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Calvinists suggest that Man has “free will” but insist that an outside agent “makes the will make its choices” If something or someone “makes the will make its choices,” free will is not free. The Calvinist states the unregenerated man is depraved having neither desire nor capacity to come to Christ until they are regenerated and “the Father and the Holy Spirit cause the renewed sinner to embrace the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior.” One surely should see the grave contradiction!

If Calvinism were true, God mocks the vast majority of mankind. The literally hundreds of times in the Bible that God calls men to repent, weeping over Israel through His prophets are a further mockery. And He damns forever in the Lake of Fire those not believing the gospel; those who can’t believe unless He regenerates them and gives them the faith — and yet He refuses to do so? Is this the “God” in whom you believe? I hope not.

“God is love” (I Jno 4:8,16), but what kind of love is that? He assures us that He loves the entire world (Jno 3:16) and would “have all men to be saved” (I Tim 2:4). The biblical God does all He can to bring all men to Himself, but each one must choose. Of Israel, He laments, “What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it?” (Isa 5:4). Jesus wept, “How often would I...and ye would not!” (Luk 13:34). But the Calvinist God damns multitudes He could have otherwise save. Again I ask, what love is that?

The Bible states, “Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely” (Rev 22:17); “being born again (‘regenerated’)...by the word of God...which by the gospel is preached...” (I Pet 1:23-25); “that believing ye might have life [i.e., be regenerated] through his name” (Jno 20:31). The Bible teaches a new birth through believing the gospel. Morover, the word “freewill” appears 17 times in the Old Testament.

Nevertheless, and that notwithstanding, Calvinists insist that only those whom God causes to repent and believe the gospel will do so. Only after He has “regenerated” the sinner can God supposedly, by “irresistible grace,” give him faith to believe. That is clearly neither biblical nor “hyper-Calvinism”, but the Calvinism of “moderates” such as John MacArthur, R.C. Sproul, John Piper, D. James Kennedy, et al. They say that God loves all men—but has a “different love” toward those for whom Christ didn’t die and does not want in heaven and thus will not regenerate. If it could be, and I suggest that it hardly can be, construed as love, just what love is that? Does God really want all mankind to be saved (as the Bible says) or just a select elect? Did Christ die for all (as the Bible says) or just for a select group?

That everything that happens has all been predetermined by God based upon His foreknowledge doesn’t even make sense. God wouldn’t need foreknowledge to predetermine everything. He would just predetermine it. But God has not predetermined everything that happens in our world. That is Calvinist doctrine predicated on a denial of a man’s fundamental free will which makes a holy God the author of all evil. Both Paul and Peter link election and predestination with God’s foreknowledge but not the way the Calvinist suggests. Paul wrote, “Whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom 8:29). Peter declares, “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father...unto obedience...” (1 Pet 1:2). Those whom God, by foreknowledge, knew would receive Christ were elected/predestined to certain blessings. The Bible does not teach that God causes some to believe and refuses to give saving faith to others. I can’t fathom how someone could deny that everyone must have free will. If we don’t have it, what was Jesus talking about in Jno 5:40, when He said: ‘But you are not willing to come to me that you may have life.’”

Nevertheless, the fundamental reason for Calvinist thinking is understandable. It has to do with, whether we can say yes or no to the gospel, whether we have the option of receiving or rejecting Christ. If one can decide their own eternal fate, then God is at the sinner’s mercy. You know, Christ came and died, but it’s all in vain unless people believe, so therefore, they have limited atonement, of course, so that Christ’s blood is not wasted, as Calvinists would say, shed for people who are going to reject him anyway. And so for God to be sure that somebody is going to go to heaven, and not just an empty place up there, he is going to have to cause some people to believe. So then, they would go to scriptures like, except the Father draw them, and so forth, you cannot come to me. They forget that Jesus does say, Come unto me, and so forth.

We know that there could be no love between husband and wife, parent and child and between man and God, without the power of choice. You can’t make someone love you! And the power to love someone is meaningless without the power to hate them, or at least ignore them or not love them. We know that every day we make so many choices. You can’t say that we are just puppets on a string. But then, wait a minute! But then how can I say that you can say, Yes, to Jesus, or No, to Jesus, wouldn’t we all be personally responsible for our individual eternal destinies? Well, there is no way to get around it, we do make choices, and it does say, “Whosoever will may come!” Jesus says, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.” Now that’s one hell of a misleading statement to say the least, or wait, it’s even worse than that if a person can’t come to Christ unless he makes them come to him. Why does He implore “Come unto me?” Why does God plead all through the Bible with his people to repent, and he says, Don’t do this abominable thing that I hate, I don’t want to punish you. He sends his prophets day and night crying out. Take Psa 81, “If my people had harkened to my voice I would have fed them with the finest wheat”, or Jesus weeping over Jerusalem: “How often would I have gathered you together, but you would not”, or Joshua saying: “Choose you this day whom you will serve”. All of those statements would be nonsense, a mockery, by telling a person who (according to the tenets of Calvinism is totally depraved), can’t make any choice except for evil, and one keeps pleading with them to repent. God, however, withholding, what Calvinists call Irresistible Grace, the very thing the individual needs for the very volition of repentand, and yet STILL keeps pleading and berating them for not doing what the individual hasn’t the least capacity to even conceive of (let alone do), which God could cause him to do if he wanted to.

Whe one reads through the scripture, verse after verse suggest that people can make a choice. Jesus said we’re not willing to come to me, so there must be a choice to be willing. Otherwise the Gospel and all of scripture is a charade, but the charade really hits deep into the solar plexus - you know, like the climactic charade at the Great White Throne of judgment. What in the hell is going on there? What is God saying to those, you know, the unregenerated, the lost, how is he holding them accountable for something? According to Calvinism, they couldn’t do anything but sin, and now God is going to damn them? What love is that?

There’s no excaping the conclusion that God is the ultimate cause of sin — or let’s not go that far, some would say that’s hyper Calvinism — but any way you try to get around it, it ultimately comes down to that. Why does Jesus ask us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, they will be done”, if everything is already according to God’s will, and if everything is already according to God’s will, man having no power of choice, all the rape, murder, crime, wars and evil, evil thoughts and so forth, is something that everybody can squarely point one’s finger at God for. Oh look! There he is, sitting all high and mighty on his judgment seat of Christ saying: “I could have caused you to believe in me, I could have caused you to repent, but I didn’t.” Well, then because He didn’t intervene, the only conclusion is that he wanted to damn YOU. What kind of love is that? I’ll tell you what kind of love that is: its the love of the demon called Allah. Quite frankly there’s no other way around it. Mohammad states in the Q’uran that he has no clue about his salvation. Even he has no assurance. Because that’s what God is: a capricious, arbitrary, vindictive God wallowing with glee in his sovereignty at the expense of the lesser mortals. It gets pretty tedious being an omneiscient, omnipresent, omnipotent being; need something to liven’ up the day, ya know? Need some yuck-yucks every now and then.

I think one of the most powerful passages concerning the matter is Isa 5:4, where he says: “What more could I have done for my vineyard than I did? I did everything I could to make them fruitful and to bring them to me, and they rebelled against me”. One risks turning the Bible into a charade with the premise man has no choice and God mocks him, Choose you this day-—Come to me, but you can’t come!