Calvinism Quiz (Part 1)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'".

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Introducing the Calvinism Quiz

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. I'm Mike Abendroth, and I'm your host today. And I'm trying to slow down. I'm trying to talk slower. Mas despacio, por favor. Because I'm going to speed up soon enough.

Today on No Compromise Radio, we are going to take a quiz. I have a quiz in front of me right here, and it is 21 questions. Now, I don't think we can get through all 21 today, but if you're driving, you can still take the quiz, just don't write down the answers.

Just listen. If you're at home, you can take the quiz. You can actually email me at info at nocompromiseradio .com, and I will send you the soft copy quiz. And we are going to take a quiz today on Calvinism.

A quiz on Calvinism. What is Calvinism? Who are the Calvinists? Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Is it biblical? And I am teaching currently a class at Bethlehem Bible Church at the New England Institute for Biblical Studies.

That's the IBS class. It's open to everyone who can hear my voice. You can actually get the classes online as well if you can't make it in person. And I am teaching a class called The History and Theology of Calvinism.

The History and Theology of Calvinism. About 14 weeks, what was the history of what we call Calvinism? And what is the theology behind it? And so I gave a quiz to the class last night for their pre-quiz to kind of wet their proverbial whistles.

So that they might be interested in it and they might want to come back to the class. And so today, NoCompromisedRadio .com, a quiz, it's actually kind of a pre-quiz in a sense, on Calvinism. 21 questions.

If you're listening, how will you answer these questions? Long ago when I listened to the Bible Answer Man, he would ask a question and I'd see if I could answer it myself. And so you could probably do the same thing.

Right here and right now. Number one, list the five points of Calvinism. List the five points of Calvinism. And so you need to start off probably thinking about the acrostic TULIP. And each one of those letters would add up to five.

And so T stands for total depravity. Man is unable to come to God by himself. He is morally corrupt and he is depraved. He's not utterly depraved. That is, he could probably be worse, but he is morally unable, spiritually incapable of turning to God on his own.

Total depravity. See Genesis 6, see Ephesians 4. U, T is total depravity. U is unconditional election. God does not look down the corridors of time and seize your faith because he looks down the corridors of time, or if he did look down the corridors of time, he would see your depravity and he would see your inability to turn, believe, repent, and follow.

So before time began, the Father and the Son and the Spirit with an eternal covenant chose unconditionally with no external coercion, they themselves chose to pick certain people. They could have picked all, they could have picked none, but they chose some.

Unconditional election, no conditions. That's the U. T-U-L, L is limited atonement. That the atonement is limited to those that the Father chose. That is to say that Jesus did not die for Judas. Jesus did not not die for Goliath.

Jesus did not die for anybody who's currently in hell right now. He died for the elect. He died for those that the Father gave him to die for. He died for his people. And so that is limited atonement.

And we'll talk about that more later, but right now we're just looking at the quiz. Number one, list the five points of Calvinism. I is irresistible grace. If you are an elect person, but you're not a Christian yet, God, the Holy Spirit will regenerate you and you cannot say no to the Spirit, to the eternal Spirit, the omnipotent Spirit's regenerating power.

And when God wants to make you born again, it's something that's done to you. You cannot say no, you will be born again. And you cannot resist that. While you may resist gospel preaching, while you may resist people evangelizing you, you will not resist the Spirit of God when he opens your eyes, gives you new nature.

You will not be able to resist that. And then finally, P, T-U-L-I-P, P is perseverance of the saints. Excuse me, if God saves you, you can't unsave yourself. You can't undo what God did. God saves, and if God says, I save you forever and eternal life starts when God saves you, then it will be eternal.

And so T-U-L-I-P, that's question number one. How you doing so far? This is Mike Abendroth, a Calvinism quiz on the radio today. You said, oh, I like some other verses for some of these others. You can look at a variety of different things.

For unconditional election, Ephesians chapter one. For limited atonement, you can look at John chapter 10. You can look at any substitutionary atonement passage, Psalm, excuse me, Isaiah 53. Irresistible grace, you could look at, I don't know what I have today, some kind of the frog in the throat thing.

I don't really know what's going on there, but we'll just carry on. I think that's probably because I taught this class last night for two hours and I've almost lost my voice. John chapter six, we could use for irresistible grace, and then perseverance of the saints.

Romans chapter eight would be a good place to go. Question number two, what is a hyper-Calvinist? Typical answer is anybody that's more Calvinistic than me, then they're hyper, see? But that's not the historical view.

Historically, hyper-Calvinist, and Phil Johnson has written a good article on this, if you go to Pyromaniacs or Spurgeon .org, what is a hyper-Calvinist? And basically, a hyper-Calvinist is someone who so trusts in the sovereignty of God, so believes in God's total sovereignty over salvation, that it doesn't really matter if you pray, it doesn't really matter if you evangelize, because God's going to get his man anyway.

If God sovereignly chooses, God sovereignly dies for, God sovereignly regenerates, why bother? And it ignores the fact that God ordains the ends, salvation and the means, evangelism and prayer. It also ignores that God uses secondary causes to accomplish his perfect work.

And so historically, a hyper-Calvinist was someone who said, God doesn't love the non-elect, there's no love at all, no love even as a creator who loves the creatures, and he therefore doesn't want us to pray, and doesn't want us to evangelize.

And so that's historically hyper-Calvinist. But today, what happens is you have people who say, five-point Calvinists are hyper-Calvinists. Well, that's really an ignorant statement, and it is not historically correct.

Hyper-Calvinists are not five-point Calvinists. Hyper-Calvinists are those that don't pray, those that don't evangelize, and those that don't see any love for the non-elect. Of course, there's a difference between the love of God for his bride and the love of God as a creator for his creatures.

There's a different kind of love. There's an inter-Trinitarian kind of love too. D .A. Carson makes that clear in his book, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God. There are different kinds of love.

Yet, we don't want to say God doesn't love unbelievers in any way, shape, or form, kind of Arthur Pink style. Number three. So we're taking the quiz today. I can already tell this is gonna be a two-part.

The Church of the Two-Part, they call us here, and they call, I guess, the radio show two parts, part one, two, and three. But if you only have 24 and a half minutes, what do you do? Just what do you do?

Whether Jesus Was a Calvinist

Calvinism quiz, number three. Interact with this statement. Jesus was a Calvinist. Jesus was a Calvinist. Now that probably strikes you as odd. To some, it probably strikes you as blasphemous. James Montgomery Boyce, the preeminent preacher from 10th Street Presbyterian in Philadelphia who died, I'm guessing, five or six years ago, he preached a sermon once.

I think it was at a conference. Jesus was a Calvinist. And it raised some eyebrows. And while I might not say it, he said it, and here's what he meant. He meant that if Calvinism teaches that God is sovereign, not just over skin color, not just over who your parents are or were, not just over the weather, not just over government, not just over length of life, how you'll die, but God is sovereign.

He chooses who goes to heaven. And he's sovereign over who goes to hell. If God is that sovereign, and we want for the economy of words, the economy of terms to use the word Calvinism, that's all Calvinism is.

Calvinism does not mean whatever John Calvin taught, we believe. Calvinism is a word that we use similar to doctrines of grace or reformed, maybe even sovereign grace, where we, instead of trying to say that God's sovereign over salvation and God unconditionally elects those that could never come to him by their own faith because they're totally depraved and he sent his son to die for those.

And then the spirit of God regenerates those and then he keeps them to the end and you just keep going on explaining all these things. It's just easier to say Calvinism. Now, I don't know how wise it is for pastors to keep on talking about Calvinism from the pulpit on Sunday morning.

I don't really do it, I rarely do it because I'm just preaching verse by verse by verse through the text. And when you preach through Romans 8, when you preach through Romans 9, when you preach through John 10, John 6, Ephesians 1, 1 Peter 1, you, if you've got any sense to you, are going to be a Calvinist.

Now, if you're going to be prideful and you don't want to have God rule over you, then there could be a problem. But when you begin to read the Bible, you'll see just how sovereign God is and just how messed up, sinful, and wretched and unable man is to do any good thing, especially spiritually.

So if you want to say Jesus was a person who believed in the sovereignty of God, Jesus was a person, of course he's more than a person, he's the God man, but he is totally human. So when I say human, I say person.

Was he a human who believed in the sovereignty of God over everything, including who goes to heaven? The answer is yes. And at the end of the day, who saves? God or man? Who's the initiator? That's really what Calvinism is about, who initiates salvation?

And so when you read John 6, some don't like John 6, those that want to believe man somehow initiates, and when they read John 6, verse 37, all that the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will certainly not cast out.

When you read that, you say Jesus believed in the sovereignty of God. Verse 44, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day. So if Jesus, the God-man, said these things, then he obviously believed them, and he was a proponent of the sovereign grace of God, the doctrines of grace.

And I just threw this in here because it kind of makes people mad. Jesus was a Calvinist, and now we know what we mean. Four, question number four, Calvin was a Calvinist. I guess he's the only one we could really say that of, truly, but he was a Calvinist, and he did believe in the sovereign grace of God.

He believed in the salvation of sinners by God's free will, by God's unencumbered counsels or purposes, or to be more exact, eternal decree, eternal purpose, eternal counsel. Number five, why is Calvinism so hated today?

Why Calvinism Is Hated and Whether Christians Who Are Not Calvinists Can Go to Heaven

My name is Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio, and we're talking today about Calvinism, and I'm giving you a quiz on the radio that I gave to our students at the NEIBS class called The History and Theology of Calvinism, taught on Thursday nights from seven to nine just north of Worcester.

You can still sign up for the class if you'd like. When this airs, I have no idea, but you can still sign up for the class and come, or if you go to bbcchurch .org, click on the Bible Institute, and you've got all kinds of classes there, church history, hermeneutics, apologetics, anthropology, all online, all free for the asking.

Download as many as you would like, and the syllabus, syllabi are online as well, 300-page hermeneutic syllabus, et cetera. Just download those. We'd love to serve you in that way. So we're taking the quiz today for the radio station, and we are up to number five, why is Calvinism so hated today?

Answer, because men are prideful, that's why. Probably because of ignorance. Secondly, more importantly, because of the pride of man. If God is sovereign, Psalm 103, his sovereignty rules over all, that means our sovereignty doesn't rule over anything.

We are not little sovereigns, and we cannot control the future, and we cannot control who goes to heaven, and we cannot say that when salvation is at man's disposal and man's initiative, we can't say that at all.

And people don't like sovereign grace now, do they? People struggle with Israel, why are people anti-Semitic? Answer, because they struggle with the sovereign grace of God choosing Israel and not choosing any other nation.

So show me someone who says, I don't like Israel, and I'll show you someone who struggles not with Israel, but with God, as God chose Israel, not because they were the best, biggest, brightest, or anything else, Deuteronomy 7 says, because God freely chose them, it pleased God to do it, and people don't like that decision.

People don't like it at all, and it's the same thing. You mean to tell me God chooses who goes to heaven? You mean to tell me if I repent and believe I can't go to heaven, and they go on and on saying crazy things like that?

And it is hated today because it impinges upon the will of man, and it impinges upon man's pride. And if you hate Calvinism and you don't like it that God's in charge, you've got a problem with pride.

And these doctrines crush pride, these doctrines humble man, it's like a mortar and pestle where it's just ground down to fine dust. We are nothing, we are no ones, and that God would send his son to die for enemies like us, that's an amazing thought.

He didn't have to do it at all. He would have been just as much God if he let us alone like he let the fallen angels alone with no plan of redemption, no plan of salvation, and just let us experience what we duly earned, and the wage we received was eternal death.

But God demonstrated his own love towards us that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. So why is Calvinism hated today? The pride of man. If you don't understand Calvinism and somebody paints a caricature of Calvinism and you hate that caricature, then people hate Calvinism because they don't understand it and they're ignorant to what the Bible teaches about it and what history teaches us Calvinism would teach.

So that's one option. The other option is if you understand these things and you read Acts 13, verse 48, as many as were appointed to eternal life believed, not the other way around. You don't believe and then you get appointed to eternal life.

Before time began, God appoints some to eternal life and then in time, you believe. God initiates salvation, no one else. And if you don't believe those things, then you need to work on your humility because you want to place yourself, your will in the place of God.

And you probably say it in a really nice way, a very kind of cooperative way, a way where you say, well, God's sovereign but, but at the end of the day, you don't believe it. So, question number six. I was going to say diese seis, but I don't need the diese, it's just seis.

Can Christians who are not Calvinist go to heaven? Why or why not? Well, I guess if you're a Christian, you get to go to heaven, don't you? Christians can go to heaven. So I guess if you're a Christian, but you're not a Calvinist, you can go to heaven.

There's a problem with pride and Calvinism in many circles where they become prideful, they were saved out of pride thinking that they could contribute to their salvation, they initiated their salvation, they caused their salvation, faith caused their salvation, and then all of a sudden they become Calvinist and they realize the only reason they are Calvinist is because the grace of God made them Calvinist.

First Corinthians chapter four, verse seven. What do you have, Paul said to the church of Corinth, that you did not receive? Well, similarly, in principle, what did the Calvinist have that they never received?

If you're a Calvinist by the grace of God, you became one, and it wasn't because you were better, smarter, brighter, you could figure these things out more, and you studied more, no, it's because God made you believe these things.

God enabled you to believe, God gave you that gift. And so we don't want to now say as a Calvinist, well, if you're an Arminian, you're not going to heaven. I believe John Wesley was an Arminian, and I believe he's in heaven.

The man who knew him very, very well, George Whitefield, although Wesley did whatever he could, and even sometimes sinfully, trying to undermine Wesley's, excuse me, Whitefield's preaching of the sovereign grace of God.

Still, Whitefield said that Wesley was going to have a higher place in heaven because of his work and motives and love for the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you look at First Corinthians chapter 15, we see things that are important.

I deliver to you as a first importance, the five points of Calvinism. No, for I deliver to you as a first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures, and he was buried, and then he was raised on the third day, according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the 12, and then he appeared to more than 500 at one time, but most of whom have remained until now, but some have fallen asleep.

Then to James, then to all the apostles, then to Paul, the least of all apostles. So there are things, and everything in Christianity is important, but there are things that are more important than other things, and Paul says the first importance, of first importance, Christ died for our sins.

He was buried, he was raised from the dead, according to the scriptures. So if you believe those things, and you are born again, yet don't embrace the five points of Calvinism, maybe you embrace zero, maybe you embrace three of the points, maybe you don't embrace any, I guess that'd be the same as zero, wouldn't it?

You can still go to heaven, and you will go to heaven in spite of your beliefs. I'm very glad we don't have to have all our theology correct for us to go to heaven. We don't go to heaven based on our good theology, we go to heaven based on who God is.

And so, that is a question today. Now, we're taking a quiz on No Compromise Radio. It's actually a pre-quiz on the doctrine of Calvinism. Pre-quiz on the doctrine of Calvinism. Number seven, describe Calvinism with one verse.

Calvinism Summed Up in One Verse and Recommended Books

Now, you could go to Jonah chapter two, verse nine, salvation is of the Lord, or from the Lord. That would be a good one. I think Charles Spurgeon might do that. And so, where Jonah was talking about temporal salvation, we would say when it comes to eternal salvation, salvation's just from God.

It's all about Him. He's the initiator, He's the starter, He's the active agent, He causes it. Just like in first Peter chapter one, God caused you to be born again. But I think I like the verse in Romans 11, 36 the best.

For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to Him be the glory forever, amen. And if you believe in Calvinism that God alone saves, God alone initiates, God is sovereign over who goes to heaven, and then you're the recipient of His great salvation, there's no smidgen, there's no room for any kind of cooperative applause.

It's just all praise and glory to God forever. Well, we've talked a little bit today about Calvinism. I had 21 questions to talk about, and guess what? We are only on question seven. If you'd like to read a good book on Calvinism, I suggest you read The Doctrines of Grace by Boyce, B-O-Y-C-E, and Ryken, R-Y-K-E-N.

Philip Ryken, who's now the president of Moody, was the replacement for James Boyce when he died at 10th Presbyterian. And so, Philip Ryken and James Boyce, The Doctrines of Grace, easy to read, wonderful book, very devotional, or if you're a little more educationally stimulated by harder books, then you read The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination.

The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination by Lorraine, it's a man, Lorraine Bettner. How do you do? My name is Lorraine, and he was a tough guy. Now, I don't know what he was, but his doctrines were good.

The Reformed Doctrines of Predestination, a book published in 1932, and that would be an excellent book for you to read. So, at least what you need to do, if you're an Arminian, if you're a semi-Pelagian, you need to say to yourself, I ought to represent Calvinism correctly.

And so, let's make sure we talk about it correctly and not run around like they're a bunch of heretics, because we'll learn next time. Your favorite missionaries were five-point Calvinists, to the person they were five-point Calvinists.

Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio. Write me at info at nocompromiseradio .com, or go to bbcchurch .org for the NEIBS class.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

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