Correcting False Beliefs about Calvinism

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We wanted to engage this article. It is on something called medium .com

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and it is by Kwaku. Kwaku was on recently here on Apologia Radio with Dr.

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White and myself. We discussed some issues. It was actually a really interesting conversation.

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If you haven't seen yet, I encourage you to check through the thread here on the videos here on Apologia Studios and check out that episode.

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I think it'll be helpful to you. He wrote an article for Medium and this is the title of the article.

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The title of the article is The Insecurity of Calvinism. The Insecurity of Calvinism.

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Now, I wanna just start, and you guys feel free to jump in at any moment here. I wanna start by saying that one of the great struggles

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I had with Kwaku while he was on the show and in watching his shows where he talks about Christian theology and doctrine is that he demonstrates that he hasn't done his homework.

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So he, from my perspective, he doesn't have a lot of my respect in this area because he hasn't done his homework to say to accurately represent the person he's trying to critique.

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Right. Yeah, and I think what's frustrating is you guys corrected him on the show. We did a show last week, again, correcting him.

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And then he comes out with this article still saying the same things, even though he's been corrected multiple times. It demonstrates that he did not listen because you even touched on this very subject.

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Yeah. That we're gonna talk about. You touched on predestination, you touched on the will of man as a creature and how he's not a robot.

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Right. You touched on the will of man making choices as a free agent, but he chooses consistently with what his nature is.

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What his nature is. And this article reflects that there was no listening. Right. On that point. Yeah.

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He makes very clear that he did not take that in. Right. And he did not represent what reformed theology teaches, essentially what the

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Bible teaches. Yeah. About man's will. Right. So that's just one example. It's one example. And I think, you know, there are people,

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I wanna say this, there are people who disagree with reformed theology. I would say they're in disagreement with the

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Apostle Paul and Jesus and the New Testament and many in the historic church. And of course, during the time of Reformation. But they're still brothers in the

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Lord and they do not do what men like Kwaku does. And that's misrepresent us.

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They try to take this from the angle of the scriptures. Let's see what the Bible really says here. But they at least have the integrity to not misrepresent our position.

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So one of my friends, Dr. Michael Brown, he is a brother in the Lord, a stellar follower of Jesus.

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I love him. He's a friend. We have disagreements in this area. He's debated Dr. White in this area.

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He doesn't wanna misrepresent his Calvinist brothers. He wants to represent faithfully. He just has disagreements.

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So there's a man who has disagreement over this area but doesn't try to misrepresent. There are other men who disagree with us at Apologia Church.

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They're brothers in the Lord. But you can tell that they are working hard to make sure they represent our position accurately.

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So they deserve our respect. They deserve our respect and they're brothers in the Lord. I believe that they're wrong, of course, but they're still brothers in the

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Lord and they have my respect. A person like Kwaku has no respect from my perspective in this area because he chooses to misrepresent the people that he's arguing against.

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Now, if I had done that to Mormons, if I lied about what Mormons believe, if I created fictitious quotes from their prophets and leaders, then of course

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I would deserve to be condemned rightly. Well, you know what's funny about that is we get criticized a lot for misrepresenting them, but all we are doing is -

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Is quoting. Quoting prophets and apostles. Yeah, so I was just gonna say quickly, this article is a big field of burning scarecrows.

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It's just one straw man after another. Each point he tries to make another straw man up in flames. And yeah, it's fun.

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Let's get to it. Cool. You ready? I'm ready. Here we go. I'm gonna go through it, guys. Stop me at any time. All right, here we go.

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And thank you all for watching. Please go to ApologiaStudios .com to get more. God arranges all things by his sovereign counsel in such a way that individuals who are born are doomed to the womb to certain death.

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I think it should say from the womb. And are to glorify him by certain destruction. That's a quote from John Calvin.

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That is how Kwaku leads off the article. And here we go. On any given Sunday, practicing

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Christians of all denominations find themselves in the pews or chairs of their respective church building.

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First, he's assuming he's a Christian. Okay, continue. Each denomination will affirm the existence of God.

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Well, yes. They may consider God to be a man with a body reflective of you and I.

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Sorry, Kwaku. We see what you're trying to sneak in there. Now, which Christian denomination. Right, exactly. Orthodox, meaning standing on the words of scripture, actually believes that.

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Yeah. No one. Kwaku, we realize what you're trying to do here. And that is you're trying very, very hard as an act of PR, public relations for the

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Mormon church, to squeeze Mormon theology into the historic Christian faith and you just simply are not.

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You are part of a false communion. It is not a Christian church. You preach a false God and a false gospel.

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Your Jesus is not the Jesus of scripture and God does not have a body of flesh and bone as tangible as man.

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They may consider God to be a man with a body reflective of you and I. No, that's Mormonism. That is the idolatry of Mormonism, the false

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God of Mormonism. If we're to look at what the Bible says about God, it says God is spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

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And when Jesus describes spirit, and I talked about this in the last episode, he says, handle me and see to Thomas, he says, spirit does not have flesh and bone as you see me have.

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That's his definition of spirit. And so, no. Keep in mind, this is one of an infinite number of gods he's talking about.

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That's right. They may consider God to be a Trinitarian essence or a modalist spirit.

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Okay, so, and this is what, this is the first point that really upset me because, again, we talked about this last week on last week's show.

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He, in the show he did with Dr. White, he claims that he did not misrepresent the Trinity and you went back and in the show, on the

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Three Mormons show, that's exactly what he said. Yes. We corrected him on this and he's still saying the same thing. We are not saying essence at all.

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That his essence is divided. Right. Right. I'm wondering what he means exactly by that.

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Yeah, it's a little muddy. It's muddy. Yet, each denomination can and will affirm the existence of God. Regardless, each denomination will affirm that Jesus Christ is the

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Son of God and Savior of mankind. Whether they believe Jesus is just a form of the Father, a spirit brother of mankind, there you go,

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Kwaku, once again. Both false, Dr. Renner. Yeah, of course. But Kwaku, we see what you're trying to do, my friend, and that's squeeze

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Mormonism into the denomination category of Christianity. It is not.

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It's a non -Christian cult. That's what Mormonism is. So whether they believe Jesus is just a form of the

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Father, a spirit of brother of mankind, or a heavenly influenced teacher who became perfect, each can and will affirm

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Jesus Christ, Yeshua, to be the Son of God. None of those are orthodox views of Christ.

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A heavenly influenced teacher who became perfect is not Yeshua. Right. Yeshua is not a mere man.

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That's the point of standard Christian doctrine is that he is the eternal God. Yeah, Christian theology is very well defined, both in, of course, the writings of Scripture, the

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New Testament, Old Testament, but also all the way into the first, second, third, fourth centuries of the church.

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You have the Christian church very clearly defining what we believe about Jesus Christ. You have the earliest heresies creeping into the church, say in the second century, whether it was the

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Gnostics, whether it was Sabellianism, whether it was Modalism to Arianism.

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All of those different isms were creeping into the church, and the Christian church responded with confession and creed.

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You can even find fights taking place with Tertullian near the end of the second century AD, clearly defining what we believe about Jesus Christ and talking about the

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Trinity. You can even find Santa Claus decking people over it. You can, yeah. Oh, Saint Nick. So here's what's,

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I know we're going point by point here. I just wanna make this very, very clear. Kwaku, you demonstrate a pure ignorance about Christianity, Orthodoxy, biblical theology, and it's just clear that this is just a

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PR piece to try to promote, ultimately, Mormonism and to try to cast Mormonism into just another denomination of the

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Christian church. It is not. Whether they believe Jesus is just a form of the father, heresy cast out by the historic

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Christian church in the second century, a spirit brother of mankind, that's Joseph's perverse theology, or a heavenly -influenced teacher who became perfect, that sounds maybe a little new -agey, maybe,

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I don't know. Each canon will affirm Jesus Christ, Yeshua, to be the Son of God. Okay, here we go. At face value, this would indeed make

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Christianity the same at its core. No? At face value, this would indeed make

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Christianity the same at its core? How? In what way? Carving all of these false Christs, false characterizations of God, and then somehow constructing this inclusivity where, oh, as long as we say

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Jesus, as long as we use the terminology Son of God, it doesn't matter what we actually believe about that.

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Jesus can be just a mere prophet and still be the means of salvation. No, the

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Bible is very clear about defining the Son of the living God, what that means, who

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Jesus is, and the reality that it is only through the biblical Christ, it is only through the

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Jesus Christ, the Messiah, Yeshua, that is presented in Scripture, you can be saved.

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It's only through Him. So if you don't have the true Christ, you are dead in your sins.

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Jesus says, unless you believe that ego eimi, I am, He takes the divine title of Yahweh and applies it to Himself, saying, unless you have me, there is none other,

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I am, you're gonna die in your sins because guess what? I'm God, and I'm the only one that's authorized to forgive your sins, just like that story in the

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Gospels where you have, you know, the religious leaders are all upset with Jesus. They say, how dare you pronounce forgiveness of sins?

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On this person that you just healed, right? I think it was the paralytic, right? And well, he says, well, by the way, just so you know that the

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Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, hey, take up your mat and walk. The sign was a pointer to the divine reality that Jesus can forgive sins because He's God in the flesh.

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The sign itself was not the thing. The sign was a pointer to God in flesh being the one that has the authority and the power to forgive sins by nature of who

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He is. Yes, that's right. That's the point. Yeah, they knew only God can forgive sins and be blasphemy to claim to do it.

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That's why they were offended. That's why they were very offended, that's right. And the fact that He says, take up your bed and walk demonstrates that He has the prerogatives both ways.

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He gets to say this, and He gets to say that, your sins are forgiven, and that's a good point. I mean, unless you believe the ego in me, you will die in your sins,

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I am. Don't forget, so important, that's where He says before Abraham was, ego in me,

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I am, and they picked up stones to kill him. They knew what he was saying. They knew what he was saying. Proof is right after that.

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Jesus says, many good works have I shown you from the Father, for which of these do you stone me? And they said, for thy good works we stone thee not, but for blasphemy, that you being a man, make yourself

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God. They knew what He was saying, and they knew that it was impossible for any human being to say that they are

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God or have divine prerogatives, unless of course, He actually is God.

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So here we go, just to point out that this is not just a unique thing that Apologia Church, these

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Reformed guys, these Calvinists are saying about their specific little Jesus. Let's go to the writings of Scripture.

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Don't forget, in the first century of the church, you had the earliest beginnings of Gnosticism creeping into the church.

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The Apostle John and Paul deal with Gnosticism and Gnostic thought in the New Testament itself, and so you've got these false versions of Jesus already creeping into the church in the first century of the church, and they were being fought against.

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And then 2 Corinthians chapter 11, this is what Paul says, in that context, verse three, I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived

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Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from sincere and pure devotion to Christ.

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For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.

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It's a way of saying, you might even put up with these people. He's worried about them. I'm worried that you're gonna be deceived, like Eve, by Satan's craftiness.

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Another Jesus. Someone will come and preach a different Jesus than the one that we preach, and he says, and I'm afraid you're gonna put up with it.

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You're gonna just let it go. And so this is Paul in the first century dealing with false Christs, false spirits, false gospels.

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So when we as the Christian church point out that the Mormon Jesus is a false

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Christ, it's not just us being big meanies, just trying to cross every theological T and dot all the

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I's. This is us as Christians, Orthodox, historic, real, genuine followers of Jesus who are saying, we are following the pages of scripture here and saying, that's a false

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Christ. One more here, just to show you this coming from John. This is from the

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Apostle John. He has to deal, this is such a short little letter, but it was so serious to the

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Apostle John. He's worried about the church, and he says this, watch yourselves, second

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John verse eight, watch yourselves so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward.

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Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the father and the son.

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If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him a greeting for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works.

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Of course, this is talking to a house church in the first century. Don't let this person into your worship.

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Don't let them into your home to disrupt your worship, your fellowship, your communion. And what is that? They are these deceivers,

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John says, and here's what they're doing. Those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh, they were denying that God had taken on flesh.

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This is dealing with the earliest beginnings of Gnosticism creeping into the church. And John says this, look, these

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Gnostics who are saying they believe in Jesus, they're saying they're followers of Jesus, but they're saying that God would never take on flesh.

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He would never do that because this is evil. This is dirty and broken and evil. God would never sully himself with human flesh.

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John says, anybody does that. They profess to believe in Jesus, but they deny that God took on flesh.

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He says, this person is antichrist. They don't know God. Do not even let them into your house.

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That's not very nice. So Kwaku, when you write this article and you say, hey, all these

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Jesuses, they're all welcome. Whatever denomination, I would say tell that to the apostles,

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John and Paul. Tell that to them, that they should just be welcoming to all these different versions of Jesus.

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No, I'm sorry. It sounds like universalism to me. Well, it's, how would you say it? It's inclusivism.

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So to summarize it, it's only exclusive faith and the exclusive Christ that will save anybody.

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And that's why this matters because you have a different Jesus than you have no hope of being saved or have salvation.

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Yeah, and I think one final word here. Isn't it interesting that Kwaku has all this room in his theology for all these different versions of Jesus, but he doesn't have room for the sovereign