Calvinist Teachers/Followers (Reformed Theologians) Are They Unsaved?

The purpose of this article is to clarify my standpoint re my last article entitled: “New Calvinism. Explaining And Exposing This Latest Ecumenical and Apostate Movement Which Is Taking The Church By Storm”   Please Click Here  (to read that article).

Calvin: unsaved?

Whitfield: unsaved?

Spurgeon: unsaved?

 

Piper: unsaved?

It has come to my attention that readers may think I am suggesting that followers of Calvinism cannot be saved because of  Calvinists pagan Catholic/Augustinian influences and its superimposing gnostic teaching TO the Bible (i.e, twisting the scriptures, effectively adding to and taking away from what the Bible says and therefore removing the true and pure simplicity of the Word of God).

I AM  NOT suggesting that a Calvinist is not saved. I will now address the reasons why I believe that (possibly) MOST Calvinists ARE saved!

In dealing with this question, we need to be careful to always remember HOW one is saved.  I do not know of anyone who becomes a Calvinist, Arminian or of any other belief system BEFORE they receive Jesus as their Saviour.  Usually a believer becomes a Calvinist etc AFTER they come to faith (depending upon what Christian group influence them, at that time).

So……  Before we dare state that Calvinists etc are unsaved, we need to remind ourselves on how is one saved?  The Bible is clear on how to be saved and can be nicely summarised as "for God so loved the World that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes on Him should not perish but have eternal life” and “to all who received Him, who believed on His Name,  He gave them power to become children of God ….. born of God”. John 3:16 and John 1:12-13

So the criteria on being saved is not whether you follow the correct systematic theology (although interpreting the Bible honestly and accurately is extremely important [in these dark days] for various other reasons – explained in many places on this blog) but on whether you have repented, believed upon Jesus and received Him into your heart. If you have done this then you have become an eternal child of God. This means that if you are LATER deceived by any false teaching AFTERWARDS you cannot lose your salvation (you cannot become UNBORN once you have become a new creation in Jesus). However, you will suffer loss in some measure or another by yielding to false teaching.

So,  what does it mean to believe in Jesus?  To believe in Jesus, means:

1) that you believe in who He is with all your heart and mind (God incarnate - the Son of God) and that he was punished by the Father for your sins, died and rose physically from the dead and is alive forevermore

2) that you recognise you are a sinner (as stated above)  who needs to be saved 

3) that you recognise and accept that Jesus's death on the cross was required and is sufficient to save you (personally) from your sins and your sinful nature

4) that you entrust your life to Him

Note: Unless you can acknowledge and recognise that you are lost and dead in your sinfulness (without the intervention of Jesus) you cannot be saved because you are unlikely to repent and put your faith in Jesus.

So here is a list of steps which normally happens automatically when Jesus is drawing you:

1) the realisation that God exists but that you are cut off from Him because of your sinfulness

2) a conviction about the extent of your sinful tendencies and sinful nature. "all we like sheep have gone astray, each to his own way".

3) the realisation that you cannot become good enough by your own efforts to get into heaven but need the mercy of God

4) you sincerely and genuinely cry from your heart to God for mercy for your sins, confessing your sins to God direct (without use of a priest) asking for forgiveness

5)  putting your trust in Jesus (because He has made the ultimate sacrifice for your sins)

Once  1 to 5 occurs, you then simply receive the free gift of salvation from God through believing in and putting your trust in Jesus

6) You invite Jesus to come into your heart and soul to save you. This is simply handing/yielding your soul over to Christ asking Him to live within you. Then "it is no longer I that live but Christ who lives in me".

7) Jesus will fill you with His Holy Spirit so that you will become a new creation. You will be changed deep within  with the Divine nature.

Those like Charles Spurgeon (despite a false Calvinistic theology) are saved because they qualify as per 1 to 7 above.  I believe that once truly born-again we are secure for eternity. Many became born-again, thus saved, but subsequently (like the Galatians) got infected by false theology. The quandary is whether it is possible for a truly born-again believer to be permanently sucked into a false theology without seeing through it (at some point during their walk with God). I mean surely the Holy Spirit will "lead us into all truth"? If they have hardened hearts - maybe they were never born-again, i.e, they never experienced 1 to 7?

Let us now think this through logically and rationally regarding men like Spurgeon, Whitfield etc. Remember that God's truths were lost for more than a thousand years. The availability of the Bible is a recent Christian phenomenon.   It seems like it has taken a very long time to discover all the lost biblical truths. Those like Charles Spurgeon were MAYBE the closest to unravelling the Bible truths of their time.

Maybe in their fight against the Roman Church they sincerely believed that Calvinism was an accurate interpretation of scripture, exposing the “works” “indulgencies” heresy of Rome. What else did they have to measure the accuracy of that theology? If men like Charles Spurgeon were not saved then that would probably mean that God did not save ANYBODY (apart from maybe just a handful of those like Ana Baptists) for a thousand years. Does that sound possible? Even in Elijah's day when it seemed that he was the only one, God made it clear that there were (quite a large number really) 7000 who had not bowed the knee to Baal.

All of us at some stage in our Christian lives have taught incorrectly because we see through a glass dimly. We are all learners of God's Word. If we were perfect in our teaching we would not need to learn, but WE DO need to learn. So, if we have or will teach error does that mean we are all false teachers? When the scriptures warn us about false teachers it is surely talking about those who give false teaching from an unregenerate/unsaved  condition. It is possible for the saved to give false teaching but it does not make them unsaved false teachers. Whereas, those who deliberately deceive are probably unsaved. I think this is what Jesus was referring to when He said "judge not". We are to test (judge) false teaching but NOT judge the heart of the teacher.

Those people I have listed (on my blog) as probably false teachers are there because of their ecumenical links with Rome.  I have listed them so that readers may check these leaders out for themselves. I cannot know the heart condition of all these people, so cannot know whether they were ever born-again or not. I would say that probably most of them are unsaved because of their deliberate false teachings and their ecumenical message and  practices which suggest they deliberately follow an ecumenical (Roman) road to salvation. 

However, some of them may have been saved but at the moment are ignorantly (but sincerely) following those false organisations. Surely God will bring the truly saved ones out of this at some stage. Those that "know" what they are doing (probably Vatican infiltrates or Jesuits) are showing that they are unsaved (never regenerated) false teachers by their deliberate false message (which also contains a lot of truth but mixed with poison).

Remember, some who get on the ecumenical train have been ignorantly persuaded AFTER they were born-again. For example. If a truly born babe in Christ in child-like faith has trusted upon Jesus ONLY for salvation by grace and have believed the right things about Jesus, they ARE born-again into God's kingdom and they will remain His child for eternity and God will watch over them, protecting them from falling away. However, subsequently (for a period of time) they may be exposed to say reformed theology or to dominionism/replacementism etc, by those discipling them and in child-like faith may trust their teachers that these things are scriptural. Does that then nullify their salvation?  Of course not!  I mean, what they NOW believe does not change the fact that they HAVE already been saved and are therefore an eternal child of God, does it?

For evidence regarding the eternal security of believers, please Click Here  which is an article on that subject.

Anyway, my list is mainly to show what organisations are ecumenical and to watch out for those who are leaders of those organisations or those who are associated with them.

Regarding the teachers of reformed theology. The general teaching and building blocks may be false but do they actually teach against the foundations of how one can be saved? Don't Calvinists teach that Jesus is the Only way to salvation, that He died on the cross to save us from our sins, rose again physically and that we need to put our trust in Jesus ALONE for our salvation through His grace etc. If they teach the basics of "how to be saved" correctly and if they have all repented and put their faith in Jesus becoming born-again receiving the Holy Spirit, doesn't that mean they are our brothers and NOT false brethren/teachers, despite their iffy other teachings? Those that teach that the RC is Christian demonstrate (to me) that they ARE false but those calvinists which actively/truthfully/unpretentiously oppose Rome show by contending for the true faith demonstrate that they are true brethren.

However, we should still contend earnestly for bible truths, proving that the overall teaching of reformed theology is not biblical, but I am cautious about calling people like Charles Spurgeon false brethren because they DID teach the basics correctly. A false teacher is someone who denies the basics of how to be saved or twists it, or removes some important parts or adds to it.

There is also a difference between the false teachers (who know exactly what they are doing) and those who are ignorantly being deceived. Those like Rushdoony are clearly from the ilk of Rome, but those who follow the teaching may not know/realise/understand the deception. The deliberate false teacher may possibly be unsaved but it doesn't mean the followers are unsaved - especially if they were truly born-again. As Jesus said  "a time is coming when even the elect (if possible) will be deceived". We are in that time when it is very difficult to distinguish truth from error - especially if the sheep do not know their Bible.