How were you led to the doctrines of Grace?

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Jon 316

Puritan Board Sophomore
I love hearing about how believers were led by God to embrace His Sovereignty in all things. Especially when they were once entrenched in arminianism.

So, pray tell, how did our Lord and saviour led you to embrace the doctrines of grace?
 
By reading the bible. I was not churched growing up, and simply reading Scripture from start to finish demonstrated to me how right the DoG are and how most churches in the US are goofy.

Theognome
 
By reading the bible. I was not churched growing up, and simply reading Scripture from start to finish demonstrated to me how right the DoG are and how most churches in the US are goofy.

Theognome

so, was there any calvinist influence? i.e books or people?

Or did you discover them independently? What scriptures convinced you?
 
It all started when a pastor of a Southern Baptist congregation in Mississippi lent me Loraine Boettner's Reformed Doctrine of Predestination. :)
 
By reading the bible. I was not churched growing up, and simply reading Scripture from start to finish demonstrated to me how right the DoG are and how most churches in the US are goofy.

Theognome

so, was there any calvinist influence? i.e books or people?

Or did you discover them independently? What scriptures convinced you?

Independently. I opened a bible, started at Genesis 1, and started reading. I posted in the writers forum, 'A Black and Blue Gospel'. It is my testimony.

Theognome
 
By reading Bahnsen & Gentry's House Divided. Which prompted me to buy Bahnsen's Always Ready, which prompted me to download many of his series on Apologetics, which prompted me to re-examine the "Deadly Flower" TULIP and then I realized that I was disagreeing with a false representation of the Doctrines of Grace. I then studied out what the scriptures said on them and then believed them.
 
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a group of friends (4 pters) were talking about it. I was interested so I started studying calvinism and after such found the trail to john piper, listened to Romans 8 and 9 preaching (which sealed the complete sovereignty of God in all things for me).
 
I think, by God's grace (no pun intended), I had leaned that way for a long time but had never had it explained systematically before.

I began attending a reformed church for the first time, a PCA church, and immediately came to realize and accept the preponderance of Scripture was on the side of the "five points." (something like more supporting it and than not, maybe 55/45%).

After a couple years of hearing it, discussing it with others, reading it in the Westminster Standards and looking at the Scripture proofs supporting each proposition and statement, it became a "clear and convincing" case. Something like 70% of Scripture on that side for the limited atonement, but 30% either unclear or apparently supporting the other side.

Two summers ago, something clicked. I suddenly seemed to understand most all of the verses that seemed to support an unlimited atonement- "all" meant "all sorts of" not every single one. It made sense. In context "all of us" was referring to Christians, especially in the early church where God expanded from mostly Israel to the whole world, in accordance with His plan from the beginning. In that context, it was a major issue, explaining how God, who had dealt with primarily Israel was now dealing with people in the whole world, Jew and Gentile.

My understanding was suddenly so remarkable, I wrote in my Bible, "date the doctrine of election became clear to me."

Glory be to God.
 
For me, it was a Sunday School class in a Disciples of Christ church. The teacher, also one of the assistant pastors, was teaching Genesis. Along the way, we stopped to study the Five Points of Calvinism. I have always had a very high view of Scripture and as we worked through the various passages dealing with the five points I became a firm believer of the grace of God. After that time, I enrolled at WTS Dallas and became more entrenched with Covenant Theology. Needless to say, my wife and I left that church and joined a local PCA church. That was going on five years in July/August. Also, the assistant pastor left that church about a year and half after we did and is now a ruling elder at my home church.

Amazing how God's grace works out.
 
I was born spouting the Five Points...almost. My parents are Presbyterians (PCA) so it was ingrained very early on.

It was the same for me. My dad was a PCA minister (actually RPC'ES to begin with). I was that annoying Reformed guy in my generally Evangelical Christian school.

I'm not so annoying about it now... but i think it's because the Doctrines of Grace are truly dear to me. That God would save a wretch like me... it makes no sense except for his free Grace to me in Christ!
 
A professor who laid out the scriptural case beautifully...he said he was not a Calvinist, but said that he wanted us to know the scriptural case for both positions. The funny thing is, when he left the institution, he gave some friends and me two cases of books...all of them were by Calvinists. He gave them to us with a wink. (He pastored a huge SBC church and taught at a Baptist institution.)

From there I simply contintued to read and study the Bible, and was absolutely convinced of the truth of the DoG.
 
A professor who laid out the scriptural case beautifully...he said he was not a Calvinist, but said that he wanted us to know the scriptural case for both positions. The funny thing is, when he left the institution, he gave some friends and me two cases of books...all of them were by Calvinists. He gave them to us with a wink. (He pastored a huge SBC church and taught at a Baptist institution.)

From there I simply contintued to read and study the Bible, and was absolutely convinced of the truth of the DoG.

so, was he lying?
 
No...he tended to the Amyrauldian (sp?) position; he just knew that Calvinists weren't "wicked and of the devil." He held to what he called the antinomy position...they are both in Scripture, though we can't reconcile it with our minds, there is no trouble in the mind of God. He gave them to us with a wink because the friends and I had earned the reputation of being the few Calvinists among the student body (though there are several Calvinist professors there). We sat together at lunch, and he had given us the nickname of being the "TULIP table." That's why he gave us the books.
 
Tip-Toe Through  TULIP

Seriously! It was linked somewhere, maybe on Phil Johnson's Spurgeon Archive. I was reading about Spurgeon and how he embraced Calvinism and somehow found this link. Between reading it, the stuff from Spurgeon and my Bible (of all things) I was hooked. I quickly noticed that the proponents of Calvinism used Scripture, the adversaries used philosophy. It was interesting though. I didn't change my views so much as clarify, expand and systemetize what I knew. It just fell into place for me as I read, with no struggle or resistance. It was quite liberating though - almost like getting saved.
 
I had(have) a couple friends who had discovered Calvinism some time prior, I'm not exactly sure how or when... but anyway. They brought up the subject a couple of times during some after-church conversations, and lent me several debates on the subject. That and doing an extensive amount of reading led me to conclude that Calvinism wasn't such a bad heresy after all. :)
 
I had(have) a couple friends who had discovered Calvinism some time prior, I'm not exactly sure how or when... but anyway. They brought up the subject a couple of times during some after-church conversations, and lent me several debates on the subject. That and doing an extensive amount of reading led me to conclude that Calvinism wasn't such a bad heresy after all. :)

I am very curious, if you don't mind and due to being very familiar with the group you are associated with, but what affects are there with you being a Calvinist and being in your church? Or is this something that you aren't at the talking about stage yet (?)
 
I had(have) a couple friends who had discovered Calvinism some time prior, I'm not exactly sure how or when... but anyway. They brought up the subject a couple of times during some after-church conversations, and lent me several debates on the subject. That and doing an extensive amount of reading led me to conclude that Calvinism wasn't such a bad heresy after all. :)

I am very curious, if you don't mind and due to being very familiar with the group you are associated with, but what affects are there with you being a Calvinist and being in your church? Or is this something that you aren't at the talking about stage yet (?)

Well, I haven't exactly been spreading Calvinism everywhere I go, no. :)

However, my dad is one of the pastors of our church, so we talk about it a bit. He actually commented recently that he was leaning more towards the reformed understanding of salvation, in that God must first draw a man and he said he was even open to it being irresistible. The only point he disagreed with, he said, was preservation of the saints or eternal security.

This is a marked improvement from the first time I brought it up, when he wouldn't even go that far. I think God's starting to answer my prayers. :)

Most of the other people in the church aren't particularly concerned about it. The one exception, I think, would be the parents of the friends I mentioned.
 
As a fairly new Christian, I was attending a Bible study in college in which the leader (who later went on to be a PCA and currently EPC pastor). Many quit coming when he did. A few days later, I ran into the leader and he showed me a quote by Spurgeon where CH referred to Calvinism as simply the teachings of Bible. Seemed to make a whole lotta sense to me.
 
As a baby believer I was in a mixed up Southern Baptist hodgepodge. There were people teaching Dispensational , Arminian and New Apostolic Reformation stuff all at the same time. It led me to a crisis of belief that boiled down to this: someone has to be wrong. As I read the Bible for myself and remembered some anti-Calvinist sermons from the Pastor, I came to the conclusion that he was wrong and Paul was right. Ephesians settled the issue once and for all as I digested it with limited language tools and several commentaries. I also learned the so called new and enlightened stuff was actually man's pipe dreams and not from Scripture at all. That got me into Church History and the beginnings of the Reformation.
 
I was raised in liberal Methodism. I first heard the gospel preached when a teenager. We had moved to Paris, TX, in '73. To meet kids my own age, I started attending a youth group led by a coworker of my dad's. A rule of the group was to attend worship somewhere on Sunday evening before going to the youth meeting. I started going to the sponsoring church's evening worship services (first Sunday I attended they had voted that AM to leave the PCUS and join the Continuing Presbyterians--precursor to the PCA). I was converted during that summer, listening to the expositions on Jonah!

The pastor and youth leader discipled me; I got a copy of the Westminster Confession and Catechisms with Scripture Proofs. I went through each chapter and section, looking up all of the references.

I never had any "struggles" in coming to the Doctrines of Grace; they were understood as the truth from the moment the Lord opened my eyes the day of my new birth; they were the very air I breathed and the water I drank. What I heard from the pulpit was in accord with what I read in the Word.

It was reality, that reality as described by God in His Word, that had invaded my understanding. The Creator-creature distinction was what clinched it; what followed close on its heels was His absolute sovereignty, authority of His Word, His grace and mercy to sinners, His loving care and keeping of us to the end - were the new grid-references in my mind.

I later in college did what Francis Shaeffer described as he had done in his book, True Spirituality - go back to square one, to the very core commitments and understanding of the Faith once for all delivered to the saints, and build from there. All of the presuppositions examined, beginning with the Creator-creature distinction and the absolute authority of God's Word, checked out.

I have now been in the Lord Jesus for 35 years; I increasingly have trouble remembering what my life was like "B.C." I see the Lord's fitting me more and more to be after the image of His Son - with a lot of the usual bumps and bruises of learning to die to self, to the old man, to be renewed in the spirit of mind, and to put new patterns of in Christ.

To God Alone Be All Glory, Honor, and Praise!

_______________
John Owen Butler
Pastor-teacher
Beal Heights PCA
Lawton, OK
 
That is good. I'll be praying. Mayhap we'll have a converted Reformed Baptist church on our hands ;) LOL!
 
There was a "surge" of people turning Reformed at my childhood church. I was discussing (heatedly, but affectionately) with one man after a get together at my parent's home. I was 19 years old on summer break from college.

I argued from the Bible for Arminianism...and to my amazement he argued for predestination from the Bible. He did so with such a reliance upon the Word that I remember wondering in prayer before God that night: "If you are a God who predestinates...can I worship You?"

From that moment, I read the Bible differently.
 
Although I wasn't brought up in a Christian home we went to church. In the good providence of God it was a presbyterian and reformed church. When I was converted I started going back to church. I never really knew what reformed meant until about 10 years ago even though I heard it often enough. I attended a part time theology course and it was like a revelation to me- "ah, so this is what reformed theology is. Well, I believe this so I must be reformed."
 
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