A little bit late, so while everybody's settling in, I want to go ahead and get started to make sure we get through everything we plan to get through today. Let's open our time this morning with prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for this good day that you've made and sanctified, Lord, to be the Lord's day. It is for your people, Lord, to be the most blessed, the happiest day of the week. And we are glad that it has come again. We pray, Father, as we seek to understand the doctrines of the Holy Scriptures this morning, Lord, that You would send Your Spirit to guide us into all truth. We pray, Father, that You'd help me as a teacher and help these gathered students to throw ourselves into this study and seek, Lord, derive from them all the benefit that we can. Our desire, Lord, is that the Lord Jesus Christ will be glorified in our midst and that we would trust Him more, even unto eternity. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. This morning we are We're going to be talking about what's known historically as the five points of Calvinism. And by way of introduction, your experience is probably the same as mine in that within the Reformed church, you find from talking to people that almost everybody has a story about how they came to believe the reforms at faith. I guess that's as we would expect. But in everybody's story, there's usually one particular influence. A book, a lot of times it's a book by R.C. Sproul or John Piper or something like that, a book that fell into your possession or perhaps a radio program like the White Horse Inn or some person in your life that was influential in introducing you to the Reformed faith. For me, it was this book. which is The Five Points of Calvinism Defined, Defended, and Documented by David Steele and Curtis Thomas. Never read anything else by these men. This book was given to me by my grandfather. And my grandfather and I were not particularly close. So I don't remember him actually saying anything to me when he gave me this book. He just sort of handed it to me and said, here. And always being a little bit inseminated by my grandfather, I took it and said, thank you. And I went home and I threw it in a box in my room and didn't look at it for a long time. But at some point later in my life, when the Holy Spirit was really was really bearing down on me, I picked up this book again and I read it from from cover to cover. And I found that The exclamation of salvation that was articulated and defended from scripture in this book was compelling, more than compelling, convincing. And I have been a Calvinist ever since and never doubted the truth of these doctrines from that time forward. Obviously, this is something that is dear to me and to a lot of you as well. So this morning, we're going to talk about these five points. The reason that we're addressing this now is because in our study of the Westminster Confession over the last couple of years, we've now covered the first 17 chapters. And over the course of those 17 chapters, we have now hit each of the five points of Calvinism. You notice that I didn't necessarily point each of these out along the way. I didn't enumerate them as we were going through the confession. One, because I didn't want to have to explain what the five points of Calvinism were every time. And two, I didn't want to give them more emphasis than they deserved in the greater system, because there's a lot of important doctrines in the Westminster Confession besides these five. But now having covered all five of them, it seemed appropriate that we would take a class and consider the five of them together as a body that teaches us the way of salvation. To understand the five points of Calvinism, we need to go back in time a little bit to the early 17th century. And by the way, you understand when I say 17th century, I mean the 1600s. If you're going to study history, you've got to understand that convention. That's something that confused me for a long time. The 20th century is the 1900s. The 17th century is the 1600s. So we're going back to the early 17th century. And we need to go to the land of Holland. In Holland at this time, there is a national church, the Church of Holland. And this particular country in Europe, this is approximately 100 years after the Protestant Reformation, the land of Holland is early Calvinistic in its theology, which means that they held to the system of theology that was taught by John Calvin about 80 years earlier. So this is, in Europe, a stronghold of Calvinism, along with a few other countries like Scotland, England to some degree, Switzerland. But at this particular time, early 17th century, in an important seminary in Holland, there is an important professor, a beloved professor, And his name is James Arminius. So he's a Dutch theologian in a seminary in this Calvinist church of Holland. And James Arminius is not sure that Calvinism is correct. He's struggling with it himself and has come to the conviction that it may in fact be an error. Arminius' difficulties really boiled down to a couple of philosophical assumptions that he held to be absolutely true and undeniable. And they are these two of them. One, Arminius felt that divine sovereignty, that is the idea that God is in control of all things, that all things come to pass according to the sovereign decree and providence of God. That idea of divine sovereignty was incompatible with the idea of human freedom and responsibility. A man's choices couldn't truly be free choices, his own choices, and he couldn't be responsible for his choices if God was sovereign over them, and they were but the fulfillment of God's own decrees. To Arminius, this was nonsense. This was a contradiction. So he denied that this could be true. So that when the Bible speaks to man and calls him to make a choice and treats him as a free agent, Arminius looked at that and said, well, if that's true, then God cannot be sovereign over this choice. It's an impossibility, a philosophical impossibility. The second difficulty that Arminius had was that he felt that human responsibility presupposed human ability. In other words, if man is going to be held responsible for an act, then he must be able to do it. So that when the Bible holds a man responsible for his choice, whether he accepts the gospel or rejects the gospel, that must indicate that man has the ability to make that choice, either to believe the gospel or reject the gospel. OK, so this is philosophical. foundations of the theology of James Arminius. And holding these things to be intuitive, absolutely necessary according to rational thought, he could not believe that the Bible would teach otherwise. And so on the basis of this philosophy, he went to the scriptures and interpreted the scriptures so that they were consistent with his philosophical presuppositions. OK, now again, by the way, this is what's called a speculative approach to theology, where a man begins not with scripture, but begins with his own with his own intuitions, with his own reason, with his own philosophy, and then goes to scripture and makes scripture bow to his philosophy. There's been a lot of speculative philosophy over the course of the history of the church. This is just one example. So it's on the basis, then, of this philosophy, these philosophical presuppositions, that Arminius begins to challenge the Calvinist theology within this particular seminary. And of course, over the years, as he's teaching, lots of students are coming through the seminary, sitting under the teaching of this winsome professor. And they're being influenced by the things that he's teaching concerning theology. James Arminius finally dies in 1609. And not long after that, his followers, his theological children, if you will, that have sat under him at this particular seminary, begin to form a movement. And they call themselves Arminians, named after James Arminius, their mentor. The Armenians come to the church in Holland, their church, and they present to it five articles of faith as what they call a remonstrance, which means a protest. And they say, these are the five articles of faith that we hold to be true. And we would like to see the church in Holland change the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism, which are both Calvinist documents. We'd like to see them change these, which was the Constitution of the Church in Holland, to represent the views of James Arminius and us as the Arminians in opposition to the Calvinism that we've held in the past. We think that these five articles of faith are, in fact, the truth. And we'd like to see this changed. The five articles of faith, and to summarize them briefly, were these. The first was human ability. The belief that man, though fallen into sin, yet retains the ability to make his own free choices and does have the ability in and of himself to choose to believe the gospel or to reject the gospel. And God's sovereignty has not taken away that freedom. Secondly, conditional election. Which means that when the Bible talks about election and God's elect, what the Bible means is that God looked into the future and he saw who would, of their own free will, believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ and who would not. And it's on the basis of this foreseen faith in men that God chose them unto salvation. So that ultimately, election is not based upon God's choice, it's based upon man's choice. God only choosing the elect because the elect he saw would first choose him. Thirdly, a doctrine called universal atonement. And this is the belief that Jesus Christ came into the world to die for all men. And furthermore, we understand, to make salvation possible for all men. But this means that Jesus Christ's death on the cross did not actually secure the salvation of anybody. It just sort of opened the door. It made it a possibility. And then it's sort of handed over to man, either to accept or to refuse. And so ultimately, still, it's man who determines his own destiny according to his own free choice. Thirdly. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is resistible. According to Arminianism, when the Gospel is preached, God, by His Holy Spirit, goes to those who have heard the Gospel and the Spirit makes an effort to draw people to Jesus Christ. Sometimes they call it the Spirit's wooing. But this action of the Holy Spirit and the hearing of the Gospel is not so powerful, so dominant that it cannot still be resisted. So that the Spirit is there trying to get people to accept Christ and to believe and be saved, but yet every man still has it within himself to reject the Spirit's drawing and perish of his own free choice. And then lastly, was the doctrine of the fall from grace. And this is the belief that basically that a man having believed in Jesus Christ, having been saved by that faith, must still then continue to believe in Jesus Christ to the end if he is to be saved. and that is still within his own power. So he must make the choice to believe and he must also make the choice to continue to believe until the end. If at any point he changes his mind, decides to reject the gospel, then he will perish. So he can be in a state of grace and then fall out of a state of grace according to his own free will. By the way, Arminians are not all consistent on this point. This particular point in history, they seem to be united as they brought this remonstrance to the the church in Holland, but over the course of history, Arminians have differed on this particular point. So this is the remonstrance the Arminians say. These are our five articles of faith. We'd like to see our confession, our catechism change to reflect these views, because we think that Calvinism is wrong. So you can imagine big controversy ensues in the land of Holland. It takes a while for this to happen. Finally, in the year 1618, so eight years after this remonstrance is presented, the Church of Holland calls what's known as a synod, which is basically a council where authorities, leaders are brought from different areas to one place to make an important decision. It's held in the city of Dort, so it's known historically as the Synod of Dort. Take in these statistics. The Synod of Dort was composed of 84 men. It's a pretty large council. It's not a decision of just a handful, just a few. But they brought theologians, ministers from all over Holland, and even from other lands, from Germany, Switzerland, other authorities. They brought them in to consider this challenge to Calvinism. The Synod of Dort met for a total of 154 sessions. 154 days, this council came together to study these two positions in the light of Scripture to make their decision. And so the entire synod took a total of seven months to complete. So a very thorough study. And at the end of this synod, it was decided that Arminianism, as represented in these five articles of faith, was inconsistent with the teaching of Scripture. And they condemned it as heretical. And those who were teaching it lost their posts throughout the Church of Holland. But the Synod of Dort did not feel that merely rejecting the five articles of Arminianism was sufficient. And so as a As an official response to this remonstrance, they presented five points of their own, answering to each of these five points. And those five points have come to be known as the five points of Calvinism. So notice a couple of things here. One, five points of Calvinism were not set forth by John Calvin as five points. The reason they're called the five points of Calvinism is because they reflect the teachings of John Calvin, which took place 80 years earlier. The second thing to note is that the only reason that there's five points is because there were five articles of faith presented by the Arminians. So it really began, the idea of five points really began with them, and this was merely a response. So these, then, were the five points of Calvinism. Again, we've covered every one of these in our study of the Westminster Confession. So I'm not going to go into these in great detail. I'm not going to try to defend them from scripture. We've already done that. But I just named them and briefly explained what they are. The first one, in response to human ability, the Arminian doctrine of human ability, the Calvinists pose the doctrine of total depravity, or also sometimes called total inability. And total depravity means that man's fall into sin, which took place at the Garden of Eden, was so severe, was such a desperate fall into sin, and that man is so now thoroughly enslaved to the sin in which he has fallen, that he has, at least with respect to any spiritual good, lost the ability to choose that which is good. Yes, he acts according to his own will. Yes, he acts according to his own nature. But his own nature is thoroughly wicked, being influenced in every part by the sin into which he's fallen. So, you can give him his choice. But there's no question what he's going to choose as a fallen, enslaved, wicked man. He's going to choose evil. He's going to reject the Son of God and choose the sin that he loves. It's 100 percent predictable. Secondly, in response to the Arminian doctrine of conditional election, the Calvinists proposed the doctrine of unconditional election. And this means that All mankind being lost in sin, all with respect to their spiritual condition being equal, which is totally to praise God before the foundation of the world, not for anything in them. just for his sheer glory's sake and out of his free grace and love, chose certain individuals from among the ruined race of mankind and set them apart to be his people. And to be by his son, Jesus Christ, saved from their sins, that they might inherit eternal life. It's an unconditional election. There's nothing in these people that made them the objects of God's choice. This was a free choice. God could have chosen any, He could have chosen all, He could have chosen none, but He chose for His glory's sake to choose these. And that's the only reason. Thirdly, in response to the Arminian doctrine of universal atonement, the Calvinists set forth a doctrine of limited atonement, also called particular atonement, which I think is actually a better term. And the doctrine of limited atonement basically means that the God of Father sent Jesus the Son into the world not to save all men, not to make salvation possible for all men, but to save God's elect. This act of of dying on the cross is one with, consistent with the purpose of God in election to save the elect. So that Jesus came to the cross not to make salvation possible for all men, but not actually secure the salvation of anyone. But Jesus came and he died on the cross to actually secure, to purchase the salvation of God's elect. And having done so, it was a certainty that they would be that they would be saved because Jesus had thereby done all that was necessary for them to be saved. That's limited atonement. In response to the Armenian doctrine that the Holy Spirit's grace is resistible, the The Calvinists posited a doctrine which they called irresistible grace, which is also called effectual calling, which is what it's called in the Westminster Confession. And this is the idea that when the gospel is preached, the Holy Spirit goes not unto all men indiscriminately, but the Holy Spirit is sent particularly unto God's elect. And the calling of the Spirit and the hearing of the gospel in the life of God's elect is so powerful It is a regenerating influence that completely gives them a new heart, totally illuminates their minds, sets them free from the bonds of sin, so that 100%, without any doubt, when the Spirit comes in its cause, a man is brought by faith, which is a gift from God, unto Jesus Christ and saved. It's irresistible. There's not a possibility. that one of God's elect being called by the Spirit would reject that call and walk away an unbeliever. And then lastly, in response to the idea that The believers could fall from grace. The Calvinists taught a doctrine called the perseverance of the saints, which we covered in the last two weeks. And again, this is the belief that God having sinned his son, having decreed the salvation of the elect, God having sinned his son to die for the salvation of the elect, God having sinned his Holy Spirit to bring the elect unto Jesus Christ by faith. There is no doubt. that they will indeed continue to persevere in that faith and be eternally saved. For the God who has done all the rest will, by his almighty power, grant them the grace of perseverance so that they will not fall away. So that all God's elect will, in fact, be saved. So those are the five points of Calvinism. And if you look at it on the handout, at least in English, there's something of an acronym here, an acrostic, or whatever you call it. U-L-I-P, the first letters of the five points of Calvinism spell the word tulip. So this is how, at least English speaking Calvinists, remember the five points of Calvinism. Remember the word tulip, total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints. All right, any comments or questions before we go on? Everything clear? Yes, sir. Weren't there a lot of social things going on at the time, like the discussion of free will being such an issue? I'm not an ophthalmologist, I'm a veterinarian. But there were some things about free will going on. I mean, class struggle and all that stuff. I mean, does this stuff just show up out of left field? Or why did the idea of free will all of a sudden, at the end of the 16th century, play a role in the 16th century and 16th century? I don't know that I have ever read anything in particular about the environment at that time, but you have to imagine, I mean you're at the height of the Enlightenment. and just the humanism that was dominating Western thought at the time. And so there was a heavy emphasis in the world of philosophy and everything that that touched to emphasize man's own ability to determine his destiny. I mean, everything was driving towards human excellence in terms of the arts, in terms of academics, and everything else. And so this is the age of the elevation of man. So I would think that, in and of itself, would not make it surprising that in these academic institutions, you're going to begin to feel that influence among the theologians. Sure, yeah, that's a good point. So I think that it always comes up in some sense, eventually, and it always has, yeah. I think too, I think Descartes' meditation came out in 1609. I think it was in Brighton at this time. And that's when I got into it. What you're talking about, speculative approach, I think was generally a new approach, where you don't start with the church, you start with God, and then build your doctrines. You start with the man, or Descartes started, I think, or I have. And you start with man, and then you go to the church. And that was relatively a monopoly. And you could argue that it's starting to fall, but I think in fact, in other terms, that would appear to be a big part of this. Would you like to support that? Which is sometimes important to understand because you don't want to say that the Reformation happens out of the Enlightenment, but the Reformation, in large part, comes along before the Central Tentative Enlightenment came along, before that starting point of man. But your point's well made, Matt. There were certainly lots of influences leaning in this direction at the time. So I did want at this point to... To go back in history and talk about what you mentioned, the question is, was this the first time this debate and these questions arose in the history of the church? And the answer is certainly not. You can go all the way back to the fifth century. And there was a very famous debate, not between two groups, really, but between two men, St. Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, and a British monk named Pelagius. Pelagius' views were more radical than the Armenians in Holland. He actually denied original sin entirely, said man is born in the exact same state in which Adam was created, totally innocent, and so he has absolute freedom of will to choose to sin, to choose not to sin, to choose to believe, to choose not to believe. So Augustine challenged this, really developed the doctrine of original sin, and also along with it taught total depravity, predestination, which is conditional election, and also irresistible grace. So a thousand years. before the Senate of Dort, these things were being hammered out and discussed in the church. After the time of Augustine, Augustine's defense from scripture was so devastating that Pelagianism just disappeared for the most part. But then it resurfaced later with something called semi-Pelagianism. which was closer to the Arminian position, held that man was affected by sin, is born in sin in some sense, and yet retains that slight ability to be able to take that first step of faith and so determine his own destiny, and God takes it from there and does the rest. Basically, same as the Arminian position. And so that lingered around in the medieval church up until the time of the Protestant Reformation. And we want to note at this point that at the actual Protestant Reformation, all of the greatest of the reformers were all Calvinists on these questions. Oryx Wingly, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Bollinger, Buter, All these guys that were there leading the charge of the Protestant Reformation in this debate between Calvinism and Arminianism, which would come to know those terms 100 years from then. They were all on the side of Calvinism. The other question with respect to the history of the church is, all right, Senator Dort having made this decision, was that the end of Arminianism in the church there in 1618? In the church in Holland, they beat it back pretty good, but it resurfaced very quickly and has now actually come to be. The dominant, Arminianism is the dominant position of the church in the West and has been for 100 years, probably maybe 150. So that at this particular point in time, nine out of 10 churches, I would say at least, that you would go to, if you look at what they teach about salvation, hold to the Arminian view and not Calvinist view, Southern Baptist, non-denominational churches, Pentecostal, Methodist, on and on you go. They're all Arminians, and so most of the Christians that you come across in the world today, whether they know these terms or not, this is the way they've been taught, this is the way they think, they are theologically Arminian. However, In the last 20 or 30 years, there has been in the West, particularly in America, a resurgence of Calvinist theology, so that Calvinism is actually making a a return or something of a charge. And of course, I don't know if you're aware of it, but we're part of that. Most of us come out of Arminian churches, have discovered five points of Calvinism, been convinced of it, and find ourselves now in a reformed church. So, it's kind of where we are in this debate. It's always been around, probably always will be around, but this is one of these five points of Calvinism, Senate of Dort, 1618. It's kind of a critical moment in the defining of the differences between the two sides. A couple of quick points. Concerning the five points of Calvinism, the first is that these five points are separate. We're not saying the same thing over and over five different ways. They are different doctrines, but the five doctrines are. truly inseparable. The belief in one necessarily assumes and leads to belief in the others. There are some who have attempted to be four-point Calvinists, three-point Calvinists, but it's never been a very popular position because you just wind up in all kinds of contradictions that you find you can't live with. The doctrine of total depravity leads you to the understanding that election must be unconditional, which logically leads to the idea that Jesus has come to die for the elect, those whom God has chosen, which tells us that if they're going to come to faith, the Holy Spirit must be an irresistible force to bring them to faith. And if it's God's decree that they should be saved and he's done all the rest, then certainly he's going to bring them to the end. So it all kind of fits together. So one of the important ideas to get out of that is that in defending any one of the five points of Calvinism, you need to understand that part of the defense is the doctrinal support for the other four. If you're attempting to defend, for example, the idea of limited atonement, You need to understand that in addition to those doctrines, those scriptures that specifically speak to limited atonement, there is also the additional support of all those passages that teach unconditional election and total depravity and irresistible grace and perseverance of saints. These five things belong together and when you bring them together, each point is stronger than any one by itself. The other thing to point out is that The five points of Calvinism are not a summary of the entire system of theology known as Calvinism. Far from it. They really only address one area of all the doctrines of systematic theology, the area of soteriology, and not even the entirety of that. Just five particular points of doctrine within this particular system. There's a lot of people that don't understand that. And so the label Calvinist gets used in two different ways. Sometimes when people say, I'm a Calvinist, they mean with respect to these five points, the differences between Calvinists and Arminians over soteriology, salvation, then I'm on the side of the Calvinists and not the Romanians. But while they may hold to those five points, in all the other doctrines which are part of the system of theology known as Calvinism, they may be somewhere totally different from John Calvin. And I would say those people, eventually, if they're thinking it through, are going to find themselves in all kinds of contradictions. Because the whole system is internally consistent and belongs together. So if you're a purist, which I advocate purity in theology, to truly be a Calvinist, when you're talking about a church, or you're talking about an individual, then your views should be consistent with the entirety of the teaching in theology which John Calvin taught, more or less. Or let's put it this way. You are more or less a Calvinist, depending on how much you agree with the whole system of theology. How about that? It's sort of like saying, in an era of politics, if you agreed with Ronald Reagan on one particular area of public polity and disagreed with him on everything else, and say, oh, yeah, I'm a Reagan conservative, it wouldn't really be accurate. Reagan's views are more than just this one little area in which he happened to agree with him. So just point that out. Comments or questions at this point? All right. Last thing I'm going to cover, then, is why this doctrine is important. I'm going to talk four areas of the church. First is this. I've had debates with Arminians a number of times over the last 10 years, family members, people that I've worked with and things, friendly debates, not anything ugly. And I always win because scripture is on my side. It's really not fair, but it's just the truth. And so the debate's always in the same way with my Arminian brother saying to me, well, what difference does it make? What difference does it make? Because ultimately, you and I agree that we have to believe in Jesus to be saved, and that's what matters. As long as we understand that it's the faith in Jesus Christ that we're saved and all the rest of this argumentation about Calvinism, Arminianism, it's just we just don't need to get bogged down in that. Well, what they betray in this objection. Is a is a thoroughly man centered. Understanding of salvation. Why is the doctrine of salvation important, they say, well, just to get me saved and as long as I know the way to get saved. What else does anything matter? But the reality is that there's something far more important going on in the salvation of human beings. There's a there's a principle goal in salvation, and it's not actually the salvation of man. That's important. But secondary, the primary goal in the salvation of man is the glory of God. God has saved man. for his glory's sake, that his glory might be manifest in the salvation of sinners through Jesus Christ, the Son. And if that's the primary thing, then there's a huge difference between Calvinism and Arminianism. It makes a big difference because Arminianism in salvation shares the glory for salvation between God and man. God does his part. Man does his part. And yet the Bible is emphatic that no man shall boast before God. That God works out his plan of salvation in such that man stands before God as a saved creature and has not one word to utter in his own praise. God, thank you for doing all that you did. And aren't you glad that I chose you? Nonsense. You'll never find it in scripture. And it's inconsistent with the purpose of God in the work of salvation. So in this respect, Calvinism should be evidently superior in that all the glory of salvation goes to God and to God alone. As an aside, you have to believe that this understanding of salvation, Calvinist understanding, which is thoroughly God-centered and God-glorifying as opposed to Arminianism, is going to have its effect on the worship of God. That if the people sitting in the pews and the people who are leading the worship service have a thoroughly God-centered, God-glorifying understanding of salvation, that's going to work itself out in the way that they worship the Lord, their God, who saved them, as opposed to an Arminian view where everybody there thinks that salvation is a combined effort between God and man. Naturally, you're going to have a more man-centered understanding of worship, which is going to have its effect upon all aspects of the service. So I would insist that Calvinists should be teaching Arminians how to worship, not the other way around. Or at least, we should be setting the example. For Calvinists, at this point in the history of the church, to embrace Arminian practices that characterize their worship and bring them into the Reformed church is to go from the greater to the lesser, I would say, for these reasons. Something to think about. The reason this doctrine is important is with respect to the study of the scriptures, there's no doubt about it, that generally speaking, you tend to find an anti intellectual sentiment in Armenian churches. They're not as interested in doctrine. in theology. And the reason is because when they try to do theology, starting with their philosophical presuppositions and their articles of faith, they find the interpretation of Scripture to be confusing and difficult and frustrating. They can't make the Bible say what in their minds they know it must say. And so they eventually get frustrated and they say, well, it just doesn't matter. This is not what's important. They dummy it down to a couple of central things, and they say, well, this is what we need to say, this is what we need to do. But in Reformed churches, and this is throughout the history of the Reformed church, Presbyterianism being a good example, you tend to get more of an emphasis on doctrine. You get to be people who are more interested in seriously studying and systematizing scripture. Why? Because when you approach it from a Calvinist perspective, it works. The system of Calvinism is a faithful representation of the system of doctrine taught in scripture itself. So Calvinist theology is much more rewarding than Arminian theology. And I say that Primarily because I want your experience in studying the scriptures to be to be fruitful, to be pleasant, to be rewarding. I don't want it to be frustrating. And I would insist that understanding these five points makes all the difference in the world and whether or not you can understand what the Bible is saying to you or not. Thirdly. These five points of Calvinism are important for two reasons with respect to God's people, their humility, and their comfort. First, you understand what the five points of Calvinism are saying. It's deeply humbling to the Christian. It says to the Christian, really, ultimately, apart from the grace of God, you are not any different from all those other people who are out there living in sin, who do not believe, who are going to spend eternity in hell. You're not one whit better than them. apart from the grace of God, which has brought you out of that. And so you have absolutely no reason to look down your nose at those people as if you're the one who made the good choice and they're the one who made the foolish choice. There's a humility here and I would emphasize that this is a good thing. This is as it should be. We should be a humble people, understanding that we're saved by God's grace alone. And then the second thing is the comfort of the saints. If you understand what the five points of Calvinism are saying, they're saying to you, do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ? I do. Have you been born again? Has your heart been changed by the Holy Spirit? Yeah. What the five points of Calvinism are saying is this was never in question. What you have experienced is the fulfillment of a decree which God made from all eternity in which he set his love upon you in particular. And when he sent his son into the world, it was the son would save you and the son died to purchase everything necessary for your salvation. And it's the Holy Spirit who's come powerfully, contrary to all your resistance, and brought you to the state of faith in which you now stand. And you can be absolutely certain that the God who has saved you, the God who has begun this work, will complete it until the day of the Lord Jesus Christ when he comes. That is a world of comfort, isn't it? And then lastly, the ministry of the church. If you think from an Arminian perspective, And you go forth to to preach the gospel to the nations. Your thinking is. Everybody out there can. Except the gospel. And they say. They can be convinced. They can be persuaded. And therefore, out of our love for people, out of our compassion for them, we should do everything that we can to compel them and to convince them to accept the gospel and to come to be baptized and to join the church. Whatever we have to do to bring that to pass, we should do it. That's the great good. And therefore, what you tend to get is you tend to get this attempt to to figure out how to present the gospel so that it will be more appealing to people and how to order the ministries of the church and the worship of the church so that when people come in all their sin, that they would that they would want to be Christians and they would want to accept the gospel and they would want to be baptized. And the result is that anything that we find in the Bible Any doctrine in the Bible, anything that the Bible tells us to do, that we perceive is going to drive people away, we tend to suppress that. And we tend to elevate those things that are pleasing to the ears of men. So this is where Arminian ministry and Arminian worship comes from. It's the idea that if we just make this all appealing enough, we're going to save a lot of people. But from the Calvinist perspective, this makes no sense at all. What's the goal of ministry? The salvation of God's elect. And what is it that God's elect need to hear? They need to hear as purely and clearly as possible the teaching of the Word of God as it has been presented to us. They need to understand and see and ultimately receive the sacraments which God has given to us in their purity, because these are the things that God uses by his Holy Spirit to bring the elect to faith in Jesus Christ. You say, what about this? This is offensive. When we say this, all these people leave. But don't you understand? You're talking about depraved people. Of course it offends them. Of course it changes the mind. But for the person who is under the conviction of the Holy Spirit, that offensive thing is the very blade which the Holy Spirit uses to pierce the hardness of their heart and bring about true conversion and change. So we do not shy away from all that is offensive in the scripture by any mean, by any means on the contrary. We present it as clearly and as faithfully as we can, according to the scriptures. And we're not dissuaded if if a portion of the world, even if the majority of the world finds that it's offensive and laughs and runs away. That's OK. Our goal, our objective has to be to be true to the scriptures because ultimately what we're seeking is the salvation of God's elect and they shall be saved by the word, through the spirit, the administration of the sacraments, the means of grace. So the two approaches to ministry are, wind up being polar opposites. One of the most discouraging things to see in our denomination today is to see these reformed PCA churches looking over at the Armenians, looking at their numbers, and saying, well, we ought to do this. And bringing all this Armenian ministry philosophy into the reformed church, it doesn't make any sense. And ultimately, it's a mistake. Think about it. Moving from theology to ministry. I think you'll see the truth of what I'm saying. All right. Any comments or questions? I was just thinking about kind of backtracking a little bit. Part of it is, we demand salvation of our very first people who are right now out in the world. And, like, you know, I mean, even you, you know, I'm going to give you that time before you think about how to get things done. I don't know how to get it done. I don't know how to get it done. I don't know how to get it done. I don't know how to get it done. I don't know how to get it done. I don't know how to get it done. I don't know how to get it done. I don't know how to get it done. I don't know how to get it done. I don't know how to get it done. I don't know how to get it done. I don't know how to get it done. I don't know how to get it done. I don't know how to get it done. I don't know how to get it done. I don't Sacrifice is built between a person's legs, and between your legs is everything that separates us from God. And God seems to be starting to do that, and I know that, but that's not enough. We have to be patient with Him, and we may be patient with Him, but they've got to do something through that unloving act of God. It's not just that they're being paid in a four-year time frame. They're actually, unless we do say, it would be a man who's sitting in prison for three and a half years later, he's got a punishment. They say, oh, you're going to think you can get through, but you've got a 47-year sentence. Yeah, the doctrine of the five, the doctrine of limited atonement tends to be the most difficult one for people to, to wrap their minds more there to accept in their hearts. So I guess it's our place to defend that, show people how it can be loving and how it can be just. I wonder if the people of all communities are interested in nothing that's known as the state of the galaxy. I wonder how they feel about the fact that, who do they hold up as somebody who, just to be methodical, there have been billions of people who have been born, more than it's feasible, and have lived a very, like, law-abiding life. So if we're not completely framed and we have the ability to live a simple life where we have the ability to be a part of this, kids interact with us, then how do they come to that end? Yeah, I think that's definitely a difficulty for the Pelagian view. For the semi-Pelagian view, they do admit a corruption of sin. So the universal existence of sin is not actually that much of a difficulty for them. But it does still leave open the possibility that none would have believed. And if some believe and some don't believe, what really is the difference between them? How do you explain that difference? Did it come from God? Did it come from man? There's a lot of questions there. All right, yes, sir. Well, I just remember, you know, I was in an Albanian church for 12 years. I didn't necessarily recognize that, but there was a big emphasis on evangelism. And I remember when I first heard about Calvinism, I remember I had this picture. of this kind of exclusive club of people who thought that they were chosen. It's almost like the finish of a sporting event, where the woman is winner, happy, and the woman is loser, unhappy. I think, anyway, so I kind of dismissed it, but, you know, we came across it again later. You know, I was anxious to see that there was a difference with evangelism and how, when you're thinking about sharing the gospel, how you share with such maturity that Whatever you're sharing with, the things that you recall are in spirit, that is, they are, they will certainly be affectionate. and that we are not to try to guess who is called by God to the gospel, but rather we have to evangelize with the assumption that everyone that we meet could be called by God. And furthermore, remember, I remember observing, you know, in my days in the Baptist Church, I remember observing some evangelize with not only that they present the mental harm through means of persuasion, but so forcefully. You know, because they were actually evangelizing in a consistent way with the belief that people would repent if you didn't try to sell all of the rest of Japan by any means, including, you know, trying to impress people with whatever. But then at the same time, in that same church, I saw others who, probably unwittingly, presented in a way more consistent with the Calvinist model. They simply presented the gospel as if it was a prayer. And so it was very confusing for me at that time. And so I gradually come around to the idea And this is something that's hard to see. I don't understand it. You know, I look at myself and I don't understand it. But then just being able to accept that you don't understand it, and why it is this way. And this was, I guess, the way for me, it was liberating to be able to talk about the gospel and share it with people, and lead them in such a way. Yeah, yeah. The text that settled all doubts in my mind was in Romans nine, where Paul's teaching very clearly the doctrine of unconditional election. And he says, what should we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? And his answer is, who are you, O man, to answer against God? It doesn't seem if it doesn't seem fair to you, but this is what the Bible teaches. Who are you to say that God's ways are unrighteous? Put me in that place is what I did. And it was just, you know, because you don't have to throw your way with the teacher. You can just read it and say, I believe this, this is what I can do to reconcile it with your view and perspective. All right, well, I've taken up all your time this morning, and I apologize for that. But we better get moving if we're going to be on time. If you have any further questions or comments, please let us talk about these things. We'd be glad to talk to you about it. Thanks.