What did Calvin and Luther do?

[Lupac]

Okay, as many of you know, I was raised a Calvinist, I was taught that he was the best thing that happened to God's people since Jesus, or something like that. (I don't want to put words in anyone's mouths.) But now, I hear of horrible things these men did. What exactly did they do? Ray only hints here and there. Thanks.

[Dave in Tenn]

Hi.  This is a list of email exchanges between readers and Ray, categorized by topic that our moderator Kat has put together.  I wanted to bring the entire list to your attention in case you had not noticed it.

http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,3108.0.html

There are a few concerning Calvin and/or Luther.  You should be able to find them.

An internet search may also yeild results about specifics, but we obviously can't verify the accuracy or authenticity of anything you might find on the web.

I'm not sure about others posting links and whether or not such links would violate the rules.  I'd ask members to consider the source before posting outside links, or to submit them to a moderator before posting.  The rules don't prohibit links to informational sites, but do prohibit links to sites with a teaching point of view.

Thanks all, and I hope that gets you started,  Lupac.

[Dave in Tenn]

Some more from B-T.

http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php?topic=1191.0

[Kat]

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
----------------------------------------------

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

[Lupac]

I'm not altogether certain this has been mentioned.   Could help as well in understanding differences.

http://bible-truths.com/lake15-D.html


3/4 of the page down and under:  "A Brief Comparative Study of Arminianism and Calvinism"


Gary

Thanks, I already read that. I didn't mean what they taught, I meant what they did. (They themselves, to other people.) Thanks Kat, I'll read your reply now...

EDIT: I read your reply, since I don't think I can curse, how's this? W...T...F?!?!? How... who could do that. WTF man. I can't believe my church or any for that matter would ever follow as wicked a man as that. Can you PM me that website? Thanks.

[Samson]

Lupac,

A copy and paste from Wikipedia on Martin Luther, it isn't much, but it clearly supports the fact he advocated and supported evil actions against the Jews, especially after they wouldn't adhere to his conversion intentions for them. Paste and Copy below in Blue.


Luther's other major works on the Jews were his 60,000-word treatise Von den Juden und Ihren Lügen (On the Jews and Their Lies), and Vom Schem Hamphoras und vom Geschlecht Christi (On the Holy Name and the Lineage of Christ), both published in 1543, three years before his death.[174] Luther argued that the Jews were no longer the chosen people but "the devil's people": he referred to them with violent, vile language.[175][176] Luther advocated setting synagogues on fire, destroying Jewish prayerbooks, forbidding rabbis from preaching, seizing Jews' property and money, and smashing up their homes, so that these "poisonous envenomed worms" would be forced into labour or expelled "for all time".[177] In Robert Michael's view, Luther's words "We are at fault in not slaying them" amounted to a sanction for murder.[178]


                        Kind Regards, Samson.

[Kat]

Hi Lupac,

All those things about Calvin may be truth, but let me add this email from Ray.

http://www.forums.bible-truths.com/index.php?topic=253.msg2134#msg2134 -----------------------

Until we come to realize that we are all just as evil as John Calvin or Adolph Hitler, we will never ever understand evil in the world.  I thank God that I have never slowly burned another man or woman at the stake over a low heat fire, but I also know that under the same circumstances, I could have done such a thing. It is within the carnal mind to do ALL the evils of the universe, and that is why carnal-minded people do such things.
Ask yourself what kinda of a God would allow YOU to be led to these same crimes of eating your own children?  PEOPLE rape little girls, not God!  Some people WANT to rape little girls. Others just want to DECEIVE their fellow brothers and sisters into thinking that they are powerful, or great, or spiritual, or wise, or loving, etc., but are just as evil inside as Adolph Hitler. Given the opportunity we would have all been Calvin and Hitler.  But is it necessary? Yes, it is necessary. Do we think that God is playing a game?
I once placed a board across a little stream that I crossed going to school in the first grade. However, laying a board accross San Francisco Bay is a bit more involved.  Creating a cat that will sit and purr on your lap is one thing, but creating creatures into the very IMAGE OF GOD HIMSELF, is quite another. Even the miracle of the Golden Gate Bridge compared to a wooden board cannot compare to what we see now and what we will be when God is through with us.
It takes incredible powers of good and evil to accomplish this. Christians cannot justify God's use of evil, and hence attribute it to what they preceive to be a greater force than God--SATAN.  Supposedly God doesn't want evil, but He just can't stop Satan. Nonsense. Read my site. I told you it is a large subject.

Ray

[Extol]

Excellent reminder Kat. I have to remind myself of this kind of thing daily; only by the grace of God am I prevented from engaging in certain sins. I've been listening to the audio "Is Free Will an Oxymoron?" in which Ray says:
"I just thank God there are certain sins that I just never was tempted to have or partake of.  I'm so thankful for that.  But if you think that I'm so stupid, that I can't see that under the same circumstances, of whoever you want to take, say Manson, that I can't see and know and understand in my very heart and being, that if I was born in his family under those conditions and circumstances, I would have been Charles Manson! ...You and I under the same circumstances, would have done the same thing.  Why can't we see that?"

[arion]

Also the audio teaching of called 'guilty of all' which came from Nashville 05;  http://bible-truths.com/audio/N05%20Guilty_of_ALL.mp3  This teaching is a tremendous blessing and at the same time humbling because if you sin in one area then your indeed guilty of all and no better than the murderer or child molester.  We might not have done these things but were not any better than those who have done so.  It's just that God has exercised his grace in our lives that we didn't go down the same path as some of these others have done.

[Extol]

I was listening to the 2008 study Does A Sovereign God Ever Change?, and there was another great explanation by Ray which reminded me of this thread:

(e-mail referring to the disciples falling asleep in the garden): The person asking the question above said that if she was with the Son of God and He ask her to pray, she would not have gone to sleep, RAY DO YOU REALLY THINK YOU WOULD HAVE GONE TO SLEEP ? 

And the answers is, absolutely!  Absolutely!  You will never understand the Bible and you will never understand God's plan and you will never understand who and what you are, until you understand that you are no different than any of those people because of anything that is superior in you.  If you say, 'well if God told me not to eat of the forbidden fruit in the garden Eden, I wouldn't have eaten it, would you Ray.'  Absolutely I would have.  Why?  Because I'm a human just like they were. 

Now I'll admit when it comes to raping little girls and cutting their heads off, I have a problem with that.  If they say, 'Ray if you were born where they are, would you have done that?'  I have to admit absolutely I would.  Now it goes against every thing that I believe and stand for, now.  Why is that?  Because I wasn't born under those conditions, by those parents, at that point in history, under those circumstances, that's all.  I mean that is a great spiritual lesson of humility. 

When I think of some of the most evil, despicable people that ever lived, I think of Uday and Qusay.  Saddam Hussein killed and murdered so many people... 

But his sons Uday and Qusay, I mean Saddam could not hold a candle to them.  I think it was Uday that Saddam said, 'my son Uday is immoral.'  Can you believe that.  Saddam one of the most evil, despicable person to ever draw breath on this God's earth, said that his son Uday was immoral... 

So if you can't see though, that if Saddam had been your father, when you were three months old and a year old and ten years old and you were raised under him in that family.  You would have been Qusay.  Yes you would have and if you deny it you don't understand yourself and you don't understand human nature and you don't understand the Bible.  It's just a whole lot you don't understand, if you can't see that that is true.