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That prospectively apocalyptic year of 1666 saw the onset of the Scottish Covenanters‘ mass martyr-making under the English gallows. Three dozen or so were put to death in the aftermath of the Battle of Rullion Green. Among them, nine men — seven in Ayr, two in Edinburgh — paid with their necks on this date. The Covenanter tragedy stretches back to the first English Civil War, when English parliamentarians enlisted the aid of Scottish Presbyterians by agreeing to a covenant guaranteeing presbyterian church governance in Scotland and England. Essentially, that meant representative ecclesiastical authority, rather than top-down power from the...

“HABEMUS PAPAM.” I will never forget hearing over the radio that declaration in Latin from the College of Cardinals in the Vatican in 2005: “Habemus Papam—we have a pope.” Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had been elected Pope. I was quite thrilled, since I had personally met the cardinal in 1988. Together with three other colleagues from the Seminary in Southern France (Faculté Jean Calvin, where I taught for 18 years), we had an extraordinary two hour meeting in the Vatican with the cardinal. This meeting was arranged for us by a well-connected Catholic priest from Aix-en-Provence, with whom our professors had...

In a video released Sunday, June 12, former Southern Baptist Convention President Jack Graham endorsed current presidential candidate Tom Ascol — a move shocking to some convention insiders and a potential game-changer in this week’s contest for leadership. Ascol and Graham hold divergent theological views, with Ascol being a staunch Calvinist and Graham being a more traditional conservative evangelical. And by endorsing Ascol, who is a Florida pastor, Graham bypassed another candidate, Bart Barber, whose church is located 37 miles away from Graham’s. Barber, pastor of First Baptist Church of Farmersville, Texas, is considered the institutionalist candidate in this year’s...

Christian entertainment company 4HisGlory Amusements has announced an exciting new escape room experience based on Calvinist theology. Participants will be entirely unable to do anything to escape the room and instead must wait for an actor playing Jesus to unlock the door and let them out.

When it comes to which of the five points of Calvinism that irk non-reformed Christians the most, my money is on limited atonement. The doctrine of limited atonement teaches that Christ's redeeming work on the cross secured an actual salvation for only the elect of God.If this causes you to grind your teeth in irritation, stop. I’m going to show you why you probably already believe in limited atonement and then provide what I believe to be the definitive argument that puts the issue to bed once and for all.Welcome to the clubUnless you’re a universalist, you already believe in...

Are you surprised by America's sudden meltdown? Over the past 12 months, we have witnessed the greatest public health crisis in 100 years, the lockdowns that were instituted to control the pandemic resulted in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, widespread civil unrest erupted in the aftermath of George Floyd's death and has not stopped since, and now we are witnessing the greatest political turmoil since the Civil War. Despite all of this chaos, many Americans remain absolutely convinced that the greatest days of the United States are still ahead of us. To them, the...

White-haired, suit-wearing Presbyterian lawyers don’t typically garner the fandom of teenagers, but Mr. Z did. Each week dozens of us would gather in his home. He would feed us and let us trash his house, watch movies, and play basketball. Each gathering would culminate in a Bible study... For a year I kept coming back. This unlikely mentor taught us Ephesians. Verse by verse, he explained this beautiful book to us. His love for the Bible was infectious, and I caught it. As I matured, I would always go back to Ephesians...But something stuck out to me that I never...

As my friend Doug Phillips has pointed out, this year has brought, in the providence of God, a strange confluence of anniversaries. The two men who have had the greatest impact on these United States may well be, on the one hand, Charles Darwin, and on the other John Calvin. Darwin was born two hundred years ago this year, Calvin five hundred years ago. Our perspective on each of these men will serve as a potent bell-weather for our perspectives on a whole host of issues. In the culture wars most of our enemies will celebrate the birth of Darwin...

Well I finally got around to it – I am reading through some of the Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin. I say “some” because the complete work spans more than 1500 pages and deals with some of the most weighty and complex theological issues known to mankind. I have chosen for now to plod my way through the most controversial aspects of Calvin’s writings; the topics of predestination and election. Most of my friends who call themselves Calvinists are eager to disassociate themselves from the doctrine of “double predestination”. They state that God has predestined some to...

When it comes to theology, many issues are not discussed among most ordinary Christians. For instance, few people will speak of the aseity of God on most Sunday mornings. However, when it comes to the issue of divine sovereignty and human freedom, the first theological question I get asked as a minister is; Are you a Calvinist or an Arminian? My answer muddies the waters for most because I respond by saying, "I am neither a Calvinist nor an Arminian." "What?" they reply. "You have to be one or the other." I say, "Not necessarily. I am a Molinist." The...

Calvinism affirms a doctrine known as the perseverance of the saints according to which the truly regenerated disciple will persist in faith. In the words of the seventeenth-century Puritan William Secker, "Though Christians be not kept altogether from falling, yet they are kept from falling altogether."Calvinists insist that perseverance of the saints is a scriptural doctrine. As Paul says in Philippians 1:6: "he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."In addition, Calvinists have also often argued that perseverance has a clear pastoral advantage in that it grounds our...

Some time ago, I read the short book Are We Together? A Protestant Analyzes Catholicism written by the late Reformed preacher R.C. Sproul. It was a good read; I thought that Sproul treated this controversy with a degree of fairness and accuracy that was not present in other books that I have read on this subject. He basically laid the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Westminster Confession side-by-side as he worked through the major differences. Sure, there were some snarky comments here and there but I overlooked these since it was clear that the book was being targeted...

What is the relationship between Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas? Much more than most might appreciate .....

"And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins" - Ephesians 2:1 "Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)" - Ephesians 2:5 "And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses" - Colossians 2:13 What does the phrase 'dead in sin" mean? What does it mean to be spiritual dead? And how did these simple concepts become so convoluted? Arminian or synergistic arguments against the Calvinist interpretation 'dead in sin' usually...

Jimmy Carter severed his ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, but apparently is still a Baptist (Maranatha Baptist Church). Josh Duggar and the Duggar family are Independent Baptist. Some will say that neither of them go to the right Baptist church or the correct one and thus neither of them are truly Baptist, just as some Methodists will say that other Methodists don't go to the right Methodist church and thus truly aren't Methodist. Some Jewish people may say that other Jews, (although quite orthodox in their beliefs) aren't quite Orthodox enough and thus aren't truly Jewish when it comes...

Do you want to know how to make a Calvinist angry? Do you want to know how to offend a whole room full of them? Just bring up the old line about Reformed theology being incompatible with evangelism. We have all heard it, we have all read it, we have all rejected it. It’s the word on the street, though, that Calvinists make poor evangelists. Many people are firmly convinced that there is a deep-rooted flaw embedded within Reformed theology that undermines evangelistic fervor. Most blame it on predestination. After all, if God has already chosen who will be saved,...

The Presbyterian Church USA is considering banning the word “Israel” from its prayers. That anti-Semitic resolution was meant to “distinguish between the biblical terms that refer to the ancient land of Israel and the modern political State of Israel". It has happened before. In his war against the Jews, Adolf Hitler instructed Christian theologians to rewrite the Bible, in a bid to remove all mention of the Jews. Their barbaric spirit is living on in the Palestinolatry of these liberal Christians...

The Trouble With Calvin – Pt. 3 In my last two blog posts, we examined the first two of the “five points” of Calvinism popularly known by the acronym, TULIP, which represents 1. Total Depravity 2. Unconditional Election 3. Limited Atonement 4. Irresistible Grace 5. Perseverance of the Saints (“once saved, always saved”). In this post, we will tackle the third point:Limited AtonementNo Christian that I know of would deny that some doctrines are more or less clear than others in Scripture. When it comes to the atonement of Christ, the Scriptures are most clear: Jesus Christ died on the...

The Trouble With Calvin – Pt. 2 In my last post, I began a series of critiques of John Calvin’s famous “five points,” most often referred to using the acronym, TULIP, which represents Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistibility of Grace, and The Perseverance of the Saints (“once saved, always saved”). In this installment, we’ll deal with Unconditional Election.Calvin’s idea of Unconditional Election simply means that God “elected” certain men for salvation and others for damnation from all eternity, rooted in texts of Scripture, as we will see below, like Romans 9:10-12:And not only so, but also when Rebecca had conceived...

Over the last two decades, more than three-fourths of Iraq’s Christians have fled the country, driven out by a combination of Muslim fanaticism and economic and social collapse. Iraq, however, isn’t the only place to experience a mass Christian exodus in recent years. Look at the Presbyterian Church (USA), the 10th largest denomination in this country. But you’d better look fast. The PC(USA), which is the nation’s largest Presbyterian denomination (at least for now), is driving out members through its own brand of leftist fanaticism. From a high of more than 4 million members back in 1965, the Louisville-based PC(USA)...