Five Objections to Calvinism
Sermon notes from Pastor Don Elmore
October 15, 2023
Scripture Reading: Ephesians 1:4-6
4) “According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love;
5) Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,
6) To the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the beloved.”
I was brought up as an Arminian; that is the belief that a man chooses God. Briefly said, in our church when the children reached the age of twelve or thirteen, they took a few classes and then went to the front of the church and said that they wanted Jesus to come into their hearts. After doing this, the future new church members were candidates for baptism and their first Lord’s Supper.
The American Baptist Church that I went to with my parents never explained what the word “election” meant in the Bible. The word was in the Bible, but the church basically ignored it. They did the same thing with similar words/phrases that are also in the Holy Scriptures: “predestination”, “God chose their seed”, “God elected” and “foreknowledge of God”. The Arminian church that I grew up in never talked about these terms. They just continued to invite people up to the front of the church every Sunday service to make their decision.
When I was about 21 years old, I read a religious newspaper that taught something that was very new to me. It taught “Calvinism.” Published by a local church that put the paper out once a week, it taught a different method of salvation teaching what most American churches taught and believed three centuries ago, the “Tulip doctrine”:
- Total depravity
- Unconditional election
- Limited Atonement
- Irresistible grace
- Perseverance and preservation of the saints (Eternal security)
These five points of Calvinism were drastically different from the Arminian position:
- Partial depravity
- Conditional Election
- Unlimited Atonement
- Resistible grace
- Conditional salvation
The Calvinist believes that all people are in sin from the time that they are conceived and can do nothing to earn their salvation. They must be chosen by God unconditionally, even before birth. That means that God didn’t die for everyone; He only died only for His elect. The Holy Spirit will provide the means for an elect person to hear the gospel and once he/she is saved and they are always saved.
The Arminian position is opposed to every statement that the Calvinist’s believes, although there are people who believe part Calvinism and part Arminian! Arminianism is a theological movement in Protestant Christianity that arose as a liberal reaction to the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. The movement began early in the 17th century and asserted that God’s sovereignty and human free will are compatible. The United States started out Calvinistic but changed to the Arminian viewpoint rather quickly.
After I learned the Calvinistic position, I was shaken with an obvious question: How could both positions be correct? For example, God couldn’t die for just His elect and then die for every person who chose Him! Who did the choosing? And what about if a person flip-flopped with his salvation? Did the Savior die for their sins and then not die for their sins?
After reading this Calvinistic Baptist paper for about six months, I had a lot of questions for my Arminian Pastor. So one day in private I asked him about whether the Bible talks about God choosing His people. He didn’t give me an answer. He just said: “You are a troublemaker. I will inform the deacons about you. I wish that you would leave!”
Is it possible that the Arminian gospel churches are acceptable by the Calvinistic gospel churches and visa-versa? How could they be if they really knew what their church was teaching? They teach opposing salvational gospels!
I didn’t know the answers to my own election questions at that time. I just wanted to find out how we (the Arminians) answered the Calvinists! But I was shocked at what my pastor said. I was not going to find out in my Arminian church. So I took my pastor’s advice and left. I went to the local assembly of the publishers of this Calvinistic paper, which was about a four-hour drive away in a tri-state area: Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky.
I was there for seven years and then I moved to a more Calvinistic church. Both churches did not celebrate Christmas or Easter but this church near an abandoned coal mine was more attuned to keeping God’s laws, but still had many things that were wrong with it. For example, it believed in separation of “church and state” and did not keep any of God’s holy days. It believed that the Jews were the covenant people of God and was very dispensational. In fact, they used a Scofield Bible and were waiting for the rapture of the church! This church was in Southwest Virginia. It took me one hour driving time, one way, to reach the church from my apartment.
But after I had been living there for about five years, I heard two tapes from a small church in Arkansas which changed my life. The tapes were from Pastor Arnold Murray. It told me who Israel was and who the imposters were. But it didn’t explain election ... at least I never saw an explanation of it.
I had gone from Arminianism to Calvinism. Now what would I do with these two opposing “Christian” doctrines? It took many years before I found the truth of the identity of the elect and both major views of Christendom were wrong!
WHAT IS WRONG WITH CALVINISM?
According to Loraine Boettner, in his much studied and theologically influential book, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, he stated the following erroneous sentence:
“The Calvinistic view is the only logical one if we accept the Scriptural declaration that salvation is by grace” (page 103).
Calvinists insist that God in His sovereignty, and in eternity, chose or picked out of all mankind whom He would save (by means of Christ’s death and the work of the Holy Spirit) for no other reason than it was His own wise, just, and gracious purpose.
The Reformed Faith separates the human race into two groups; sheep and goats and ordains one to everlasting life and the other to everlasting death. There are variations of this belief, but they believe that God elected His people before the foundation of the world. The hyper-Calvinist even believes that no missionaries are necessary because if God chose a person, He would see that that person would hear the gospel in his life!
But what about the following:
- A miscarried baby,
- An aborted baby,
- An infant who dies,
- A special needs individual,
- An adult individual who never hears the gospel,
- A person who became a dedicated believer in Calvinism, but later in life left the faith and became an atheist?
Did God choose these individuals? There will be a wide range of different views of Calvinists who answer this question:
- Some say they will all go to hell,
- Others that they are saved by a different method,
- Others that they will be given a chance in the future when they are resurrected, and
- Others that they don’t know
Just ask a Calvinist and see what he says.
As the Westminster Confession states: “By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated to everlasting life, and others are foreordained to everlasting death. These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeable designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished.”
This doctrine, which was taught by Martin Luther (Lutheran Church) and John Calvin (Presbyterian Church), leaders of the Protestant Reformation, and was learned from Augustine. This should not be surprising as both Luther and Calvin were Augustinian Roman Catholic monks.
Besides the Lutherans and Presbyterians, the Puritans and Pilgrims of England, Netherlands and America, the Covenanters of Scotland, the Huguenots of France, the Afrikaners of South Africa, some Baptists of America and Europe, and for a short time, the Roman Catholic Church were all staunch Calvinists.
For most of his ministry, Luther was supported by the contributions of wealthy Jews. They financed him because they were in favor of his opposition to the Roman Catholic Church. But when Luther was elderly, he was given a Jewish Talmud to read and after he read it, he completely changed his belief about the Jews. He wrote a small book about them called “The Jews and Their Lies.”
Luther identified the Talmudic, atheistic Jew as the formidable anti-Christ and organized enemy of Christianity. He advocated they be kicked out of every Christian nation that they were in, have their synagogues burned to the ground, and have their disastrous usury banking system eliminated.
As a result, Jewish propaganda said that Luther was senile when he wrote the book against them and even now, most Lutherans do not even know that Luther wrote this book! Ask a Lutheran what they think of Luther’s book about the Jews and see their reaction when they say, “What book?”
Ever since Luther identified them as the true power of the antichrist upon the earth, the Jews have sought to destroy Germany. Though the German people were one of the primary building forces of the United States, their contributions to America have been covered over and downplayed. This has all been due to the relentless Zionistic and Jewish propaganda of the media.
As a result of Luther’s sudden contradictory switch in his opinion, the wealthy Jews changed their financial support from Luther to Calvin. Calvin kept silent on who the antichrist Jews were and supported their usury banking system. The theological system became known, not as Lutheranism, but Calvinism. Today, Calvinists do not teach about the satanic antichrist Jews; that they are our genetic enemy, nor their anti-God usury banking system. In fact, most are dispensational and very pro-Zionist.
Today, America is the last lingering stronghold of freedom from Jewish socialism in the entire world. Yet, the Americans are losing the principles that constituted their unique confederation. The Jewish diabolical genius has been its ability to use the white man against the white man. This continues to be the atheistic, Christ-hating Jew’s method of operation, even today. Too bad we didn’t listen to one of the founders of the Protestant Reformation!
While I strongly disagree with Boettner’s statement that Calvinism is the only logical view of election, I strongly agree with his following assessment:
“Every Christian must believe in some kind of election; for while the Scriptures leave unexplained many things about the doctrine of Election, they make very plain the FACT that there has been an election” (Page 87).
To summarize, Calvinists believe that God elected predominately individual Israelites in the Old Testament era, but now He elects individuals of all races as special and peculiar objects of His favor. In both time periods, they strongly assert that,
“Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, loved, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only” (Page 84).
Despite the promises of God and many divine prophecies to the contrary, they promote the popular idea that anyone of any race can become God’s people by being “saved.” They fervently deny that only Israelites are God’s elect!
CALVINISTIC ELECTION:
- GOD CHOOSES SOME OF ALL RACES TO SALVATION – The Elect
- GOD LEAVES THE REST TO DAMNATION – The Non-Elect
FIVE OBJECTIONS TO CALVINISM
Calvinism has no explanation as to why God chooses some to salvation and leaves others to damnation other than His own sovereign will. The love of God, according to their theology, is both random and without any reason.
But is God’s love and salvation without any basis? Nowhere in his book does Lorraine Boettner mention the surest thing in the entire world: the Abrahamic Covenant; guaranteed by God’s PROMISE and OATH. (“…two immutable things” – as mentioned in Hebrews 6:18).
The fact that a heifer, a she-goat, and a ram were cut in half and, along with a pigeon and a turtledove, were placed to form a path by which only God, Himself, passed through while Abram was “in a deep sleep” is evidentially considered to be nonessential by Boettner in God’s predestination plan of His people. By this very important ceremony, a once-in-the-history-of-the-world occurrence, when the Creator of the entire universe cut an unconditional covenant with His friend Abra(ha)m and later confirmed it to Abraham's son, Isaac and his grandson, Jacob/Israel, the foundation of God’s choice of His people was determined forever. From this pivotal time in history, it was divinely ordained that the sons of this covenant would be the ones to whom God would declare, “And I will be your God.”
Several years later, Abraham proved his faith in this divine promise. Abraham, who was childless at this time, willingly obeyed God’s command to offer Isaac as a burnt offering. By faith, he believed that God would keep His promise no matter what. So, if Isaac was to be sacrificed, God would bring him back to life like He did later to Lazarus.
Abraham couldn’t die and be without seed – for that would make God’s promise null and void. As a result of Abraham’s steadfast faith in God’s promise, God swore by Himself that this covenant of election would never be set aside.
Genesis 22:12: “For now I [God] know that thou [Abraham] fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son [Isaac], thy only son [born of Sarah] from Me.”
But nevertheless, Calvinistic writers, like Elisha Coles in his book, God’s Sovereignty, as well as Boettner, ignore the importance of this covenant when they expound on verses like these two from Deuteronomy:
Coles: “What then was the cause or motive of God’s choosing them [Israel] above others” [Deuteronomy 7:9]. It was his underserved love and favour to them. “He loved them because he loved them.” (Page 48).
Boettner: “Here [Deuteronomy 10:15] it is carefully explained that Israel was honored with the divine choice in contrast with the treatment accorded all the other peoples of the earth, that the choice rested solely on the unmerited love of God, and that it had no foundation in Israel itself” (Page 89).
But these two verses quoted from Deuteronomy (7:9 and 10:15), along with many other Scriptures, disagree with Calvinistic thought that God’s love was without careful choice and purpose. In fact, the constant theme of the Bible is that God’s love was NOT random but that it was related to the oath that He made with patriarch Abraham:
Deuteronomy 7:6-8:
6) “For thou [Israel] art an holy people unto the LORD thy God; the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people who are upon the face of the earth.
7) The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people.
8) But because the LORD loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the LORD brought you out with a mighty hand. and redeemed you out of the house of bondage from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.”
Deuteronomy 10:15: “Only the LORD had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and he chose their seed after them, even you above all people, as it is this day.”
Deuteronomy 4:37: “And because he loved thy fathers, therefore he chose their seed after them, and brought thee out in his sight with his mighty power out of Egypt.”
These verses reveal that God ELECTED the physical seed of Jacob/Israel BECAUSE HE LOVED Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – the ones with whom He made His binding covenant. God’s choosing was not without aim or purpose.
While Calvinists agree that God elected Israel as a nation for centuries and “were the only people to whom God was pleased to make any special revelation of Himself” and “that Jesus confined His public ministry almost exclusively to them and forbade his disciples to go among others until after the day of Pentecost” (page 117), they deny that God’s covenant with Abraham and his anointed seed was an everlasting covenant.
But the Scriptures proclaim:
Psalm 105:6, 8-10
6) “O ye seed of Abraham, His servant, ye children of Jacob, His chosen…
8) He hath remembered His covenant forever, the word which He commanded to a thousand generations,
9) Which covenant He made with Abraham, and His oath unto Isaac,
10) And confirmed the same unto Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting covenant.”
These verses teach that God’s election is based upon the everlasting covenant that He made with the fathers of the Israel people. And if the covenant of God’s elective people was declared by God’s own sworn word to never end, but then if, as Calvinism teaches, it was only temporary – wouldn’t that make God a liar? But we know that “…it was [is] impossible for God to lie…” (Hebrews 6:18b). Therefore, God did not have a special people for several thousand years and then suddenly, after Pentecost, switch to someone else!
Calvinists ignore that God’s election is based upon the love of Israel’s fathers and the covenant that He made with them. Maybe it is because they insist that after thousands of years of not electing anyone outside of Israel, God began to choose and bless individuals of other races beginning with Pentecost.
But the Scriptures do not uphold that presupposition:
Isaiah 44:1, 3b
1) “Yet now hear, O Jacob, My servant; and Israel, whom I have chosen…
3b) I will pour out My Spirit upon thy seed, and My blessing upon thine offspring.”
And wasn’t this fulfilled when on Pentecost Peter preached in Acts:
Acts 2:22, 38a, 39a:
22a) “Ye men of Israel, hear these words…
38a, c) Repent, and be baptized…And ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
39a) For the PROMISE is unto you, and to your children….”
And after Pentecost, Peter preached, “Ye are the sons…of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be BLESSED” (Acts 3:25).
In the letter to the church at Galatia, the Apostle Paul writes that this was the gospel that was preached unto ABRAHAM! (Galatians 3:8).
During the Apostle Paul’s first missionary journey at Antioch in Pisidia, he preached,
Acts 13:32, 33a:
32) “And we declare unto you [‘Men and brethren, children of the stock of Abraham’…Acts 13:26a] “glad tidings, how the promise which was made unto the fathers [Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob],
33a) God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children….”
“Us their children” must be the seed or stock of Abraham and cannot in any way be spiritualized. In addition, John the Baptist’s father proclaimed these words about Jesus, that He would:
Luke 1:72b, 73a, 77a:
72b) “…perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember His holy covenant;
73a) The oath which he swore to our father, Abraham…
77a) To give knowledge of salvation unto His people [not to those who were not His people] by the remission of their sins….”
The elect of the New Testament is the same as the elect of the Old Testament. In no wise did God’s chosen people totally disappear. For to them only were the promises made and to no one else.
Boettner writes that God rejected His chosen people of the Old Testament Congregation of Israel “that salvation might be given to the Gentiles….” He then adds, “Historically we see that the Christian Church has been almost exclusively a Gentile Church” (Page 122). Furthermore, it may be said that Calvinism makes membership in the New Testament Congregation of Israel (local visible church) optional. Membership is recommended but not required (page 146).
Boettner would be right when he says that salvation was given to the Gentiles if he knew the identity of the Gentiles of whom he refers. But He identifies the Gentiles of the New Testament as being separate from the everlasting covenant that God made with the physical seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Irregardless, Boettner and other Calvinistic writers quote Ephesians 1:4-13:
“According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love….” as if it applies to anyone of any race. But those who were “chosen” (verse 4), also were “predestinated” (verse 5), and had “redemption through His [Christ’s] blood” (verse 7) and had the “forgiveness of sins” (verse 7) and heard and believed the gospel of their salvation and were sealed with the Holy Spirit (verse 13). These chosen and redeemed people were Israelites in the local church of Ephesus.
These were dispersed and “uncircumcised” Israelites (Ephesians 2:11), who were “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise” (Ephesians 2:12). And like the dry bones of the house of Israel, prophesied by Ezekiel hundreds of years earlier, they had “no hope” (Ephesians 2:12 and Ezekiel 37:11).
The failure to understand the prophecies and destinies of the House of Israel, who were cut off from being God’s people in 640 B. C., is a major error of Calvinism. All Calvinistic writers fail to recognize that it was the Northern Kingdom of Israel that was prophesied by the prophet Hosea!
The people of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, who were the elect people of God at the time of Hosea, were, according to this prophet of God, to soon become no longer “the people of God.” But, by God’s loving grace, these hopeless Israelites were later in history to be “grafted back into the olive tree [Israel]” and be restored again to the status of the “people of God.” This was to happen after they, for many centuries, were to be “scattered” to many parts of the earth and to be “without mercy.”
And then the disciple of Jesus quotes Hosea: “Who is time past were not a people but are now the people of God; who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy” (1 Peter 2:10).
So, these elect people of God who Boettner calls non-Israelite Gentiles are the people who are the fulfillment of the names of the three children of Hosea:
- “Jezreel”; “scattered”,
- “Loruhamah”; “no more mercy”, and
- “Loammi”; “not my people”
They could be no one else but the dispersed, punished House of Israel. The ELECT Gentiles written about by Peter and Paul were Israelites.
Think about it. The House of Israel, according to the epistle written to the Ephesians, was “without hope” (Ephesians 2:12). The ten tribes of Dan, Gad, Ephraim, Reuben, Simeon, Zebulun, Naphtali, Manasseh, Asher and Issachar along with many from the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and Levi were, since the days of the Assyrian Captivity, “far off and without God in the world.” What could they do to be made alive, since they were dead in sins?
NOTHING! They, like a marred clay vessel in the hand of the potter, had to be refashioned into a new vessel (Jeremiah 18:1-10).
Boettner asserts, “God undoubtedly does choose some nations to receive much greater spiritual and temporal blessings than others.” This form of election has been well illustrated in the nation of Israel, “in certain European nations and communities, and in America. The contrast is very striking when we compare these with other nations such as China, Japan, India, etc.” (Page 88).
Election has been well illustrated in certain European nations and in the lands that they colonized – in America, in South Africa, in Australia, in New Zealand, in Canada, etc. Is it not very significant that these are the dwelling places appointed by God for the nations of the dispersed House of Israel and the House of Judah? And ONLY in these lands, amongst its Caucasian people, is there a common heritage of being part of Christendom for countless generations.
But in striking contrast, as Boettner points out, China, Japan, India, and most of the countries of the earth, do not have a heritage of Christianity. Why? Calvinism just attributes it to God’s sovereign choice. A mystery that, admittedly by them, is hard to understand and explain.
How much simpler it is to understand if one realizes that the Elect people of God have remained the same for the last four thousand years. AMAZING GRACE! The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob proved His love to the world of His elect people, by faithfully keeping the covenant that He made with their fathers. He so loved their fathers and their posterity that even though they became adulterous and rejected the covenant, God would not cast them away. As it was prophesied to Joseph by an angel in a dream, “Thou shalt call His name Jesus; for He shall save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). By His suffering and shed blood as their Passover Lamb, and His resurrection, He did bring salvation to His people – known as the elect.
CONCLUSION
Is it logical that Calvinism teaches that the “rejection of the Jews” brought about God’s elective love being poured out on non-covenant peoples, but is silent about the rejection of the House of Israel seven centuries earlier? Why didn’t the cessation of the larger portion of Israel (over 80%) bring about a change in God’s election?
While Calvinism claims to be the ONLY logical view of election, on a closer examination, is it logical at all? While Calvinism claims to be the only logical view of election, it admittedly is unable to provide any reason for God’s election except His random love. They changed God’s love to now a spiritual seed from an Old Testament physical seed. It expanded His love to the whole world and not just His covenant people.
It insists that since the first Pentecost after the ascension of Jesus Christ, the divine choice of God is completely independent from the promise and oath that He made with Abraham. It argues that salvation is by grace, even if some of the recipients of God’s grace were never under God’s laws and some never even knew who He was and what He did!
But covenant theology not only provides a consistent view of election, but it also maintains God’s integrity of His promise, oath, and love. It saves everyone who is God’s sheep.
But Calvinism is quiet about who the “serpent seed” is. They teach that God can choose, from any race, including the serpent seed, people for His kingdom. They deny that there has never and will never be any individual from the serpent race who has or will ever be “saved.” They deny that the Jews were sired by a fallen angel which makes their seed so evil (just ask Esau).
We are and have been in a genetic war since the Garden of Eden. The agenda of the enemy is to destroy the White Israel Race so this issue of Two Seedlines cannot be passed over lightly. Anywhere we go now, we see the shameless manifestation of race-mixing that is ever on the rise and is forever destroying our race as it did before Noah’s flood.
They are not Identity Christians if they do not learn and accept Two Seedline doctrine, such as, the Arminians, Calvinists, and half-way Identity Christians who deny Two Seedism. All of these do not adequately identify who is our genetic enemy and are, knowingly or unknowingly aiding our eternal enemy. If we cannot properly distinguish the Wheat from the Tares, how can we walk with Christ and avoid the fate of the devil?
There are many who call themselves “Christian Identity Pastors” who not only deny Two Seed doctrine but are no more than denominational preachers who have come to understand something of the identity of the children of Israel in modern times. Some still preach Arminian salvation; others preach Calvinistic salvation; and they aid our dangerous enemy because they do not identify who they genetically are. They refuse to say that our enemy can never and has never been “saved”.
Real Christian-Identity beliefs would require the ability to identify all the parties of the Old Testament historically, since they all have descendants living among us today. Christ taught us that there is wheat and there are tares; there are sheep and there are goats; there are good fish and there are bad fish. To identify only who the wheat, sheep and good fish are, is only half of what the Israelites need to know. They also need to know who the tares, the goats and the bad fish are. As they are our genetic enemy. His parables are meaningless if they are not relevant to our modern lives.
And who fathered the giants or Nephilim? Why were they only found in the line of Cain, Canaan, and Esau?
Who fathered the Adamite women that made their offspring mongrels so that a massive flood had to occur to kill all the mixed breeds? Were they fallen angels?
Why do the Jews trace their lineage through the woman instead of the man? Maybe they want to keep secret who their father was!
The Christian works such as the 4th book of Maccabees and the Protoevangelium of James and the book of Enoch that describe the sexual seduction of Eve and the others sins of the fallen angels are far older than the Jewish Talmud.
Christ had called His adversaries “serpents” and the “offspring of vipers”, meaning that even their parents were vipers. In diverse places in the Gospel, He also called them “children of their father the devil” and “serpents and scorpions”. If Jesus said this, that settles it!
Blessed be the LORD God of Israel.
