https://www.amazon.com/NEXUS-True-Nature-ebook/dp/B006WHGINI/ref=la_B006NTVAWY_1_13?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1500685189&sr=1-13&refinements=p_82%3AB006NTVAWY
John
Calvin (1509-64) systematized the Christian Religion at the time when the
Church that had become very deformed under the papacy and Roman Catholicism,
was being reformed. Reformed Christianity, to which I adhere, began at the time
of the great Reformation – a time of getting back to what the Bible really
teaches.
Perhaps you have been inoculated against Reformed
Christianity and the Christian worldview. Perhaps some portion of
misinformation propagated by anti-Christians such as Michel Onfray or Richard
Dawkins has so gotten stuck in your craw that it causes you to spit whenever
you hear Calvin’s name mentioned! A small sample of the teeth gnashing and
vitriol spewing that the name of Calvin causes in some can be found in the
following caricature of Calvin
and some of his Biblical understandings, as
painted by the Darwinist and ‘journalist’ Christopher Hitchens,
"According
to the really extreme religious totalitarians, such as John Calvin, who
borrowed his awful doctrine from Augustine, an infinity of punishment can be
awaiting you even before you are born. Long ago it was written which souls
would be chosen or ‘elected’ when the time came to divide the sheep from the
goats. No appeal against this primordial sentence is possible, and no good
works or profession of faith can save one who has not been fortunate enough to
be picked. Calvin’s Geneva was a prototypical totalitarian state, and Calvin
himself a sadist and torturer and killer, who burned Servetus (one of the great
thinkers and questioners of the day) while the man was still alive. The lesser
wretchedness induced in Calvin’s followers, compelled [them] to waste their
lives worrying if they had been ‘elected’ or not…"
Hitchens goes on to state that he has had some crazy people phone him ‘with
hoarse voices condemning me to death or hell or both’ … And of ‘the eternal
blackening of my name by religious frauds and liars.’ Crazy people are crazy whatever their
worldview, but, in the interest of truth, sanity, and the un-blackening of the
name of John Calvin, Francis Nigel Lee sets the record straight,
"Servetus
had blasphemously described the most blessed Trinity as a three-headed dog and
a monster from hell! Yet even at a time when the Catholic Inquisition was
seeking to slay Servetus and every Protestant city in Europe had expelled him
or condemned him, Calvin corresponded with him and sent him a copy of his
Institutes. For Calvin sought to win Servetus to Christ!
"Knowing
full well that Calvin favoured the punishment of exile for heretics and the
death penalty for blasphemers, the wretched Servetus arrogantly made his way to
Geneva planning to overthrow Calvin and de-christianize the city. Put on trial
by the civil magistrates of Geneva (and not by Calvin who was neither a judge
nor a citizen of that city) Servetus was found guilty of blasphemy and sedition
and sentenced to death by burning. Calvin unsuccessfully tried to get Servetus
to recant his errors. When Servetus would not recant, Calvin pleaded for a
milder form of punishment. And later still, Calvin also pleaded with Servetus
in his death cell to get right with God and accept the Divine Christ as his
Lord and Master!
"Rarely in the annals of history has so much
evangelical concern ever been shown to such a monstrous miscreant, as Calvin
showed to Michael Servetus, enemy of Christ and Christianity and of public law
and order! Even during that highly intolerant age, the gentle Calvin tenderly
yet firmly presented Christ and His salvation to the very man who had sought to
destroy him!"
No comments:
Post a Comment