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Note: This article was originally published in the Standard Bearer on May 15, 1997. John Pedersen has given me permission to re-release this article as a feature for predestinarian.net. - Brandan

For many in the tolerant, cultured world of evangelical religion, there is no scum more vile than a harsh, judgmental, pontificating buffoon who goes about judging whether others are "true Christians."

Such a one is seen as patently bad, and leaves a sour taste and a sick stomach in his preachy wake, cutting a smelly swath through people who have learned not to put God in the kind of box that can be shaken, opened, and checked.

The question is, why are such lumps a part of the landscape? What keeps them going? Since no one likes them and they have the cuddliness of a sore porcupine, who feeds them?

As I am such a "judgmental" one, so called by more gentle, tolerant "Christians" than I can count ("See -he puts 'Christians' in quotation marks!"), I would like to venture an answer, warning the reader first to make sure he or she is sitting down, with some smelling salts handy.

What keeps me going, harsh, intolerant pill that I am, is this: I am afraid of being judgmental - toward God.

Faced with the prospect of being judgmental toward a man's words and being judgmental toward the Word of God, I choose the former, and run from the latter, although I would have many, many more friends if I did not do this.

Perhaps I would even have you, dear reader, for a friend. As it is, your initial reaction to the title of this essay may have been to take it and read it so as to recognize better and avoid people like me, as if we were not easy enough to spot already. But you just can't be too careful when it comes to knowing the modus operandi of a religious psychopath, so you read on.
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“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.” - John 6:44 ESV

Vincent Cheung, an outspoken and widely known Christian of our day says this regarding God’s sovereignty in our salvation:

“you think I will tell you, God has sent Christ to make salvation possible (emphasis mine) for everyone, even you, so that in the end you will determine your own destiny…… But God has not left even this for the sinner to determine. Jesus says that no one can be saved except the Father has chosen him; unless God first shows you mercy, you will not and cannot choose him. Thus even in this aspect you are powerless, and you are completely at His mercy.” (V. Cheung).

A constant occurrence within modern day evangelicalism is the notion that the God of Scripture is in Heaven wringing His hands, crying, because His creation will not come to Him for salvation, and that He has done all that He can to save them. Within this view is the thinking that the will of man is untouchable by God, and that He will not force Himself on His creation; that He will only try to “woo” people to come to His Son Jesus, not that He will as Scripture teaches “draw” His people to His Son irresistibly. As we move forward in this short essay a case will be made for the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation, and a hope that with the apostle Paul you will say: “for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” - Phil. 2:13 ESV
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Prov 10:18, (NASB), He who conceals hatred has lying lips, And he who spreads slander is a fool.

Prov 16:28, (NASB), A perverse man spreads strife, And a slanderer separates intimate friends.

Greetings brethren in Christ! If you are reading this, you have probably already watched the video Monty Collier has placed on youtube about me. There are a lot of things I would like to say about it, but Monty has never given me the opportunity on the actual youtube page to post my comments. Indeed, he has disabled the comments section for that video, and I don't know why. If you search for "Brandan Kraft" on the internet, the top hit is this video. But I am now going to officially respond to this video because it has me greatly disturbed. It has troubled me now for sometime, and although it's been over three years since this video has posted, I am finally motivated to respond to it because it has affected me in a very personal way. And while I will not disclose how this video has hurt me, I would like like to state up front that this video is flat out slander. I liken slander to murder. It is very destructive and it can destroy relationships (Prov 16:28).
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Though this epistle of St. James was rejected by the ancients, I praise it and consider it a good book, because it sets up no doctrines of men but vigorously promulgates the law of God. However, to state my own opinion about it, though without prejudice to anyone, I do not regard it as the writing of an apostle; and my reasons follow.

In the first place it is flatly against St. Paul and all the rest of Scripture in ascribing justification to works. It says that Abraham was justified by his works when he offered his son Isaac; though in Romans 4 St. Paul teaches to the contrary that Abraham was justified apart from works, by his faith alone, before he had offered his son, and proves it by Moses in Genesis 15. Now although this epistle might be helped and an interpretation devised for this justification by works, it cannot be defended in its application to works of Moses' statement in Genesis 15. For Moses is speaking here only of Abraham's faith, and not of his works, as St. Paul demonstrates in Romans 4. This fault, therefore, proves that this epistle is not the work of any apostle.

In the second place its purpose is to teach Christians, but in all this long teaching it does not once mention the Passion, the resurrection, or the Spirit of Christ. He names Christ several times; however he teaches nothing about him, but only speaks of general faith in God. Now it is the office of a true apostle to preach of the Passion and resurrection and office of Christ, and to lay the foundation for faith in him, as Christ himself says in John 15, "You shall bear witness to me." ...

The Protestant movement arose in the early 16th century as an attempt to overthrow centuries of corruption and false doctrine in the Roman Catholic church. The heart and soul of the Protestant Reformation focused on a revival of Pauline soteriology, in opposition to the Papal doctrine of justification before God achieved by means of inner transformation--communicated in the clergy-administered church sacraments. The leaders of Protestantism have never acknowledged that the entire system of Roman soteriology was invented and expounded by Augustine of Hippo. There is instead an insistence that Augustinian theology is the very basis of the Reformation. Gus is alleged by Reformed teachers to espouse justification exclusively by the free grace of God in the person of Jesus Christ.

"His doctrine of the Church he had received whole from his predecessors, and he gave it merely the precision and vitality which insured its persistence . . . The problem which Augustine bequeathed to the Church for solution, the Church required a thousand years to solve. But even so, it is Augustine who gave us the Reformation. For the Reformation, inwardly considered, was just the ultimate triumph of Augustine's doctrine of grace over Augustine's doctrine of the church." Benjamin Warfield, Studies in Tertullian and Augustine (Baker, Grand Rapids, MI, 1991 reprint, p. 130).

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An eight part series defending each point of SEA TULIP.

Introduction and Part 1: Supralapsarianism

Introduction


This article will defend the necessity of a broader confessional basis for gospel predestination than what is commonly defined in the five points of Calvinism. TULIP Calvinism was formulated in response to the 1610 five articles of the Remonstrants, who were followers of Jacob Arminius. At the time of its assembly, when the Synod of Dort formulated TULIP, the issue of counteracting the five articles was paramount to continuing any semblance of a Reformation. Though the Synod of Dort resulted in a major advance in gospel truth at the time of its occurrence, the pertinence of those gains was later destroyed through the rise of evangelicalism under the immensely popular teaching of Andrew Fuller. A tongue-in-cheek confession of the 5 points still remains today. But for centuries Reformed Calvinists have shunned any doctrine of absolute, positive, double, and causative predestination. Arminians are embraced as full brethren in Christ and fellow evangelicals. ...

By Gery Schmidt: Is the gospel something to be offered to the unregenerate? A great many Christians believe so. It has long been maintained that Christ himself, or eternal life, is to be offered unto the lost for their acceptance or rejection. However, we are convinced that the very concept of the gospel being an offer made unto the unregenerate represents a departure from the Scriptures in at least the following four things: first, what the gospel is; secondly, the purpose or utility of the gospel; thirdly, the doctrine of total depravity; and fourthly, a proper understanding of God's justice.

First, the notion that the gospel is an offer represents a misunderstanding and perversion of what the gospel is. The word gospel represents the greek word euaggelion, which literally means "good news." But what is the good news? Essentially, the good news is that Christ Jesus came into the world to save his people from their sins. (Mt. 1:21, Lk. 2:10,11; 1 Tim. 1:15) The very heart of the gospel is the person and work of Jesus Christ. And the gospel itself declares that the incarnation of the Son of God had a definite end in view, namely, the salvation of the elect, and none else. Yet the view that the gospel is an offer contravenes this Scriptural fact. Underlying the premise that the gospel ...