View Full Version : If a Calvinist is Born-Again, I Don't Want to Be Saved
Churchwork
11-05-2008, 07:40 PM
Remonstrants are those Arminians who rejected John Calvin and Augustine and the later Counter-Remonstrants. Their third point is that man cannot “think, will or do anything that is truly good,” and that includes “saving faith,” but must be regenerated. They sure sound a lot like calvinists, because if you can’t will to think and do by coming to the cross as a helpless sinner by saving faith (justified by faith alone in Christ alone), since you are not regenerated then that is the teaching of needing to be saved before you can believe (unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace). My belief is that we are deprave but not totally deprave, so though we can’t do anything (actually, except one thing) truly good before being saved; nonetheless, we can do one thing which is come to the cross, for God gave us this one “out,” otherwise the cross was given for automatons in vain to “whosoever believeth”. I believe the gift of faith is available to us all by being made in His image, except some don’t access it because they don’t come to God with an honest heart for God’s Holy Spirit to make it known to them.
If a true calvinist is born-again, then I don’t want to be saved. As it is on earth so it is in heaven.
In a previous century under calvinism-state controlled enterprises, I would have had my goods confiscated, been imprisoned or banished, or burned to death for religious heresy. The same would have happened to me under the Roman Church for teaching once-saved-always-saved, popery and intermediary priesthood are heresy, the sacraments are not physical signs of grace, infant baptism does not provide salvation, and the 1000 years has not started yet.
Today, all you get is a banning on a forum or excommunication from a denomination you were not part of to begin with. Funny eh? As corrupted as the world is, there is so much corruption in the sphere of the kingdom of heaven (Christendom), you are left with the only conclusion the body of Christ, the true Church, is a very little flock, one here, one there, spread out about the globe.
Churchwork
11-05-2008, 08:13 PM
What Remonstrants did was a far cry from what Arminius believed, because Arminius believed a person could not lose salvation after being-born again, whereas Remonstrants believed a person could lose salvation.
Arminius said, "Christ preserved them from falling...I never taught that a true believer can, either totally or finally fall away from the faith, or perish..." If this is what he said, then this is what he believes. Take him on his word.
The major difference between arminian and calvinism is obvious: the Arminians put the blame for man's eternal punishment upon man himself for rejecting the gospel by his own free will, though he could have accepted it through God's gracious enabling; whereas the Calvinists laid sin itself and the damnation of man totally upon God, who simply predestined everything to turn out that way. A. W. Tozer declared, "So when man exercises his freedom of choice, he is fulfilling the sovereignty of God, not canceling out." The question is God fulfilling sovereignty by giving man the free-choice (sovereign being) or by making free-choice not really free-choice (unsovereign being)? Tozer like Spurgeon thought the latter.
Is God the author of sin, setting limits to His saving grace and left the majority of mankind without hope or possibility of salvation? Or is this just the belief of the false tares trying to look like the saved wheat? What you have to explain is why does God say He dies for the sins of all mankind and the whole world if He didn't actually do so?
Arminius, before rebuking calvinism in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, attempted to modify calvinism so that "God might not be considered the author of sin, nor man an automaton (robot) in the hands of God." Arminius believed that God's decree to save some and damn others had "its foundation in the foreknowledge of God": God predestinates by foreknowing our free-choice: a conditional election, unlimited atonement, resistible grace, for preservation of the saints. "Thus election was conditional rather than unconditional...Arminius also believed that Christ's death was sufficient for all but that it was efficient only for believers" obviously, since only believers receive the cross of salvation. "Calvin limited the atonement to to those elected for salvation. Arminius also taught that men might resist God's saving grace" to never be born-again, "whereas Calvin maintained that grace was irresistible."
If calvinism is true then their misrepresentation of God of the Bible must be true and the God of the Bible would be false and something similar to gnosticism would be true about an evil creator.
Churchwork
11-05-2008, 10:07 PM
If man can make some moral choices, like help a person in need, then why can't man choose the cross and be drawn by God in coming to the cross? Isn't it evil to say election is unconditional on no moral basis whatsoever by God? Don't you think the free-will of arminian belief is different than the free-will of the calvinism belief, for the latter hardly seems like free-will if it is already predetermined without consideration for that choice?
Churchwork
11-05-2008, 10:53 PM
History clearly records that these were the men - Augustine, Luther and Calvin - and the motives behind the established creeds and confessions in control of the assets and wealth and powers with the state. Unquestionably, their modus operandi followed the footsteps of Constantine. Not a true Christian, and thus not interested in truth but in the "unity" of the empire, Constantine used "Christianity" to that end. Under him, the church, once persecuted by the world, became the persecutor. True Christians were still the ones being persecuted and ban(ished). The only change was that the oppressive church (not the true Church) had joined the world to persecute those not subscribing to their dogmas. The new persecution was done in the name of Christ but was the very antithesis of all Christ taught and lived, and for which He died. Following in the footsteps of Rome, which in most matters they opposed, the Protestant Reformers continued the same practice. This further verified non-OSAS arminian and Calvin's Total Depravity and double Predestination all false, which even the unsaved could not tolerate under such oppression for very long. Magical regeneration through infant baptism and persecution of Anabaptists! What a disgrace incited among man-made creeds and edicts, dorts and cohorts.
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