100% Bible Based Teaching
Provides in Depth teaching from the Word of God
Clear distinction between worldly and Christian music
Aim to fulfill the great commission as commanded by Jesus
Seeking to find answers to your faith based questions from God’s Word
Local Fundamentalist Pastor Heresy
The day and age in which we live is rapidly defining itself as the Laodicean age (Revelation 3:14-22). The Laodicean church was a lukewarm church, neither hot (representing fervour for God) nor cold (fervour for the world). God says that He would prefer it to at least come out in the open and proclaim just exactly what it believed in, either for or against Him. But the Laodicean church couldn’t commit itself one way or the other. No doubt, like many churches today, it regularly taught one thing and practised another, or held back on any controversial teachings because they might cause conflict, rock the boat so to speak. Getting along with your fellow Christian has become so important today that even truth must be sacrificed for the sake of keeping the peace! Community overrules truth! People these days are so afraid to rock the church boat that they will put up with borderline (or worse) heresy rather than create a disagreement with another “Christian”. Of course, that’s when they actually know that what’s being taught is not the complete truth of the Bible. However, all too often they trust their pastors and teachers so much that they are seemingly reluctant to test everything they say against the truth of the Bible. And ignorance is no excuse! “What you don’t know can’t hurt you” appears to be the catch-cry of so many “Christians” today. And they’re wrong!
It is essential that each genuine Christian ascertain the truth of what he believes directly from the Bible. To this end he is encouraged to make use of the experienced teaching of pastors and mature Christians, whether personally or via media such as books and DVDs, etc. However, never should Christians accept any teachings without also assessing them against the truth of the Bible.
Acts 17:10-12 – 10 And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea: who coming [thither] went into the synagogue of the Jews. 11 These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. 12 Therefore many of them believed; also of honourable women which were Greeks, and of men, not a few.
So, if you desire to see many around you believe in the truth of the Scriptures, then you must search the Scriptures daily to see if those things that you have been taught are actually true! By doing so, you may then declare yourself to be a fundamentalist believer, one who believes in the fundamental doctrines of the Bible, rightly dividing the word of truth as taught by the Bible.
But, many alleged fundamentalists are only that because they claim to be such. For instance, John MacArthur is often proclaimed to be a respected theologian and Bible teacher, therefore a fundamentalist. He has produced many books and other documents including a book called Fundamentals of the Faith which may be found in many church libraries and in the homes of many church-goers. However, MacArthur is far from being fundamentalist; in fact, his doctrines include many serious unacceptable heresies. Being a calvinist, MacArthur teaches a false gospel that is in conflict with the gospel of the Bible. Read MacArthur Teaches Works Salvation, The False Calvinist Gospel blog, The False Calvinist Gospel, Calvinism is the Non-gospel and Calvinists Born Again before they are Saved.
MacArthur claims to be a Christian, yet he has no testimony of when he was saved at the cross of Jesus. He appears to claim that he has never been lost!
PHIL: How old were you when you first recall sensing your need for Christ?
JOHN: Well I always believed the gospel. I don’t ever…I don’t ever remember a time when I didn’t believe the gospel.
(MacArthur’s Life Testimony Code 80-33)
Apparently MacArthur has been so good all his life that he’s never needed to be saved!
He claims his ministry to be the consequence of a godly heritage, yet his immediate ancestors were apparently more involved with freemasonry than Christianity. He claims that his spiritual fruit and harvest has come through from his great grandfather who was a Presbyterian minister and a Freemason Grand Master, both at the same time! Read Is MacArthur a Freemason?
MacArthur also teaches as if he is an expert scholar of Greek and Hebrew, yet he gets even basic interpretations wrong. Read MacArthur is Wrong where MacArthur misquotes a Greek rule to “prove” from Acts 2:23 that God’s foreknowledge is the same as God’s predetermined counsel. In MacArthur is Wrong – Again! MacArthur teaches that, because of Hebrew parallelism, “many” cannot mean the same as “many” if they are both used in the same verse (Romans 5:15), and that “all” cannot mean the same as “all” if they are both used in the same verse (Romans 5:18). Is MacArthur incompetent or is he a liar? Each of these documents has extra links to other calvinist documents for further reading.
Many churches worldwide have taken MacArthur’s false doctrines on board, demonstrating a distinct lack of discernment in doing so. A local church, Grace West Bible Church, is a clone or franchise of MacArthur’s church, having almost identical doctrinal statements. Thus, it claims to teach the same false doctrines and heresies as MacArthur’s church, including the same false gospel. This false calvinist gospel states clearly that God has from the beginning unconditionally chosen a small group of people (the elect) to go to heaven, while also choosing the vast majority of the world’s population to go to hell. “Unconditionally” means that no-one has any say in the matter, whether they are going to heaven or (most likely) hell. For all people, it is your destiny to be chosen by God to go to either heaven or to hell! Read The Heresy of Calvinism Refuted Part 1.
In fact, MacArthur, being a calvinist, has to teach that Jesus only died for the sins of God’s chosen elect. The calvinist Jesus didn’t die for any of the sins of the vast majority of the world. Even if one of those not chosen by God wanted to be saved, the calvinist God would still reject them, because their sins were never paid for on the cross. They literally can’t be saved, ever! (Read The Big Lie of the Calvinists.) MacArthur says that it was never the intention of God to save everyone anyway! Read The False Calvinist Gospel blog and The False Calvinist Gospel. Also read The Calvinist God created most of Mankind for Torment in Hell and MacArthur Teaches Works Salvation.
Of course, God of the Bible does choose an elect group of people, the election. However, it is dependent upon Him knowing by foreknowledge who will call upon the name of the Lord to be saved (which is the true gospel of the Bible). (Which is why the calvinists cannot accept that God’s foreknowledge means His perfect knowledge of the future!)
If you want to get saved, don’t go to Grace West, for if their God doesn’t want to save you, then according to them you will remain lost, even if you wanted to be saved! In fact, they have to teach that if you prayed a prayer asking God to save you, then you are still lost, unless the calvinist God has already previously decided that he wants you on that list of elect, regardless of your goodness or evil! If you are not on that list, no prayer can, or ever will, save you! They are forced to teach that you do not choose God; God chooses you! You have no say in the matter at all! If God has chosen you to be saved, then you will be saved; nothing you can do will ever prevent you from being saved. And, if God has chosen you for hell, then you will go to hell! This is truly the Non-gospel of the calvinist. Read Calvinism is the Non-gospel.
Another local church, Living Springs Baptist, while pretending to be a fundamentalist church, claims on its website to be a like-minded sister church to Grace West Bible Church. Therefore Living Springs has, by their own admission, a false doctrine similar to Grace West, and thus they likewise teach the same heresies, including the same false gospel. Otherwise they could not be a like-minded sister church! Living Springs has used materials by calvinist Todd Friel (as advertised on the Living Springs Baptist website under Ministries/Small Groups), who teaches that if you prayed the sinners’ prayer, you are not saved and you are still going to hell. No Christian ministry should be teaching their members such heresy as Todd Friel teaches. Read The Heresy of Todd Friel.
But wait! That’s not all! Living Springs also apparently considers Gary Thomas to be a good Christian teacher. According to their website, they have been studying Thomas’ book “Sacred Marriage” which claims to be Christian. However, it quotes favourably from “Conjugal Spirituality” (by Mary Anne Oliver), a book that teaches how to use kundalini yoga and tantric sex, both involving demonism. Thomas also quotes from Friedrich Nietzsche (who teaches nihilism, and that God is dead). Gary Thomas elsewhere also advocates heresies such as contemplative and centering prayer (which is little more than crying out endless mantras to demons, a very un-Christian practice). Read Gary Thomas – New Age Teacher.
In both of these churches, it is the pastor who ultimately must take responsibility for the doctrines taught in his church. Pastors have an awesome responsibility to serve God by shepherding His flocks. This demands that they be called by God to do so, or else they will certainly fail. And if such pastors cause such heresy to be taught to their church members, then those pastors are guilty of offending those little ones of God as per Matthew 18:6 – But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and [that] he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
That is, it is better to not be a pastor than to pretend to be a pastor called by God and offend His little ones by teaching such heresies.
Yet another pastor of a supposedly fundamentalist church in our area has allegedly chosen to use Paul Tripp study materials. If this is true, he has shown a distinct lack of discernment. Paul Tripp, a calvinist, focuses upon what he would call Biblical Counselling, yet much of his teachings are far from Biblical. He teaches that when we become Christians we are infected with a terrible disease called identity amnesia. What’s worse, we don’t even know we have this disease until a friendly neighbourhood “Biblical Counsellor” comes along to tell us all about it and to be “healed” by this counsellor. It sounds far too much like snake-oil salesmanship to me! That is, you need to sell your snake-oil medicine, but no-one wants it, so you persuade them that they are actually sick and have need of your snake-oil. Consequently they buy it, thinking they’re now going to be healed of a sickness which they most likely don’t have, never had, or doesn’t even exist at all! These so-called Biblical Counsellors of the Paul Tripp type create the problem that they then try to “cure” for you! This creation of a problem in order to solve it is called the Hegelian Dialectic. Read Paul Trip – Heretic or Tare?
This same church now advertises Biblical Counselling as one of its ministries, which is quite interesting considering that Paul Tripp material is used extensively by Biblical Counselling Australia (BCA) – see https://www.biblicalcounselling.org.au/training-in-biblical-counselling/ where workbooks and DVDs produced by Tim Lane and Paul Tripp are advertised as part of their “biblical counselling” training. The four directors of BCA (as noted on their website) have all done courses through CCEF (Christian Counseling & Education Foundation) which is closely affiliated with Westminster Theological Seminary (USA) which is (and has been for many years) a training and resource centre for calvinism and reformed theology. Much of today’s aggressive marketing of “New Calvinism” (embraced by such as Piper, MacArthur, Mohler, Keller) has been initiated at Westminster Theological Seminary, including what is widely known today as “Biblical Counselling” (although much of its teachings are far from Biblical!). Biblical Counselling was for many years known as nouthetic counselling which was originally developed by Prof Jay Adams of Westminster Seminary through the writing of his book “Competent to Counsel” in 1970. Nouthetic counselling was developed further into Biblical Counselling by David Powlison along with others such as Tim Lane and Paul Tripp. For further information, please read Biblical Counselling & new calvinism today.
If this local supposedly fundamentalist church is using BCA materials to support its Biblical Counselling ministry, then such a ministry is based upon the corrupt calvinist (reformed) teachings of Westminster Theological Seminary. Such a counselling ministry cannot be acceptable to the God of the Bible, for calvinism itself is a doctrine without an effective gospel for mankind’s sin. Although, if they have chosen to use Paul Tripp materials in the past, then they would probably see no problem with continuing to use Tripp’s heresies under the pretense of calling it “Biblical” Counselling. And the use of Paul Tripp (and related) materials can only lead a church into apostasy.
I am told that when this supposedly fundamentalist pastor was challenged (in the past) regarding the use of Paul Tripp materials, he allegedly said that he took the material on the recommendation of another church pastor. This might be so, perhaps, although it does seem possible that it could have arisen from studies in Biblical Counselling. Of course, a genuine pastor should be very wary of following up the recommendations of another without firstly testing all things. He has a responsibility to shepherd his flock, which will always overrule making agreements with pastors of other churches!
However, the truth remains: that if he has taught heresy through the use of Tripp’s materials, whether or not on the advice of another pastor, he has offended those little ones of God. And, could the alleged “another pastor” be a friendly neighbourhood calvinist pastor who cannot see any conflict between his own calvinist heresies and Tripp’s false teaching, consequently recommending Paul Tripp to other local pastors? In any case, any pastor who cannot discern danger (such as Tripp’s heresies) for his church members should reassess his calling to be pastor. And God will hold all pastors responsible for their leadership of their flocks, and not for how well they get along with other pastors of other churches! For information on Paul Tripp, read Paul Tripp – Heretic or Tare? and The Gospel of New Calvinism.
And finally, it’s ironic that just a generation ago, fundamentalists were quite rightly condemnatory of the heresies taught via the Revised Standard Version of the Bible (RSV), yet today they use a revised version of the RSV in many supposedly fundamentalist churches. And what is that version called? Well, just to throw fundamentalists off the scent, they have renamed this version the English Standard Version (ESV).
The English Standard Version (ESV) is an English translation of the Christian Bible. It is a revision of the 1971 edition of the Revised Standard Version (Wikipedia)
With this name change and the backing of the calvinists (who had a significant input into the ESV), that which was rightly despised has now become highly desirable! Funny how views can change if you’re not doing your homework properly, isn’t it!
List of all my posts on this site.
If you wish to read other documents on the heresies of calvinism, please use this link.
Please feel free to comment Comments and contact page
Comments and replies are recorded on the Comments page.
Calvinism is the Non-gospel!
(Unless otherwise stated, all quotes are from The doctrine of God’s effectual call – MacArthur.)
Calvinists love claiming that calvinism is the gospel. They also love to make the preposterous claim that they preach the gospel to the ends of the earth, or similar outlandish statements.
MacArthur says: We plead with sinners. We take the gospel to the ends of the earth and we leave the secret things to the Lord but we follow the responsibility to call sinners to faith, knowing that those who come will have had a full atonement provided for them.
(The Doctrine of Actual Atonement Pt 1)
But which gospel is MacArthur talking about here? The general outward invitation of the gospel which he appears to define as ineffectual, or the effectual call that can only save those whom the calvinist God chose to go to heaven (the elect). See the following:
We’re not talking about what we could call the general call of the gospel, the general outward invitation of the gospel. We’re talking about something that comes only to the predestined and results in justification. And that is why it is called an efficacious call, or an effectual call.
Thus, according to MacArthur, the call of the gospel to the world in general is “the general outward invitation of the gospel” as contrasted with the effectual call which he claims is efficacious. From such statements one can only assume that MacArthur’s gospel is not effectual because it is a general call. So, what would the calvinist call the effectual call? Clearly not the gospel, as it is obviously ineffectual.
Yet MacArthur also appears to be saying that the gospel is what the sinner responds to.
When the gospel comes, the sinner is so eager to respond. ……..
You were chosen to be sanctified by the Spirit, you were chosen to put faith in the truth, and He called you to that through our gospel in order that you might gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So now the gospel is that which God uses to call you? Is this the general, outward, apparently ineffectual, invitation of the gospel, or is it now the effectual gospel call to the elect? Does this now mean that there are two types of calvinist gospel: the general outward call to all people, and the effectual call only to the elect? Do they preach a general gospel to the public in general and an effectual gospel to just the elect? That raises a lot of questions, especially how the calvinist is to know who gets what, so he may avoid preaching the wrong gospel to the wrong people! Maybe the calvinist God chooses whether it is general or specific? But the same point still applies: that somehow it still becomes a general outward call or a specific effectual call. But then the calvinists claim that the same gospel is preached to all and it is God who determines that only the elect should answer the specific effectual call. Obviously the calvinist God has altered that same gospel for the non-elect by changing it from a specific effectual call to a general outward call. It seems that the non-elect do not deserve to have an effectual gospel call!
Clearly it is not the sinner who determines who answers the call, whatever type it may be, because the calvinist God refuses to permit (by his sovereign will) any person to make any decision of any kind that could look like that person responding to the gospel against the calvinist God’s will. The calvinist God has chosen from the beginning of time just who will be saved and go to heaven, and who will not be saved and therefore go to hell. If you are on the list to go to heaven, then the calvinist God has decided that you will hear the gospel and you will respond; you cannot avoid being saved and spending eternity in heaven. If you are not on that list, you will not hear the effectual gospel call and respond; you will not be saved; you will not be going to heaven; you will be going to hell for eternity. The calvinist God has already decided this for all mankind from the beginning, and no-one may be removed nor added to the list of people heading to heaven (or hell!). Wherever you are going, it is your destiny, for all eternity! No-one may choose; only the calvinist God may choose people for heaven (and hell!). This is basic calvinist doctrine: man has no free will to choose his eternal future, either heaven or hell.
Yet MacArthur says: No one was ever saved against their will. No one was ever brought into the Kingdom kicking and screaming, protesting. No one was ever saved who was dragged against the grain of having dug their heels in. That is not what Scripture teaches. No one has ever been saved against his will. No one ever will be. Everybody who is saved is saved because they will to believe the gospel. In fact, they will with all their heart and soul to believe the gospel. No one is ever saved without being willing. It is an act of the will to believe.
So it is an act of the will to believe? Why, then, does MacArthur also teach (in that same document) that no sinner has the capacity to be willing.
No sinner has the capacity to be willing. …..
This is what we mean by “total depravity,” the utter inability of the sinner to be willing.
MacArthur also teaches that the calvinist God will make those unwilling sinners willing (assuming they have been “chosen” for heaven!).
No sinner is ever going to be willing until the power of God comes upon that sinner. There’s nothing in the sinner to make him willing. There’s nothing in the sinner, even under the best of the preacher’s effort. It is only when the power of God makes him willing that he becomes willing. …..
But it’s not that the sinner comes kicking, and screaming, and protesting, and trying to resist, because when the summons comes, the sinner is made willing. …..
The gospel alone is what God uses to awaken the sinner and He makes him willing, whereas he has never been willing before.
MacArthur uses some rather colourful and imaginative language to describe how God changes Paul from unwilling to willing on the road to Damascus.
He’s a good one to look at for this kind of call because when the call of God came on the life of the apostle Paul, it was a sovereign, divine, gracious, and irresistible summons. He was slammed in to the dirt on the road to Damascus with nothing to do but respond. He is called as an apostle.
and
Paul understood that he was just grabbed by the neck by God and awakened to the glory of Christ and saved and made an apostle.
Well, was Paul brought into the kingdom by an act of his belief, or was he dragged – sorry – slammed into the dirt, grabbed by the neck and made an apostle?
This MacArthur is apparently a very disorganised thinker, such that he doesn’t seem to be able to put ideas together consistently so that they actually lead to a single coherent conclusion. MacArthur seems to be either incompetent or else deliberately trying to deceive the elect. Or, probably, both! The gospel he claims to take to the ends of the earth is both general and ineffectual, and specific and effectual. Those elect people who hear the gospel are not able to be willing to respond, yet the calvinist God makes them willing, all without opposing man’s will which was not able to be willing without being opposed in this way!?? Paul wasn’t dragged in kicking and screaming, yet he is grabbed by the neck and slammed into the dirt. Sounds like a lot of rather forceful persuasion to me! (Unless it was an act of Paul’s will that he be grabbed by the neck and slammed into the dirt?)
The fact of the matter is that the gospel (of the Bible) is totally irrelevant to the calvinist God. He has already decided who will be saved, and he will apparently use the gospel to “save” them after they have already been called and made (against their wills?) to be willing to respond. Thus, to the calvinist, it is not the gospel which “saves” anyone, but the decision of the calvinist God from the start of time as to who would be going to heaven, and who wouldn’t be fortunate enough to go there. The same gospel, then, is general and ineffectual to the vast majority of the lost non-elect, while at the same time being specific and effectual to just those of the elect (the chosen of the calvinist God). Even then, the calvinist God must make them willing to respond before they are able to respond. Thus such a gospel becomes merely a consequence of having already been called to respond; and only those who are on that list of elect going to heaven will be called in order to be made willing to respond to that gospel.
Such a gospel becomes absolutely irrelevant, not being able to save anyone who wasn’t already on the list to be saved in the first place! Therefore, the gospel is only effectual once the calvinist God has decided that the sinner is to be made willing to respond. And this is the gospel that Paul taught was “the power of God unto salvation” (Romans 1:16)?! This calvinist gospel should be called the “non-power of the calvinist God unto non-salvation”!
The calvinist gospel is in reality a non-gospel, only able to save those who can never be lost (the elect, or chosen of God), and unable to save those who can never be saved (the non-elect, or the non-chosen of the calvinist God). You can only respond to the gospel after the calvinist God has made you willing to respond, as long as you have already been chosen for heaven. Of course, the Bible does teach that God chooses (elects) a group of people for salvation, but also that this choice is based upon man’s free will decision to believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ, a choice which is known by God from the beginning according to His foreknowledge of the future.
1 Peter 1:2a – Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father
This is called the election conditional upon God’s foreknowledge of man’s response to the gospel. However, calvinists refuse to accept that man is able to make such a decision, even after the light of the gospel of Christ has opened his eyes to the truth.
2 Corinthians 4:3-4 – 3 But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: 4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
Calvinists call their version of the election an “unconditional election”, where the calvinist God chooses his elect without any regard to any condition relating in any way at all to the sinner, hence “unconditional”. However, if the hearing of the gospel is how the calvinist God calls his elect, then that hearing of the gospel must be in itself a condition of response to God’s call. And calvinists cannot teach that salvation is conditional in any way upon the hearing of the gospel, because this would then be a condition of the election and therefore such election could not be unconditional. Thus the calvinist doctrine of salvation has to be unrelated to the gospel of the Bible.
And MacArthur is claimed by so many to be a great teacher and theologian? His logic is greatly flawed and he openly contradicts himself in “The Doctrine of God’s effectual call”. If he were to debate this topic, he would fail to win any points for clear and logical presentation of information. Instead, my comment on his debate is that he has delivered a confused and irrational presentation, using contradictory and fragmented logic. But, this is the non-gospel of the calvinists!
For further reading, try these.
MacArthur teaches works salvation
The calvinist God created most of mankind for torment in hell
List of all my posts on this site.
If you wish to read other documents on the heresies of calvinism, please use this link.
Please feel free to comment Comments and contact page
Comments and replies are recorded on the Comments page.