Post Calvinism Debate Discussion

One, two, three. Welcome to Apologetics Live. We're here to answer your questions and challenges about God and the Bible. Meet your hosts from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport, Dr. Anthony Silvestro, and Pastor Justin Pierce.

Well, we are live, but we are not at our normal time. So this is a bonus episode. This was something we've put together. We are trying to put together with some pastors down in the Philippines, one of which could not make it, but we're hoping the other one will come in.

I'll bring in my co-host, Justin Peters. We are doing this at this time, folks. Hi, everybody. I'm Justin Peters. What'd he say? Oh, Justin Pierce. Did I say that?

Yeah. Okay. I said Justin Peters. Justin Peters never looked so bad. I was gonna say, he would have been way stepped down if he looked like me.

Apologetics Live is usually Thursday nights. You can always join us any Thursday night to have any questions on God or the Bible. That's what the show is for. We also are here to explain apologetics, to help you better in your apologetics.

And that's what this bonus show is gonna be. Now, we did try to do this at a time that was set for us, but we were just talking to a pastor that's backstage and didn't realize it is so late for those in the Philippines.

So it's about midnight there. And so we thought it was much earlier in the evening. So what we're probably gonna do is we're probably gonna do two episodes, two bonus episodes. We'll do another one. We just gotta find a good time to do it where folks would be awake and active in the Philippines there, because that's really who we want to target this bonus episode for so that folks can come in and folks from the Philippines especially could come in and be able to express their thoughts of the debate.

So for folks who don't know, we did have, maybe just tuning in, and you're going, what are you guys talking about? What debate? On Apologetics Live last Thursday, we did a debate and the topic was, Calvinism is useless and dangerous.

And so we had done the debate and realized actually the one who is dangerous was my opponent. And so we have seen his behavior before the debate. I'm gonna get into explaining that. During the debate, but after the debate gave us even greater concern.

And so we felt there was a need to set the record straight to have others come in, be able to share what they've seen and their views. Overall, I'll say this. It's always interesting to see the feedback of a debate, see how you do.

One of the more interesting comments, the overwhelming comments that I received were that I had a great amount of patience. One of my friends had texted me and said, he couldn't watch the whole thing because he was too busy screaming at the screen.

One comment that I really liked, I should have saved it. Someone said that they thought they had a lot of patience until they watched the debate and realized I had more. And I'm going, I don't know what they were watching because I felt like I lost my patience.

Once again.

Debate Reactions, Patience, and the Opponent’s Behavior

Well, you know, if you think about it though, I mean, I watched there as the moderator and you know me, being quiet is hard. So, but to listen to the conversation and how things were progressing, you know, towards the end, it was confrontational because you guys were having a back and forth.

But after the debate was over, when the ad hominems and things came from Mr. Fuentes and the things that he was saying, I was surprised that you didn't get angrier knowing you as I do, you know, you don't have a lot of patience for, you know, people that are, you know, lying or misstating or doing things on purpose, but you exercise a lot more patience.

And I know that there were people that were like, oh, you know, Andrew, you need to calm down and everything. And that's going to happen, you know, because there is a segment of people that hear a debate and they're always, you know, their proclivity might be towards, you know, one person or another.

And so that they might look at Andrew and say, well, he was too harsh or look at Mr. Fuentes and say, well, he did everything perfectly. Now I'm not going to listen to you. Oh, sorry. Yeah, and see those things happen.

But what amazed me, Andrew, to be honest.

I should explain that joke, right? Because Go ahead, go ahead. That was the one thing that really bothered a lot of people was his behavior toward the end when I started kind of correcting him on the fact of how people, you know, people, look, this is just a general truth.

People should not be debating a topic they don't understand. Yeah. I mean, it just, and he had had it. He just was like, I'm not going to be, you know, it's as if he can't be wrong. So he just, he literally, toward the end, was just asking, we're going to close in prayer, we're going to close in prayer.

And then he took his earbuds out and some people noted that he was staring right at the camera. Now we don't know, maybe he switched screens, he wasn't looking, who knows, he claims afterwards he was talking to someone.

But it was interesting that many people commented that he knew exactly when the prayer ended and he stuck his earbuds in. He's made excuses for that since. But, you know, that was, that showed a behavior and that's one of the things we'll end up talking about with this.

And so I do want to say some things just in way of, we were supposed, I was supposed to mention this in the beginning of the show last week and I didn't, but we are, for folks who want, we are running a Christmas special on the book, What Do We Believe?

If you order it at strivingforeternity .org, go to the store. It is just the book, What Do We Believe? Half off. You use the coupon code CHRISTMAS21, Christmas21, and you get that book for half off. We are encouraging people to buy those books for Christmas.

And we're gonna try to get those out immediately for Christmas. So that is something. Also, we have our Christian Podcast Community Awards. And so if you're not familiar with the Christian Podcast Community, we have, I can't, over 40 podcasts.

I think we're approaching 45. We just added Matt Slick Live. We have a lot of really good shows recently. And so, yeah, so we're gonna be, and that's a five day a week, his teaching. So that's gonna be something that, we got a lot of episodes if you don't go out there.

But just, if you have podcasts you really enjoy, you think are worthy of a award, just email us at info at christianpodcastcommunity .org. Info at christianpodcastcommunity .org. Let us know what podcast, and if you have a specific episode you thought was so good we should listen to, that, let us know that.

So those are two things just to mention. I do see some comments in the background. I know you'll put them up as we go. And so one of the things I wanna do early on, one is bringing our guest that's at least backstage because he's here and it's late and he just got done with prayer meeting.

And so we should have him in. Just trying to look if the other guests that actually requested this is commenting and I don't see anything yet. All right, so let's, now let's bring in Pastor Nilo. If you could just introduce yourself, let folks know the church you're at down there, where in the Philippines you are.

I am in Imus Kabite. This is very near the National Capital Region. And we just started the church, the mission. This is a mission from the OFWs, the Overseas Filipino Workers from Riyadh. We started in Riyadh 2010.

Okay, now you came in at the end because you're actually backstage and you had picked up on something that I said. And this seems to be a big thing that a lot of people picked up on. And let me, I say that this is something I want to do where this is helpful for folks to learn.

You have two different kinds of people that do debates. You'll often see some people that try to overwhelm people with tons of scripture, just overwhelmed with facts and details. And for the audience, that typically becomes overwhelming.

They don't follow it. They don't, they can't keep track of it all. You'll see people in debates that just cite scripture, scripture, scripture, scripture, scripture. And as someone in the audience, you don't have time to look at that.

Now, what does that do? One, it gives the sense that there's a lot of scripture that supports my view, but I've also noticed a lot of times, guys who debate, they do that. And you examine the scripture in context and realize it's not saying what they're saying.

My style with debate is not to overwhelm with information, but to drill down. And I think that we saw, and Pastor Nilo, you actually honed in on this toward the end, is the one verse that I ended up using of Philippians 1 .29, because it really was devastating.

It was kind of funny watching him kind of squirm with that because even when he read it out of his own translation, it still said that God gives us for Christ's sake, not only to believe, but also to suffer.

And it was funny because you brought this up as well with him, it's just, but what does God give you? What does God give you? And it was funny because he kind of said the same thing to you he said to me in the debate, that, well, you're reading that wrong.

We're just reading it. And in fact, we aren't reading it, we're asking you to read it. Why did you think that that was such an important verse for him to understand?

Well, the context speaks for itself. It says, give, God gives it. And there are two things that God gives, the belief and the suffering. So he didn't explain it well. So I tried to give him another chance, but he didn't know how to, he's always talking about Calvinism, that's not Calvinism.

I'm not talking about Calvinism, I'm talking about the verse. So he didn't do well. Even in the after debate, I gave him, we had an exchange, the two of us, and he said, you can use it for unbelief and you can use it against God.

Yeah.

The same thing that he did do. Yeah, and see, that's one thing that I picked up on, is that what he's doing there without understanding it, because he doesn't understand the importance of context. He doesn't understand the importance of doctrinal truth in this, because what he was doing, whether he knew it or not, was he was actually accusing or making God directly responsible for an unbeliever's unbelief.

He was saying that God equally gives Andrew faith as much as he gives Mr. Atheist, anybody else. He doesn't believe he was saved. So I know, I know, I know, but any Christian, any Christian, first is an unbeliever, and God equally gives that faith to both of them.

So he's putting it up on God to give that person the faith not to believe, and he's using faith in a faulty context.

Yeah, and that's the very thing he was trying to, he was trying to defend, was that God's not responsible for it. Now, we do have a question that comes in. This is a question that came in during the show, and this is, hello, brethren, can you please comment on his defense of standalone verses?

And I should say, I should've said this from the beginning. If any of you want to join us, just go to apologiacslive .com. You just scroll down, there's a video on top, and then you scroll down a little bit more, and there is a StreamYard icon, and you click on that to join.

This was something that caught me off guard in the bit. He mentioned it offhanded in, I think it was his closing comments. And, you know, I'm, I mean, look, this is something I didn't see him doing. If you watch the debate, you'll see me with my head down over here, and I am scribbling.

I'm just taking all kinds of notes because this is what you end up doing, is, now I messed up the order, but you take notes, you pay attention to what they're saying, you take notes. And so I actually missed him say that about the standalone verses.

So when you asked that in the Q &A section, I went, what are you talking about? I missed that. And so when he started explaining that, I gotta admit, I was quite confused with, I had to, I re-listened to the debate to go, wow.

Like, cause throughout the debate, we talked about context, the importance of context. And anyone who takes my class, if they go to strivingfraternityacademy .org, you can see all of our academy classes.

We have 20 lessons on how to interpret the Bible. And they're free. All you need is YouTube. Okay, we'll move it to Odyssey soon. But, you know, we offer those classes for free. And the reason is, is because we want people to learn these important things.

And so what's the very first thing we teach? Harmonetics. First thing, context. I mean, that is the first thing you have to understand. I think his argument for standalone verses was something to say that the Bible says things that can stand all by themselves.

Yes. And they're not related to the context. And as an example, he used in Genesis 6, where it just says there were giants in the land. So he was saying that has nothing to do with anything. That's just, there were giants in the land.

What? Like, that's in a context. He tried to argue with me with the Proverbs. Now, I think in Proverbs, he would have a better argument because what are the Proverbs? And not all Proverbs, right? Proverbs chapter 10 to 29 are general truths, but they're, so they're kind of independent in those chapters.

But they do have a context that they're fulfilling in the overall purpose of Proverbs with teaching wisdom literature and teaching wise versus foolish. But he would be accurate in that sense of saying, if you wanna go limit the Proverbs, but that's because it's a very specific thing.

Now, what you can't do is take one proverb or just a verse or a line of a proverb outside of the context of the whole proverb.

And see, that's what he's trying to argue for. And that's the problem. Even in the Proverbs, if you go look through the Proverbs, each one of them deals with a context of a father to a son, giving him wise teaching so that he understands how to live versus how not to live.

So you can't just say, you know, Proverbs chapter one says, verse 12, let us swallow them alive like Sheol, even while as those, even whole as those who go down to the pit. Well, that's a standalone verse.

You can't say that. You have to look and see what the context of it is because even while it's alone, Jesus wept, there is a context to it.

Yeah, and Rob Barnhart saying that most hermeneutical books run from 25 to $50. So free is a real gift. Yeah, and I mean, we do charge $25 for the syllabus, but you can watch the classes for free. You know, one of the things I promised during the debate at the end that we were gonna put out some articles.

Now, for just my article that I have written, we accidentally deleted it and I have to rewrite it. So I'm working on that. But I do, I wanna show you something because I want, you know, for Ari Fute, how is it again?

Fute. Fuentes. Fuentes, Fuentes. Fuentes. For Ari Fuentes, you know, he's trying to make a name for himself. And he, you know, everyone kind of said that. Everyone said that he was doing these debates to make a name for himself and that debating an American would give him that credibility.

He was saying that he was, before the debate, he was claiming that as credibility. I like what, you could put up Rob's comment there because that actually is interesting that Oh yeah.

Let me give you some insight on the mind of our brother, or I don't know now. First of all, he was a debater among the, against Islam. I was with him all, maybe a few months ago before this Calvinism, against Calvinism.

He was against Islam and he was a good defender of Christianity. And then he was against the cult Seventh-day Adventist. Then he, I don't know who did it, but there was a debater of the Seventh-day Adventist who became an evangelical and he was a friend of him.

And this Erwin also, they were together. So he had a lot of experience among these people. And so there were many Filipinos speaking up on his program. And then suddenly they became vehemently anti-Calvinist.

They dealt with this topic. I tried to warn them that don't tell people that the Calvinists are unsaved automatically. All of them are heretics because your church started by brother Bob Hughes was a Calvinist church.

He was, but the Bible Baptist Fellowship warned him not to teach Calvinism anymore, or maybe they will cut their support. That's why he stopped. And now the church in Cebu is now teaching anti-Calvinism.

So if you continue with this line of aggression against Calvinism, you are unbaptizing yourself. Because if a heretic baptized you and your pastor and started the church, it's a heretic. Then all of you were started by heretics.

Then you don't have a true church.

Yeah. Now here's a comment that D .A. Chan puts up. He had two points that Calvinism is not talked about in evangelism and that Calvinists aren't allowed to say God loves sinners. But he had a script and assumed his script was flawless.

So when pastor Andrew exposed the flaws in his rhetoric, he did not know what to do anymore. And tragically doubled down on his points without addressing any argument at all. Clearly, he was not interested in truth.

He wanted a monologue. And that's great insight. You know, even someone else is saying that that's interesting insight. Because what you end up seeing there is, I think there's a lot of validity to that.

He did, to double down, there were things, I gotta admit, I was shocked with some of the things he ended up saying and then contradicting himself. It's something that, and I totally encourage people, go back and re-listen.

And I wanna play clips of it at some point, but he actually, one of the things I did purposely, since he would not define Calvinism before in a pre-debate. And, oh yeah, I was gonna bring that one up, but we could.

Well, this is what he's written after the debate. He said, Calvinism is not only cultic, but it is also demonic, anti-Bible, anti-Christo. Have another gospel and attack the character of God, the God of the Bible.

And so I had one purpose in the cross-examination. Round one of cross-examination, I wanted to give him the definitions of Calvinism without using labels. That does two things. One, it exposes if he understands Calvinism.

And two, it exposes if he's a Calvinist. So what we ended up seeing is he's actually a Calvinist. He agreed with the Calvinistic principles. It's just that he doesn't know Calvinism well enough to know that.

And round two of the cross-examination, my goal was to ask him to define Calvinism using the labels. And then he misdefined them. You notice he was saying, well, my understanding, my understanding. Well, in our pre-debate discussion, he said he could teach Calvinism.

I said, if you can teach it, you should be able to define it.

So is this John was saying? Yeah, John Wilkinson said that not only is Ari defeated, but Andrew proved that he was a Calvinist all along. And I want to pull up Jess's, if I can find it, there it is. Jess Marie Ann Ott, she said, the question is, is why does he hate Calvinism when it comes to the Bible?

Well, part of the thing, and this is a general thing that I often find is people do not understand the terminology. They have labels. When you only read from one side of an argument, I had someone that contacted me after this debate and he wanted to debate Romans 7.

He wants to do a debate on Romans 7, whether it's the regenerate or unregenerate. Turns out he holds the same position I do. So I said, well, I don't mind debating it. I'm just going to have to announce that we both hold to the same position.

If I win that debate, it means I'm a really good debater, but I'll have to apologize at the end saying that that position I debated is wrong. And I've done that before. So, but the thing that you end up seeing in it is in a debate, and I said this at the end, if you're more interested in winning the debate than teaching truth, you got a problem and you shouldn't be debating.

And when he was doubling down on stuff, he was doing that. I'm going to bring Jordan in real quick because he had a question here for us. Jordan, welcome.

Hey, Jordan. Yeah. Is it morning over there?

It is. Yeah, it's almost noon. You guys are night owls. That's, I mean, you guys are late night owls.

Hello. So it's noon, so it's afternoon, all of us here. So yeah, I have a question regarding the regeneration of Christian faith. Question from our acquaintance. Pastor Andrew, do you claim that you reject the idea of regeneration of Christian faith?

Yeah, he's been posting, and it almost makes me wonder what he was listening to during the debate, right? He has been posting throughout that I deny what I said. Yeah. So he says that I claim that regeneration proceeds belief.

I spent some time in the opening that, and I understand that for many people, this is a difficult point. It's something I explain in my book, What Do We Believe?, on the chapter of soteriology. I also have an article on striving fraternity that goes into more detail on this as well than I had time in the debate to go over.

And it's called God's Sovereignty and Human Responsibility from Romans 9 and Romans 10. And what I try to explain is a doctrine called superintending. Now, where do we see this doctrine? We see this doctrine when it comes to the inspiration of scripture.

Okay, so did Paul write Romans? We would say yes. But is that really true? Well, not really because God wrote Romans. How can both of those things be true? I mean, Paul clearly writes different than John or Peter or Moses.

So we'll see them write personal things. Paul's gonna say, hey, can you bring my cloak? It's gonna be cold this winter. You know, can you bring my books and parchments when you come? Those are personal things.

He chose to write those things. And yet what we would say is that it's God's word. God worked through the human author so that what they wrote is exactly as God intended it to be. So who gets 100 of the credit?

God does. Could they have written scripture apart from God doing that work? No. In fact, we know that Paul wrote other letters to the Corinthians, two others possibly, at least one that we know of, and probably two that were never scripture.

So it's clearly not what Paul wrote that made it scripture. It's what God did working through Paul so that everything that Paul wrote was exactly as God intended it to be. Now, I don't know many people that would disagree with that that are within Orthodox Christian circles.

And so the reason I start there is because if we say, well, when did it become scripture? When did it become inspired? Well, that's when God had him write it. But who did it? God did. It's God who breathed it.

It's God who made it inspired. And yet the human author actually wrote it. He didn't dictate it or things like that. Now, we see that in the area of inspiration. I then mentioned the same thing with the area of sanctification.

What do we see there? You know, Jordan, if I was to ask you, do you do good works as a believer? You might say yes. Yep, exactly. And you'd realize, go, wait a minute. I don't really, do I, right? God does that through you.

So he gets all the credit for any good works you do. Now, when did it become a good work? Well, it's when God did that through you. You couldn't have done it on your own. That's the same doctrine of superintending.

So we see that doctrine in the area of inspiration, sanctification. I see it also in regeneration. And that's why my view of this really resolves, I think, all the debates and issues that people see in it, is that God works through the human so that the choice, the experientially he chose God, theologically God chose him, both are true.

Because God worked through the person. When did the regeneration occur? Well, it's simultaneous. And this is a thing, in my book, I have a chart of all the things that happen simultaneously. You're in dwelt with the Holy Spirit.

You're adopted into the family of God. You go from an enemy of God to a child of God. You are regenerate. You are justified. You believe. You have faith. All of those are simultaneous. And the Puritan, I think it was Christopher Love, who had asked the question, can someone be an unregenerate believer?

And think about it. Can someone be unregenerate and a believer? The answer is no. Okay, can someone be a regenerate unbeliever? No. Well, if you can't have either one of them, there's only one solution.

They're simultaneous. So do I see that regeneration precedes faith? I said that in the debate when he asked and I said no. And yet he goes off to say that I'm saying the opposite. It's simultaneous. And let me just finish the thought.

They're simultaneous. And so the thing he has to recognize is that when we speak logically versus chronologically, and I mentioned that in the debate. Logically, many people would see that regeneration precedes faith.

Why? Because it's God and God alone who can do that work, just like it is in inspiration, just like it is in our good works and sanctification. God does that, but he does it through us. If it wasn't for God, we wouldn't be able to do those things.

And so logically, it proceeds. The problem many people have is that they start saying that there's a chronological order to it. And I remember going to a church with a pastor of mine, and he said, Andrew, you and I disagree by a millisecond, because he believed that for one millisecond, someone was regenerate, and then they would believe.

And when you understand what I'm explaining here, it resolves in the thing, when I asked him to define TULIP, you listen to what his arguments were, especially with like irresistible grace. You see, when we went through that, when I asked him, does he believe that there's a response?

He was like, yeah, it's a response. The response has to have something to respond to. So that's basically irresistible grace, because they're simultaneous. His whole thing is that he thinks what Calvinism teaches is that you have regenerate unbelievers running around, even if they're for a millisecond.

And so I know that he's been saying that I deny this. I've been kind of clear. And actually, I've been kind of clear for about 25, 30 years on this. I have articles on strivingforeturning .org on this that have been out there long before R .A. Fuentes, did I pronounce it right?

Yes. Okay, before he had even, from the looks of maybe even before he was alive, I don't know. But I've had these articles out for a long time. And it's not that I'm changing views. I'm being consistent with it.

And the thing is to note is to say that I'm saying regeneration precedes faith chronologically is a lie. But one of the things you're gonna see with him is, and this is the thing that, one of the things you're gonna see with him is, and this is the behavior of guys like this.

What he says is true, but not the whole truth. He'll say things, because what he's gonna appeal to is a, you see, but you did say that when it comes to logical. Okay, but you're not using it that way, right?

And that's what I wanted to point out is in the article that I wrote, that's on striving for eternity, I tried to make sure and pull out the heaviest detail on where Mr. Fuentes was trying to raise up illogical, false arguments.

And I tried to make sure if I understood in the article that he's saying things, not understand what he's talking about. And then he's attacking Andrew, myself, Pastor Nilo and many other people, he's attacking them for things he doesn't even understand.

And in this section right here, I wrote this, Mr. Fuentes raised a question over regeneration preceding faith. And Andrew, Pastor Andrew correctly said that this was not in the scope of the debate. Still, he answered that regeneration precedes faith logically, not chronologically.

Now, if you wanna have a debate on those issues, that's fine, but he's right, that wasn't part of the debate, but let's go ahead and answer it so that everybody hears it. And so it's important that, you know, regeneration precedes faith logically, but not chronologically.

And he explained that both come simultaneously. It was as clear as day. And however, Mr. Fuentes, he posted, and this is part of his misrepresentation, and it could even go so far as to say lying, okay?

He's misrepresenting the truth. And he goes, now I know that all Calvinists, or not all Calvinists believe regeneration precedes faith, and that 1 Corinthians 5, one through four is not a complete gospel presentation.

Now, I wanna point this out. That was absolutely dishonest, because Andrew said it was, talking about, we'll get that in a second, but on 1 Corinthians 15, Andrew actually said in the debate, I wrote it out, I have it timestamped, that Andrew actually said, no, I believe it is the gospel in its fullness, but it's not the complete gospel, it's the true gospel, but there's more things to be said.

And Andrew, I'll let you comment on that, and then other gentlemen here, if you wanna comment, but I would like to interject something that had been brought out into my attention, if you guys would.

Well, there are some things, and let me just put up, where was Rob's comment? Rob Barnhart said this, this is actually a somewhat hard concept for many to grasp. Andrew is explaining it pretty well. And the concept that we're referring to there is this concept of superintending.

When you understand this, most of the people that have discussions on this, it resolves them. Now, you've brought up a couple things. I'm just gonna share, because you brought up your article. Yeah, go ahead.

So let me just share some things from our website. So here is strivingforeturning .org, and if you go to the latest articles, just go up to the articles, you'll see that right now we have three articles that are dealing with this issue, okay?

We have more that are actually coming. One is to deal with the whole discussion of does God grant belief, and his whole way of, and the guy, Josiah, that's writing this is writing it from, his big thing is hermeneutics, how to interpret.

So he's writing this article from the position of how do we hermeneutically interpret the scriptures with this? And so he deals with that issue. The second one he ended up writing is the whole thing of John 3 .16, who is the world there, that came up.

Then we have your article. Now, I said in the debate, I said during the debate that we were going to put things up. I know that, and I started saying this a little bit earlier, he was counting on getting credibility and we had countless, Justin, you saw this as well, we had countless people contacting us, just warning us, don't do this debate, you're gonna give him credibility.

And I told people, like, I didn't understand the situation before we did the debate, but afterwards, I realized he's, if he is a false teacher, which we ended up exposing that he was, I wasn't 100 sure until the debate, but if he was a false teacher, then we were gonna make sure he didn't get credibility from this.

So I said that we were gonna put articles out explaining things from the debate. Now, Justin, your article here, which is called, Why in the World Are You Debating R .A. Fuentes? Fuentes. So that goes through the entire debate and you really laid that out well.

That's an article that people should get, read and share. But I wanna show something. Justin didn't get credibility from this. But that goes through the entire debate. Is that you, Justin? You really made that out.

Yeah, it was you, because I just muted you and it stopped. So you might have done something in the back. All right, so I wanna show you something. Your article, Justin, has been up for less than 12 hours.

Okay, the other two articles have been up for, I think, 24 hours, all right? Now, I said, we're gonna make sure that if anyone searches on the internet for him, they're gonna find these articles. Well, take a look at a recent search.

Let me make this a little larger. The first thing you'll get is his Facebook page. Second thing, his Facebook page. Oh, this was the old, yeah. So all of a sudden, you're starting to see our articles popping up, right?

I did this search earlier. The third article was yours, okay? In less than 12 hours, all right? Now, you figure Facebook and YouTube, they're gonna be popular, but you're starting to see our stuff popping in before his.

Why? Because Striving Fraternity has a very large internet reach. If you end up going there, you'll end up seeing that we're one of the top, pretty top site compared to other sites. And so we're gonna make sure that anyone that goes searching for him, what they're gonna discover is your article.

That's gonna be number one.

He's not gonna be able to use this to go, oh, look, I got credibility. I have a question, Brother Andrew. These views that you propounded, I find that it's exactly the same as what I teach here in the church.

Good. But what about Calvin? Does he teach the same? I haven't read any Calvin books.

Well, I've read some of his commentaries. I read the Institutes long, long, long ago, probably like 25 years ago. So I wouldn't be an expert on Calvin's particular views. I was actually, many years ago, I was writing a little pamphlet called, Is Calvin a Calvinist?

And there's a reason I was doing that was because what a lot of people don't understand is that the term we know of as Calvinism didn't actually develop until after John Calvin. What a lot of people don't realize is John Calvin's followers started going to an extreme, started teaching things like double predestination.

Some started teaching determinism, that everything's determined. And what ended up happening is that you had a guy, Jacob Arminius, where everyone knows Arminianism from. Now here's the irony of history.

Jacob Arminius was actually a Calvinist, meaning Jacob Arminius was taking those that were going the extreme and trying to pull them back into what Calvin taught. But in that, when he passed away, his followers went extreme the other way, started denying things like original sin and whatnot.