FSTDT

Marc D. Carpenter #fundie outsidethecamp.org

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The doctrine of reprobation is one of the most despised doctrines of the Christian faith. It is despised by the irreligious and unconcerned, and it is despised by most who come in the name of Christianity. In spite the common notion that there is a dichotomy between "Arminians" and "Calvinists," people in both of these camps hate the true doctrine of reprobation. Some will dismiss it out of hand, while others will try to explain it away or water it down. This article, which is based on sermons this author has preached from Romans 9:11-22, will present the biblical doctrine of reprobation that exalts God and abases man.

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Why did God emphasize that He loved Jacob before Jacob had done anything good and hated Esau before Esau had done anything bad? Because He was showing that election and reprobation are both unconditional. They are not based on anything that Jacob or Esau did or did not do. Some false religionists say that God looked down through time and saw who would believe and then chose to save them, which is an utterly ridiculous and blasphemous notion. That makes salvation conditioned on what God foresaw man would do, and it would make God's choosing merely an empty gesture, since it was man who chose his own destiny, and God just affirmed it. But the truth in this passage is undeniable. God's choosing - God's election to life and reprobation to death - is completely, absolutely, totally without precondition. God did not decide to save Jacob once He found out that Jacob would be a good person or would believe. God did not decide to damn Esau once He found out that Esau would be a bad person or would not believe. God's decision was based purely on His own sovereign will and had nothing to do with the will of the sinner.

It is a given that Arminians hate the doctrine of unconditional reprobation. But it might surprise the reader that most Calvinists hate this doctrine as well. They will claim to love unconditional election, yet when it comes to reprobation, they turn into conditionalists. They say that God reprobates a person based on something in the person. They say that God reprobated Esau based on something in Esau. And who better to represent and articulate this heretical notion than the most popular Calvinist himself, Charles H. Spurgeon?

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The reader might think that anyone who professes belief in the absolute sovereignty of God would easily embrace the truth that God actively hardens people and actively causes sin. After all, a God who does not control all actions and events, including the sins of men and angels, is not God. But most who say they believe in the absolute sovereignty of God do not believe this. They will say that God is in control of everything, but not that He controls everything, and they concoct all kinds of theories in order to justify their view of their god who does not cause everything while remaining sovereign. They use high-sounding catch-phrases such as: "God withholds His restraining grace," "God withdraws His gracious influences," and "God leaves men to their natural blindness, to the hardness and unrestrained tendencies of their hearts, to the corruptions of their nature, to their own depraved wills and desires so they are free to act according to their own inclinations and the free exercise of their evil dispositions." These might sound good in Satanic seminaries and pulpits, but they have absolutely no basis in God's Word.

Marc D. Carpenter #fundie outsidethecamp.org

[All italics and underlining original]

During the course of a sermon, a "pastor" (loosely-termed) came to 1 Timothy 2:9-10 and read it in the KJV: "In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; but (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works."

Instead of exegeting the passage, this pastor said, "I'm not going to touch this one with a ten-foot pole." This is a true story; I heard him say it on tape.

Why did this "pastor" abrogate his "pastoral duty" when it came to the modesty of women? To anyone who saw how the women were dressed in his assembly, the answer is obvious: This "pastor" was afraid to get into specifics as to what constituted modest dress, because if he did so, he would face the wrath of the shamelessly immodest women of the assembly and would be called a "fundamentalist" or a "legalist."

Yet passages on the modesty and immodesty of women are found throughout the Bible. If God put them in the Bible, we had better not ignore them.

Why does the Bible focus on women rather than men when it comes to modesty of dress? As Solomon said, "That which has been, it [is] that which shall be. And that which has been done, it [is] that which will be done. And there is no new [thing] under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9). As it is today, so it always has been: the women of the world love the glitter and glamor. They love to behave and to dress in such a way as to be sexy and seductive. The men of the world love it and feed into it. It is a truly disgusting dance of whoredom.

Whorish dress has not stayed outside of the professing church. In most cases, the women in the professing church and the world look no different. Their "everyday" clothes are whorish, their "dress-up" clothes are whorish, and their "recreation" clothes are whorish.

But this is not how true Christian women are to dress or conduct themselves. They are to adorn (arrange) themselves in modest, proper clothing, with shamefacedness and sobriety.

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Why are most women's clothes made the way they are? What do most fashion designers have in mind when they design clothes for women? All you have to do is listen to a women's fashion clothing designer talk about why he or she designed clothing a certain way. The fashionable clothing is designed to be purposefully sexual. Almost all the clothes in the women's clothing departments and stores are designed to make the woman sexually attractive.

There is no denying this fact. Look at the difference between men's and women's clothing. Why is there a much higher prevalence of low-cut blouses, shirts, and dresses among women's clothing than among men's clothing? Why are so many v-necks or scoop-necks in women's clothing? Why do many women's fashions try to bare something, whether it be a part of the back or the front or the leg or even the shoulder? You cannot get around the fact that these things are designed the way they are because the designers have wicked things in mind. Whenever my wife and I go shopping with our children for clothes for the females in our house (one woman and two girls), we get angry. It is disgusting to see that stores (even K-Mart, Wal-Mart, Sears, etc.) expect all girls and women, including my daughters and my wife, to dress like whores. Take something as benign as shirts. In the stores, there are separate sections for girls' shirts, boys' shirts, women's shirts, and men's shirts. One would expect, if there were no other motive than to clothe people, that the girls' shirts would be designed the same as the boys' shirts, and the men's shirts would be designed the same as the women's shirts, maybe with some color differences. But no - they are noticeably different. The first thing one notices is that the hole for the head is noticeably bigger for the female shirts. Why would this be? Is it because females' heads are bigger than males' heads? Of course not. Upon closer inspection, the hole is actually shaped differently as well as being bigger. What is it for? It is for the neckline to be lower on the females' tops! When one looks at button-down tops, most of the females' tops do not button as high as the males' tops. In addition, shirts for females are shorter than the shirts for males.

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Little girls of the world learn that femininity means whorishness at a very young age. The dolls they play with have whorish clothing. The animated Disney movies they see always have the main female character dressed in whorish clothing (usually something strapless). It is all around.

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Finally, there is the swimsuit. It is nothing more than underwear worn in public. Why is it that women would be ashamed to be seen in a bikini walking down the sidewalk in a city, but it all of a sudden becomes acceptable when there is sand and water? Do the standards of modesty change when one comes upon sand and water? These are the same women who would be very upset if someone walked in on them in their bedroom when they were only clothed in their underwear, but when there is sand and water around, the shame is gone. The hypocrisy is evident. Can a woman wearing a modern swimsuit in public ever say that she is obeying 1 Timothy 2:9? And how many women in a beauty pageant would qualify for shamefacedness? It should be obvious that beauty pageants of any sort, whether or not there are swimsuits, are wicked.

Christian women and girls - be modest, be proper, be discreet, be decent, be shamefaced!

Chris Duncan #fundie outsidethecamp.org

[Extracts from the article The Wicked Westminster Confession - Italics original]

III.7. "The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extendeth or withholdeth mercy, as He pleaseth, for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by; and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice."

In Matthew 11:25-26, Jesus is giving thanks to the Father for hiding the things of the gospel from the wise and prudent and revealing them unto babes. God the Father is said to be doing two things here: hiding from some and revealing to others. It is clear that a supposed "permissive decree" of God is not "expressly set down" in Scripture. Using the WCF's professed principle set forth in I.9, we go to John 12:40 for a fuller and clearer sense of what it means for God to hide these things from the wise and prudent: "He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with [their] eyes, nor understand with [their] heart, and be converted, and I should heal them."

God actively blinds eyes and hardens hearts. Why? So that they should not see nor understand and be converted. In Matthew 11:25-26, God is not passively hiding things but actively doing so by means of blinding and hardening.

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The Scriptures that the WCF men put forth do not demonstrate that God is passive in His decree of sovereign ordination of the reprobate to wrath. Jude 4 and 1 Peter 2:8 make it clear that the reprobate are ordained and appointed to their respective condemnations. Those who stumbled at the stone of stumbling, those who were offended by the rock of offence, were not "permitted" or "allowed" to appoint themselves. They were appointed by God to stumble at the Word. If God is said to actively cause the reprobate of mankind to stumble at the Stone of stumbling, then will not the carnal response be: "Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?"?

The Scripture says that God raised Pharaoh up in order to display His power in him. How is God's power demonstrated in Pharaoh if God "passes by" him by giving him more freedom and "allowing" him to harden himself? In the Passover found in the book of Exodus, and in the final destruction of Pharaoh in the Red Sea, we see that God raised up Pharaoh (and by extension all the reprobate) in order to show His wrath and to make His power known in His active and unconditional hardening of Pharaoh. The hardening done by God in Pharaoh's heart is shown to be active and efficient because it is a display of His power, and the hardening is shown to be unconditional because God will harden whom He will.

Certainly there are aspects of God's counsel and will that are "unsearchable" (Romans 11:33; Deuteronomy 29: 29) to finite creatures. But God has clearly revealed in His Word exactly WHY He has chosen to have mercy on some and chosen to harden others: God wants to demonstrate His power and wrath in the reprobate so that those to whom He would show mercy might know that the riches of His glorious mercy found in Jesus Christ alone are what makes them to differ from the Pharaohs of the world (Romans 9:22-24).