The Taunting and Mocking God of Calvinism

If Calvinism is true then Luther, in The Bondage of the Will, would be right that God is "taunting and mocking" the Jews. According to Luther and Calvin, Christ said something like this to the Jews:

You must believe on Me as the bread of God come down from heaven to give life unto the world. But you lack the ability to believe unto salvation, and My Father is only going to give that ability to some of you.

By "world," of course, I really mean "elect." Though no one recognizes that yet, one day it will be revealed through a mystery religion in a system called Calvinism.

I fulfilled the Levitical sacrifices which the priests ate for all of Israel to eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, so here are my two opposing wills in which I provided sacrifices for all because I want all to be saved but actually I don't. It is not for you to understand why I contradict myself, so that you too may contradict yourself and not need to have to justify it adequately to others or yourself because you are in Me and I in you. This is how I want you to behave. I want you to live in this eternal state of contradiction and be a testimony to this contradiction to others [i.e. Satan is the author of confusion].

If you don't believe on Me, you will perish in your sins. Of course, you can't believe on me unless my Father causes you to, and He gives that grace to only a select number.

You naively think the gospel is a real offer of salvation, but in fact, it is intended the better to damn you. You couldn't believe on Me if you tried.

Come, you wretches, come. These are the terms. But you are so totally depraved that you can't come to Me except My Father regenerates you and gives you the faith to believe. And He has already decided in a past eternity (for reasons hidden in His unexplainable two opposing wills, and for His glory) that He will only do that for some but not all of you.

But you are all held accountable anyway. Yes, He could cause all of you to believe in Me, but it is His good pleasure to rescue only some from hell. An don't think I'm going to die needlessly for those of you whom My Father has predestined to eternal destruction as reprobates-that would be a waste of my blood. I will die only for the sins of the elect.

Some Calvinists willingly admit that the real issue is "whether...God desires the salvation of all men." Most Calvinists, though, insist that God has no such desire. MacArthur, the confused person that he is and convicted by this problem of Calvinism, says God desires the salvation of all but decrees the salvation of only some (MacArthur Study Bible) even though He can do anything He desires, that is, He can decree anything He desires.

Others say that God has two wills (similar to MacArthur), one to save all and the other to damn multitudes-and the latter somehow overcome the former, contrary to TULIP's Irresistible Grace.

If God could by His power bend anyone and everyone's heart "to the obedience of Christ" without any desire on their part, why doesn't He do it for all? And why didn't He do this for Adam and Eve at the very beginning, and thereafter for all their descendants? Why needlessly create sin and foreordain man to be its slave, bringing horror of evil and suffering that would plague billions-and then save only some when all could be rescued? Why would God cause Adam and Eve and all mankind to sin, and then punish them for doing what He caused them to do? This is not what the Bible teaches (and conscience rises up against it), but this is Calvinism.

In support of this abhorrent doctrine, Calvin quotes Augustine: "It cannot be doubted that the will of God (who hath done whatever he pleased in heaven and in earth...) cannot be resisted by the human will...." [Institutes of the Christian Religion.] So in breaking the Ten Commandments, men are not resisting God's will but fulfilling it! This unbiblical belief created the appalling dogma that everything happening on earth, including all wickedness-even of the grossest nature-is willed by God. How could it be otherwise, if man can do nothing contrary to God's will?

Thus Calvinism leads to fatalism and passivity (which induces evil spirits to gain strongholds in your mind), from which come both predestination to damnation without the choice and Irresistible Grace. It makes nonsense of the prayer "Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven" (Matt. 6.10), if God is the cause of all, as Calvinists insist.

If grace truly is irresistible, if only those elected by God to salvation can be saved, if no one can believe the gospel until regenerated by God and thereafter given the faith to believe, would it not be vain to attempt to persuade anyone to embrace the gospel-or for those who hear to voluntarily believe in Christ? Since there is nothing one can do to change one's eternal destiny (if among the elect, nothing can keep one out of heaven; if not, nothing can be done to escape hell) shouldn't one just let the inevitable take its course (whatever evil may come embrace it, and even do it yourself, as God's will)? Although many Calvinists would object to this view, inevitably, this is the practical conclusion to which that fatalistic dogman leads. After all (they say), regeneration takes place sovereignly without any faith on the part of the recipient-or even knowledge of its occurrence.

Yet Calvinists, like Spurgeon, often contradict themselves out of a sincere concern for souls (presumably) that conflicts with TULIP. At times, D. James Kennedy, founder of Evangelism Explosion, makes it sound as though salvation is available to all (but, then you have the contradictory bipolar two-will theory of God to contend with) and even that faith precedes regeneration (which, if not obtainable by all is just coerced): "Place your trust in [Christ]. Ask Him to come in and be born in you today." Likewise, contrary to his professed Calvinism, Spurgeon taught that "soul-winning is the chief business of the Christian...."

But soul-winning is an oxymoron if Calvinism is true. The eternal destiny of every person has already been pre-determined, so winning is impossible. Yet Kennedy trains others to evangelize-and in the process, further contradicts Calvinism: "For if it is true that we must be born again, then it is also true that we may be born again.... That, my friends, is the good news." Does he seriously mean that salvation for the elect alone is good news for everyone? Doesn't such language mock the non-elect?

In attempting to show that evangelism has some place in Calvinism, Boettner declared that every preacher should "pray for them [to whom he presents the gospel] that they may each be among the elect." But since the number and identity of the elect is already determined, isn't such a prayer made in vain? Indeed, what is the point of either praying or preaching, if it is not the gospel but sovereign regeneration that brings men to Christ, and the fate of each has been predestined from past eternity?

Allow yourself to be passive, possessed by the evil spirit, for if that is what God wants for you, embrace it happily, for you were predestinated for Hell and that is your irrevocable calling thanks to the teaching of Calvinism. And isn't that ultimately what Satan wants from you, is your blank mind and passive will so he can bring you to Hell with him? Calvinism encourages this state of mind even in writing thousands upon thousands of articles rationalizing this view. Your free-will is not really free. You really have no choice in the matter, for the god of Calvinism does not afford you the choice or the grace to obtain the gift of faith; you either get it or your don't and nothing can change that according to the god of Augustine, Spurgeon, Calvin, Luther and White.

Assumptions can be dangerous like those that don't require you to repent and believed to be regenerated. As you pride yourself over others by your assumption you have been pre-selected what eternal damnation will fall upon you for this sin and selfish assuming? Or, as the case may be, sulk in your everlasting torment without any recourse to escape the fiery pits of Hell, for God is just in doing this to you!? As Dave Hunt says, What love is this? of Calvinism's misrepresentation of God.

As for Kennedy's "good" news, are those who have been predestinated to eternal torment expected to rejoice that their doom is sealed and there is nothing that can be done to change it? Can he and other evangelistically inclined Calvinists seriously think their practice matches their belief? If anything, their guilt is manifesting itself in a state of contradiction to the tenets of Calvinism: inability, unconditional, irresistible, limited. Is God limited? Can you do nothing good, not even accept the cross of salvation? Is God a tyrant? Does He afford nobody the choice? Why would God hold a lesser standard than human beings? If we find these antics deplorable, why are they not disgusting behavior for God? Unless, the God purported by Calvinism is actually Satan who is trying to create a facsimile of God's redemptive design to tickle peoples' ears with a salvation that doesn't require your repentance from your sins and belief in Christ before regeneration (salvation).

In disagreeing with Hoeksema, another Calvinist rightly points out that "for them [the elect] alone the gospel is good news." [James Daane, The Freedom of God.]

Many Calvinists are convinced, and logically so, "that the doctrines of [calvinism-type] grace are contrary to soul winning." [Joseph M. Wilson, "Soul Winning," The Baptist Examiner.] Engelsma callously declares that the call of the gospel "does not express God's love for them [the non-elect]" nor is it "a saving purpose. On the contrary, it is his purpose to render them inexcusable and to harden them." No wonder that by their own admission so many Calvinist lack the Apostle Paul's zeal for winning the lost.

Calvinism, therefore, simply become an exercise in self-rationalizing that assumption you don't have to repent and believe in Christ to be saved (regenerated)-an exercise in futility. Could it be God is just hardening the Calvinist's heart because like the Pharaoh and the Pharisees they harden their hearts already, providing God no means to touch them as they resist His loving and most merciful grace?

Vance quotes a Sovereign Grace Baptist leader who admits that:

Our preachers are not soul winning men. We do not have soul winning members...we almost never given any instructions on why and how to win souls. We do not really work at soul winning in our churches.

OSAS Arminians (i.e. Christians) don't have this infighting that Calvinists have of whether to win souls or not to win souls or in winning souls what that really entails.

But this is Calvinism. Why "work at soul winning"? There is no wining those whose eternal destiny has already been decided. Sproul insists, Those whom [the Father] regenerates come to Christ. Without regeneration no one will ever come to Christ. With regeneration no one will ever reject him." But, should we confuse once-saved-always-saved with Calvinism? There is a looking back upon our salvation in being eternally saved which should not be construed as irresistibly imposed.

Evangelism has little significance in a limited atonement by a limited God. James E. Adams sincerely declares: "Repentance and faith are the acts of regenerated men, not of men dead in sins." Contradicting his quote above, Boettner says, "Only those who are quickened (made spiritually alive) by the Holy Spirit ever have that will [to come to Christ]." We ought not to be "doubletongued" (1 Tim. 3.8). Little does he realize that all men, though dead in sins, are made in God's image, thus all by the Holy Spirit have been given the grace to obtain the gift of faith "whosoever is willing" to be regenerated with eternal life. Therefore, there would be no need for Boettner's doublespeak and contradictory two wills of his god if he were to repent of Calvinism. Just as a dead person can't reject God, nor can a spiritually dead person be unable to accept God by the universal enablement of God. For God wants all to be saved, but will coerce no one. He gives everyone the choice with common grace and for some special grace (previent or enabling grace for all).

If God is able to regenerate allegedly totally depraved sinners, why couldn't He cause the elect to live perfect lives after He has regenerated them? Why doesn't God's Irresistible Grace that is so powerful toward sinners create perfect obedience after they are given the free-choice to be saved? Why is grace irresistible for lost sinners, bending their wills to His, but not for saved sinners who so often fail to do His will? Something is wrong with the theory of Calvinism!

What the Holy Spirit has put on my heart is to say explicitly that people who love the world but want a modicum of a salvation so they can maintain their engagement in the world with their time and hearts, are really just creating a salvation of their own making so they can delude themselves into having their cake and eat it too. But they are no more saved than an outspoken atheist. What is it worth to gain the world and your cunning ways of salvation, if you lose your soul in obtaining these things?

The Calvinist is never endlingly troubled by how it is God's infinite foreknowledge can be reconciled with a free-will, why some choose and others do not to receive the gift of faith. Because their heady minds can't conceive of how God is able to do this, they invent Calvinism, thus remaining unsaved and bound for Hell. For those who read the Scriptures and accept the plain words that God predestinates by foreknowing our free-choice, if they don't know how God reconciles His infinite foreknowledge with free-will, they are being humble. But for those that do know, they understand how Molinism works.