INTRODUCTION TO THIS SERIES
Please know that this series is not about putting down Calvinists. I know some Calvinists and love them dearly! This series (as well as all of the posts that I have written thus far on the topic of Catholicism) is about stressing the importance for all of us to test the teachings of everyone we listen to, the books that we read, etc., against the truth of God’s Word –in context — as we are shown to do in Scripture. (Acts 17:11, 1 Thessalonians 5:21,22, 1 John 4:1)
God gives us many warnings in His Word regarding false teachers in the last days and how they will arise even in our midst! (2 Peter 2:1-3, Acts 20:25-31) Therefore we should always be alert and constantly testing everything against Scripture so that we will not be deceived!
It doesn’t matter how well respected a professing Christian pastor or teacher may be, or how many years they have been in ministry, how big a church they may have, etc.. What’s of the utmost importance is:
Do they present teachings to you that are based on Scripture, and are those Scriptures completely in context?
Do they distort the very character and nature of God by using human reasoning, instead of presenting God’s nature in all of His glory, holiness, and infinite love and mercy as He is revealed to us in His Word?
God’s Word also warns us about another Jesus and another gospel:
“I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.” (2 Corinthians 11:2-4)
“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel — which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!” (Galatians 1:6-9)
Therefore, with these stern warnings that God has given to us in His Word in mind, we should constantly be on guard against accepting a false Jesus and a false gospel, both not having complete power to save!
At first I thought Calvinism and Reformed Theology were the next steps to take in order to go deeper into God’s Word so that we can get to know Him better. However, the more that I learned about these teachings by listening to John MacArthur, John Piper, R C Sproul, and Paul Washer, the more I realized how these teachings do not line up with Scripture! I also became very disturbed and troubled as I saw how these teachings distort the character and nature of God and the truly good news of the Biblical gospel! Many Scriptures came flooding into my mind to refute these teachings and I just could not embrace them as being Biblical!! Those were the reasons why I rejected Calvinism. Those are also the reasons why I see the urgent need to write this series; I simply want to point every Calvinist back to Scripture and away from the teachings of men!
It grieves me when I see many Calvinists post quotes from well-known Calvinist preachers such as Spurgeon, A W Pink, Martyn Lloyd Jones, and Calvin himself, instead of simply quoting Scripture. We need nothing more than God’s Word! How can we lose sight of the amazing fact that we have the very Word of God given to us by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit??!!
With all of that being said, here is the first submission that was sent to me by Loretta from Massachusetts. [NOTE: Names have been changed to protect their identities.] (I am waiting to receive more from some of you out there who would like to share your stories with me. Your names and locations will be changed to protect your identities, as well). When time allows, I may go through the many emails that this dear sister-in-Christ sent me and add more information that she had shared with me to this post –if I see the need to do so, and if I have time:
There are some things only a mother knows, I think God has given us that mothering gift exclusively because every mom I have ever known has had it. No disrespect to my husband, but he never saw this thing coming and I don’t blame him! Eight months after Leroy had left home to start plying his trade in LA after some local training, he took a cheap evening flight home for his first visit home. I was overjoyed at the prospect of seeing him again and did not sleep much the night before. The fact that Leroy had mentioned in his correspondence that he had listened and been to certain Calvinist mega-churches and had been reading Calvinist writers did worry me some. Let us be honest that LA is probably the last place parents want to see their children go, least of all to live and work! The horror stories from there are often not exaggerated.
Nothing, however, could prepare me for the next day. Seeing Leroy turned out to be one the saddest days of my life. I knew he had changed even before I kissed him hello. He looked different, spoke with a fake but weird accent, and he was distant as though his dad and I were actually embarrassing to him. He did not want to be home. I saw that and sensed that.
On the 40-minute or so drive home from the airport, my husband tried to strike up a conversation with Leroy. Leroy kept it strictly superficial and spoke about Hollywood and some of the famous people he had seen, and he said that he was not impressed with the Lakers or the Sparks. Leroy has always been a Celtics and Paul Pierce admirer! (Those days drove me nuts even tho’ they hold precious and sweet memories!) As if prompted, I suddenly felt I needed to ask Leroy something and asked him if he was still spreading the gospel as he used to do in our block.
My son grimaced and did not reply and for the rest of the trip no one spoke. By the time we reached our downtown apartment, my stomach was in knots and my chest was tight of the worryin’. After a late supper that had not gone as I had planned in my mind, and mostly because Leroy had barely spoken with his younger brother Jordan, I offered to unpack his suitcase, hoping to spend some needed time with him alone. While he was sitting on his bed and texting, I asked him to tell me what had happened in LA. I reminded him, silly me, that I was still his Mo. Many things had crossed my mind. Did he have problems at work? Problems in the apartment he was renting? Girlfriend problems? Did he not like the weather? Was the lifestyle change taking its toll on him? Had someone upset him, a friend perhaps? Was he in some kind of trouble?
Although I remember most of Leroy’s stingin’ words clearly, that night is still a hazy nightmare to me, and it still keeps me awake at night sometimes. Even now I sometimes get up at 3 a.m. and do household chores or watch some TV or read some. It’s very hard to write about this specific night because that’s the night that Leroy basically disowned me as his Mo. That’s the night he wrote off his family, his dad, his brother, his past, and dare I say it, his Jesus. (I say “his Jesus” because he had found another.) I had expected bad news, but I was not prepared for what came out of his mouth and the manner in which he said it. He told me I was not saved. He said I was a “reprobate” like his dad and Jordan. It was also the first time that my firstborn had ever raised his voice at me. As far as my beautiful boy was concerned, everyone who did not hold to his revealed “doctrines of grace” and who did not worship “his” sovereign God on God’s terms, which was the strange unscriptural TULIP, was basically already in hell, “predestined by God to go to hell from before time began.”
Conveniently, and I say this with a mother’s love, Leroy was not one of the unbelieving doomed masses. As if taken over by someone or something else, Leroy explained, stressin’ every word as though I could not hear him, that he was now one of the “elect”, that the “sovereign” God had revealed it to him via the teaching and the elders of his godly church (which he has since changed for another two) and through their godly authority, which neither his dad nor I had ever had.
I broke down and left his room and for the next week, until he returned we did not speak about the incident again. We all pretended that nothing had happened except for Jordan. Jordan was not happy with the way Leroy had treated all of us, but took out his frustration by playing his jazz music with some friends in the church hall at nights. Since then, Leroy has only been home a couple of times, twice with his girlfriend, bless her heart, whom he had met at a church “function.” She is another huge influence on his life and decisions, and even once suggested with Leroy that I go for Biblical counseling so that I could also see the one true way that was found only in Calvinism. I really believed she was playing a joke on me, but it turned out that she was serious! Leroy’s choice of girlfriend is not my decision at all, but I can only pray that she turns from her ways and believes on the Lord Jesus Christ. But by far, the saddest aspect of Leroy’s “conversion” to what so many call the doctrines of men, which I agree with, is that since that first night and in the many times after that, is the absence of mentioning and reverence of the Lord Jesus Christ and His complete deity. Over time, Leroy has given me the names of hundreds of websites to visit, the names of just as many books, and he has spoken of Calvinists that I have not even heard of. He has sent me link upon link about this teacher and that one, and the one was as far gone as the next. He has also sent internet sermons that were embarrassing to watch and listen to. But Jesus who died so that anyone who accepts His gift of salvation may be saved, is not esteemed as highly as these false teachers or as some of the websites, many of which were downright offensive to a Christian!
My dear pastor was visibly upset when I asked him for advice about Leroy’s situation. Leroy and Jordan were both born-again in our small church, only two years apart! My pastor gave me some books to read on Calvinism and then gave me advice that turned out to be so helpful. He said I should read up and find out everything about it for myself so I can learn about it from the horse’s mouth. Although I had a good understanding of Calvinism before, due to an altercation I had had with a colleague years ago, reading and learning about it broadened my understanding of it even more. It is an ugly belief system, I must admit. Against my will I patiently visited and read through every website and blog that Leroy had given me and it did not take long to see who and what was poisoning him. Every site had the same message of “total depravity” and every site made excuses for sin and even condoned it, including the evil acts of Calvin himself. What was most disturbing and heartbreaking was that many of these sites were downright rude and pious and going as far as to say — and this Leroy had said so himself — that the evil acts of men were for God’s glory, and these included 9/11, the Sandy Hooks School bloodbath, the Orlando nightclub shootings and every other disaster and even the molestation of children, as shocking as that may sound! “It is God’s will,” Leroy says to all these horrible things! What kind of God would take glory from such things? Not the God of the Bible, and on a few occasions I have told Leroy that. Every time he has given me the same answer, that I don’t understand Calvinism or the “secret ways of God.”
Over time, Leroy has come to reflect the false gospel that he now believes in. Again, I am saying this because I love him, because I want to see him be freed from this terrible lie, and because there are other Leroys out there.
Before I continue I must make it clear that until a few months before he left for LA, Leroy, Jordan, and a couple of other brave youngsters, still spread the gospel in our neighborhood as was their custom. Even though our block of the city and neighborhood have had the tragic fentanyl drug plague for years, it’s known as Apache or China White on the streets, the street gangs, and the dirty clubs and its intimidating barkers, these things had never stopped Leroy from venturing out at all hours to tell everyone about Jesus Christ. He especially enjoyed weekend nights and basket ball games to tell the lost souls of the salvation that Jesus offered. Despite these dangers I never feared for his safety or for that of Jordan’s as much as I fear for Leroy’s safety now. I am talking about his spiritual safety.
He has changed. The handsome young man with the charming dark brown eyes (in his late teens, he was known as the young Denzel Washington of our specific ‘hood’) is no longer there. My real son is not behind those eyes anymore. Someone else has moved in and took his body, someone spiritually proud, arrogant, condescending, angry, and unloving. He has become unhappy and is depressed. I have noticed that he is looking down on women, as though he is superior simply by being a man. I spoke to him about that and he went into the “submission without questioning” tirade that grieved me deeply. Would he one day really treat his own wife that way? I asked him that too and he said that’s what the scriptures really teach.
I dare not list the number of insults Leroy has thrown our way since he has “found” Calvinism. There have been Easter cards that mocked Jesus, that had made fun of me, Calvinist Christmas cards, and hundreds of memes with senseless and offensive Calvinist memes. He went so far as to call me a bad mother because I had kept the “truth” from him, and he has turned red in the face on many occasions when I have asked him for some straightforward answers on simple issues like why even bother to share the gospel when god has already decided who’d be saved? “Because we don’t know who the elect are,” he answered, and that answer I’ve heard countless times from other Calvinists and have seen on blogs.
It does not even make sense! I understand my son is under someone else’s control and his normal way of thinking has been altered, and I get chest pains when I think who is responsible! He does not laugh like he used to, or talk to his brother and hang with him like he used to when he visits, he ignores his dad, he sees himself as good for nothing, which is not what the Bible teaches! He has become rude and even cusses…! And he is watching and promoting movies with extreme nude scenes and blasphemy that he’d never dream of watching before, and this because some false teacher has said there’s nothing wrong for a Christian to watch worldly things (Ephesians 4, verse 29). He has even turned his back on the music we used to listen to together. The artists he listens to now I won’t even name as there is nothing Christian or wholesome about them although these performers are found at every Calvinist conference or “event” and some of the big names in Calvinism even promote these worldly songs.
Leroy spends much of his money attending these conferences and he used to tell me about it all the time, and every time I realized that he was being led by the nose and being brainwashed. What struck me is that these conferences were obviously aimed at people within his age range. But how do I tell him that I can see he is involved with the works of darkness without pushing him away even more? On the rare visit, I have tried to talk to him, to remind him of how he had been before. I even asked him on the last visit in 2016 if he even realized that he was hurting everyone who loves him. He shrugged his shoulders.
Jordan has had words with Leroy and has demanded he apologize for the way he’d been treating my husband and I, and an apology did come forth, but even that did not last long. Jordan has been amazing and has told me over and over that Leroy will come to his senses, that he is simply star struck and following personalities and not Jesus; Leroy is caught in human idolatry. Jordan says, “It is just a phase that will pass.” He tells me that every now and then. He misses his brother so much and is planning to visit him in LA during the summer.
My dear husband has been supportive too even though he has probably been hit the hardest by all of this. He has taken it very personally, and I often find him staring at nothing. He has been patient with Leroy and has told him that our home is still his home, and that Jesus is still his Savior, and that there is no other. My husband has often asked me and I have often asked him where we’d gone wrong. But we’ve been told by wonderful friends and fellow believers that we are not to blame, that Leroy has made his own choices, and that we should not give up praying, hoping, and believing. Our son will come “home.”
For all the grieving and worried parents out there whose children have wandered away from Jesus and into Calvinism, I can say take heart! It seems to be a almost fashion like and this fad should pass. In Leroy’s case, this fad has been going on for 3 years, but it will pass. Never argue with your children about Calvinism, but speak to them gently about it by quoting the Bible and not the words of men or women.
Also, although technically it is a cult, please don’t call it one when talking to them as that will make them more determined in following after men. Never stop praying for them or loving them or showering them with kindness. Learn as much about Calvinism that you can stand and find out who the popular Calvinist and Reformed leaders are and what they teach. Remember, Calvinists have twisted every Christian phrase and word to mean something else. Above all, let them know that you love them despite everything.
Growing up, my mom and her friends had the beautiful and exciting habit of break into song whenever they got together. It was second nature for those women to sing and sing. “His eye is on the sparrow” by Mahalia Jackson was one of their favorites, and before I turned seven, I knew the words to the whole song! I know that despite the fact that Leroy has temporarily turned his back on Him and despite Leroy being blinded by Satan, God is still keeping an eye on my boy. That is the God we believe in, a God of love, forgiveness and salvation that comes through believing in His Son, Jesus Christ.
Our family’s story does not have a good ending yet, but I know it is gonna have one. Many precious people are praying for Leroy and for his girlfriend too. I thank them all. Our story will have a good ending too. I just know it. God bless y’all!
And thank you Mary for allowing me to share our story.
Loretta D. Massachusetts
Mary Dalke - Living4HisGlory
Living4HisGlory 