John Calvin was a French theologian, pastor and reformer in Geneva during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of theology later called Calvinism, including its doctrines of predestination and of God's absolute sovereignty in the salvation of the human soul from death and eternal damnation. What is often not mentioned in sanitized and hagiographical Protestant sources is the false gospel that John Calvin embraced and his evil and murderous hatred towards those who didn't obey him or opposed him.
The reverence I often find for the so-called reformers like Calvin is really strange. It is odd, like a modern day case of cognitive dissonance. Some of these men, like Calvin, were evil.
Consider the proof of that.
JOHN CALVINS FALSE GOSPEL AND SPITE OVER THE TRUTH
I believe that God providentially used the reformers at that point in time to counteract the harmful effects of Roman Catholicism on Europe. Although not itself a grand purveyor of freedom, the Protestant Reformation loosened the tyranny of a Catholic stranglehold. The translation, printing, and distribution of the Bible brought the real freedom as men and women could decide for themselves what God had said. With that said, whatever the alleged “brave” reformers saved, they did NOT save the gospel in their era or any other. The message of God has never been lost (Lk 1:70). The old fable that the Roman Catholic Church extinguished the light of the saving gospel and hundreds of years later the Reformers renewed it again, as is often heard, is a gross untruth!
The state churchism of Calvin, Zwingli, and Luther are not my ecclesiastical heritage. Mine is found in the independent NT church movement represented in the Anabaptist/ Baptist Schleitheim Confession of 1527. In response to this document, in 1544 Calvin disseminated his Brief Instruction for Arming All the Good Faithful against the Errors of the Common Sect of the Anabaptists, at the beginning of which Calvin said it was written by “ignorant persons” and with “nothing beneficial for persons of learning and understanding, seeing that, in addition to being inept and haphazardly written, it sufficiently discredits itself.”
Calvin went on to passionately denounce believer’s baptism and defend infant sprinkling, despite the fact that Calvin himself conceded that baby baptism itself was found nowhere in the Bible. His chief argument was that since scripture says nothing about women recieving the Lord’s Table, and yet women partake of that ordinance and it is good for them, then baptism, also being good for its recipients, should be applied to the never mentioned infants, seeing that the Lord regards these babies as the “servants of His church.”
In addition to passing down the heritage of a state church, which we can be thankful that it was rejected by the Baptists in colonial America, Calvin also bequeathed this dangerous and unscriptural doctrine of infant sprinkling, of which John Gill later wrote in 1765:
"The Paedobaptists are ever restless and uneasy, endeavoring to maintain and support, if possible, their unscriptural practice of infant-baptism; though it is no other than a pillar of popery; that by which Antichrist has spread his baneful influence over many nations; is the basis of national churches and worldly establishments; that which unites the church and world, and keeps them together; nor can there be a full separation of the one from the other, nor a thorough reformation in religion; until it is wholly removed: and though it has so long and largely obtained, and still does obtain; I believe with a firm and unshaken faith, that the time is hastening on, when infant-baptism will be no more practiced in the world; when churches will be formed on the same plan they were in the times of the apostles; when gospel-doctrine and discipline will be restored to their primitive luster and purity; when the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper will be administered as they were first delivered, clear of all present corruption and superstition."
When I read Calvin’s massive Institutes of the Christian Religion and other writings, I read a false gospel. The Calvinists often rush to explain that we just don’t understand Calvin or that we’re wrongly interpreting him. I guess their must be codes to be read and broken in Calvin's pious writings, because he seems very clear to me, clearly wrong, and communicating it in plain fashion.
Calvin's False Gospel of Baptismal Regeneration
Calvin wrote (Institutes, 4:17:1, 4:15:3, 4):
"God, regenerating us in baptism, ingrafts us into the fellowship of his Church, and makes us his by adoption . . . whatever time we are baptized, we are washed and purified . . . forgiveness, which at our first regeneration we receive by baptism alone . . . forgiveness has reference to baptism."
Calvin also published (1547 Antidote to the Council of Trent, Reply to the 1st Decree of the 5th Session):
“We assert that the whole guilt of sin is taken away in baptism, so that the remains of sin still existing are not imputed. That this may be more clear, let my readers call to mind that there is a twofold grace in baptism, for therein both remission of sins and regeneration are offered to us. We teach that full remission is made . . . by baptism . . . the guilt is effaced [and] it is null in regard to imputation. Nothing is plainer than this doctrine.”
He continued in the same publication (Canon #5):
“We, too [as do the Catholics], acknowledge that the use of baptism is necessary—that no one may omit it from either neglect or contempt. In this way we by no means make it free (optional). And not only do we strictly bind the faithful to the observance of it, but we also maintain that it is the ordinary instrument of God in washing and renewing us; in short, in communicating to us salvation. The only exception we make is, that the hand of God must not be tied down to the instrument. He may of himself accomplish salvation. For when an opportunity for baptism is wanting, the promise of God alone is amply sufficient.”
John Calvin also wrote in his Commentary on Matthew (19:14):
“We . . . maintain that since baptism is the pledge and figure of the forgiveness of sins and likewise of adoption by God, it ought not to be denied to infants whom God adopts and washes with the blood of His Son.”
Calvin stated the following in the 1547 Antidote to the Council of Trent, Reply to the 1st Decree of the 5th Session:
“We assert that the whole guilt of sin is taken away in baptism, so that the remains of sin still existing are not imputed. . . . Nothing is plainer than this doctrine.”
In answer to these quotes of Calvin, an advocate of sole fide might quote the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF: Article V of Chapter XXVIII):
“Although it is a great sin to contemn or neglect this ordinance, yet grace and salvation are not so inseparably annexed unto it, as that no person can be regenerated, or saved, without it: or, that all that are baptized are undoubtedly regenerated.”
I admit that this part of the WCF sounds pretty good. But it’s only great in that it clears up one problem, that is, baptism isn’t necessary for salvation IF an adult without baptism later places faith in Christ alone for salvation. This WCF statement does not repudiate baptismal regeneration.
Calvin, who had no actual personal testimony of the new birth, continued to embrace baptismal regeneration after leaving the Catholic Church and for the remainder of his life, which must be unequivocally repudiated and anathematized (Gal. 1:6-9), a further indication that Calvin was “accursed” (Gal. 1:8-9), a false teacher peddling a false gospel (Gal. 2:4-5; 2 Jn. 1:9-11).
Are you going to be loyal to God and the Bible in your belief and teaching on the gospel and baptism? If you disagree with the false gospel of baptismal regeneration that has likely damned more souls to hell than any other false doctrine, why not dissociate yourself from heretics and false teachers that believed in it and taught it, like John Calvin? I’m not going to agree to disagree. I’m just going to disagree. And then I’m going to separate and expose.
Calvin's False Gospel of Catholic Mass Communion
In part one of his commentary on Jeremiah (fourth paragraph), Calvin wrote:
“That we really feed in the Holy Supper on the flesh and blood of Christ, no otherwise than as bread and wine are the aliments of our bodies, we freely confess. If a clearer explanation is asked, we say, that the substance of Christ’s flesh and blood is our spiritual life, and that it is communicated to us under the symbols of bread and wine; for Christ, in instituting the mystery of The Supper, promised nothing falsely, nor mocked us with a vain shew, but represented by external signs what he has really given us.”
I’ll let that speak for itself. It’s practically identical to what Rome writes and believes. I don’t find it to be anything different than what I read in Calvin’s Institutes and in his Short Treatise on the Holy Supper of our Lord Jesus Christ, in which he wrote this:
“But as the blessings of Jesus Christ do not belong to us at all, unless he be previously ours, it is necessary, first of all, that he be given us in the Supper, in order that the things which we have mentioned may be truly accomplished in us. For this reason I am wont to say, that the substance of the sacraments is the Lord Jesus, and the efficacy of them the graces and blessings which we have by his means. Now the efficacy of the Supper is to confirm to us the reconciliation which we have with God through our Savior’s death and passion; the washing of our souls which we have in the shedding of his blood; the righteousness which we have in his obedience; in short, the hope of salvation which we have in all that he has done for us. It is necessary, then, that the substance should be conjoined with these, otherwise nothing would be firm or certain. Hence we conclude that two things are presented to us in the Supper, viz., Jesus Christ as the source and substance of all good; and, secondly, the fruit and efficacy of his death and passion. This is implied in the words which were used. For after commanding us to eat his body and drink his blood, he adds that his body was delivered for us, and his blood shed for the remission of our sins. Hereby he intimates, first, that we ought not simply to communicate in his body and blood, without any other consideration, but in order to receive the fruit derived to us from his death and passion; secondly that we can attain the enjoyment of such fruit only by participating in his body and blood, from which it is derived.”
Calvin, like Rome, taught that the real presence of Christ was found in the elements of the Lord’s Table.
This is only one aspect of the false gospel of John Calvin, the works element. We haven't even dug into his false gospel of the TULIP with its errors on election and predestination, but you can read about that here: Trampling Calvinism's TULIP.
Calvin also had no personal testimony of conversion, of the new birth. When asked about his absence of testimony, Calvin replied that the only testimony he could’ve had was what he copied from Augustine, the father of Roman Catholicism, Calvinism and Lutheranism simultaneously:
“Augustine is so wholly with me, that if I wished to write a confession of my faith, I would do so with all fullness and satisfaction to myself out of his writings” (Calvin, “The Eternal Predestination of God")
Yikes. That’s very personal isn’t it?!
CALVIN‘S PERSECUTIONS AND MURDERS
Under Calvin and his Reformed leadership henchman, hundreds were imprisoned, beaten, burnt alive, beheaded, and tortured. In the year 2000 author Bernard Cottret, who greatly admired John Calvin, published a book entitled, “Calvin: A Biography,” and because this book is based upon a favourable portrayal of Calvin it gives credibility to the reality of the no less than 38 executions recorded therein. He documents the dates of each of John Calvin’s despicable acts and shows that Calvin's methods included imprisonment, torture, and execution by beheading and by burning at the stake.
John Calvin was wicked and vicious toward his enemies, behaving precisely like the devouring wolf he was, and nothing like a harmless sheep. He imposed his theocracy on the people of Geneva, and had over 65 people murdered, more than what Cottret recorded in his book. Calvin hated the Anabaptists with a demonic hatred, not unlike many Calvinists today mind you, calling them “henchmen of Satan.”
From 1541 to 1549, French theologian John Calvin attempted the perfect marriage of Church and State in Geneva, Switzerland. Determined to transform the city into a model of God’s kingdom on earth, Calvin established numerous detailed “reforms” as well as devising a system to police citizens through regular home inspections—questioning the residents on all aspects of their beliefs and practice.
Historian Will Durant reports that Calvin even dictated,
"The allowable color and quantity of clothing, and the number of dishes permissible at a meal. . . . Jewelry and lace were frowned upon. A woman was jailed for arranging her hair to an immoral height. . . . Censorship of the press was taken over from Catholic and secular precedents and enlarged. . . . To speak disrespectfully of Calvin or the clergy was a crime . . . punished with imprisonment or banishment. Fornication was to be punished with exile or drowning; adultery, blasphemy, or idolatry, with death . . . a child was beheaded for striking its parents. In the years 1558–59 there were 414 prosecutions for moral offenses; between 1542 and 1564 there were seventy-six banishments and fifty-eight executions; the total population of Geneva was then about 20,000."
Calvin’s Statements Supporting Persecution
Prefatory Address in his Institutes to Francis, King of the French, 1536. “But when I perceived that the fury of certain bad men had risen to such a height in your realm, that there was no place in it for sound doctrine, I thought it might be of service if I were in the same work both to give instruction to my countrymen, and also lay before your Majesty a Confession, from which you may learn what the doctrine is that so inflames the rage of those madmen who are this day, with fire and sword, troubling your kingdom. For I fear not to declare, that what I have here given may be regarded as a summary of the very doctrine which, they vociferate, ought to be punished with confiscation, exile, imprisonment, and flames, as well as exterminated by land and sea. . . . This, I allow, is a fearful punishment which God sends on the earth; but if the wickedness of men so deserves, why do we strive to oppose the just vengeance of God?”
Letter to William Farel, February 13, 1546. “If he [Servetus] comes [to Geneva], I shall never let him go out alive if my authority has weight.”
Letter to the Lord Protector of Somerset, adviser to King Edward VI, October 22, 1548. “[They] well deserve to be repressed by the sword which is committed to you, seeing that they attack not the King only, but God who has seated him upon the throne, and has entrusted to you the protection as well of His person as of His majesty.”
Letter of August 20, 1553, one week after Servetus arrest. “I hope that Servetus will be condemned to death.”
Defence of Orthodox Faith against the Prodigious Errors of the Spaniard Michael Servetus, published in early 1554. "Whoever shall now contend that it is unjust to put heretics and blasphemers to death will knowingly and willingly incur their very guilt. This is not laid down on human authority; it is God who speaks and prescribes a perpetual rule for his Church. It is not in vain that he banishes all those human affections which soften our hearts; that he commands paternal love and all the benevolent feelings between brothers, relations, and friends to cease; in a word, that he almost deprives men of their nature in order that nothing may hinder their holy zeal. Why is so implacable a severity exacted but that we may know that God is defrauded of his honour, unless the piety that is due to him be preferred to all human duties, and that when his glory is to be asserted, humanity must be almost obliterated from our memories? . . . Many people have accused me of such ferocious cruelty that I would like to kill again the man I have destroyed. Not only am I indifferent to their comments, but I rejoice in the fact that they spit in my face.”
Preface to Commentaries, July 22, 1557. “To these irreligious characters. and despisers of the heavenly doctrine. . . . I think that there is scarcely any of the weapons which are forged in the workshop of Satan, which has not been employed by them in order to obtain their object. And at length matters had come to such a state, that an end could be put to their machinations in no other way than cutting them off by an ignominious death; which was indeed a painful and pitiable spectacle to me. They no doubt deserved the severest punishment, but I always rather desired that they might live in prosperity, and continue safe and untouched; which would have been the case had they not been altogether incorrigible, and obstinately refused to listen to wholesome admonition.”
Comments on Ex. 22:20, Lev. 24:16, Deut. 13:5-15, 17:2-5. “Moreover, God Himself has explicitly instructed us to kill heretics, to smite with the sword any city that abandons the worship of the true faith revealed by Him.”
Letter to the Marquis Paet, chamberlain to the King of Navarre, 1561. “Honour, glory, and riches shall be the reward of your pains; but above all, do not fail to rid the country of those scoundrels [Anabaptists and others], who stir up the people to revolt against us. Such monsters should be exterminated, as I have exterminated Michael Servetus the Spaniard.”
Calvin’s Murderous Lust
Many of these accounts are also recorded in secular encyclopedias.
James Gruet, a known opponent of Calvin, was arrested for writing on one of Calvin’s tracts the words, “all rubbish,” and was put on the rack twice a day for a month. He also wrote a book against Calvin. Then, on July 26, 1547, he was tied to a stake, his feet were nailed to it, and he was beheaded. Calvin wrote: “With God and His Sacred Scriptures before our eyes we say, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen: . . . We condemn you, Jacques Gruet, to be taken to Champel and there have your body attached to a stake and burned to ashes and so you shall finish your days to give an example to others who would commit the like.” (July 16, 1547). Gruet's book was later found and burned along with his house while his wife was thrown out into the street to watch.
The Spanish Reformer Michael Servetus (who is pictured with John Calvin here) had dared to criticize Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, to which Calvin declared: “If he comes here and I have any authority, I will never let him leave the place alive.” Servetus, an anti-Trinitarian, had disagreed with Calvin via correspondence and when he visited Geneva on Aug 13, 1553, he went to hear Calvin preach. Calvin saw him in church and had him arrested immediately. Calvin drew up forty charges against him including Servetus’ opposition to infant baptism and his attack upon the preaching of Calvin. Calvin wrote about Servetus, “One should not be content with simply killing such people, but should burn them cruelly.” On Aug 20, 1553, Calvin wrote: “I hope that Servetus will be condemned to death” and in October the Geneva Council ordered that he be burned alive the next day, for rejecting infant baptism and for denying Christ’s deity and for opposing John Calvin.
“Heretics” were frequently hanged then burned in Zurich, Basil, and Geneva for disagreeing with Calvin’s teachings.
During the first five years of Calvin’s rule in the small town of Geneva, 13 people were hanged, 10 were decapitated, and 35 were burned to death. A citizen could go to prison for smiling during a baptismal service or sleeping during a church service!
Calvin was vicious toward his enemies, acting more like a devouring wolf than a harmless sheep. Historian William Jones observed that “that most hateful feature of popery adhered to Calvin through life, the spirit of persecution.” Note how he described his theological opponents: “. . . all that filth and villainy . . . mad dogs who vomit their filth against the majesty of God and want to pervert all religion. Must they be spared?” (Oct. 16, 1555).
Calvin hated the Anabaptists passionately, though they were miles closer to the Scriptural pattern for the N.T. church than he was. He called them “henchmen of Satan.” Four Anabaptists men who disagreed with Calvin on who should be admitted to the Lord’s Supper were beheaded, quartered, and their body parts hung in strategic locations in Geneva as a warning to others.
Other Persecutions at Calvin’s Geneva
From The Minutes Book of the Geneva City Council, 1541-59 (Translated by Stefan Zweig, Erasmus: The Right to Heresy).
During the ravages of the pestilence in 1545 more than twenty men and women were burnt alive for witchcraft.
From 1542 to 1546 fifty-eight judgements of death and seventy-six decrees of banishment were passed.
During the years 1558 and 1559 the cases of various punishments for all sorts of offences amounted to four hundred and fourteen.
One burgher (a citizen of a town or city, typically a member of the wealthy bourgeoisie) smiled while attending a baptism: three days imprisonment.
Another, tired out on a hot summer day, went to sleep during a sermon: prison.
Some workingmen ate pastry at breakfast: three days on bread and water.
Two burghers played skittles: prison.
Two others diced for a quarter bottle of wine: prison.
A blind fiddler played a dance: expelled from the city.
One man praised Castellio’s translation of the Bible: expelled from Geneva.
A girl caught skating, a widow throwing herself on the grave of her husband, a burgher offering his neighbour a pinch of snuff during divine service: all were summoned before the Consistory, exhorted, and ordered to do penance.
Some cheerful fellows at Epiphany stuck a bean into the cake: four-and-twenty hours on bread and water.
A couple of peasants talked about business matters on coming out of church: prison.
A man played cards: he was pilloried with the pack of cards hung around his neck.
Another sang riotously in the street: was told ‘he could go and sing elsewhere,' -- meaning he was banished from the city.
A man who publicly protested against the reformer’s doctrine of predestination was flogged at all the crossways of the city and then expelled.
A book printer who in his cups [columns] had railed at Calvin, was sentenced to have his tongue perforated with a red-hot iron before being expelled from the city.
Jacques Gruent was racked and then executed for calling Calvin a hypocrite.
Two bargees had a brawl: executed.
Each offence, even the most paltry, was carefully entered in the record of the Consistory, so that the private life of every citizen could unfailingly be held up against him in evidence.
Quotes from Philip Schaff’s History of the Christian Church, vol. 8.
The death penalty against heresy, idolatry and blasphemy and barbarous customs of torture were retained. Attendance at public worship was commanded on penality of three sols. Watchmen were appointed to see that people went to church. The members of the Consistory visited every house once a year to examine . . . the faith and morals of the family. Every unseemly word and act on the street was reported, and the offenders were cited before the Consistory to be either censured and warned, or to be handed over to the Council for severer punishment.
Several women, among them the wife of Ami Perrin, the captain-general, were imprisoned for dancing.
A man was banished from the city for three months because on hearing an ass bray, he said jestingly ‘He prays a beautiful psalm’.
A young man was punished because he gave his bride a book on housekeeping with the remark: ‘This is the best Psalter.’
Three men who laughed during a sermon were imprisoned for three days.
Three children were punished because they remained outside of the church during the sermon to eat cakes.
A man who swore by the ‘body and blood of Christ’ was fined and condemned to stand for an hour in the pillory on the public square.
A child was whipped for calling his mother a thief and a she-devil.
A girl was beheaded for striking her parents.
A banker was executed for repeated adultery.
A person named Chapuis was imprisoned for four days because he persisted in calling his child Claude (a Roman Catholic saint) instead of Abraham.
Men and women were burnt to death for witchcraft.
Other Sources
"Belot, an Anabaptist was arrested for passing out tracts in Geneva and also accusing Calvin of excessive use of wine. With his books and tracts burned, he was banished from the city and told not to return on pain of hanging." (J.L. Adams, The Radical Reformation, pp. 597-598).
Martin Luther said of Calvin’s actions in Geneva, “With a death sentence they solve all argumentation." (Juergan L. Neve, A History of Christian Thought, vol. I, p. 285).
“About the month of January 1546, a member of the Little Council, Pierre Ameaux, asserted that Calvin was nothing but a wicked man . . . who was preaching false doctrine. Calvin felt that his authority as an interpreter of the Word of God was being attacked: he so completely identified his own ministry with the will of God that he considered Ameaux’s words as an insult to the honour of Christ. . . . The Magistrates offered to make the culprit beg Calvin’s pardon on bended knees before the Council of the Two Hundred, but Calvin found this insufficient. . . . On April 8, Ameaux was sentenced to walk all round the town, dressed only in a shirt, bareheaded and carrying a lighted torch in his hand, and after that to present himself before the tribunal and cry to God for mercy.” (F. Wendel, Calvin, pp. 85-86).
What did Calvin do to Baptists?
“The influence of John Calvin had begun to be felt in English affairs. His books had appeared in translations in England. He was responsible in a large measure for the demon of hate and fierce hostility which the Baptists of England had to encounter. He advised that “Anabaptists and reactionists should be alike put to death” (Froude, History of England, V. p. 99). He wrote a letter to Lord Protector Somerset, the translation was probably made by Archbishop Cranmer (Calvin to the Protector, MSS. Domestic Edward VI, V. 1548) to the effect: “These altogether deserve to be well punished by the sword, seeing that they do conspire against God, who had set him in his royal seat.””
For those that think that Baptists are reformed or come out of the Reformation, they really need to study that time period and the relationship of the reformers to the Baptists. They were separate from one another. You also have the early history of America, when in the colonial period, the Puritans hated the Baptists. The Baptists were treated criminal in the colonies. They bore the persecutions of whipping, imprisonment, excommunication, banishment, ridicule, and starvation––all for believing and practicing Biblical principles which Baptists hold dear. Henry Dunster (1612-1659), first president of Harvard, began to preach against infant baptism and in 1653, after twelve years of impressive service at Harvard, would not submit to sprinkling his fourth child. Despite earnest pleading he was refused the use of his home, cast out into the winter, and died within five weeks.
The Baptists sacrificed to separate from Calvinists and Reformers. Today Baptists cozy up to them and appreciate them. Men died rather than to subject their families to baby baptism. Today Baptists are enthralled with John Calvin and the reformers, forgetting that ungodly heritage and that suffering, never mind all the heretical doctrine.
C.H. Spurgeon wrote (The New Park Street Pulpit, Volume VII, p. 225):
“We believe that the Baptists are the original Christians. We did not commence our existence at the reformation, we were reformers before Luther or Calvin were born; we never come from the Church of Rome, for we were never in it, but we have an unbroken line up to the apostles themselves. We have always existed from the very days of Christ, and our principles, sometimes veiled and forgotten, like a river which may travel underground for a little season, have always had honest and holy adherents. Persecuted alike by Romanists and Protestants of almost every sect, yet there has never existed a Government holding Baptist principles which persecuted others; nor, I believe, any body of Baptists ever held it to be right to put the consciences of others under the control of man. We have ever been ready to suffer, as our martyrologies will prove, but we are not ready to accept any help from the State, to prostitute the purity of the Bride of Christ to any alliance with Government, and we will never make the Church, although the Queen, the despot over the consciences of men.”
Some of those who profess a “Reformed” faith today take Calvin’s Geneva as their model and thus hope to Christianize the United States—and then the world. Is it any wonder that much of the general public, accusing evangelicals of orchestrating a “vast right-wing conspiracy,” recoils in horror at such a thought? Many Christian activists with looser attachments to Calvin hope to force an ungodly American citizenry into godly living. But is such an agenda within the will of God? No one ever worked so hard at attempting to do this, nor for so long a time, as John Calvin—whose “righteous” judgment dominated the people of Geneva for eight deadly years. Should today’s Christian leaders continue to laud a man whose behavior was often so far removed from the commandments of Christ and the example of Paul? Should believers seek to celebrate (and emulate) Calvin’s theology—which led to his ungodly reign as “protestant pope” of Geneva?
Conclusion
John Calvin has been acclaimed as a godly example who based his theology and actions upon Scripture alone, but in fact, much that he did was unbiblical—though entirely consistent with his belief system. The false gospel of Calvin is horrendous. Its a works gospel which plainly reveals he was never converted but a wolf in sheep's clothing, which ties into the absence of any personal testimony of conversion.
But there is much more, such as the infant sprinkling, TULIP false gospel, replacement theology and other heresies.
He was also a ravening murderer and the Bible is clear that "know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him." (1 Jn 3:15).
Jesus said in Matt. 5:44,
“But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”
Jam 3:11,
“Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?”
It doesn’t even take a saved person to understand what spirit Calvin was of.
Would John Calvin be welcome as a pastor, a deacon or even a member in your church today? Would you let a man like him baby-sit your children? WHY then would anyone think that God would use such a man as Calvin to be a great leader of Christianity? It is even blasphemous to think such a man was a true Christian, completely spinning God's Word on its head. It is very clear that John Calvin was under the influence of “another spirit” (2 Cor. 11:4) than the Holy Spirit. How about those who follow him and his teachings, without Biblical discernment?
Click here for further reading on the plain fact that The Protestant Reformers Were Wolves in Sheep's Clothing.
I never advocated for baptismal regeneration. I clearly said that they are always talked about being together. For you to disagree With what I have said clearly proven by the scriptures given above would be to be against the Bible. Be humble sir state your position like a teacher who you claim to be. Papist are the only ones I know who throw out the word heretic when a question is raised against their position. I have hopes you are above them, so tell me teacher how is saying “but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost” heresy? If talking about them together is heresy why does the word…
I would say that you are a truly ignorant man being simple in doctrine of the Bible. I could write a long drawn out statement refuting the things that you say using scripture alone, but you do not peg me for a humble fellow that can dispute with true understanding. I am not a calvinist (holding on to everything teaching he taught), but would say he was definitely a brother in Christ who taught faith alone for salvation. Calvin just did not separate baptism and salvation because the scriptures do not either. they are talked about always together in the bible. Other than the thief on the cross.