle

Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Luke volume 1,

[Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1986], 257. {Luke 8:16-21}

Let us not only think of ourselves. Let us also think of others. There are millions in the world who have no spiritual light at all. They are without God, without Christ, and without hope. (Eph. 2:12) Can we do nothing for them? There are thousands around us who are unconverted and dead in sins, seeing nothing and knowing nothing right. Can we do nothing for them?

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Faith in the Storm

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled “Wrecked But Not Reckless,”

delivered June 9, 1872.

There are many young believers who get into such a squall, and do not know what to make of it. They say, “Why, had I been a child of God I could not have drifted into this frightful tempest.” How sayest thou so? Did not David go through it? He said, “All thy waves and thy billows have gone over me.” You must be very little acquainted with the history of the people of God if you think that they are strangers to these conflicts.

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Mohamedanism, or to the fierce doctrines of Budha……

  C. H. Spurgeon

Delivered on Sabbath Morning, September 16, 1855,
At New Park Street Chapel, Southwark.

Storming the Battlements

“Go ye up upon her walls, and destroy; but make not a full end: take away her battlements; for they are not the Lord’s.”—Jeremiah 5:10.

E HAVE BEEN talking very freely during this last week of “glorious victories,” of “brilliant successes,” of “sieges,” and of “stormings.” We little know what the dread reality is of which we boast. Could our eyes once behold the storming of a city, the sacking of a town, the pillage of the soldiery, the barbarous deeds of fury, when the blood is up and long delay has maddened their souls; could we see the fields saturated with blood, and soaked with gore; could we spend one hour amongst the corpses and the dying; or if we could only let the din of battle, and the noise of the guns reach our ears, we should not so much rejoice, if we had anything of fellow feeling for others as well as for ourselves. The death of an enemy is to me a cause of regret as well as the death of a friend. Are not all my brethren? and doth not Jesus tell me so? Are we not all made of one flesh? and hath not God “made of one blood all nations that dwell upon the face of the earth?” Let us, then, when we hear of slaughtered enemies, and of thousands that have fallen, cease to rejoice in their death.

It would betray a spirit utterly inconsistent with the Christian religion, more akin to Mohamedanism, or to the fierce doctrines of Budha, but not in the least to be brought into compatibility with the truths of the gospel of the glorious God. And yet with all that, far be it from me to check any gladness which this nation may experience, now that it hopes that the incubus of war may at last be removed.

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Jesus a Prophet of Chrislam?

 

By Ken Silva pastor-teacher

on June 1, 2011

For at least the past six years now online apologetics and discernment ministries like Lighthouse Trails Research, as well as here at Apprising Ministries, have warning about the growing infestation within evangelicalism of critical thinking skills-numbing corrupt Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism (CSM), such as that taught by Living Spiritual Teacher and Quaker mystic Richard Foster along with his spiritual twin and Southern Baptist minister Dallas Willard.

You may remember that none other than Emergent Church guru Brian McLaren told you they were “key mentors” of the Emerging Church.[1] So what did you think these mentors were teaching the leaders within the sinfully ecumenical neo-liberal cult of the Emergent Church, who have now gone on to develop a quasi-universalism in their new version of Progressive Christian theology under their spiritual circus “big tent” Emergence Christianity?

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Open Letter To Evangelical and Protestant Pastors Worldwide Now is the Day to Turn Back to God’s Word

RE: Open Letter To Evangelical and Protestant Pastors Worldwide

Now is the Day to Turn Back to God’s Word

From: Roger Oakland, Understand The Times

The following letter is to all Bible-believing pastors throughout the world who have been or are being influenced by current trends that are attacking the Word of God through the postmodern humanistic mystical belief system. I have witnessed this deception firsthand on a worldwide basis but am most familiar with what has been happening in the two fellowships I have been part of for the past thirty years – one in Canada and one based in southern California.

It is with a heavy heart I write this open letter to those who consider themselves evangelical or Protestant pastors. While my desire is to do this respectfully and with the love of the Lord, I am compelled with a strong sense of responsibility to write this warning.

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Was it so even in the beginning ?

Devotionals by Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“The evening and the morning were the first day.”
– Gen_1:5

Was it so even in the beginning? Did light and darkness divide the realm of time in the first day? Then little wonder is it if I have also changes in my circumstances from the sunshine of prosperity to the midnight of adversity. It will not always be the blaze of noon even in my soul concerns, I must expect at seasons to mourn the absence of my former joys, and seek my Beloved in the night. Nor am I alone in this, for all the Lord’s beloved ones have had to sing the mingled song of judgment and of mercy, of trial and deliverance, of mourning and of delight. It is one of the arrangements of Divine providence that day and night shall not cease either in the spiritual or natural creation till we reach the land of which it is written, “there is no night there.” What our heavenly Father ordains is wise and good.

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The Solitariness of God

The Solitariness of God

A. W. Pink

PERHAPS THE TITLE of the chapter is not sufficiently explicit to indicate its theme. This is partly because so few are accustomed to meditate upon the personal perfections of God. Comparatively few who occasionally read the Bible are aware of the awe-inspiring and worship-provoking grandeur of the divine character. That God is great in wisdom, wondrous in power, yet full of mercy is assumed by many as common knowledge. But to entertain anything approaching an adequate conception of His being, nature, and attributes, as revealed in the Scripture, is something which very few people in these degenerate times have done. God is solitary in His excellency.

“Who is like unto Thee, O LORD, among the gods? who is like Thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?” (Ex 15:11).

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Endurance: Look to The Future

John MacArthur – Strength for Today (Book)

 

“For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.”
– 2 Corinthians 4:17

It is far easier to endure trials when we value the future over the present.

Afew years ago the popular Back to the Future movies dealt rather whimsically with the possibility of time travel, which always involved entering the future. The recurring theme was that with all the complications of tampering with the future, it was better to live in the present. Viewers could infer that, ultimately, it is not worth it to dwell a lot on the future. That is just the opposite of the apostle Paul’s attitude about the future. He dealt with the profound certainties of what awaits all believers in the life to come. For Paul, the value of the future was another important reason he could endure life’s sufferings and trials. The temporal pain for him and us is inconsequential compared to what awaits us in Heaven (Rom. 8:18).

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There Is No Wisdom in Sin

A W Tozer –  Man – the dwelling place of God

There Is No Wisdom in Sin

 

THE WORLD HAS DIVIDED MEN into two classes, the stupid good people and the clever wicked ones.

This false classification runs through much of the literature of the last centuries from the classics to the comic strip, from Shakespeare’s Polomus, who furnished his son with a set of good but dull moral platitudes, to Capp’s Li’l Abner, who would never knowingly do a wrong act but who would rather fall on his head than on his feet because there is more feeling in his feet than in his head.

In the Holy Scriptures things are quite the opposite. There righteousness is always associated with wisdom and evil with folly. Whatever other factors may be present in an act of wrongdoing, folly is one that is never absent. To do a wrong act a man must for the moment think wrong; he must exercise bad judgment.

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Here is a precious truth for thee Believer

Devotionals by Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“Whom he justified, them he also glorified.”
– Rom_8:30

Here is a precious truth for thee, believer. Thou mayest be poor, or in suffering, or unknown, but for thine encouragement take a review of thy “calling” and the consequences that flow from it, and especially that blessed result here spoken of. As surely as thou art God’s child today, so surely shall all thy trials soon be at an end, and thou shalt be rich to all the intents of bliss. Wait awhile, and that weary head shall wear the crown of glory, and that hand of labour shall grasp the palm-branch of victory.

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John Piper’s Interview with Rick Warren at Saddleback Reappears

By Ken Silva pastor-teacher on May 27, 2011

Apprising Ministries has pointed out that a part of our labor in the Lord is our documenting of the painfully obvious New Downgrade going on within mainstream evangelicalism; not unlike The Downgrade Controversy Charles Spurgeon dealt with many years ago, which should be more and more obvious, at least for those blessed by God with eyes that see.

You should know that the root of this growing apostasy roughly begins with the charismatic revival circa 1960 as it later spreads through the Jesus People/Movement in the early 1970′s and out into various mainline denominations as well as into what became the Fuller Theological Seminary School of World Mission.[1]

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Claimed from Oblivion

Grace Unlimited – Dr. Joshua Mack

Ephesians 2:11-12

Some people are excited to hear that there is an ancient source of information that is very hard to gain access to. Suppose it was said that all of the secrets to life were inscribed on an aged scroll. That scroll, however, was kept in a most remote place on earth. Even the journey to get there was arduous. But more than that, the scroll is housed in an impenetrable castle, guarded by an elite force of soldiers.
No-one has ever gained access to this document.