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Calvinism is that part of Christianity that believes that our salvation has nothing to do with our behavior but is based solely upon whether or not God predestined us, before the creation of the world, to be saved. It emphatically denies that we have a free will, insisting that Jesus died for some people and not for the rest. "It is God," I have heard them say, "Who makes us sin." The last statement is the logical conclusion of their unbiblical understanding of predestination.
Their understanding of individual predestination is the poisonous taproot of Calvinism from which a host of unbiblical concepts and doctrines are injected into the rest of Christianity, thoroughly confusing us about what being a Christian has to do with our behavior and resulting in the well-documented fact that there is no measurable difference in the morality of the average modern-day Christian and the average non-Christian.
This view of New Covenant salvation rests upon a faulty view of God's foreknowledge that causes them to conclude: "Since God already knows who is going to be saved, nothing we do can alter that." I will talk more about the faulty concepts and doctrines of Calvinism later.
I am bringing serious charges against Calvinism which you will read momentarily, but first let me state what I am not charging. What I am not charging is just as important as what I am charging.
[Note: I am not even addressing whether the prince of Daniel 9, the II Thessalonians 2 man of sin, or the beast of Revelation represent a literal or figurative figure. I am saying that the Bible does not call this figure the antichrist. I've been told, "C'mon Wayne. What does it hurt to let the dispensationalists call this figure the antichrist? They are not hurting anyone and besides, it makes them happy." Here is what it hurts: To do so is to divert our attention from the biblical antichrist.]
As I said, that was the easy part. It did not take any special knowledge of the Hebrew or Greek language or a seminary education. In fact, these facts are so apparent that it makes you wonder why so few understand and teach them.
The reason so few are willing to accept and teach these facts is that if they do, people will ask the next logical question: "What, then, are the doctrines of the false belief system that John called the antichrist?" This is a question that our modern-day church, under the dominating control of the antichrist, cannot allow to be asked.
As I said, that was the easy part. Now for the hard part—being willing to submit everything we believe to Scripture, letting the chips fall where they may. The reason this is hard is that each of us is emotionally attached to what we believe. This is why so few are willing to do it. But do it we must if we are going to stop and reverse the downward spiral of the church's morality.
Now, let's take a look at the charges I am bringing against Calvinism.
As I said earlier, Calvinism is the belief system based on the idea that a person's salvation has nothing to do with his behavior but is determined solely by whether or not God predestined him to be saved. If you happen to find yourself in the "favored" group, no amount of misbehavior can change the fact that you are accepted by God. But if you are not in this group there is absolutely nothing you can do to change your situation—you are not accepted by God in this life and will be rejected in judgment because Christ did not die for you. In other words, you are going to face the terrible wrath of an angry God and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. This, in a nutshell, is Calvinism.
Only a small percentage of people within the Calvinist/Lutheran camp actually accept this horrible doctrine, but those who do are considered the intellectuals within the group. Because they go virtually unchallenged, their unbiblical concepts and doctrines exert a tremendous amount of influence, thoroughly confusing the rest of us about what being a Christian has to do with our behavior. As I said earlier, this is why there is no measurable difference in the morality of the average modern-day Christian and the average non-Christian.
John Wesley, from whose salvation doctrines came the Methodists, the Salvation Army, and the tremendous Pentecostal/Charismatic revivals of 100 years ago, fought against this horribly unbiblical view of God's New Covenant plan of salvation and the concepts and doctrines which sprang from it, insisting that they have no biblical basis whatsoever. He charged that they are contrary to biblical Christianity and undermine a person's ability to live a life of personal holiness. As far as I know he did not call it the antichrist, as I am doing, but he did label it a false gospel.
The Calvinist concepts and doctrines against which Wesley so desperately fought have infiltrated our modern-day church, thoroughly corrupting its morality. Even the modern-day Wesleyan theologians I read and talk to have embraced the unbiblical salvation concepts and doctrines of Calvinism, thus greasing the skids for the downward spiral of the church's morality that we have witnessed in the last 50–100 years. Sometimes it is hard to get them to admit that there ever has been a real difference in Calvinism and Wesleyanism.
I think we should once again give Wesley a fair hearing as did those of his generation. When people listened to him in the 1700s, a revival of personal holiness swept England and the world, echoing periodically in the centuries since. I pray that we have not drifted so far from God that it cannot happen again.
Wesley's clearest, most concise arguments against Calvinism appear in a brilliantly written two-volume set called Calvinism Calmly Considered, which is available at CalvinismCalmlyConsidered.com for $18 including shipping and handling. I consider this a must-read for Christians who would like to understand exactly why our modern-day church is blatantly immoral. When I first read the books, I saw clearly that carnal Christians are living what they believe. No one can consistently live any differently than he believes. They have believed a lie.
Remember: the "one-person-yet-to-come" antichrist, which is the only antichrist I remember ever hearing preached, is a decoy created by the biblical antichrist. Like the proverbial dumb blonde, the bride of Christ has fallen for the decoy. While her attention has been diverted to Europe awaiting the rise of the "one-person-yet-to-come" antichrist, the biblical antichrist has crept in the back door, in the form of unbiblical salvation concepts and doctrines, thoroughly corrupting her belief system and thus her morality.
We are saved by believing but not if we have believed a lie. The carnal modern-day church has believed the lies spewing forth from the mouth of the antichrist about the reason Jesus came, resulting in confusion about what our behavior has to do with our salvation which results in the well-documented immorality we see today.
Hi. My name is Wayne Scott. I'm the author of a new, controversial, highly endorsed book called The Prophets' Gospel. It introduces two tried and proven Bible study techniques that, with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel, separate the concepts and doctrines of the antichrist from those of the Christ.
It delivers a wake-up call to a slumbering church—a clearly understood call to turn from our sins and commit our lives to God (repent) followed by a walk of Spirit-empowered personal holiness. This book does not just preach against sin and quote a few verses that tell us not to sin; it demonstrates from Scripture that Jesus came to make a way for any believer who chooses to, to be able to live a victorious overcoming Christian life, consistently resisting the temptation to do what he knows to be wrong (which is the biblical definition of "sin").
In this book I demonstrate that New Covenant salvation is not a "do this" or "experience that" so you won't go to hell; it is a relationship that is only available on the terms God offers and that the only terms He has ever offered is unconditional surrender to His oft-repeated claims of lordship rights over our lives. In other words, New Covenant salvation is the relationship against which Adam rebelled and that the terms of that relationship have never changed.
If you find such a relationship distasteful, I'm sorry. This is what God offers.
Doubtless, the antichrist has many faces. As I said earlier, Calvinism is one of them.
Many non-Christian world religions teach that Jesus came in the flesh but deny that He is the Christ. Calvinism teaches that He came in the flesh and calls Him "Christ" but denies that He accomplished what the New Testament says the Christ accomplished (Ephesians 5:25-27, Hebrews 9:14, I Peter 2:24-25, I John 3:6-10, etc.). These and other verses say that Jesus came to free us from the power and control of sin so that we can live for God. This is what the Bible writers insisted is the mission statement of the Messiah.
By stripping Jesus Christ of His mission statement and replacing it with another (i.e., "to free us from the guilt and consequences of our ongoing inevitable sins"), Calvinism denies that He is the Christ while calling Him the Christ. The "christ" of Calvinism, who came to cover the ongoing inevitable sins of some but not others, does not appear in Scripture except by reading verses out-of-context and redefining biblical words.
Calvinism has gone far beyond the seemingly innocent blunders of teaching us to call our sins "mistakes" and sinning "struggling." It has redefined foundational New Covenant words like "faith," "grace," "justification," "repent," "sin," and "righteousness." It has redefined so many words that it can read straight from Scripture things that God never said.
By the way, three different church historians have examined my work and all three told me that the salvation doctrines I am putting forth here match what early Christians, of the first three centuries of Christianity, believed about the gospel. And one of them was Calvinist. May our God richly bless you!
Your brother in Christ,
Wayne Scott
Author of The Prophets' Gospel
P.S. One of the links at the bottom of this page will take you to CalvinismCalmlyConsidered.com where you can order John Wesley's two-volume set mentioned above. The other will take you to ProphetsGospel.com where you can read endorsements from mainline pastors and theologians, chapter one, and the table of contents, as well as find ordering information for The Prophets' Gospel.