Unfortunately, Heather, your testimony is repeated over and over today in so many churches. They think that they are cute or something special because they have this pet doctrine of Calvinism. Others think that they have discovered or rediscovered historic Christianity. Christ never taught the doctrines of John Calvin. Election, as they teach it was not/is not the gospel of the New Testament. Although the Bible does mention election and predestination, it was never what preachers taught to the unsaved they were speaking to. Election is never “what saves you”. Rather faith in Jesus Christ. Calvinists teach that what saves us is our elected status. That was never presented in Scripture as the cause and the go to thing or the effective element in saving a person’s soul. Perhaps in eternity, we will understand how God uses election and free will, but from our point of view here, God says believe and you will be saved. It is our “election” in using our will to select God’s salvation, and not an uncontrolable, irresistible force from God that overrides our will.

Amen and Amen! I feel the same way. We (my family) had to leave our church of almost 20 years because a new pastor brought Calvinism in with him. As little red flags went up in our minds as he preached, we began researching what he was teaching, and we became more and more convinced how wrong it is, how demonically-inspired and cult-like Calvinism is. We tried to warn the elders, but they support him. And no one else in the church seems to be alarmed. And so since no one would listen, we had to leave.

The nail in the coffin for us was when the church posted then deleted a biblically-based comment I wrote on his post about predestination, where I disagreed – using Bible verses – with him and said that there were other ways to view it. If they will not allow disagreement, then we cannot stay there. And in fact, he doesn’t allow disagreement at all. In his sermons, he says we have three options when it comes to (his view of) predestination: to ignore it, get angry about it, or accept it. Disagreeing with him is not an option. It’s his view (or as he calls it, “the Biblical view”) or nothing.

But the good thing is that it led us to study deeper, to teach our kids the dangers of Calvinism, to teach them what the Bible really says, and I have been writing against it on a blog for others who want to learn more about it (anticalvinistrant.blogspot.com). Thank you for speaking out against it too! God bless!