Hi Lupac,
Here are a few more places that Ray mentions John Calvin.
http://bible-truths.com/lake16-C.html -----------------------
What are we clearly told by Paul concerning the apostatized church of our day?
Paul said:
"…evil men and imposters seducers [Gk: ‘imposters’] shall wax [grow] worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived" (II Tim. 3:13).
These are those which Paul says:
"…shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables" (II Tim. 4:2-4).
One cannot turn away from the truth, unless they once had the truth. This is speaking of the Church. But how has today’s Church gotten worse and worse than burning their sons and daughter in fire? By teaching that their sons and daughters will not be burned up in fire, as the Canaanites did, but by teaching that their sons and daughters will BURN IN FIRE FOR EVER! Here is but one proof of such "damnable heresy" (II Pet. 2:1) in today’s Church:
"…every BOY and every GIRL who dies without knowing Jesus Christ spends AN ETERNITY IN A CITY WHERE THE FIRE IS NEVER QUENCHED and the worm dieth not." (Directly quoted from John Hagee’s Sermon entitled: "The Seven Wonders of Hell").
John Hagee says of this eternal torture for boys and girls with Jesus Christ in fire, that, "IT’S JUSTICE."
I have been accused of being a "Calvinist." Let me now personally and publicly denounce his damnable theology as rank, unscriptural heresy.
Calvin had the same doctrine of children, apparently, as John Hagee and others:
"How did it come to pass that the fall of Adam, without remedy, should involve so many nations, with their INFANT CHILDREN, in eternal death [by which he means eternal torture in fire], but because of the will of God? It is a horrible decree, I confess!" (Calvin’s Institutes, Book III, c. 23, 7).
Read the following quotation from Thayer’s Paper, and weep:
"’The condemnation of the CHILDREN dying without having been baptized," says the Catholic Bossuet, "is an article of firm faith of the church. They are guilty, since they die in the wrath of God, and in the powers of darkness.. Children of wrath by nature, objects of HATRED AND AVERSION, CAST DOWN TO HELL with the OTHER DAMNED, the remain there EVERLASTINGLY subject to the HORRIBLE VENGEANCE OF THE DEVIL.’ Thus the learned Denis Peteau has decided, as well as the most eminent Bellarmin, the Council of Lyons, the Council of Florence, and the Council of Trent."
Whereas Calvin himself calls this damning of the children "a horrible decree," modern follower of Calvinism, Dr. James Kennedy, has euphemized Calvin’s "horrible decree" down to "Hell is FAIR." I am not sure how any modern followers of Calvin can euphemize his burning of Christian believers at the stake. What hideously evil men John Calvin and Martin Luther were.
And Christians by the thousands ask who I think I am that I should be judging such prominent theologians? I don’t judge them, I just expose their damnable heresies as I have just done one more time.
http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php?topic=2505.0 --------
So what is the Good News? This all appears to me as a veiled form of fatalism and pretty impersonal at that.
So you will know where I have been I am a five point Calvinist, a real believer, but oppressed and persecuted daily in my struggle, and for what? So that I might be saved some day? I cannot know with any certainty that I will be saved and even if I am, do I really understand what "saved" means? I am fast loosing faith that God intends anything for us except suffering and find this a terrible state of mind. Where is the peace of God or is it peace with God, and if so, what the heck does that mean when God baits the Devil into tormenting the elect. How cruel all of this is but despite it all, I still believe Jesus is the Son of God, that he died for our sins and was raised form the dead. I just feel dead and hopeless.
Unless you know something that can give hope, I do not want, or need an answer but thanks for listening.
Steve
Dear Steve:
First of all, if I were a "five point Calvinist," I too would be depressed. What an evil doctrine they teach! And not supprisingly so, seeing that John Calvin was one of the most evil human being to ever draw breath on this God's earth. Burning a brother do death under low heat so as to extent the insane torture of the ordeal? Unbelievable!
Even so, you question your "blessed assurance," when Calvinism teaches that those elected will not and cannot ever lose their calling. Calvinists have a strange twist on "free will." They claim that man has no free will UNTIL he recognizes his "election," and then he does have free will!
The Gospel is the "Good New of THE KINGDOM OF GOD," which includes many things, not the least of which is "eonian life" ruling and reigning with Jesus Christ to bring about the salvation of the entire world. It includes sonship with God. We are to becomes spiritual sons and daughters of the Great God and Creator of the Universe. We will be like God--for ever! LIKE GOD..............FOREVER! It doesn't get any better than that, Steve. But, I'll admit, even that has little value in the eyes of the carnal mind. You do not have the spiritual eyes to SEE the goal and destiny that God has ordained for humanity. God is "CREATING humanity in His very Own IMAGE." It was begun in the garden: it was never completed in the garden. The process of being transformed into the Image of Jesus Christ Who is the Image of His Father IS THE WHOLE PURPOSE FOR LIFE. And all of the misery and heartache of life is a needful part of the process. We may not understand it fully at this time, but in time we will. It truley is "GOOD NEWS," for those who can see it.
God be with you,
Ray
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Here is a few things a found on a Google search of John Calvin.
According to records, from 1541 to 1546, fifty-eight people were executed and seventy-six exiled from Geneva. Calvin was consulted in all affairs of State and his advice was usually followed.
Michael Servetus, a Spaniard, physician, scientist and Bible scholar, was born in Villanova in 1511. He was Calvin's longtime friend in their earlier resistance against the Roman Catholic Church. Servetus angered Calvin by returning a copy of Calvin's writings, Institutes, with critical comments in the margins. Calvin promptly had Servetus arrested and charged with heresy for his disagreement with Calvin's theology. The thirty-eight official charges included rejection of the Trinity and infant baptism. Servetus pleaded to be beheaded instead of the more brutal method of burning at the stake, but Calvin and the city council refused the quicker death method. Other Protestant churches throughout Switzerland advised Calvin that Servetus be condemned but not executed. Calvin ignored their pleas and Servetus was burned at the stake on October 27, 1553. John Calvin insisted that his men use green wood for the fire because it burned slower. Servetus was screaming as he was literally baked alive from the feet upward and suffered the heat of the flames for 30 minutes before finally succumbing to one of the most painful and brutal death methods possible. Servetus had written a theology book, a copy of which Calvin had strapped to the chest of Servetus. The flames from the burning book rose against Servetus' face as he screamed in agony.
Gentile of an Italian sect in Geneva were required to sign a confession drawn up by Calvin in 1558. Gentile signed it reluctantly, but he was condemned and imprisoned as a perjurer. He escaped only to be incarcerated twice at Berne where, in 1566, he was beheaded.
John Calvin once had a man tortured for over a month and then beheaded, just because he placed a note calling John Calvin a hypocrite on
his podium in his pulpit.
Calvin also had thirty-four (34) women burned at the stake after accusing them of causing a plague that had swept through Geneva in 1545. Later this would be repeated, as men trained in the school of Calvin, burned the “witches” in Salem, here in America.
There is much to be found about the evil atrocious acts of John Calvin. Just wanted the myth and the reality about the man to be understood.
mercy, peace and love
Kat