Author: Papa Giorgio

The Honest Calvinist Evangelist

Published by Papa Giorgio

This [cartoons and commentary] is via NOT WILLING THAT ANY, an important aspect of the jaundiced view of salvation embedded into the warped view of the Reformation (click toons to enlarge):

Quick Take:

When you share the gospel, are you saying the same thing your theology actually believes?

This image shows a common tension in Calvinist evangelism. In public, the message sounds simple and open: believe in Jesus and you will be saved. But when the theology is explained, the unbeliever learns that they cannot believe, cannot want to believe, and cannot even seek God unless God first changes them. The invitation sounds real at first, but once the system is understood, it becomes hard to see how salvation is truly something the listener can respond to at all.

Is it an accurate picture of Calvinism?

To understand this image fairly, we have to describe Calvinism the way Calvinists themselves do. Calvinism teaches that all people are commanded to believe the gospel, but no one has the ability to do so unless God first gives them a new heart. People are responsible to believe, even though they are unable to believe on their own (John 6:44, Romans 8:7–8, Ephesians 2:1).

The Public Gospel Call
Panel 1 shows a Calvinist evangelist preaching the gospel the way most Calvinists do. The message, “Believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved,” comes straight from Scripture (Acts 16:31). It is spoken to everyone and sounds like a real choice. This is accurate. Calvinists believe the gospel should be preached freely to all people, even though only some will be able to respond.

Human Inability to Believe
Panel 2 explains what Calvinism believes is happening underneath that message. According to Calvinism, a person cannot accept the gospel unless God first regenerates them (John 3:3, John 6:65, 1 Corinthians 2:14). The evangelist’s explanation is not exaggerated. It is a direct statement of Calvinist doctrine. The unbeliever’s confusion makes sense because the call sounded like something he could do, but the explanation says he cannot.

Inability to Seek God
Panel 3 simply follows the logic of Calvinism. If a person cannot believe or desire salvation, then they also cannot seek God or even pray rightly unless God acts first (Romans 3:10–11). The unbeliever is not arguing against Calvinism here. He is repeating it back in his own words. The image lets the theology speak for itself.

Returning to Evangelistic Language
In Panel 4, the evangelist turns back to the crowd and resumes preaching in general terms. He again speaks about believing and being saved, without mentioning inability or regeneration. This reflects how Calvinist evangelism often works in practice. Calvinists believe God uses the preached word to give faith to the elect (Romans 10:17), even though the hearer has no control over whether they will be given that ability.

Taken together, the image shows Calvinism accurately. The gospel is preached to everyone, but the ability to respond is given only to some (Romans 9:16–18). The tension the unbeliever feels is not because he misunderstands, but because he understands clearly.

And that leads to a simple question worth thinking about. If the gospel sounds like it is up to you until the theology is explained, and once explained it no longer is, what is the unbeliever really being asked to do? And is it possible that the picture in Panel 4, where God truly desires all to be saved and genuinely enables all to respond, better matches both the message of the gospel and the character of God?

Quick Take:

Why would a human being want everyone to be saved, while God does not?

That question drives the tension in this illustration. Within Calvinist theology, God’s saving love is not extended to all people in the same way. Because of that, broad statements about God loving and wanting to save everyone eventually need to be qualified. The preacher’s shift is not meant to deceive, but to stay consistent with doctrine. What feels uneasy is not a mistake, but watching theology reshape the message in real time.

Is it an accurate picture of Calvinism?

At its core, this illustration is trying to show Calvinism honestly, not mock it. The preacher is not confused or hypocritical. He is adjusting his words to line up with what Calvinism actually teaches about salvation. The tension in the image comes from doctrinal faithfulness, not emotional struggle. In that sense, the illustration reflects Calvinism accurately.

  1. Salvation depends on God’s choice, not human desire (Unconditional Election)
    In the illustration, the preacher admits that he would choose salvation for everyone if he could, but recognizes that God does not. This matches the Calvinist belief that God chooses who will be saved based on His will alone, not on human desire or response (Romans 9:11–13; Ephesians 1:4–5). The preacher’s internal correction reflects this belief. If salvation is based on God’s choice, then God does not intend to save all people.
  2. God’s saving love is limited to the elect (Limited Atonement)
    The preacher realizes that his original statement sounded like his own love rather than God’s. In Calvinism, God’s saving love is not universal. Christ’s death is understood to be effective only for those God has chosen (John 10:14–15; Matthew 1:21). Because of this, the preacher feels the need to clarify his message so it does not suggest that God’s saving love applies to everyone.
  3. God saves those He chooses without fail (Irresistible Grace)
    Calvinism teaches that when God chooses to save someone, His grace cannot be resisted and will always succeed (John 6:37, 44; Romans 8:30). This matters because if God can save anyone He wants and does not fail, then the fact that many remain unsaved means God does not intend to save all. This belief explains why the preacher narrows his message in the final panel.

This illustration does not claim Calvinists lack compassion or sincerity. It shows how Calvinist doctrine shapes the way salvation is talked about. If this is an accurate picture of Calvinism, the question for the reader is simple: are you comfortable with this picture of God’s saving love, and does it reflect what you believe Scripture teaches about God’s character?

Wanna see a visual of this?

Quick Take:

What does it say about God’s character if rescue is limited not by ability, but by choice?

This illustration presses the tension between a God who has abundant power to save and a framework in which that power is applied only to some, even while others remain in the same danger. Scripture consistently presents God as one who is able and willing to save, who does not delight in destruction but calls people to turn and live (Ezekiel 18:23; 33:11). The gospel is proclaimed as good news for all, with Christ described as the Savior of the world and the atoning sacrifice not only for our sins but for the sins of the whole world (John 3:16–17; 1 John 2:2). The image raises the question of whether it best reflects the biblical witness to see God’s selective rescue as rooted in an eternal decision that leaves others without remedy, or to understand judgment as the tragic result of rejecting a salvation God genuinely extends and desires all to receive (2 Peter 3:9; 1 Timothy 2:3–6).

Is it an accurate picture of Calvinism?

The aim of this illustration is accuracy, not mockery. It is intended to engage Calvinist theology on its own terms rather than caricature it. A meaningful critique must begin by representing Calvinism as its advocates themselves describe it, allowing the system to be evaluated based on its actual claims.

Total Inability: The prisoners are entirely unable to rescue themselves from the fire, reflecting the Calvinist teaching that fallen humanity is spiritually dead and incapable of coming to God apart from divine intervention (Ephesians 2:1–3; Romans 8:7–8).

Sovereign Election: The firefighter chooses whom to rescue based solely on his own decision rather than any quality, action, or response found in the prisoners. This mirrors unconditional election, where God’s saving choice rests in His sovereign will alone (Romans 9:15–16; Ephesians 1:4–5).

Effectual Grace: The rescue of the chosen prisoner is decisive and successful. Once the firefighter acts, the outcome is guaranteed, reflecting the Calvinist claim that God’s saving grace unfailingly accomplishes salvation for those He intends to save (John 6:37; John 6:44).

Particular Redemption: The firefighter’s efforts are directed toward one individual rather than all those in danger. This aligns with the doctrine of particular redemption, where Christ’s atoning work is understood to be designed to secure salvation for the elect in a definite and effective way (John 10:11, 15; Matthew 1:21).

God-Centered Glory: The rescued prisoner responds with gratitude that highlights the rescuer’s choice and action rather than questioning the scope of the rescue. This reflects the Calvinist emphasis that salvation ultimately exists to magnify God’s glory and initiative rather than human response or cooperation (Ephesians 1:5–6; Romans 11:36).

Taken together, these elements show that the illustration is engaging real Calvinist theology rather than a strawman. It portrays a system in which salvation is entirely God-driven, selective by divine purpose, and effectual for those chosen.

The question that remains is not whether the illustration is fair, but whether this portrayal of salvation is one you believe best reflects the character of God revealed in Scripture?

The Origin of Evil… Calvinist’s Say God, Same as the Atheist

Published by Papa Giorgio

CLICK TO ENLARGE

(Below Video Description) Dr. Leighton Flowers plays clips from Drs. James White, RC Sproul and John Piper on the question of the origin of moral evil so as to compare and contrast the various perspectives and the apparent inconsistencies of the Calvinistic worldview.

See my other posts on this topic:

William Lane Craig discusses [below] being a “consistent Calvinist” vs. an “inconsistent Calvinism”

Is the Calvinist God the Author of Evil? w/ William Lane Craig Dr. William Lane Craig explains why he believes that Calvinism is forced to conclude that God is the author of evil.

The below is from my “Challenges To Strict 5-Point Calvinism | Tozer/Winger/Geisler/Lewis“

“Divine Goodness”

Any consideration of the goodness of God at once threat­ens us with the following dilemma.

On the one hand, if God is wiser than we His judge­ment must differ from ours on many things, and not least on good and evil. What seems to us good may therefore not be good in His eyes, and what seems to us evil may not be evil.

On the other hand, if God’s moral judgement differs from ours so that our ‘black’ may be His ‘white’, we can mean nothing by calling Him good; for to say ‘God is good’, while asserting that His goodness is wholly other than ours, is really only to say ‘God is we know not what’. And an utterly unknown quality in God cannot give us moral grounds for loving or obeying Him. If He is not (in our sense) ‘good’ we shall obey, if at all, only through fear—and should be equally ready to obey an omnipotent Fiend. The doctrine of Total Depravity— when the consequence is drawn that, since we are totally depraved, our idea of good is worth simply nothing— may thus turn Christianity into a form of devil-worship.

The escape from this dilemma depends on observing what happens, in human relations, when the man of infe­rior moral standards enters the society of those who are better and wiser than he and gradually learns to accept their standards—a process which, as it happens, I can describe fairly accurately, since I have undergone it. When I came first to the University I was as nearly with­out a moral conscience as a boy could be. Some faint dis­taste for cruelty and for meanness about money was my utmost reach—of chastity, truthfulness, and self-sacrifice I thought as a baboon thinks of classical music. By the mercy of God I fell among a set of young men (none of them, by the way, Christians) who were sufficiently close to me in intellect and imagination to secure immediate intimacy, but who knew, and tried to obey, the moral law. Thus their judgement of good and evil was very different from mine. Now what happens in such a case is not in the least like being asked to treat as ‘white’ what was hitherto called black. The new moral judgements never enter the mind as mere reversals (though they do reverse them) of previous judgements but ‘as lords that are certainly expected’. You can have no doubt in which direction you are moving: they are more like good than the little shreds of good you already had, but are, in a sense, continuous with them. But the great test is that the recognition of the new standards is accompanied with the sense of shame and guilt: one is conscious of having blundered into soci­ety that one is unfit for. It is in the light of such experi­ences that we must consider the goodness of God. Beyond all doubt, His idea of ‘goodness’ differs from ours; but you need have no fear that, as you approach it, you will be asked simply to reverse your moral standards. When the relevant difference between the Divine ethics and your own appears to you, you will not, in fact, be in any doubt that the change demanded of you is in the direction you already call ‘better’. The Divine ‘goodness’ differs from ours, but it is not sheerly different: it differs from ours not as white from black but as a perfect circle from a child’s first attempt to draw a wheel. But when the child has learned to draw, it will know that the circle it then makes is what it was trying to make from the very beginning.

This doctrine is presupposed in Scripture. Christ calls men to repent—a call which would be meaningless if God’s standards were sheerly different from that which they already knew and failed to practise. He appeals to our existing moral judgement—‘Why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?’ (Luke 12:57) God in the Old Testament expostulates with men on the basis of their own concep­tions of gratitude, fidelity, and fair play: and puts Himself, as it were, at the bar before His own creatures—‘What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me?’ (Jeremiah 2:5.) …

CS Lewis | The Problem of Pain (Chapter 3)

“Human Wickedness”

…A recovery of the old sense of sin is essential to Christianity. Christ takes it for granted that men are bad. Until we really feel this assumption of His to be true, though we are part of the world He came to save, we are not part of the audience to whom His words are addressed. We lack the first condition for understanding what He is talking about. And when men attempt to be Christians without this preliminary consciousness of sin, the result is almost bound to be a certain resentment against God as to one always inexplicably angry. Most of us have at times felt a secret sympathy with the dying farmer who replied to the Vicar’s dissertation on repentance by asking ‘What harm have I ever done Him?’ There is the real rub. The worst we have done to God is to leave Him alone—why can’t He return the compliment? Why not live and let live? What call has He, of all beings, to be ‘angry’? It’s easy for Him to be good!

Now at the moment when a man feels real guilt— moments too rare in our lives—all these blasphemies vanish away. Much, we may feel, can be excused to human infirmities: but not this—this incredibly mean and ugly action which none of our friends would have done, which even such a thorough-going little rotter as X would have been ashamed of, which we would not for the world allow to be published. At such a moment we really do know that our character, as revealed in this action, is, and ought to be, hateful to all good men, and, if there are powers above man, to them. A God who did not regard this with unappeasable distaste would not be a good being. We cannot even wish for such a God—it is like wishing that every nose in the universe were abol­ished, that smell of hay or roses or the sea should never again delight any creature, because our own breath hap­pens to stink.

When we merely say that we are bad, the ‘wrath’ of God seems a barbarous doctrine; as soon as we perceive our badness, it appears inevitable, a mere corollary from God’s goodness. To keep ever before us the insight derived from such a moment as I have been describing, to learn to detect the same real inexcusable corruption under more and more of its complex disguises, is therefore indis­pensable to a real understanding of the Christian faith. This is not, of course, a new doctrine. I am attempting nothing very splendid in this chapter. I am merely trying to get my reader (and, still more, myself) over a pons asi-norum—to take the first step out of fools’ paradise and utter illusion. But the illusion has grown, in modern times, so strong, that I must add a few considerations tending to make the reality less incredible.

  1. We are deceived by looking on the outside of things. We suppose ourselves to be roughly not much worse than Y, whom all acknowledge for a decent sort of person, and certainly (though we should not claim it out loud) better than the abominable X. Even on the superficial level we are probably deceived about this. Don’t be too sure that your friends think you as good as Y. The very fact that you selected him for the comparison is suspicious: he is prob­ably head and shoulders above you and your circle. But let us suppose that Y and yourself both appear ‘not bad’. How far Y’s appearance is deceptive, is between Y and God. His may not be deceptive: you know that yours is.

Does this seem to you a mere trick, because I could say the same to Y and so to every man in turn? But that is just the point. Every man, not very holy or very arrogant, has to ‘live up to’ the outward appearance of other men: he knows there is that within him which falls far below even his most careless public behaviour, even his loosest talk. In an instant of time—while your friend hesitates for a word—what things pass through your mind? We have never told the whole truth. We may confess ugly facts— the meanest cowardice or the shabbiest and most prosaic impurity—but the tone is false. The very act of confess-ing—an infinitesimally hypocritical glance—a dash of humour—all this contrives to dissociate the facts from your very self. No one could guess how familiar and, in a sense, congenial to your soul these things were, how much of a piece with all the rest: down there, in the dreaming inner warmth, they struck no such discordant note, were not nearly so odd and detachable from the rest of you, as they seem when they are turned into words. We imply, and often believe, that habitual vices are excep­tional single acts, and make the opposite mistake about our virtues—like the bad tennis player who calls his nor­mal form his ‘bad days’ and mistakes his rare successes for his normal. I do not think it is our fault that we cannot tell the real truth about ourselves; the persistent, life-long, inner murmur of spite, jealousy, prurience, greed and self-complacence, simply will not go into words. But the  important thing is that we should not mistake our inevitably limited utterances for a full account of the worst that is inside.

  1. A reaction—in itself wholesome—is now going on against purely private or domestic conceptions of moral­ity, a reawakening of the social We feel our­selves to be involved in an iniquitous social system and to share a corporate guilt. This is very true: but the enemy can exploit even truths to our deception. Beware lest you are making use of the idea of corporate guilt to distract your attention from those humdrum, old-fashioned guilts of your own which have nothing to do with ‘the system’ and which can be dealt with without waiting for the mil­lennium. For corporate guilt perhaps cannot be, and cer­tainly is not, felt with the same force as personal guilt. For most of us, as we now are, this conception is a mere excuse for evading the real issue. When we have really learned to know our individual corruption, then indeed we can go on to think of the corporate guilt and can hardly think of it too much. But we must learn to walk before we run.
  2. We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. I have heard others, and I have heard myself, recounting cruelties and falsehoods committed in boyhood as if they were no concern of the present speaker’s, and even with laughter. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin. The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the blood of Christ: if we have repented these early sins we should remember the price of our forgiveness and be humble. As for the fact of a sin, is it probable that anything cancels it? All times are eternally present to God. Is it not at least possible that along some one line of His multi-dimensional eternity He sees you forever in the nursery pulling the wings off a fly, forever toadying, lying, and lusting as a schoolboy, forever in that moment of cowardice or insolence as a subaltern? It may be that salvation consists not in the cancelling of these eternal moments but in the perfected humanity that bears the shame forever, rejoicing in the occasion which it fur­nished to God’s compassion and glad that it should be common knowledge to the universe. Perhaps in that eter­nal moment St Peter—he will forgive me if I am wrong— forever denies his Master. If so, it would indeed be true that the joys of Heaven are for most of us, in our present condition, ‘an acquired taste’—and certain ways of life may render the taste impossible of acquisition. Perhaps the lost are those who dare not go to such a public Of course I do not know that this is true; but I think the possibility is worth keeping in mind.
  3. We must guard against the feeling that there is ‘safety in numbers’. It is natural to feel that if all men are as bad as the Christians say, then badness must be very excus­able. If all the boys plough in the examination, surely the papers must have been too hard? And so the masters at that school feel till they learn that there are other schools where ninety per cent of the boys passed on the same papers. Then they begin to suspect that the fault did not lie with the examiners. Again, many of us have had the experience of living in some local pocket of human soci-ety—some particular school, college, regiment or profes­sion where the tone was bad. And inside that pocket certain actions were regarded as merely normal (‘Every­one does it’) and certain others as impracticably virtuous and Quixotic. But when we emerged from that bad soci­ety we made the horrible discovery that in the outer world our ‘normal’ was the kind of thing that no decent person ever dreamed of doing, and our ‘Quixotic’ was taken for granted as the minimum standard of decency. What had seemed to us morbid and fantastic scruples so long as we were in the ‘pocket’ now turned out to be the only moments of sanity we there enjoyed. It is wise to face the possibility that the whole human race (being a small thing in the universe) is, in fact, just such a local pocket of evil—an isolated bad school or regiment inside which minimum decency passes for heroic virtue and utter corruption for pardonable imperfection. But is there any evidence—except Christian doctrine itself—that this is so? I am afraid there is. In the first place, there are those odd people among us who do not accept the local stan­dard, who demonstrate the alarming truth that a quite dif­ferent behaviour is, in fact, possible. Worse still, there is the fact that these people, even when separated widely in space and time, have a suspicious knack of agreeing with one another in the main—almost as if they were in touch with some larger public opinion outside the pocket. What is common to Zarathustra, Jeremiah, Socrates, Gautama, Christ1 and Marcus Aurelius, is something pretty sub­stantial. Thirdly, we find in ourselves even now a theoret­ical approval of this behaviour which no one practises. Even inside the pocket we do not say that justice, mercy, fortitude, and temperance are of no value, but only that the local custom is as just, brave, temperate and merciful as can reasonably be expected. It begins to look as if the neglected school rules even inside this bad school were connected with some larger world—and that when the term ends we might find ourselves facing the public opin­ion of that larger world. But the worst of all is this: we cannot help seeing that only the degree of virtue which we now regard as impracticable can possibly save our race from disaster even on this planet. The standard which seems to have come into the ‘pocket’ from outside, turns out to be terribly relevant to conditions inside the pocket—so relevant that a consistent practice of virtue by the human race even for ten years would fill the earth from pole to pole with peace, plenty, health, merriment, and heartsease, and that nothing else will. It may be the custom, down here, to treat the regimental rules as a dead letter or a counsel of perfection: but even now, everyone who stops to think can see that when we meet the enemy this neglect is going to cost every man of us his life. It is then that we shall envy the ‘morbid’ person, the ‘pedant’ or ‘enthusiast’ who really has taught his company to shoot and dig in and spare their water bottles.

[….]

This chapter will have been misunderstood if anyone describes it as a reinstatement of the doctrine of Total Depravity. I disbelieve that doctrine, partly on the logical ground that if our depravity were total we should not know ourselves to be depraved, and partly because experience shows us much goodness in human nature. Nor am I recommending universal gloom. The emotion of shame has been valued not as an emotion but because of the insight to which it leads. I think that insight should be permanent in each man’s mind: but whether the painful emotions that attend it should also be encouraged, is a technical problem of spiritual direction on which, as a layman, I have little call to speak. My own idea, for what it is worth, is that all sadness which is not either arising from the repentance of a concrete sin and hastening towards concrete amendment or restitution, or else arising from pity and hastening to active assistance, is simply bad; and I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to ‘rejoice’ as much as by anything else. Humility, after the first shock, is a cheerful virtue: it is the high-minded unbeliever, desperately trying in the teeth of repeated disillusions to retain his ‘faith in human nature’, who is really sad. I have been aiming at an intellectual, not an emotional, effect: I have been trying to make the reader believe that we actually are, at present, creatures whose character must be, in some respects, a horror to God, as it is, when we really see it, a horror to ourselves. This I believe to be a fact: and I notice that the holier a man is, the more fully he is aware of that fact. Perhaps you have imagined that this humility in the saints is a pious illusion at which God smiles. That is a most dangerous error. It is theoretically dangerous, because it makes you identify a virtue (i.e., a perfection) with an illusion (i.e., an imperfection), which must be nonsense. It is practically dangerous because it encourages a man to mistake his first insights into his own corruption for the first beginnings of a halo round his own silly head. No, depend upon it; when the saints say that they—even they—are vile, they are recording truth with scientific accuracy.

CS Lewis | The Problem of Pain (Chapter 4)

Does God Love All Persons? Or Does He Hate Most?

Published by Papa Giorgio

As surely as I live, says the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of wicked people. I only want them to turn from their wicked ways so they can live. Turn! Turn from your wickedness, O people of Israel! Why should you die? (Ezek. 33:11, NLT)

 

In my small group conversation was just getting off the ground regarding this topic, of God’s love. I had, providentially, just listed to this video [below] and was going to adopt this tact into my response. As I was just gonna get going another brother in Christ came in and conversation changed. So I followed up with the ppl in the original short discussion:

  • Like Paul Harvey would say, “Here is the rest of the story.” Frank Turek notes the view that I said was jaundiced in group…. that the splitting of God’s will creates an “infinite application of God’s justice,” but a “finite application of His love.” It bifurcates God in a way the Bible does not. God is a Whole. (5 minutes):

If God Wants All Saved, Why Isn’t Everyone Saved?

(Above Video, description) Can anyone truly produce good works apart from Christ, or even choose to submit to God on their own? A Calvinist questions Frank on predestination, human freedom, and whether we are capable or incapable of choosing God. Join the conversation and share where you land in the comments!

Here is more to connect the idea above.

(Below Video description) Does God want to save all men? Yes He does! The Calvinists are wrong.

In the short conversation, Psalm 5:5 was mentioned, which reads:

  • The boastful shall not stand in Your sight; You hate all workers of iniquity. (NKJV)

Here, we have a picture, not of where man begins, but where sin’s grip will take him if he continues in rebellion against God. (As an aside, I like Bible Hub’s dealing with this sticky issue) I had a discussion of this verse on my Facebook, but cannot find it unfortunately. So I will respond to the ideas herein. The first few clips are showing how reading Scripture without the additional lenses of a 16th century philosophy can bring out the beauty, assurance in God, and the meaning to the audience David intended:

Prayer regarding enemies (5:4–12). The psalmist next complains to God about his enemies—especially their destructive speech which consists of lies and flattery. He urges God to indict them and let them experience the consequences of their destructive behavior. He also asks God to get them away from him. The psalmist turns from God’s enemies to those who seek God’s protection. For these, the psalmist asks protection, joy, a sense of great security.

Dana Gould, Psalms 1-50, Shepherd’s Notes (Nashville, TN: Holman Reference, 1999), 25.

The assurance of being heard is now won by the petitioner from the fact that the wicked are not allowed to appear before Yahweh, whereas he himself, the petitioner, has access to the sanctuary

Hans-Joachim Kraus, A Continental Commentary: Psalms 1–59 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), 155.

Stanza 2 focuses on the accusers, but in the form of praise for God’s judgment of the wicked. The foes are described (vv. 4–6, 9–10) [Enemies]. With mouth and tongue they destroy. They are boastful and speak lies; they are bloodthirsty and deceitful (vv. 5–6). Such persons cannot stand in God’s sight; for God, such behavior must be abhorrent (v. 6). The implication is that the LORD will never permit the wicked access to the sanctuary, to which the psalmist now seeks entry.

James H. Waltner, Psalms, Believers Church Bible Commentary (Scottdale, PA; Waterloo, ON: Herald Press, 2006), 50.

Verses 4–6: David distances himself from his enemies

Now he is sure that God is hearing him, David’s thoughts of his enemies are different from what they were in Psalm 3. Then he was thinking of the strength of their numbers (3:1), now he is thinking of the weakness of their position before God. God cannot dwell with them because they are wicked and God takes no pleasure in evil (v. 4) in fact he hates such (v. 5). Since God is not with them, they will not stand. When he appears among them it will not be to prosper but to destroy them.

For God is just, and their charges against David have no basis in fact but are lies (v. 6). Absalom and his party were acting against him out of sheer deceit and cruelty; they are bloodthirsty and deceitful men. This is the truth behind Absalom and his campaign. It is sufficient ground for David to believe they will not succeed and that he will return, as he goes on to say.

Eric Lane, Psalms 1-89: The Lord Saves, Focus on the Bible Commentary (Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2006), 42.

The first response is via Calvinism Answered Verse By Verse and Subject by Subject. Here is there response to this idea:

How do non-Calvinists deal with certain Bible verses which show that God hates certain people?

  • Psalm 5:5: “The boastful shall not stand before Your eyes; You hate all who do iniquity.”
  • Psalm 7:11: “God is a righteous judge, and a God who has indignation every day.”
  • Psalm 26:5: “I hate the assembly of evildoers, and I will not sit with the wicked.”
  • Malachi 1:3: “But I have hated Esau [referencing Edom], and I have made his mountains a desolation and appointed his inheritance for the jackals of the wilderness.”

It is answered in two ways. In some instances, the word “hate” just reflects preference, such as Luke 14:26: “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.” However, that may not be a suitable understanding for all occurrences, such as Malachi 1:3, in which God said that He is “indignant forever” with the Edomites, regarding their betrayal of Israel during the Babylonian captivity. So, how can a God who “is love” (1st John 4:8, 10) hate anyone? It’s not that He wants to, or that He needed to create people to hate. God’s wrath is conditional. Evil distorts God’s perfect ways, and for those who do commit evil, God would rather have it that they turn back to Him, so that He may show them mercy, than to have to exercise judgment upon them.

Micah 7:18: “Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of His possession? He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in unchanging love.”

So, although God may declare that He hates a particular sinner, that does not preclude His longing to see restoration through repentance. One example is that of wicked King Ahab, when God was delighted to see his repentance, and in turn, relented from His intentions of judging him: “‘Do you see how Ahab has humbled himself before Me? Because he has humbled himself before Me, I will not bring the evil in his days, but I will bring the evil upon his house in his son’s days.’” (1st Kings 21:29)

To further illustrate, I might say: “I hate people who tailgate on the highway and drive recklessly,” or I might say, “I hate people who don’t flush the toilet when they’re done.” This doesn’t mean that I have arbitrarily thrown names into a hat, and chosen to unconditionally hate them for no reason whatsoever. Rather, it means that my disapproval of them is based upon their free will choice to commit an act which I disapprove of. This is what God is expressing at verses like Psalm 5:5, Psalm 7:11, etc., as He is defining a certain class of people who have freely chosen to enter that class, by freely choosing to sin. It’s somewhat similar to when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. expressed a desire for his children to be judged, “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Make no mistake, God still does judge people. However, He judges them for the “content of their character,” so to speak, as displayed by the type of actions that they chose to engage in. (In other words, He doesn’t judge them on arbitrary things, such as skin color, or whether or not He unconditionally picked their name out of a hat from eternity, and arbitrarily decided to hate them for no other reason than that their name was selected.) God looks to the heart, and judges people accordingly: “‘I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds.’” (Jeremiah 17:10)

Of course Leighton Flowers deals with this. I will clip his longer video, but my clip is still long mind you. He is essentially reading from his own article: “Does God Love or Hate His Enemies?” Here is the “truncated” version:

In a favored site I like this comment:

  • The wages of sin is death, but it is not God’s pleasure to see the death of anyone. However, anyone who hates Him and refuses to return, will see death. In every man-made government the penalty for high treason is death; it is no different in the Kingdom of God.

The whole thread is worth a read — it includes many from varying theological assumptions. (This resource was mentioned, click to enlarge)

I wish to note as well, that Calvin’s Institutes is a work I do not like all that much. However, I hold his commentary on a higher level because he withholds much of the Augustinian influence at bay, so-to-speak. Here is his commentary on verses 4-6 of Psalm 5:

Verses 4-6

  • 4 For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness; evil shall not dwell Smith thee. 5 The foolish shall not stand in thy sight; thou hatest all that commit iniquity. 6 Thou shalt destroy them that speak falsehood; Jehovah will abhor the blood-thirsty 9 and deceitful man.

Here David makes the malice and wickedness of his enemies an argument to enforce his prayer for the divine favor towards him. The language is indeed abrupt, as the saints in prayer will often stammer; but this stammering is more acceptable to God than all the figures of rhetoric, be they ever so fine and glittering. Besides, the great object which David has in view, is to show, that since the cruelty and treachery of his enemies had reached their utmost height, it was impossible but that God would soon arrest them in their course. His reasoning is grounded upon the nature of God. Since righteousness and upright dealing are pleasing to him, David, from this, concludes that he will take vengeance on all the unjust and wicked. And how is it possible for them to escape from his hand unpunished, seeing he is the judge of the world? The passage is worthy of our most special attention. For we know how greatly we are discouraged by the unbounded insolence of the wicked. If God does not immediately restrain it, we are either stupified and dismayed, or cast down into despair. But David, from this, rather finds matter of encouragement and confidence. The greater the lawlessness with which his enemies proceeded against him, the more earnestly did he supplicate preservation from God, whose office it is to destroy all the wicked, because he hates all wickedness. Let all the godly, therefore, learn, as often as they have to contend against violence, deceit, and injustice, to raise their thoughts to God in order to encourage themselves in the certain hope of deliverance, according as Paul also exhorts them in 2 Thessalonians 1:5, “Which is,” says he, “a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer: seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; and to you who are troubled, rest with us.” And assuredly he would not be the judge of the world if there were not laid up in store with him a recompense for all the ungodly. One use, then, which may be made of this doctrine is this, – when we see the wicked indulging themselves in their lusts, and when, in consequence, doubts steal into our minds as to whether God takes any care of us, we should learn to satisfy ourselves with the consideration that God, who hates and abhors all iniquity, will not permit them to pass unpunished, and although he bear with them for a time, he will at length ascend into the judgment-seat, and show himself an avenger, as he is the protector and defender of his people. 10 Again, we may infer from this passage the common doctrine, that God, although he works by Satan and by the ungodly, and makes use of their malice for executing his judgments, is not, on this account, the author of sin, nor is pleased with it because the end which he purposes is always righteous; and he justly condemns and punishes those who, by his mysterious providence, are driven whithersoever he pleases.

In the 4th verse some take ra, in the masculine gender, for a wicked man; but I understand it rather of wickedness itself David declares simply, that there is no agreement between God and unrighteousness. He immediately after proceeds to speak of the men themselves, saying, the foolish shall not stand in thy sight; and it is a very just inference from this, that iniquity its hateful to God, and that, therefore, he will execute just punishment upon all the wicked. He calls those fools, according to a frequent use of the term in Scripture, who, impelled by blind passion, rush headlong into sin. Nothing is more foolish, than for the ungodly to cast away the fear of God, and suffer the desire of doing mischief to be their ruling principle; yea, there is no madness worse than the contempt of God, under the influence of which men pervert all right. David sets this truth before himself for his own comfort; but we also may draw from it doctrine very useful in training us to the fear of God; for the Holy Spirit, by declaring God to be the avenger of wickedness, puts a bridle upon us, to restrain us from committing sin, in the vain hope of escaping with impunity.

Some INSPIRING PHILOSOPHY YouTube Shorts:

In the debate Dr. Turek mentions in the YouTube Short to the right, his memory was a bit off [graphic at the bottom with the corrected reference], however, he is still correct… as many 5-pointers mention God not allowing Adam and Eve to sin, but actually causing it. See my two posts:

  1. Is God the “devil” Behind Satan? | Sovereign Puppeteer
  2. RC Sproul and Adams Fall | Calvinist Obfuscations

In a dealing with Psalm 5:5-6, Dr. Eitan Bar (co-founder of one of my go-to Jewish ministries, ONE FOR ISRAEL — although he is no longer affiliated with them. Which I kind of agree with – he rejects an eternal punishment in hell as well as the penal substitutionary theory.)

But Doesn’t God Hate Sinners?

You hate all who do wrong. – Psalm 5:5

Marco from Reading, Pennsylvania, wrote to ask pastor John Piper: “Pastor John, what do you make of the saying, ‘God loves the sinner, but hates the sin?’” John Piper’s answer included a quotation of Psalm 5:5 as well as the following statement:

It is just not true to give the impression that God doesn’t hate sinners by saying, ‘he loves the sinner and hates the sin.’ He does hate sinners. – John Piper

Likewise, pastor Mark Driscoll preached to his congregation the same motif:

The Bible speaks of God not just hating sin but sinners… Psalm 5:5, “You,” speaking of God, “hate all evildoers.” God doesn’t just hate what you do. He hates who you are! – Mark Driscoll

In the same way, Reformed Baptist pastor David Platt wrote:

Does God hate sinners? Listen closely to Psalm 5:5-6: “The arrogant cannot stand in your presence; You hate all who do wrong.“ – David Platt

The ECT’s (Eternal Conscious Torment) logic in quoting Psalm 5:5-6 goes something like this:

  1. Those who sin are sinners.
  2. Everyone sins.
  3. God hates sinners.
  4. God must separate Himself from sinners.
  5. Therefore, God hates everyone and must condemn all to hellfire.

Practically speaking, fundamentalist preachers believe that every cute newborn, every sweet toddler, and every child playing in your neighborhood’s park—are all sinners condemned to hellfire as God hates them.

A Ronnie Rogers Break (SOURCE):

Once we dismiss the pleasantries of Calvinism, the only reason some are in heaven and some are in hell is because it pleased God for them to be there. Notwithstanding the weak and misleading arguments to the contrary by many Calvinists, I maintain all consistent Calvinists inevitably believe in double predestination. They either believe God actively predestined some to hell, as Calvin does, or he did so by choosing not to offer what would have surely delivered them from hell to heaven, which is unconditional election and selective regeneration. Calvin refers to this cold, inescapable reality as the product of God’s wish, pleasure, and counsel.*

* John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, translated by Henry Beveridge (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1997), vol. 2, bk. 3, chap. 21, sec. 7, pg. 210.

On the surface, Psalm 5 seems to contradict verses like John 3:16, which states, “For God so loved the world.” In “World,” John speaks about the people in it, not the waters and soil. John essentially says, “For God so loved the sinners.”

So, is there a conflict between Psalm 5 and John 3:16?

Psalm 5:5

Biblical Hebrew has a limited vocabulary, so many Hebrew words carry a broad range of meanings, varying according to context. Moreover, the meanings of words often evolve over time.

To fully grasp the message of Psalm 5:5, it’s crucial first to understand its context. Hebraist scholar Mitchell Dahood interprets Psalm 5 as a “repudiation of false gods when one was accused of idolatry.” In a similar vein, VanGemeren, Professor Emeritus of Old Testament and Semitic Languages, views Psalm 5 as God’s self-distinction from other deities, asserting that “whereas other religions brought together good and evil at the level of the gods, God had revealed that evil exists apart from him.”

Thus, with this context in mind, more accurate than ‘God hates everyone’ will be to conclude that God hates idol worshippers. Remember, the pagans around ancient Israel would not only steal office pens and lie about how lovely you looked in your new evening dress tonight; they would burn their babies in the fire as a sacrifice for their idols. The pagans were cruel and evil. So, it is they, in this context, that God hates.

But this isn’t even the main problem with how Psalm 5:5-6 is being misused.

The Biblical Meaning of “Hate”

Much like “love,” the English word “hate” has become heavily loaded with strong emotional connotations in contemporary language. “Hate,” often used to express extremely strong emotions, is usually associated with images of violence, wrath, death, and anger. In biblical Hebrew, however, “hate” means something else altogether.

Regrettably, preachers often misinterpret ancient Hebrew (and Greek) terms when reading a translation in their native languages, applying modern perspectives and interpretations. This misinterpretation can occur accidentally, but at times, it might also stem from a desire to support a pre-existing theological agenda.

SANE = To avoid, reject, and ignore

The Hebrew word translated to “hate” is SANE. The Hebrew Bible frequently uses SANE as a synonym for ‘reject,’ ‘avoid,’ ‘deny,’ or ‘ignore.’ If you don’t trust my Hebrew skills as a native Hebrew speaker, then allow me to point you over to the Ancient Hebrew Lexicon of the Bible, where ‘SANE ’ is explained as something one avoids:

The pictograph is a picture of a thorn, then is a picture of seed. Combined, these mean “thorn seed.” The thorn, (the seed of a plant with small sharp points) causes one to turn in directions to avoid them.

Hate as reject: In Romans 9:10-13, Paul clearly uses “hate” in a matter of election. God elected Jacob yet rejected (SANE/hated) Esau. “Esau I have hated” is not about God wishing for Esau a violent and painful death but about God rejecting Esau and electing Jacob instead.

Thus, biblically speaking, to hate someone is to reject or avoid them—to deny your attention, election, intimacy, or blessings from them. If a woman hates her husband, she turns indifferent, pushes him away, avoids him, and leaves him. On the other hand, if she still cares for him — loves him — she will get angry and fight loudly and emotionally. You go to battle over the things you cherish most but avoid associating with those you hate and are apathetic about.

Hate as ignore/avoid: Paul’s understanding of “hate” is also why Paul says, “No one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body.” (Ephesians 5:29). We all know people who emotionally hate their body or parts of it. I emotionally hated mine when I was a fat kid with zits on my face. But as we just established, biblical hate is not about emotions or feelings of detestation. Paul was saying that no one ignores their body. We indeed drink water when we are thirsty and don’t avoid going to the toilet when our body tells us to (even if emotionally we “hate” ourselves).

The understanding that to ‘hate’ means to reject, ignore, or avoid is the only way the words of Jesus would make any sense:

If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. – Luke 14:26

Love would not demand that you “hate” (in the modern emotional sense of the word) others or your family because that would contradict Jesus’ commandment to love even our enemies. So clearly, to “hate” your family must mean we have to choose him over them, not loathe and despise them.

As a Jew, I had to experience Luke 14:26 when my Jewish mother first found out I believed in Jesus. When she demanded I stop believing and reject Jesus, I had to reject her plea, choosing Christ instead.

In the same way, we should read Psalm 5:5-6. God rejects the evildoers—the idols and those who worship them. God’s rejection of idols stems from their influence in leading Israel to commit heinous acts, such as the burning of their children.

To conclude, from a biblical standpoint, when you reject, avoid, or ignore someone, you SANE (“hate”) them. Therefore, God may “hate” in the sense of withdrawing blessings and protection from people, rejecting their appeals, or avoiding them. However, God loves even the greatest of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15).

Does God Desire the Salvation of Everyone?

WWUTT (When We Understand The Text) has recently released a video that denies God’s genuine desire for the salvation of all people based on some very erroneous logical fallacies and misapplications of scripture.

FAULTY DOCTRINE (Hippity Hoppity) Faith Distorted

Published by Papa Giorgio

Originally posted April of 2013, UPDATED (1/15/2026) with Calvinist distortions.
JUMP TO UPDATE

I am including this here because in my now closing in on a year of studies, I clearly saw this “faith distortion” a few months ago. So I am including this video with my Facebook description here:

This was awesome to hear — listened to today (1-14-2026). I made this point in my small group, which was: having been raised in the Word Faith/”name it and claim it” type Christianity, I noticed that Calvinist’s adopt a view of faith that is the same, when describing their opponents. That is, “Faith in your faith”, to wit:

  • Many of the WOFM’s doctrines are linked directly to the mistaken concept that faith is a literal substance, “a power force … a tangible force … a conductive force.”

— According to Kenneth E. Hagin, faith in one’s own faith is the secret to getting every desire of the heart.

This delapitated/false view of faith is what Calvinists think all non-Calvinists express. And that is a wrong supposition, or view of what faith is. It is a straw man. I was happy to hear that connection I thought of from Doc Flowers.

SOTO 101’s full episode

Originally posted April of 2013, UPDATED (2/8/2024) with the NET Bible and commentary at the end.

Here is a quick 101 on the history of the Word Faith via GOT QUESTIONS:

The Word of Faith movement grew out of the Pentecostal movement in the late 20th century. Its founder was E. W. Kenyon, who studied the metaphysical New Thought teachings of Phineas Quimby. Mind science (where “name it and claim it” originated) was combined with Pentecostalism, resulting in a peculiar mix of orthodox Christianity and mysticism. Kenneth Hagin, in turn, studied under E. W. Kenyon and made the Word of Faith movement what it is today. Although individual teachings range from completely heretical to completely ridiculous, what follows is the basic theology most Word of Faith teachers align themselves with.

At the heart of the Word of Faith movement is the belief in the “force of faith.” It is believed words can be used to manipulate the faith-force, and thus actually create what they believe Scripture promises (health and wealth). Laws supposedly governing the faith-force are said to operate independently of God’s sovereign will and that God Himself is subject to these laws. This is nothing short of idolatry, turning our faith—and by extension ourselves—into god.

From here, its theology just strays further and further from Scripture: it claims that God created human beings in His literal, physical image as little gods. Before the fall, humans had the potential to call things into existence by using the faith-force. After the fall, humans took on Satan’s nature and lost the ability to call things into existence. In order to correct this situation, Jesus Christ gave up His divinity and became a man, died spiritually, took Satan’s nature upon Himself, went to hell, was born again, and rose from the dead with God’s nature. After this, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to replicate the Incarnation in believers so they could become little gods as God had originally intended.

Following the natural progression of these teachings, as little gods we again have the ability to manipulate the faith-force and become prosperous in all areas of life. Illness, sin, and failure are the result of a lack of faith, and are remedied by confession—claiming God’s promises for oneself into existence. Simply put, the Word of Faith movement exalts man to god-status and reduces God to man-status. Needless to say, this is a false representation of what Christianity is all about. Obviously, Word of Faith teaching does not take into account what is found in Scripture. Personal revelation, not Scripture, is highly relied upon in order to come up with such absurd beliefs, which is just one more proof of its heretical nature.

[….]

The Word of Faith movement is deceiving countless people, causing them to grasp after a way of life and faith that is not biblical. At its core is the same lie Satan has been telling since the Garden: “You shall be as God” (Genesis 3:5). Sadly, those who buy into the Word of Faith movement are still listening to him. Our hope is in the Lord, not in our own words, not even in our own faith (Psalm 33:20-22). Our faith comes from God in the first place (Ephesians 2:8; Hebrews 12:2) and is not something we create for ourselves. So, be wary of the Word of Faith movement and any church that aligns itself with Word of Faith teachings.

Here is an example of one verse striped of context via the Word Faith movement:

Geisler & Rhodes opine:

JOSHUA 1:8—Is this verse a key to financial prosperity, as Word-Faith teachers suggest?

MISINTERPRETATION: Joshua 1:8 says, “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have suc­cess” (NASB). Word-Faith teachers say this verse is a key to financial pros­perity.

CORRECTING THE MISINTERPRETATION: Word-Faith teach­ers are reading a meaning into this verse that is not there. The context of this verse is military, not financial. In fact, finances are nowhere in sight in this entire chapter of Joshua.

In the conquest of the Promised Land, God promised Joshua that his military efforts would prosper if he maintained his commitment to meditate upon and obey God’s Word. The prospering also no doubt includes the full outworking of the land promises that were given uncon­ditionally by God in the Abrahamic Covenant (Gen. 12:1-3). Later, just before his death, Joshua urged the people to continue living in sub­mission to the Scriptures (Josh. 23:6).

What a healthy view of this Joshua verse is this:

… Sometimes we misunderstand what it means, ‘to succeed’ or ‘to prosper’ which has given rise to a prosperity teaching which places the emphasis on temporal, worldly prosperity rather than eternal spiritual wealth. God may choose to bestow worldly wealth on His children or He may permit the alternative, but the goods and chattel of this world are passing away, and like Paul we need to be content in all things.

What is important, is to know the Word of God, to trust the Word of God, and to apply the Word of God in every circumstance of life, knowing that to do so will lead to success in the Christian life; for all things work together for good to those that love the Lord and trust His Word.

We should read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the Word of the Lord. We should study God’s Book of instruction, particularly those passages that relate specifically to the Church, and we should continually feed on His Word in our hearts by faith with thanksgiving.

We should meditate on His Word, memorize His Word, trust His Word, and love His Word, and we should be sure to obey His Word and apply His Word in our daily lives, for in so doing we will certainly prosper and succeed in all we do, to His praise and glory….

Or s the NET BIBLE rewords a bit:

1:8 This law scroll must not leave your lips! You must memorize it day and night so you can carefully obey all that is written in it. Then you will prosper and be successful.

1:9 I repeat, be strong and brave! Don’t be afraid and don’t panic, for I, the LORD your God, am with you in all you do.”

Biblical Studies Press, The NET Bible First Edition; Bible. English. NET Bible.; The NET Bible (Biblical Studies Press, 2005), Jos 1:7–9.

A decent extended commentary can be found here to help separate the wheat from the Chaff, as competing theologies fight over interpreting verses:

1:6–9. The second half of God’s speech also begins with two imperatives (“Be strong and courageous”), though these two are effectively synonyms. These imperatives follow logically from the promise of verse 5—if no one could resist Joshua, then there was no basis for fear. Instead, as leader he was to distribute the land that God had sworn to give to their ancestors (adapting phrasing found five times in Deuteronomy). The land is thus simultaneously God’s gift and something to be claimed and allotted. Verse 7 provides a more specific focus for Joshua: He was to be strong and very courageous in carefully observing all the instruction (תּוֹרָה) that God had given through Moses. This was not simply a set of facts to be known but rather a life that was to be lived—and living this life would take effort. Drawing on the common metaphor of life as a journey, the idea is that Joshua should stay on the path that this instruction provides rather than take alternative routes, for this is the means by which he would succeed. This success is related to the task that God had given Joshua, so walking faithfully in the Mosaic instruction was the means by which Joshua could lead the people into the land that God had promised.

Joshua was to meditate (הָגָה) on this instruction. The verb, with a similar promise of success, also occurs in Ps 1:2 and means something like “growl” or “mutter.” This verbal element is more apparent in Ps 2:1, where it is translated “plot.” It is difficult to match this word to a single English verb since “meditate” is often thought of as a silent activity. That the instruction was to be in Joshua’s “mouth” is an idiom that goes naturally with the verb. Thus, he would continue reflecting on its meaning, with such reflection being verbal. This relates to the fact that reading in the ancient world meant reading aloud. In the same way, reflection on it was verbal. But what matters in particular is that Joshua’s life was to be shaped by faithfulness to God’s instruction. At this stage in the book we might think of this as unproblematic, but as the ensuing chapters unfold it becomes clear that Joshua would need to wrestle with the intent of the instruction in order to determine how it was to be applied in a range of circumstances. This would require seeing the instruction as guidance for situations that would be faced rather than as a comprehensive set of rules that could simply be applied. Joshua would need a deep knowledge of God’s instruction, which meant both knowing its content and reflecting on how it could be applied. Therefore, it could not depart from his mouth, because only by continued recitation/meditation could he both know it and understand how to apply it. Psalm 1 then broadens out this possibility for all believers.

God’s speech then concludes with a reminder of the command to be strong and courageous so that Joshua would understand there is no place for fear because Yahweh would go with him. Joshua could succeed and lead his people to success when he understood that his role as a leader was to journey with God, know God’s instruction, and shape his life by it. Success here does not mean something financial but to receive the things that God is giving. We might perhaps think of “success” as flourishing in the life God has prepared—which is the way it is developed in Psalm 1. Here, that flourishing would be military, as Israel received the land God gave.

David G. Firth, JOSHUA, ed. T. Desmond Alexander, Thomas R. Schreiner, and Andreas J. Köstenberger, Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2021), 72–74.

This from CROSS WISE (2011) explaining a bit about the above:

In light of another Calvary Chapel pastor making an appearance on TBN’s Praise-the-Lord program, I thought it apropos to share a tape in my collection of how a Bible believer should behave when invited onto TBN or any of the other errant “Christian” networks. What sort of message is communicated when a solid Bible teacher shares the platform with heretics and does not bring reproof? Certainly it gives the impression that the guest endorses the teaching of the hosts and /or founder of the Christian network.

Some argue that if they can’t go on TBN due to its corruption, then they couldn’t show up on ABC, NBC or CBS either. They don’t understand the distinction between being salt and light to the unsaved world and practicing biblical separation from so-called Christians who are spreading false teaching against Jesus Christ. To the unsaved, we can use their media to spread the Gospel, but to the errant brother we are to bring correction and divide if they do not stop their false teaching. For a proof-text consider 1 Corinthians 5:11:

But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called a brother if he is an immoral person, or covetous, or ban idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler—not even to eat with such a one. (NASB)

When Calvary Chapel Albuquerque’s pastor Skip Heitzig went on TBN last week acting like he and his host Phil Munsey were old friends, it was a shame to the spirit of that passage. Phil Munsey and his brother Steve Munsey are two of the most infamous extortioners in the field of Christian television. Munsey has used new age ideas of paradigm shifts and panentheism to spread his unbiblical dominionist views.

In contrast to the compromisers, the late Walter Martin tried to bring correction the last time he made an appearance on TBN. This video tape has never circulated and has not been available anywhere until now that I have posted it to YouTube.

Back in 1985 my younger sister was Martin’s secretary. She and my older sister and I all regularly attended his weekly Bible study. I used to share my research with him and also with my friend author Dave Hunt. Walter and Dave disagreed on many things regarding their styles of apologetics and discernment. Whenever there was a difference of opinion between the two of them, I usually agreed with Dave.

I had had some discussion with Dr. Martin over Dave’s book, The Seduction of Christianity. Walter had been critical about it on the radio having never read it but based his criticisms upon what his personal editor had told him.

One day my older sister was watching Praise-the-Lord when Hal Lindsey was a guest. He was her pastor at that time. Back then Hal used to challenge the teaching of other TBN regulars and Paul Crouch put up with it. However, that got old with the Crouches and when Hal wouldn’t stop criticizing the Kingdom Now doctrine, he was put on the shelf until he learned to kow-tow to them. When my sister heard Hal bring up Walter’s name in the show, Paul and Jan agreed that he was a brilliant man and Hal said you should have him on some time. They both responded – oh sure we will.

So she informed our little sister who told Walter and Walter told her to call TBN and arrange it which she did. However, the Crouches wouldn’t host him so they got prophecy teacher Doug Clark to do so. My younger sister called me on the day of the taping saying that Walter wanted me to go through Dave Hunt’s book, The Seduction of Christianity and highlight things he would be in agreement with. I was happy to do so for him. He used that information to challenge TBN’s blackballing of Dave Hunt and other whistle-blowers.

I stayed home to work the VCR I didn’t know how to program, while my two sisters attended, one in the green room and one in the audience we had stacked with many friends. Walter gave it to them with both barrels. Not only was the program not replayed at its regular slot, but the tapes were not available when people followed up to request one. Back in those days any Praise-the-Lord program could be bought on audio cassette for a small fee. And both Walter Martin and Doug Clark were never invited back. We had heard years later from Doug Clark that during the interview he kept receiving notes from the stage manager telling him to “shut that guy up” and other nasty notes….

Bill Barr and Jonathan Turley: Legality of Venezuela Raid

Published by Papa Giorgio

Barr SHUTS DOWN Dems on Maduro: Case stronger than Noriega

Former Attorney General Bill Barr discusses Nicolás Maduro’s upcoming arraignment, the strength of the indictment and comparisons to Manuel Noriega’s arrest.

Bill Barr: Case Stronger Than Noriega (Ruthless Podcast Interview)

… former AG Bill Barr sits down for a wide-ranging interview on Venezuela, narco-terrorism…

Turley left ‘BAFFLED’ by the left’s latest argument

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley responds to deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro pleading not guilty to drugs and weapons charges on ‘America Reports.’

Dr. Flowers Reads from Pastor Mitchell’s Book: Rediscovering Romans 9

Published by Papa Giorgio

Dr. Flowers welcomes Pastor Scott Mitchell, of Calvary Chapel in Boston, who has authored a new book titled, “Rediscovering Romans 9: How Calvinism Distorts the Nature & Character of God” (FULL VIDEO EMBEDDED BELOW)

Leighton read this section from Pastor Scott’s book:

REDISCOVERING RESPECT

Disrespect through misrepresentation is nothing new; it happens among people all the time. I cannot count the number of times I have had people misrepresent me, or put words in my mouth that I never said. I have had people tell me what I believe, when in fact I do not. Even when I attempt to correct their claim, many refuse to listen and continue to tell me what I believe. The point here is, if I am disrespected because someone misrepresents me, though frustrating, it is not necessarily going to affect me and I typically do not take it personally. What others claim I believe does not actually change me, it just makes me aware of their opinion. People are always going to have their opinions and I cannot correct everyone’s perspective of what they think I believe. I have taught enough Bible studies over the past 30 plus years so people can know what I believe and why I believe it. There will always be detractors; as they say, it goes with the territory.

Sometimes disrespectful statements can hurt those beyond the one targeted. If someone makes a disrespectful or inaccurate statement about me and it results in hurt to others, then you have my attention. Affecting others causes the stakes of the case to rise. Moreover, if the claim is against my character and it results in a damaged relationship with someone dear to me (including those God has placed under my care as a pastor) this requires my undivided attention. Not because of how I feel about the personal disrespect, but because of how it affects others who are innocent victims and vulnerable to unnecessary hurt. This issue corresponds to the intention of this book. I believe that Calvinism misrepresents God’s character. Though I do not believe Calvinists do this intentionally, the resulting effect is still the same.

When any Christian misrepresents God, it can result in hurt or confusion to believers and effect the presentation of the gospel to unbelievers. Calvinism has a particular problem in this area since their doctrines are notoriously controversial. When a neophyte Calvinist begins to realize the incongruity of the “doctrines of grace” with the clear teachings of Scripture, it can certainly result in confusion. The real problem in this case can be a distrust in the Bible instead of the Calvinistic teachings, since there may not be enough previous Bible education for a fair comparison to take place.

Calvinists typically reject any presentation of the gospel to large groups or crusades because they believe it is deceptive to offer the gospel to those in the crowd who are not the elect. Their actions in rejection of these events spans from refusing involvement to outright picketing as unbelievers enter these events. What does that say to unbelievers? Any concern Calvinists have with the gospel preached to the “non-elect” (in their minds) is a result of their own theological bias and is both unbiblical and illogical. First, in the Bible Jesus and the apostles preach the gospel to groups. We are told that some or many believed, implying naturally that not all believed, or that others rejected. Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2) is a classic example along with the multiple cities Paul visited on his missionary journeys. His efforts involved crowds of people he preached to, not to mention his visit to Jerusalem (Acts 22). Second, it is illogical to hold the gospel back from anyone through concern they are not one of the elect. Whether it is one or one hundred thousand to whom the gospel is shared, no one knows who will respond positively until after the presentation is made. Moreover, an initial positive response may not be genuine faith; this is only discoverable over time no matter whether it is one or more. There is never a biblical or logical reason to prevent sharing the gospel with anyone when the opportunity presents itself. No one knows or can assume a person will receive or reject the truth.

God has big shoulders and can certainly handle people who do not accurately understand Him because they do not know Him. But, when false or misleading statements made about Him are by those who know Him, this presents a different picture. This can affect the relationship between God and His people, and when this occurs, I think you will have His attention. There is a particular responsibility assigned to pastors, Bible teachers, and Christian leaders to represent Him reverently and biblically. All Christians have the responsibility to engage in “casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the [accurate} knowledge of God” (2 Cor. 10:5), but those whom God has specifically tasked with overseeing and caring for His flock (1 Peter 5:2-3; Titus 1:9-11) must pay particular attention for the sake of His flock. “The flock of God” (1 Peter 5:2) are His blood-bought people!

False statements and claims about God can easily result in unbelievers rejecting Christ. This however is also a problem in the church among God’s people. If there is a place people should be able to go and get a clear understanding of God’s self-revelation through His word, it is the church, “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). His word accurately represents His nature and character; thus, a poor exposition of His word can easily result in misrepresenting Him in the congregation. Paul was well-aware of this problem and spent much of the New Testament (NT) instructing about God and correcting misrepresentations or misunderstandings related to Him. Therefore, this issue requires our utmost attention. Misrepresenting God kept Moses from entering the Promised Land (Num. 20:7-13) after a life of faithful service (Heb. 3:5)—it is a serious matter with God for sure.

Pages 5-7 of Scott Mitchell’s book, Rediscovering Romans 9: How Calvinism Distorts The Nature And Character Of God

Venezuela Free | Can They Keep It?

Published by Papa Giorgio

Here is a summary of the excellent interview about the reasoning that led up to the actions the United States took against Venezuela. This is the link and description of the interview:

STOLEN ELECTIONS with Gary Berntsen & Ralph Pezzullo
Ep 45 | Going Rogue with Lara Logan

Gary Berntsen & Ralph Pezzullo explain how America’s enemies, foreign & domestic, are stealing the Republic. We dissect the controversial involvement of Smartmatic in the U.S. election system and explore the swirling allegations of manipulation and fraud. Our discussion probes deep into electoral malfeasance, questioning the integrity of the very systems that uphold our Republic. Expect a thorough examination of the evidence and sentiments surrounding these topics, drawing connections that extend all the way to Venezuela.

Here is a summary of the above podcast:

Summary of why it needed to be done outside of the ending of a communist regime and the freeing of an oppressed people.

BLUF: Venezuela operates as a hybrid narco-state and influence-operations hub, combining state-directed drug trafficking, transnational organized crime, espionage, and coordinated partnerships with hostile foreign powers, while leveraging covert political and information operations to undermine regional stability and U.S. national security.

Operating a global election-manipulation scheme originating in Venezuela, involving state-owned voting software (Smartmatic and successors), allegedly used to alter elections domestically, across Latin America, in the United States, and globally while defeating audits and concealing source code ownership

Running a state-led narcotics enterprise (Cartel de los Soles), with the Venezuelan military acting as the logistics arm and the president identified as the cartel’s leader

Weaponizing organized crime, including training and deploying gangs such as Tren de Aragua for foreign criminal and insurgent activity, including alleged operations inside the United States

Conducting long-term espionage and infiltration of U.S. diplomatic, intelligence, and political institutions, often in coordination with Cuban intelligence

Collaborating with hostile foreign powers (Cuba, China, Russia, Iran) to expand influence operations, fund destabilization efforts, and undermine U.S. national security

Exploiting U.S. government programs and taxpayer funds, allegedly using USAID-linked and NGO mechanisms to promote Venezuelan-origin election technology abroad

Establishing intelligence and political dominance in the Western Hemisphere, leveraging oil wealth, criminal revenue, and covert influence to shape regional governments

For more of the below, see HOT AIR

(Just a quick note on the graphic to the right… there is more info linked in the graphic… but this training in the lead up to this assault explains this training exercise accident. They were prepping heavily for this and accidental deaths are bound to happen)

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR has a wonderful article that notes this has been in the legal making for quite a while

In the wake of the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, the United States is now forced to reckon with a record of depravity that is nothing short of a great human scandal. Indeed, the crimes of which Mr. Maduro has been credibly accused boggle the mind.

Maduro’s presence on American soil is the result of years of legal preparation and, according to Saturday’s press conference, months of operational planning. He arrives facing a lengthy federal indictment in the Southern District of New York. The charges are staggering: narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, and the possession of machine guns and destructive devices. The U.S. government alleges that Maduro functioned as the leader of the “Cartel de los Soles,” effectively converting the Venezuelan state into a criminal enterprise designed to flood American streets with poison while enriching a corrupt elite. He is also accused of stealing American oil and using the proceeds to fund his criminal endeavors and entrench his power.

But as grave as these narco-terrorism charges are, they only scratch the surface of Maduro’s evil. The current U.S. legal framework focuses on drugs and guns because they provide the clearest, most traditional path to a domestic conviction. However, the American people, the Venezuelan people, and indeed the whole world deserve more than a trial about smuggling routes, vessels, and the usual talking points of foreign policy hawks.

Moreover, an inconvenient truth arises for his apologists, both foreign adversaries and domestic stooges: if the Department of Justice is truly committed to the so-called “full wrath of American justice,” it must pursue explicit charges for the crimes against humanity that define Maduro’s tenure. One crime especially demands the sword: the detention and physical and sexual torture of children.

The International Criminal Court has, since 2021, been pursuing a formal investigation into credible reports of systematic torture, sexual violence, and political persecution. Children are among those most affected by these heinous abuses. Following the South American nation’s rigged 2024 election, at least 220 children were forcibly detained. Many were held in adult prisons and subjected to what Amnesty International has dubbed “endless cruelty.”

The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission has documented a “policy of repression” that specifically targets the young. Further, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights alleges Maduro used the apparatus of the state — including legal cover provided by his wife, who has been indicted alongside him — to detain hundreds more children and subject them to unspeakable evil.

According to these reports, Maduro’s forces appear to have sexually tortured children and adolescents as young as 12 years old to extract sham confessions of “terrorism” and “treason.” Their “crime” was nothing more than attending pro-democracy protests with their parents. The methods used to extract these confessions included beatings, forced nudity, and coercive transactional sex from female children in exchange for basic needs. Most horrifyingly, reports from the UN confirm the use of electric shocks on the genitals of minors.

The United States must speak and act with crystalline clarity: the DOJ must immediately expand its charges against Maduro to include these crimes against children. Further, if convicted, Mr. Maduro has quite possibly forfeited his right to life. The same applies to the officials who performed and permitted these hellish acts — officials who, God willing, will also be brought to justice through the might of the American Armed Forces as the transition of power begins.

We are not merely discussing a failed communist experiment or a standard-issue autocrat. We are discussing a regime and a man that has likely systematically engaged in “anthropological murder” — the violent desecration of the human person and a war against the inviolable selfhood of the image-bearers of the Creator. To look upon the ruins of Maduro’s regime and offer only a shrug or sentencing for drug trafficking is to fail the most basic test of a just society. ….

This from Twi-X via Eric Spracklen:

  • “Trump is basically parading Maduro around Manhattan in front of Mamdani and all his little commies. God tier trolling.”


And yes, this “God Tier Trolling” as Eric calls it is to counter the Mamdani speeach of “replac[ing] the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.” Audacious collectivism: that’s the Mamdani agenda — as the CITY JOURNAL calls it.

To wit, I will end with this:

The Above Photo is of August Landmesser (WIKI)

Let me also note that I have already seen the idea online that we are doing this for oil and minerals. I saw this same accusation during Dubya’s Iraq War… what was the actual outcome?

  • (CNNMoney.com) — “Despite claims by some critics that the Bush administration invaded Iraq to take control of its oil, the first contracts with major oil firms from Iraq’s new government are likely to go not to U.S. companies, but rather to companies from China, India, Vietnam, and Indonesia.” (MY UPDATED POST)

So similar to my post, I doubt you will see forced contracts with Venezuela over oil and mineral rights/purchases. But that aside, AND? So what if we want a free government by democratic process to install a free government… which would then not want to have contracts with the countries that came in and helped keep a dictator who lost the previous “election” and caused chaos while stealing their wealth.

My Gawd Man!

Full Interview: Marco Rubio on Venezuela | Meet the Press

Was The Iraq War About Oil?

Published by Papa Giorgio

The first appearance of this was on my old free blog,
April 2007, then here February 2016

  • (CNNMoney.com) — “Despite claims by some critics that the Bush administration invaded Iraq to take control of its oil, the first contracts with major oil firms from Iraq’s new government are likely to go not to U.S. companies, but rather to companies from China, India, Vietnam, and Indonesia.” — via my old site in April of 2007.

SWEETNESS-N-LIGHT points out in their post on the subject that China will get about 80% of the oil from Iraq:

…The International Energy Agency expects China to become the main customer for Iraq’s vast oil reserves. Fatih Birol, the agency’s chief economist, recently declared “a new trade axis is being formed between Baghdad and Beijing.” Birol said that about 80 percent of Iraq’s future oil exports were expected to go to Asia, mainly to China.

Iraq’s potential for oil production is huge. The International Energy Agency predicts that Iraqi production will more than double in the next eight years and that the country will be by far the largest contributor to growth in the global oil supply over the next two decades. By the 2030s, the agency expects Iraq to become the second largest global oil exporter, overtaking Russia…

Iraq hasn’t become the bonanza for big Western international oil companies that some might have expected when the U.S. invaded 10 years ago…

The below is an update from 2013, 10-years after the war… I am going to highlight something for the reader to emphasize the proclivity of the Professional Left in dumbing down complicated choices and simplifying history. It comes from FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE:

Now that the tenth anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom has arrived, the American left has taken another opportunity to revive the trope that going to war in that nation “was all about oil.” The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald is one such revivalist. In a column on Monday he’s magnanimous enough to concede that saying the war in Iraq was fought strictly for oil is an “oversimplification.” Yet just as quickly, he can’t contain himself. “But the fact that oil is a major factor in every Western military action in the Middle East is so self-evident that it’s astonishing that it’s even considered debatable, let alone some fringe and edgy idea,” he contends. The war for oil mantra may be self-evident to Greenwald and his fellow travelers, but the facts say otherwise.

If oil were a major factor for prosecuting war in Iraq, it stands to reason the United States would be getting substantial amounts of it. It may come as a shock to Greenwald as well as a number of other Americans, but with regard to importing oil, the overwhelming percentage of our imported oil does not come from the Middle East. Canada and Latin America provide the United States with 34.7 percent of our imported oil. Africa provides another 10.3 percent. The entire Persian Gulf, led by Saudi Arabia at 8.1 percent, provides us with a total of 12.9 percent of our imported oil.

As recently as December 2012, Iraq provided the United States with approximately 14.3 million barrels of oil out of a total of about 298 million barrels imported, or 4.8 percent of our total imports. And as this chart indicates, we were importing the highest amount of oil from Iraq before we went to war to oust Saddam Hussein.

Furthermore, the United States fully supported the United Nations’ oil embargo against Iraq, imposed when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, despite the reality that we were far more dependent on imported oil then than we are now. We continued to support it even when it was revealed that the eventual softening of those sanctions, known as the oil for food program, revealed that Russia, France and a number of other nations were collaborating with Saddam Hussein to violate sanctions in return for billions of dollars of ill-gotten gains. Of the 52 countries named in a report compiled by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker detailing the scandal, only 28 even wanted the evidence, and the United States led the way in prosecuting those implicated.

In 2010, the UN Security Council lifted most of the remaining sanctions. The Security Council said it “recognizes that the situation now existing in Iraq is significantly different from that which existed at the time of the adoption of resolution 661” in 1990. In other words, they recognized that Butcher of Baghdad and his brutal dictatorship had been tossed on the ash heap of history, and a relatively stable government had taken its place. The Council also voted to return control of Iraq’s oil and natural gas revenue to the government by June 30 of that year. “Iraq is on the cusp of something remarkable–a stable, self-reliant nation,” said Vice President Joe Biden, who chaired the meeting.

It is precisely that self-reliant nation–not an oil-rich client state of America–that Iraq is becoming.

If America went to war in Iraq mostly for oil, it would stand to reason that we would maintain a stranglehold on both their supply and production. Ten years after the war began, China has emerged as one of the main beneficiaries of a relatively stable Iraqi government and a country that, after two decades, is poised to become the world’s third largest oil exporter. Trade between Iraq and China has doubled almost 34 times, soaring from $517 million in 2002, to $17.5 billion by the end of last year. If current trends continue, it will replace the U.S. as Iraq’s largest trading partner.

Furthermore, the first postwar oil license awarded by the Iraqi government in 2008 was to the state-run China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), in the form of a $3.5 billion development contract for Iraqi oil field Al-Ahdab. In December 2009, in the second round of bids to develop Iraq’s vast untapped oil reserves (following a June auction allowing foreign companies the chance to increase production at existing fields), China and Russia emerged with the lion’s share of the contracts. At the time, Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani envisioned a bright future. “Our principal objective is to increase our oil production from 2.4 million barrels per day to more than four million in the next five years,” he said.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL notes more recently that these many myths presented to us by the Left are deserving of being retired:

…OK, I had some help from a duplicitous vice president, Dick Cheney. Then there wasGeorge W. Bush, a gullible president who could barely locate Iraq on a map and who wanted to avenge his father and enrich his friends in the oil business. And don’t forget the neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon who fed cherry-picked intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, to reporters like me.

None of these assertions happens to be true, though all were published and continue to have believers. This is not how wars come about, and it is surely not how the war in Iraq occurred. Nor is it what I did as a reporter for the New York Times. These false narratives deserve, at last, to be retired….

(read it all)

See more about the “behind the scenes” machinations that included Alan Greenspan at COLUMBIA JOURNALISM JOURNAL. REUTERS noted the clarification as well…

 

The “Heavenly Mother” Cult (Church of Ahnsahnghong)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Originally Posted April 2016

This is a post dealing with the many aspects of the Korean cult known as World Mission Society Church of God (as well as: The Church of God, WMSCOG, COGWMS, The Church of Ahnsahnghong, Elohists). CARM has some helpfully concise information on the cult…

Jesus

  1. WMSCOG: The Church claims a man called Ahnsahnghong is the Second Coming of Christ. According to this church, Ahnsahnghong is Jesus.
  2. Bible: The Bible teaches clearly that Jesus Christ will return as a Jew visibly, not in a secret coming.
  1. “For false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect. Behold, I have told you in advance. So if they say to you, ‘Behold, He is in the wilderness,’ do not go out, or, ‘Behold, He is in the inner rooms,’ do not believe them. For just as the lightning comes from the east and flashes even to the west, so will the coming of the Son of Man be,” (Mt. 24:23-27).
  2. Ahnsahnghong made false prophecies by predicting the end of the world in 1967 and 1988. This is a sin. Since Jesus never sinned and/or ever make a mistake, He and Ahnsahnghong are not the same person.
[….]

Incarnation

  1. WMSCOG: Believe Mother Jerusalem to be the female incarnation of God.
  2. Bible:
  1. This is definitely unbiblical since the Bible clearly teaches that Jesus is the unique incarnation of God as the one and only begotten Son of God who is God and man. Since Jesus is the unique incarnation of God, there are not other incarnations of God who are female.
  2. Jesus is God: John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being . . . 14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Jesus also created all things (Col. 1:16-17), is called God (Rom. 9:5, Heb. 1:8), and is worshipped (Mt. 2:2, 14:33), and prayed to (1 Cor. 1:2, Acts 7:55-60).
  3. Jesus is Man: Jesus rose from the dead as a physical man (Lk. 24:39, Jn. 20:19-20), ascended into Heaven as that same man (Acts 1:11), and is still a man right now since He is our Mediator as man (1 Tim. 2:5) and eternal High Priest as a man after the order of Melchizedek (Heb. 6:20, 7:25). Scripture also speaks of Him presently dwelling in bodily form (Col. 2:9).
  4. There is only one God: There is only one God in all existence (Is. 43:10, 44:6, 8). Therefore, there are not other gods who incarnate. Jesus is the only one.

(read more)

The following video is a great (albeit badly filmed) introduction to some of the concerns of WMSCOG presented by Professor Ji-il Tark via Steven Hassan’s “Freedom of Mind” YouTube Channel: Here is the video description followed by the video:

“The World Mission Society Church of God (Korean: 하나님의교회 세계복음선교협회) was founded by Ahn Sahng-hong (안상홍) in 1964. The church believes that he is the second coming of Christ. Ahn Sahng-Hong was baptized in 1948 and died in 1985 and the current leader of the church is Ahn’s spiritual wife, Zang Gil-Jah (장길자), known in the church as “the Heavenly Mother”, and the General Pastor is Kim Joo-Cheol.”

I shot this video in July 2010 of Professor Tark at a conference where many former members of a wide variety of destructive, totalitarian groups met. I had never heard of Professor Tark, but came to learn that his father was the most famous anti-cult minister in Korea. He was unfortunately assassinated by a cult member (not someone from WMSCOG). He is professor of Religion at Busan Presbyterian University. 

There is another video testimony by a 12 year ex-member/missionary for WMSCOG on Steve Hassan’s YouTube Channel HERE.

A partial — quick — dealing with WMSCOG can be found at Got Questions:

Question: “What is the World Mission Society Church of God, and what do they believe?”

Answer: The World Mission Society Church of God (WMSCOG) was founded by a man named Ahn Sahng-Hong in South Korea in 1964. He was born in 1918 to Buddhist parents and spent many years with the Seventh-day Adventists. He claimed to have rebuilt the Church of God—the same Church that Jesus established and with the same truths of the Early Church. Ahn Sahng-Hong died in 1985.

The WMSCOG believes in God the Father and God the Mother, who came to earth in the flesh. Ahn Sahng-Hong’s spiritual wife, Zahng Gil-Jah, is known as “the Heavenly Mother.” According the WMSCOG, “God the Mother is the core of our faith and the figure that guides us. . . . God the Mother stands by and prays for us whenever we face hardships.” The Bible does not teach the existence of a “heavenly mother.” God is consistently referred to as our Father. Revelation 21:2 describes the New Jerusalem as a beautifully adorned bride. But verses 9–10 show that the “wife of the Lamb” and the “New Jerusalem” are synonymous terms. Obviously, the New Jerusalem is a city, not a person. In this case, the city is the church, the redeemed of the Lord living in God’s heavenly city. The Lamb’s “wife,” then, is figurative, not literal.

[….]

Ahn Sahng-Hong was a false prophet. He predicted Christ would return in 1967, then changed the date to 1988. The WMSCOG believed the world would end in 1967, then 1988, and then at the end of 2012. History has proved Ahn Sahng-Hong wrong. It is noteworthy that one of the signs of the end times is the increase in false prophets and false messiahs. Ahn Sahng-Hong clearly falls into the category of false prophet and false messiah.

And here I wish to shift gears a bit and discuss a few of their false prophecies. Dueteronomy 18:20-22 reads thusly from a few different versions:

One commentator notes the following about the above verse:

  • False prophets could be detected in various ways. We have previously learned that they were false if they sought to lead the people away from the worship of the true God (13:1–5). Here is another means of detection: If a prediction failed to come to pass, that prophet should be put to death, and no one need fear any curse he might pronounce.

William MacDonald, Believer’s Bible Commentary: Old and New Testaments, ed. Arthur Farstad (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1995), 217.

So one-way to see a false prophet is by their fruits. Matthew 7:15-20 reads:

“Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravaging wolves. You’ll recognize them by their fruit. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree produces good fruit, but a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can’t produce bad fruit; neither can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So you’ll recognize them by their fruit.“

So here Jesus is analogizing “bad fruit” with false prophecies. How does this relate to WMSCOG? Because they made 3-major false prohecies. This came out in a court case where the cult lost hands down… here are some of the key portions, I will highlight them:

Defendant has published about 2,000 copies of a book titled “Researches on the New Religions of Korea 2002, Collection I (subtitled, Self-Claimed Reborn Jesus Christ of Korea) and distributed about 500 copies to the Christian bookstores nationwide. On pages 145 to 168 of the book, the following text is listed about the plaintiff church: Under the title of “The Church of God (World Gospel Association)”, and underneath it, it describes, “The Church of God is an organization that stemmed from the Adventist Church. But unlike the Adventist church which acknowledges general Christian beliefs of judgment, ethical salvation, as well as resurrection, eternal life, trinity, atonement of the cross, and Jesus Christ’s redemption, this organization believes that Sang Hong Ahn who died in 1985 is God, and as they have proclaimed that they are not Christians, they are actually not part of Christianity”. It goes on to say, “Aware that the continuing failures of the many end of the world theories that continued in 1988 and 1994 as well as the critical views of the society, as they all came to be not true, they have changed their name to the Church of God World Gospel Association to continue their activities. In 1999, particularly, they again came up with another end of the world theory by jumping on the wagon of the Y2K phenomenon, which they insisted to their believers, but it too also backfired and along with reports of the Church of God Sang Hong Ahn Witness Association, what went on in their organization was reported by the media. In 1988, they were reported to have proclaimed an end of the world theory, and after this year, they have continued to claim these theories every year to their believers, some of which resulted in some of their believers leaving their families, which resulted in the family members making petitions each year They then changed their name to Sang Hong Ahn Witness Association, but after it caused troubles in their missionary work, they changed their name to the Church of God. According to the teachings of Sang Hong Ahn Witness Association, the end of the world would come in 1988 at which time the world will disappear without a trace and except for 144,000 people who have been granted with God’s special protection, everything will be destroyed. It was believed that the first wife of Sang Hong Ahn, who was his so called spiritual wife, was Soo In Um. Um divorced her former husband before she began seeing Ahn, and she was the one who proclaimed that Ahn was Jesus Christ in 1978. After Ahn died, the Sang Hong Ahn Witness Association was divided into a sect called New Covenant Passover Church of God that worshipped Um as the wife of God and another sect that chose Gil Ja Chang as the wife of God in 1981 and believed the second spiritual wife as Mother. They wore white clothes that Ahn always wore when he was alive and insisted on living in shacks in the slums of Haewoondae. At worship meetings, they could not get into the building while wearing shoes, and women were required to wear veils on their head just like the Roman Catholic Church, all of which were some of their major doctrines. The Sang Hong Ahn Witness Association interpreted some of the Bible verses on their own in discretion in order to match with their claims, some of which were that in Psalms 132:10-18, there is a prophecy that David will grow horns. They insisted that the seven horns in the verse symbolize seven seasonal periods, and Ahn insisted after finding a doctrine about the periods that he was the little lamb in the last period. We must know that cults and heresies always target and approach people who are not satisfied and complain about their lives. What they are insisting are clearly pseudo-religious heresies that can only be accepted by someone with little knowledge about Christian beliefs, but they do not focus on Ahn being God to other people when they start missionary work. In February 29, 2000, a former member of the association named Chung left the organization and disclosed the truth about it after which he was surrounded by some 400 members and assaulted.”

[….]

In looking at the parts where the book described how the plaintiff church first proclaimed its end of the world theory in 1988, by which the members of the families of some of the believers who left their families pleaded every year, according to the combined arguments made in the documents 7 of (Article) number 7 and (Article) numbers 8 through 13 (including serial numbers), the plaintiff church did make a missionary paper which stated that the world will end in 1988, which was three years after the death of Sang Hong Ahn, and in 1999, it also conducted a survey about their prophecy of the end of the world in 1999 on their believers. Also within the church, there is another claim being proposed that the world will end in 2012. Additionally, the broadcasting stations KBS, SBS and MBC have collected information and tried to broadcast about the plaintiff church’s end of the world theory in their programs of “60 Minutes America”, “Cases and People”, and “PD Memos” respectively, and there is now an organization formed by husbands of the victims who have said that they were victimized by the plaintiff church’s end of the world theory. Considering all these acknowledged facts, it cannot be conclusively said that the book’s descriptions are untruthful facts even if there may be some incorrect or a little excessive expressions about how the end of the world theory was described.

There was also a false prophecy about the end of the world in 1967.

  • Ahn Sahng-Hong was a false prophet. He predicted Christ would return in 1967, then changed the date to 1988. The WMSCOG believed the world would end in 1967, then 1988, and then at the end of 2012. History has proved Ahn Sahng-Hong wrong. It is noteworthy that one of the signs of the end times is the increase in false prophets and false messiahs. Ahn Sahng-Hong clearly falls into the category of false prophet and false messiah.

But above we see also 1988; 1999, and 2012 were dates set for the end of the world as well.

Most cults have false prophecies: Jehovah’s Witnesses; Mormons; etc.

Here is another example of a false prophecy as detailed by Examining The World Mission Society Church of God site:

When we compare the Green Book in 1993 to the Green Book in 2010, we find some curious changes.

The “Second Coming Jesus” Writes About the Future “Second Coming Jesus”?

Just to be clear, Ahn Sahng-Hong never claimed anywhere in his writings to be Jesus Christ. Rather, it is the WMSCOG which claims he was the Second Coming of Jesus. Yet, we find that Ahn Sahng-Hong in his own writings in 1993 speaks about the future Second Coming of Jesus:

The below graphics are from here:

Changes in the Green Book – Part 1 – Removal of “Second Coming” References

CLICK TO ENLARGE

(See more false prophecies in this index at Encountering the Cult of Ahnsahnghong)

So what should the layman walking around the college campus do when approached by these people knowing that their theology teaches that Ahnsahnghong will judge/save us (only God the Father, Christ, Ahnsahnghong and God the Mother [Heavenly Mother] can give people salvation), then you can quickly explain that the Bible forbids one to follow such salvific pronunciations because the Bible clearly teaches that we should “not be afraid of the false prophet.”

I will continue the topic on WMSCOG in the future.

Real Socialism Has Never Been Tried (Mantra’s of the Left)

Published by Papa Giorgio

ORIGINALLY POSTED OCT 3, 2013 — JUST UPDATED “DEAD” MEDIA

I wish to post some ideas and thoughts by others here that will allow a framework to reply to such a challenge. Many professors will infect young minds with this idea, which is, “you cannot criticize Marxism, socialism, or the like because its ‘pure form[s]’ have never been implemented on earth.” To which I would reply to said professor that he then would not be able to criticize Christianity, Republicans, Capitalism, etc…. because the ideal they hold has never been purely implemented on earth. [In Christianity I would note that the faith was modeled perfectly in the man of Christ Jesus.]

So if you have a professor who is harping on Capitalism, Bush, Republicans, Reagan, Newt, Ted Cruz, whomever…, you just need to point out that since  FDR’s “New Deal” and Johnson’s “Great Society” all they are really criticizing is regulation and redistribution. Because we are far from a truly free-market.

So, what are some good resources to build a cumulative case or allow deeper — non-sophomoric thinking as the author of The Politically incorrect Guide would say — on this subject? While I responded to the person where I work with the quick answer of, “that is essentially copping out of dealing with what is produced by such beliefs,” my thinking on the matter goes beyond how I could or can express it in the work environment. This frustration of quick interactions has led me partly to blog on various topics so not only myself, but others can access this “nugget” if-you-will for both personal edification and learning or linking to friends, co-workers, and family that you discuss this issue with. Especially young people at university.

I do wish to note that just because I am posting items by others below, it does not imply I fully agree with their position stated or worldview. For instance I use Student of Objectivism’s (SO) video (spliced with a quick “baked in the cake” precursor), while I enjoy and agree with Ayn Rand on many points… on many others I disagree. I CAN recommend wholeheartedly — for the lover of theology that really wishes to understand the political divide — a book by Thomas Sowell entitled, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles. While this is a must read for any political junkie, it is all the more powerful for one who believes in The Fall of mankind, objective grounding of ethics, man’s spark of life/creativity as well as mankind’s depravity. So to all the pastors and apologists that read this… add that book into your reading hopper.

Okay, I wanted to begin with this chapter, at least the opening pages of it, the chapter can be seen below.

In it the author notes that “baked into” socialism is serfdom… by violence if necessary. Scott Huber of Brightlight Books comments well on this idea and the book:

Williamson ended Chapter 1 (see that summary here) with the observation (from Hayek) that socialist planners always lead an economy on the “road to serfdom”. This is because socialist economic planning cannot work because the planners cannot have enough information or knowledge to make the proper economic decisions. So, in lieu of having enough knowledge to properly make economic decisions, they opt for varying and escalating levels of coercion to enforce their Plan.

In Chapter 2, he begins by refuting what he calls the high school debater’s trick of claiming that socialism in “theory” is great (and true and just and compassionate, etc.) but it just gets screwed up in practice.

Not so, he says:

In truth, the theory behind socialism is deeply flawed: it is intellectually narrow, inhumane, and deeply irrational in that it fails to account for the ways in which knowledge works in a society. Socialism in theory is every bit as bad as socialism in practice, once you understand the theory and stop mistaking it for the common and humane charitable impulse.

Here is a key question? How is economic value determined? Next, we can ask a slightly different set of questions: How should economic value be determined and, perhaps more importantly, by whom?

Williamson argues that on the issue of determining economic value Marx (and every socialist) is a moralist. How so?

Because for Marx, and every other socialist, the value of economic activity, which is to say the value of any product or service, is (or more precisely should) be objectively related to the labor of the worker who produces it. This contrasts with the subjective approach of the capitalist marketplace which basically says that the value of a product or a service is related to how people in the marketplace subjectively value it.

In other words, let’s say you spend a lot of time, human labor, and other resources to produce something. The socialist approach to value says that your product is, at least roughly, worth the sum of the costs required to produce it especially the labor costs. To price it higher or lower is an injustice.

Marx’s analysis is morally normative [i.e. what should be] in that he insists that, since labor is the measure of value, wages must equal the price of the product. The mere existence of profits – squeezing economic value out of a product beyond what workers are paid – for Marx was proof of capitalist’s exploitation of workers. It was indistinguishable from outright theft.

And, according to Williamson, it’s this moral (and moralizing) context that fuels Marxists’ and other socialists’ revolutionary fervor. Note Marx’s most famous quote: The point of philosophy is not merely to understand the world, but to change it. And at the point of a gun if necessary, which it usually is since free people do not readily cooperate with the revolution.

“Communism is a great idea, it just hasn’t been tried properly.” Leftist fellow travelers rush to embrace every Marxist experiment, champion the system and agitate for it to be copied in their own country. …and then walk away when it inevitably fails; searching once again for the next soon to fail utopia. Communism has been tried over 40 times in the last 100 years and has produced egregious results in every iteration. This video shows every application and deep dives into half a dozen examples, comparing before and after Communism was tried as well as comparing examples directly with free and mixed market neighbors.(Via VOTE NIXON)

And one should note that ALL of the above have a current application to what we are seeing the Democrats implementing. Socialized Medicine. And who better to explain this to us that the Gipper himself:

Walter Williams makes this real for us in a way that should perk the interest of those who love and cherish freedom:

…Mao Zedong has been long admired by academics and leftists across our country, as they often marched around singing the praises of Mao and waving his little red book, “Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-tung.” President Barack Obama’s communications director, Anita Dunn, in her June 2009 commencement address to St. Andrews Episcopal High School at Washington National Cathedral, said Mao was one of her heroes.

Whether it’s the academic community, the media elite, stalwarts of the Democratic Party or organizations such as the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, Green for All, the Sierra Club and the Children’s Defense Fund, there is a great tolerance for the ideas of socialism — a system that has caused more deaths and human misery than all other systems combined.

Today’s leftists, socialists and progressives would bristle at the suggestion that their agenda differs little from those of Nazi, Soviet and Maoist mass murderers. One does not have to be in favor of death camps or wars of conquest to be a tyrant. The only requirement is that one has to believe in the primacy of the state over individual rights.

The unspeakable horrors of Nazism didn’t happen overnight. They were simply the end result of a long evolution of ideas leading to consolidation of power in central government in the quest for “social justice.”…

Social Justice. This social justice always leads to repression, from the NAACP asking the rodeo clown who wore an Obama mask to be investigated, to, Dr. Benjamin Carson being audited after his prayer breakfast speech by the IRS. These are murmurings of the greater end that always ends in violent repression. From pro-lifers being threatened on university campuses, to suppression of free speech, to… eventualy, the outgrowth — naturally — to violent repression. The difference between Marxism, Socialism, Communism, and Fascism, is a matter of degrees, only:

✯ A Marxist will scream at you, argue and fist-fight you down the road to his dream, as he carries your belongings and says, “They belong to the collective”.

✯ A Socialist will grab you by the hand or the hair, and beat you on the head with a stick and drag you along, as they make you carry your own belongings and tell you they, “Belong to the collective”.

✯ A Communist will get behind you and make you carry your own belongings to his dream, as he points a gun to the back of your head, and kicks you in the back and screams at you, “They belong to the State”… as in the collective.

✯ A Fascist will will have your neighbor carry your belongings, and shoot you if you do not agree with his dream of “Centralized Authority, and it all belongs to the State”,… the collective”.

…a matter of degrees.

(I cry every time I watch the beginning of this.) This footage is a great example of how Democrats are joined at the hip with radicals. The example comes by way of the two radical Democrat women making my point:

Question is, which is our temperature to stop this from going further in our country?

And any person should acknowledge why someone should “fear” government more than business. In fact, I made this point on my FB outgrowth of this blog in talking to my liberal friend:

…the point was to show how the Obama admin is stacking the books with GM. You see, when the government chooses winners-and-losers instead of getting contracts with private companies (like Ford, GM, etc.), they are invested to [i.e., forced to] only choose a government run business and stock their fish (so-to-speak) with GM fleets… leaving the non-government company to flounder.

This next audio deals with the differences of the Koch brothers, in comparison to the Left’s version of them, Soros. There are many areas that one can discuss about the two… but let us focus in on the main/foundational difference. One wants a large government that is able to legislate more than just what kind of light-bulbs one can use in the privacy of their own home. Soros wants large government able to control a large portion of the economy (see link to chart below), and he has been very vocal on this goal. The other party always mentioned are the Koch brothers. These rich conservatives want a weak government. A government that cannot effect our daily lives nearly as much (personal, business, etc) as the Soros enterprise wants. And really, if you think about it, what business can really “harm” you, when people come to my door with pistols on their hip… are they a) more likely to be from GM, or, b) from the IRS?

The possibility of them being from the IRS is even more possible with the passing of Obama-Care [i.e., larger government]. So the “fear” (audio in next comment) I think the Left has of “Big-Business” is unfounded, and the problem comes when big-business gets in bed with big-government. Here I am thinking of (like with the penalties that were found to be Constitutional in the recent SCOTUS decision) a government that can penalize you if you do not buy a Chevy Volt, or some other green car in order to save the planet. When this happens, guys coming to my door because of unpaid (hypothetical… but historical examples abound of the tax history of our nation) “fines” are likely to be IRS agents because of a personal choice made in the “free-market.”

Appendix: If the above example didn’t inspire any liberal fear (forced to go green or be penalized), maybe this one will?

…First, the government needs to issue a mandate that all households must own at least one firearm. We will need a federal agency to ensure that people aren’t just buying cheap BB guns or .22 pistols, even though that may be all they need or want. It has to be 9mm or above, with .44 magnums getting a one-time tax credit on their own. Let’s pick an agency known for its aptitude on firearms and home protection to issue required annual certifications each year, without which the government will have to levy hefty fines. Which agency would do the best job? Hmmmm … I know! How about TSA? With their track record of excellence, we should have no problems implementing this mandate.

Don’t want to own a gun? Hey, no worries. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts says citizens have the right to refuse to comply with mandates. The government will just seize some of your cash in fines, that’s all. Isn’t choice great? Those fines will go toward federal credits that will fund firearm purchases for the less well off, so that they can protect their homes as adequately as those who can afford guns on their own. Since they generally live in neighborhoods where police response is appreciably worse than their higher-earning fellow Americans, they need them more anyway. Besides — gun ownership is actually mentioned in the Constitution, unlike health care, which isn’t. Obviously, that means that the federal government should be funding gun ownership….

…read more…

(See More)

The Pilgrims could have benefited from sound theology which would have dissuaded their (and should ours) experiment with “communal” activities:

Many Americans believe socialism to be a form of social kindness by the government. But true socialism isn’t a social safety net. It is when the government controls most prices, businesses, property, and other aspects of economic life. The historical record of socialism has been wrecked or stagnating economies and flagrant human rights violations. The truth borne of a hundred years of hard experience is that people do not prosper in socialist countries.

A. PRIVATE PROPERTY

According to the teachings of the Bible, government should both document and protect the ownership of private property in a nation.

The Bible regularly assumes and reinforces a system in which property belongs to individuals, not to the government or to society as a whole.

We see this implied in the Ten Commandments, for example, because the eighth commandment, “You shall not steal” (Exod. 20:15), assumes that human beings will own property that belongs to them individually and not to other people. I should not steal my neighbor’s ox or donkey because it belongs to my neighbor, not to me and not to anyone else.

The tenth commandment makes this more explicit when it prohibits not just stealing but also desiring to steal what belongs to my neighbor:

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s” (Exod. 20:17).

The reason I should not “covet” my neighbor’s house or anything else is that these things belong to my neighbor, not to me and not to the community or the nation.

This assumption of private ownership of property, found in this fundamental moral code of the Bible, puts the Bible in direct opposition to the communist system advocated by Karl Marx. Marx said:

The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: abolition of private property.

One reason why communism is so incredibly dehumanizing is that when private property is abolished, government controls all economic activity. And when government controls all economic activity, it controls what you can buy, where you will live, and what job you will have (and therefore what job you are allowed to train for, and where you go to school), and how much you will earn. It essentially controls all of life, and human liberty is destroyed. Communism enslaves people and destroys human freedom of choice. The entire nation becomes one huge prison. For this reason, it seems to me that communism is the most dehumanizing economic system ever invented by man.

Other passages of Scripture also support the idea that property should belong to individuals, not to “society” or to the government (except for certain property required for proper government purposes, such as government offices, military bases, and streets and highways). The Bible contains many laws concerning punishments for stealing and appropriate restitution for damage of another person’s farm animals or agricultural fields (for example, see Exod. 21:28-36; 22:1-15; Deut. 22:1-4; 23:24-25). Another com­mandment guaranteed that property boundaries would be protected: “You shall not move your neighbor’s landmark, which the men of old have set, in the inheritance that you will hold in the land that the LORD your God is giving you to possess” (Deut. 19:14). To move the landmark was to move the boundaries of the land and thus to steal land that belonged to one’s neighbor (compare Prov. 22:28; 23:10).

Another guarantee of the ownership of private property was the fact that, even if property was sold to someone else, in the Year of Jubilee it had to return to the family that originally owned it:

It shall be a Jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan (Lev. 25:10).

This is why the land could not be sold forever: “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me” (Lev. 25:23).

This last verse emphasizes the fact that private property is never viewed in the Bible as an absolute right, because all that people have is ultimately given to them by God, and people are viewed as God’s “stewards” to manage what he has entrusted to their care.

The earth is the LORD’S and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein (Ps. 24:1; compare Ps. 50:10-12; Hag. 2:8).

Yet the fact remains that, under the overall sovereign lordship of God himself, property is regularly said to belong to individuals, not to the government and not to “society” or the nation as a whole.

When Samuel warned the people about the evils that would be imposed upon them by a king, he emphasized the fact that the monarch, with so much government power, would “take” and “take” and “take” from the people and confiscate things for his own use:

So Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking for a king from him. He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day” (1 Sam. 8:10-18).

This prediction was tragically fulfilled in the story of the theft of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite by Ahab the wicked king and Jezebel, his even more wicked queen (see 1 Kings 21:1-29). The regular tendency of human governments is to seek to take control of more and more of the property of a nation that God intends to be owned and controlled by private individuals.

Wayne Grudem, Politics According to the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), 261-263.

RC Sproul and Adams Fall | Calvinist Obfuscations

Published by Papa Giorgio

(There are only two types of Calvinists/”Reformed” models: consistent and inconsistent. Double predestination is consistent.) In the video that follows these two quotes, you will see the quote by John Calvin… but I wanted to put an old quote by RC Sproul — who — apparently hasn’t read John Calvin:

DO YOU SCHOLAR MUCH RC?

  • Herein lies the problem. Before a person can commit an act of sin he must first have a desire to perform that act. The Bible tells us that evil actions flow from evil desires. But the presence of an evil desire is already sin. We sin because we are sinners. We were born with a sin nature. We are fallen creatures. But Adam and Eve were not created fallen. They had no sin nature. They were good creatures with a free will. Yet they chose to sin. Why ? I don’t know. Nor have I found anyone yet who does know.

RC Sproul, Chosen By God (Wheaton, IL: Thomas Nelson Inc., Publishers, 1986), 30-31

  • “God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his posterity; but also at His own pleasure arranged it … Though their perdition depends on the predestination of God, the cause and matter of it is in themselves … Man therefore falls, divine providence so ordaining, but he falls by his own fault.”

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.23.7; 3.23.8

What if Calvin was more extreme than most Calvinists today? In this clip, Austin Fischer and Leighton Flowers unpack the forgotten (or ignored) parts of Calvin’s own words—especially around God ordaining the Fall and reprobation. If you’ve ever been told Calvinism is misrepresented, this is the clip you need to see.

MORE:

  • “Even the fall of Adam, and through him the fall of the race, was not by chance or accident, but was so ordained in the secret counsels of God.”1
  • “Surely, if God had not willed the fall, He could, and no doubt would, have prevented it; but He did not prevent it: ergo He willed it. And if He willed it, He certainly decreed it”2
  • “Plainly it was God’s will that sin should enter this world, otherwise it would not have entered, for nothing happens except what God has eternally decreed. Moreover, there was more than a simple permission, for God only permits things that fulfill His purpose.”3
  • “Not only did God have a perfect foreknowledge of the outcome of Adam’s trial; not only did His omniscient eye see Adam eating of the forbidden fruit, but He decreed beforehand that he should do so.”4
  • “Also, Calvinists often affirm that Adam was free before the Fall. But again, I always speak of freedom relative to God, and from this perspective, I would say that Adam had no freedom whatsoever even before the Fall. To be “free” from sin is irrelevant. The issue is whether Adam was free from God to choose to remain free from sin – he was not. In addition, I would not say that God permitted Adam to fall, but that God caused it.”5

1 Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, p. 234

2 Jerome Zanchius, The Doctrine of Absolute Predestination, Ch. II, Sec. II, Par. 4 (Link)

3 A.W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God, p. 162

4 A.W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God, Appendix II, The Case of Adam, p. 283

5 Vicent Cheung, The Author of Sin (WEBSITE), last accessed 7/29/2025.

GENESIS 1:31

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good indeed. (Genesis 1:31, CSB)

I just added the below quote from Calvin to Genesis 1:31 in my Bible…. if Calvinism is correct, and the theistic determinism that is its baggage, then God called “good” His creation [man] by nature destined by decree to sin.

  • “God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his posterity; but also at His own pleasure arranged it … Though their perdition depends on the predestination of God, the cause and matter of it is in themselves … Man therefore falls, divine providence so ordaining, but he falls by his own fault.” (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.23.7; 3.23.8)

Gordon H. Clark: “I wish very Frankly and pointedly to assert that if a man gets drunk and shoots his family, it was the will of God that he should do so …In Ephesians 1:11, Paul tells us that God works all things, not some things only, after the counsel of his own will.”

  • They have built high places to Baal on which to burn their children in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, something I have never commanded or mentioned; I never entertained the thought (Jeremiah 19:5, CSB)

James 1 says every good gift that we get is from God. He doesn’t cause our sin thru 1st or secondary causes.

  • No one undergoing a trial should say, “I am being tempted by God,” since God is not tempted by evil, and he himself doesn’t tempt anyone. But each person is tempted when he is drawn away and enticed by his own evil desire. Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is fully grown, it gives birth to death. Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. (James 1:13-17, CSB)

Otherwise, He would be redeeming His own decree, a dualistic God of Eastern metaphysics. Even our prayers are rendered useless, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” ~ His will is being done, to the “T”. Which is why when challenged in a lecture about prayer and Reformed ideas, Wayne Grudem said our prayers were even decreed [scripted] before the creation of the time-space-continuum.

MORE: Calvinism’s “Reading Rainbow” | John 11

WORTHWHILE: The “Connective Tissue” Between Islam and Calvinism

Ronnie Rogers zeroes in on the main issue that I will note C.S. Lewis hits first:

LEWIS

Any consideration of the goodness of God at once threat­ens us with the following dilemma.

On the one hand, if God is wiser than we His judge­ment must differ from ours on many things, and not least on good and evil. What seems to us good may therefore not be good in His eyes, and what seems to us evil may not be evil.

On the other hand, if God’s moral judgement differs from ours so that our ‘black’ may be His ‘white’, we can mean nothing by calling Him good; for to say ‘God is good’, while asserting that His goodness is wholly other than ours, is really only to say ‘God is we know not what’. And an utterly unknown quality in God cannot give us moral grounds for loving or obeying Him. If He is not (in our sense) ‘good’ we shall obey, if at all, only through fear—and should be equally ready to obey an omnipotent Fiend. The doctrine of Total Depravity— when the consequence is drawn that, since we are totally depraved, our idea of good is worth simply nothing— may thus turn Christianity into a form of devil-worship.

The escape from this dilemma depends on observing what happens, in human relations, when the man of infe­rior moral standards enters the society of those who are better and wiser than he and gradually learns to accept their standards—a process which, as it happens, I can describe fairly accurately, since I have undergone it. When I came first to the University I was as nearly with­out a moral conscience as a boy could be. Some faint dis­taste for cruelty and for meanness about money was my utmost reach—of chastity, truthfulness, and self-sacrifice I thought as a baboon thinks of classical music. By the mercy of God I fell among a set of young men (none of them, by the way, Christians) who were sufficiently close to me in intellect and imagination to secure immediate intimacy, but who knew, and tried to obey, the moral law. Thus their judgement of good and evil was very different from mine. Now what happens in such a case is not in the least like being asked to treat as ‘white’ what was hitherto called black. The new moral judgements never enter the mind as mere reversals (though they do reverse them) of previous judgements but ‘as lords that are certainly expected’. You can have no doubt in which direction you are moving: they are more like good than the little shreds of good you already had, but are, in a sense, continuous with them. But the great test is that the recognition of the new standards is accompanied with the sense of shame and guilt: one is conscious of having blundered into soci­ety that one is unfit for. It is in the light of such experi­ences that we must consider the goodness of God. Beyond all doubt, His idea of ‘goodness’ differs from ours; but you need have no fear that, as you approach it, you will be asked simply to reverse your moral standards. When the relevant difference between the Divine ethics and your own appears to you, you will not, in fact, be in any doubt that the change demanded of you is in the direction you already call ‘better’. The Divine ‘goodness’ differs from ours, but it is not sheerly different: it differs from ours not as white from black but as a perfect circle from a child’s first attempt to draw a wheel. But when the child has learned to draw, it will know that the circle it then makes is what it was trying to make from the very beginning. …

(MORE: CS Lewis: Our White Being God’s Black)

ROGERS

Origin of Sin

  1. I affirm that sin and evil are the corruption of God’s good creation; further, this corruption is due to the act of free moral agents making free choices to choose contrary to what is righteous and good when they could have chosen to do otherwise. Libertarian freedom entails the ability to act or refrain. Moreover, I affirm that Lucifer, Adam, and Eve possessed the ability to have exercised their free choice of either obeying God or disobeying Him. ‘Therefore, sin is the result of God’s creatures, as free moral agencies, making choices by exercising free will in the libertarian sense of free will, thereby revealing sin to be deprivation rather than a part of creation. By libertarian, I am not implying that man after the fall is fully free, but rather that before the fall, Lucifer, Adam, and Eve had “otherwise choice.”

As Norman Geisler distinguishes, “Technically, free will is not the efficient cause of a free act …. The efficient cause of a free act is really the free agent, not the free choice. Free choice is simply the power by which the free agent acts …. And once we have arrived at the free agent, it is meaningless to ask what caused its free acts. For if something else caused its actions, then the agent is not the cause of them and thus is not responsible for them. The free moral agent is the cause of free moral actions.”31

  1. I disaffirm that the origin of sin is due to God creating creatures to inevitably sin, withholding grace or ordering circumstances so that man had to sin, or that sin was in any way caused by God.32 Further, I disaffirm that sovereignty precludes Lucifer or man before the first sin from being truly free to sin or not to sin. Moreover, I disaffirm that compatibilism, wherein man is free to act according to his nature or desires, sufficiently answers the origin of the first sin question because Lucifer had no external or internal stimuli to precipitate sin.33 See Chapter 18 for a fuller discussion of this dilemma for Calvinism.

Here again, the distinction between the compatibilist view of free will and the libertarian view is a critical one. See Chapter 17 for a fuller comparison. Compatibilism is the view that moral freedom and determinism are compatible. However, compatibilism does not satisfactorily answer the question of what caused the first sin. In other words, if it is not the product of free choice in the libertarian sense, but only in the compatibilist sense, then did it arise out of the nature of Lucifer, which God directly created, or from overpowering stimuli from Lucifer’s environment, which God also directly created? Furthermore, although the serpent tempted Adam and Eve, there could have been no reason that man would have had to choose sin freely (compatibilism) lest we have what God called “good” being by nature destined to sin, a disquieting reality.

The compatibilist perspective seems to be exactly what Jonathan Edwards meant when he said, “If a person is able to do what he wills or chooses, he is free, no matter how he came to make this choice.”34 This understanding seems further confirmed by his statement regarding the nature of free choice when he says, “the ability to do what we will, or according to our pleasure.”35 Consequently, for the compatibilist, free choice is merely the freedom to choose to do what a person desires to do, even if the range of desires are limited by some preceding event like creation or the fall of man in the garden. As far as original sin, it seems as though he is arguing that man freely chose to eat of the fruit, but then God is the only one who could have given Adam that desire. Thus, Edwards’ compatibilism seems to imply God calling the desire that would ensure the fall and sin “very good” (Genesis 1:31).

I also disaffirm similar contemporary sentiments regarding God’s relation to sin such as R.C. Sproul Jr.’s comment that “Every Bible-believing Christian must conclude at least that God in some sense desired that man would fall into sin… I am not accusing God of sinning; I am suggesting that he created sin.”36 He “describes God as ‘the Culprit’ that caused Eve to sin in the garden.”37 Then there is Gordon Clark’s assessment, “As God cannot sin, so in the next place, God is not responsible for sin, even though he decrees it.”38 Again, Clark in response to Arminians asseverates, “I wish very frankly and pointedly to assert that if a man gets drunk and shoots his family, it was the will of God that he should do so … In Ephesians 1:11. Paul tells us that God works all things, not some things only, after the counsel of his own will.”39 Contrary to Clark, Ephesians does not say that God wills—directly causes—everything, but rather that “he works all things after the counsel of His will” (Ephesians 1:11).

God never has desired sin, nor will He ever. God always desires holiness. In creating man to freely love and walk with God without internal or external coercion, God accomplished the impossible. God desired a holy, loving, personal and eternal relationship with man that would glorify Him and be eternal, joyful bliss for man. That type of relationship would require God creating a being in His own image. Therefore, God chose to create man in His image (Genesis 1:26-28.), which necessitated man being created with true ability to choose to follow God or not follow God. God’s unwavering desire and will was and is for man to experience God’s love for eternity and for man to walk in holiness and love for God without ever using his free will to choose sin. God knew that it was an actual impossibility to guarantee that a truly free created person would never freely choose to misuse his freedom. God knew with absolute certainty that man would use his freedom to sin.40

For that reason, God coextensively determined to allow man to sin, provide His Son as the payment for the sins of the first man and woman and their offspring (1 John 2:2), and unconditionally offer salvation to every sinner, conditioning the reception of the offer upon grace-enabled faith (John 3:16; Ephesians 2:8-10). Although God’s desire for holiness never included a desire for man to sin, this plan allowed man to use his freedom to sin, and his grace-enabled freedom to repent and believe, which results in man being born again with a new nature that is created in righteousness and holiness (Colossians 3:10; Ephesians 4:20-22), but now with the experiential knowledge of sin and redemption.

God also coextensively knew that this transformed man, once salvation is completed in glorification (Romans 8:28-30), who now knows sin experientially and its consequences more fully, as well as redemptive love, will freely choose to live eternally in holiness and love with God and never use his freedom to sin again. God knows this because He knows everything (John 21:17). Thus, what mere creation could not accomplish, creation and redemption could. ‘Therefore, redemption was not a plan subsequent to creation, but rather an essential part of the plan of creation.41

When Satan tempted Eve, he said, “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5, italics added). This statement was true. Adam and Eve only knew sin as something forbidden by God, with claimed dire consequences. They did not know sin like God. They did not know it experientially, with all of its heartache, loss, damage, dishonor, depression, separation, and death, and its eternal consequences and corollaries. Satan told them the truth. They would know more about sin, and in that sense they would be more like God; however, he intentionally deceived them by not telling them that in every other way, they would become less like God, and irrevocably so if it were not for the predetermined gracious plan of redemption by God. God knows everything and always has. God has never had a new thought and nothing has ever occurred to God. Therefore, God knows sin experientially, without having ever experienced sin. This is something that cannot be true of a created being like man.

Some things are actual impossibilities, like God ceasing to exist, God sinning, forgiveness without sin’s penalty being borne, and creating a truly free moral being with libertarian free will and guaranteeing that he will not sin. God knew with infinite and invincible certitude that man would use his freedom to sin. He also knew that while it is impossible to create a truly free person without the possibility of him using his freedom to sin, it is not impossible for a completely redeemed and glorified created free being to choose always to walk in holiness. Therefore, what is impossible for man is not impossible for God; albeit, infinitely costly (John 3:16). Further, this is how God could create man while never desiring sin, but only righteousness, and still maintain certitude without Calvinism’s causality. This is the epitome of “God working all things together for good” (Romans 8:28).

Although all earthly analogies are inadequate to illustrate the full orb of eternal truths, they can provide a simple illustration of the eternal truth. A simple analogy of the difference between unfallen man and fallen, redeemed man would be a child having been told not to touch the hot stove. Even with the sternest warnings, cautions and lectures from mom, children are still often drawn to touch the stove; however, if they do touch the burner, and their hands are burned; they are rushed to the hospital and painful treatments, and recuperation are endured over a period of weeks. Once healing is complete, they will not intentionally touch the hot stove again. At this point, they are no longer naive children merely trusting their mother’s caution, but they have experienced the pain of wrong choices and restorative healing.

An illustration of how God could allow sin and yet never desire sin can be found in parents’ desires to have children. When Gina and I decided to have children, our passionate desire was that they would always choose righteousness, and never have to suffer the consequences of their own or someone else’s sin. We desired that they would live the fullest life in fellowship with God that is possible. We desired that they would never choose to act contrary to God’s Word. During the over thirty-four years that our two daughters have been alive, we have remained unequivocally true to those desires. There never has been, nor is there today, a desire to see them sin or be hurt by sin. Yet, we knew enough about the Scripture to know that it would be impossible for them to live the life we desired for them in this life, but that knowledge never altered our desire for righteousness. Furthermore, because God has graciously saved both of our daughters, our desire for them to walk in eternal fellowship with God will be realized.

《《 《《  FOOTNOTES  》》》》

  1. Norman Geisler, Chosen But Free, (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1999), 176.
  2. Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957), 413.
  3. Edwards, Freedom, 15.
  4. Edwards, Freedom, 15.
  5. Edwards, Freedom, 11.
  6. David L. Allen and Steve W. Lemke, eds., Whosoever Will: A Biblical-Theological Critique of Five-Point Calvinism, (Nashville, B&H Academic, 2010), 148.
  7. Ibid.
  8. Ibid., 292.
  9. Ibid
  10. The same is true of Lucifer and the fallen angels. However, their creation was different and therefore redemption is not a part of the plan concerning them.
  11. Additionally, the range of options changes without dispossessing one of libertarian freedom. For example, Adam and Eve had a range of options that man presently does not, and heaven will change the range of options from either state of affairs. In this life, the range of options is very different for a toddler, teenager, adult, and an elderly person, but each has libertarian freedom.

In an excellent post, Robin Phillips explains the reasoning behind the “Reformers” positing WHY God HAD TO make mankind fall:

…. As already mentioned, this theory says that God hates evil so much that He must ensure its eternal perpetuation, for if in a trillion years from now there was even a millisecond of time in which God didn’t have a group of sinners to be angry at, then this would be tragic as one whole part of His character (justice) would be unable to be expressed.

As Douglas Wilson once put it on his blog,

In a world without sin, two of God’s most glorious attributes—His justice and His mercy—would go undisplayed. This, obviously, would be horrible … In a world without sin and evil, at least two attributes of God would have gone unrevealed and unmanifested, those attributes being wrath and mercy. Since this is obviously intolerable, God determined to direct our affairs the way that He did.

Jonathan Edwards expressed a similar idea when he wrote:

It is a proper and excellent thing for infinite glory to shine forth; and for the same reason, it is proper that the shining forth of God’s glory should be complete; that is, that all parts of his glory should shine forth, that every beauty should be proportionably effulgent, that the beholder may have a proper notion of God. It is not proper that one glory should be exceedingly manifested, and another not at all … Thus it is necessary, that God’s awful majesty, his authority and dreadful greatness, justice, and holiness, should be manifested. But this could not be, unless sin and punishment had been decreed; so that the shining forth of God’s glory would be very imperfect, both because these parts of divine glory would not shine forth as the others do, and also the glory of his goodness, love, and holiness would be faint without them; nay, they could scarcely shine forth at all. If it were not right that God should decree and permit and punish sin, there could be no manifestation of God’s holiness in hatred of sin, or in showing any preference, in his providence, of godliness before it. There would be no manifestation of God’s grace or true goodness, if there was no sin to be pardoned, no misery to be saved from. How much happiness soever he bestowed, his goodness would not be so much prized and admired … So evil is necessary, in order to the highest happiness of the creature, and the completeness of that communication of God, for which he made the world; because the creature’s happiness consists in the knowledge of God, and the sense of his love. And if the knowledge of him be imperfect, the happiness of the creature must be proportionably imperfect.

The same notion is present in the works of Saint Augustine:

…if all had remained condemned to the punishment entailed by just condemnation, then God’s merciful grace would not have been seen at work in anyone, on the other hand, if all had been transferred from darkness to light, the truth of God’s vengeance would not have been made evident. —City of God 21.11

[….]

The problem with Calvinism is that its quest for rationalistic clarity does away with this necessary mystery. Calvinism asserts that evil exists because God wants it to be there—end of story. As Calvin put it in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, “I say with Augustine that the Lord has created those who, as He certainly foreknew, were to go to destruction, and He did so because He so willed,” while later Calvin extends this idea to its consistent corollary, which is that “man by the righteous impulsion of God does that which is unlawful.” In other words, according to Calvin, the sinner sins because God impels him to do so.

Calvin picked up on this same theme later when he wrote that:

[M]an falls, the Providence of God so ordaining …that by the will of God all the sons of Adam fell into the state of wretchedness in which they are now involved … Nor ought it to seem absurd when I say, that God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his posterity; but also at his own pleasure arranged it.

God, in His own pleasure, arranged evil?

These are difficult words, especially since they appear to directly implicate God in all the wickedness of the world. It easily solves the problem of evil, but does so at the expense of other scriptural teaching. For example, Psalm 5:5. In the Septuagint—the Old Testament text quoted by the New Testament writers and the canonical text of the ancient Church—Psalms 5:4 reads “For You are not a God who wills (thelon) lawlessness (anomian).”

In fairness to Calvin, he was able to maintain some degree of dialectical balance that would be lacking in his followers. That is why my critique of Calvinism recognizes that Calvinism is larger than simply the teachings of John Calvin. This was impressed upon me when our former church put on a family camp and invited R.C. Sproul, Jr. to speak. The younger Sproul has taken Calvin’s teachings to such an extreme, going even further than his father—let alone Calvin himself. For example, Sproul took particular delight in describing to us in detail how God desired sin to come about, and how God forced the devil to sin like a man operating a remote control. In his book Almighty Over All, Sproul expands on this point, writing, “I am suggesting that he [God] created sin … Where, I must ask, does the law of God forbid the creation of evil? I would suggest that it just isn’t there.”

This leads to what I consider to be a trivialization of evil.

R.C. Sproul, Jr. posted a Facebook status saying that since God is sovereign, even those things which are not as they ought to be really are just as things ought to be. He went on to say that there are ultimately no “bad” things, since God is completely sovereign. Now if all he means is that even bad things work out ultimately for good, then I have no problem. But there is a great difference between saying, on the one hand, that God works good out of evil, and on the other hand, saying that that since God is the author of all things, evil isn’t really bad (or that everything which happens ought to be).

If, as Sproul maintains, God is the author of evil, then we would have to say that He fosters wickedness in people’s hearts. But if so, then God is sinful by the Biblical definitions of sin and evil. Consider that in the Proverbs, the ones who incite and tempt to evil (like the fool’s friends or the prostitute) are as morally guilty as the simple man who falls prey to those temptations. James says that God does not tempt us, but if God is the author of evil then He is doing a lot more than merely tempting us: He is fostering the evil in our hearts and inciting us to sin.

Under this scheme, the words “God is good” are no longer intelligible, as God is violating His own self-revelation of what constitutes “goodness.” Consequently, if God really is the energizing principle behind both the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, then we would have to conclude that the Biblical categories used to describe God are ultimately non-descriptive. Moreover, it would make a mockery of the antithesis that we find throughout the war-Psalms, if God is the causal force behind both sides.

Moreover, if God is the author of evil, then we would have to conclude that evil is just as much an intrinsic part of God’s character as His goodness. But in that case, we are left without a standard for distinguishing between good and evil. Using God’s character as the standard would then be akin to using a tape measure on which inches and centimeters are all mixed up. God can only be the standard for distinguishing between good and evil if the former and not the latter is fundamental to His character. …

I will finish the thought I have…

GOD NEEDED TO CREATE MAN TO BE WHOLE

… according to Calvinism. A theological “heresy” in my mind at least.

 

An Amazing Tale Of God Protecting a Woman of Faith

Published by Papa Giorgio

Originally Posted September 2013

I watched this the other day, and now here is the back-story. This man had a chance offered to him to repent, and surrender… he will stand before his Judge without excuse. Via The Blaze:

Police say Charlie “Chris” Bates had just finished raping four women at gunpoint after tying up the four men who were with them in a Tampa, Fla. apartment.

Bates then found what he thought was his next victim, a woman sitting on her porch at another apartment complex.

Police say Bates forced the woman inside her unit, made her undress and kiss him, and was about to rape her, according to the Tampa Tribune.

Then she did something amazingly bold and faithful: She began praying.

And she recited John 3:16 from the Bible, the Tampa Bay Times reports.

“For God so loved the world …”

Police say Bates’ whole demeanor transformed.

He apologized to the woman, gave her a shirt, and they prayed together.

She tried to hand him her Bible, but when Bates wouldn’t take it, she ripped pages out and gave them to him, the Times says.

After he left, she called 911.

The prayers probably saved the woman’s life, police said.

Twelve hours later on Friday Bates, 24, was fatally wounded by police after a high-speed chase in which authorities exchanged at least 100 bullets with him. Bates is also suspected of shooting at another man, stealing a friend’s car, and threatening a large group of partygoers during his 14-hour rampage, authorities told the Tribune.