As a rule, I never name the system of theology that I am preaching from God's Word – I never brand these great truths as Baptist doctrine or as Presbyterian doctrine, etc. Someone called me yesterday about a matter in regard to organizing a Presbyterian church, and I asked, "Are you going to call me as pastor?" They said, "Well, we've got to have one. Would you preach for Presbyterians?" I said, "I ought to. You are Calvinistic in your doctrine, whether you know it or not. Some things, maybe, I couldn't believe, but I would preach God's Word to you."

I am a Calvinist. A Hypercalvinist denies man's responsibility – Calvinism accepts man's responsibility as the Bible teaches it, but at the same time recognizes God's sovereignty. Arminianism on the other hand puts the emphasis on man's responsibility and denies God's sovereignty. I am also called a Hardshell Baptist preacher, which is practically the same thing.

In this study we want to discuss "The evils of Calvinism as seen through the eyes of an Arminian," or unsaved religionist. Many times, when I preach on the Sovereignty of God, I am called a Hardshell Baptist preacher; then when I preach on the Doctrine of the Holy spirit I am branded as a Holiness, and so on down the line. Then when I get to preaching with all the fire of my soul, I am branded as a old "second-blessing" Methodist. I used to say that you could take Baptist water and Methodist fire and have a revival, but today Methodists, as a whole, have lost their fire and Baptist water has become stagnant and full of wiggletails! Therefore we have a deadness everywhere, a spiritual dearth across our country.

Our subject at this time is, "What Is Calvinism?" Calvinism is a belief, a systematic presentation of the truths of God's Word as set forth by John Calvin, an old Puritan preacher. John Calvin got it from St. Augustine and God's Word. St. Augustine got it from the Apostle Paul, and the Apostle Paul got it directly from the Lord Jesus Christ. Let me make this statement, that Baptist today have a Calvinistic creed but an Arminian ministry. You Episcopalians who are listening to me, go back and read your creed – you have a Calvinistic creed. You Reformed Dutch have a Calvinistic creed, but many of you are now drifting to Arminianism. Take old-time Methodists, you have a Calvinistic creed – there are very few of you left. You Presbyterians have a Calvinistic creed, but the vast majority of you today are Arminians. All right now, you listen. I'll challenge anyone on every inch of ground with this statement, that Baptists today do not preach their creed – they do not believe their creed. Take the New Hampshire Confession of Faith, the London Confession of Faith, and other Confessions of Faith, read them – they are Calvinistic to the core. Baptists as a whole do not believe and preach their own creed. I will challenge anyone on every inch of ground with that statement, that Baptists today do not preach their creed – they do not believe their creed! Over a period of time Baptists have slowly departed from it and have come to embrace a system of teachings known as Arminianism, which has led Baptists largely to a position of practice know as Campbellism, and 90% of our Baptists today are Campbellites in practice. Now you look up that word "Campbellism" and see what a Campbellite believes.

Now let's notice what Calvinism teaches and see why unsaved religionists and Arminians hate the doctrine of Calvinism, and why they find so much fault with it. In other words, why do folks find so much fault with my preaching? I am being challenged now as having departed from Baptist doctrine; I have not! I challenge any Baptist who has any sense at all to take my 85 volumes of messages on different subjects and find one fault with them from the Baptist doctrinal viewpoint, from God's Word. I am preaching what Baptists believe – I don't brand it as that; I brand it as coming from God's Word. Why do you brand me as this, that, or the other? Why do you try to apologize for my type of preaching? Why? Because you have departed from your creed – you are an Arminian. In connection with this statement, let me present this question, Why didn't the Lord Jesus Christ, when giving His Word that we call the Holy bible through the Holy Spirit to individuals, make the truth so plain and simple that man can understand it? Now He did, if you are born again.

My friend, the Bible was written for born-again believers, and not for you unsaved religionists. The Lord God of Heaven cannot explain spiritual truth to the natural mind so that it can understand it. God Himself can't do it. The Lord Jesus Christ couldn't do it when He was on earth. My preacher-friend, I don't care how you try to simplify the truth of God's Word you cannot make unsaved religionists understand it. Now, that is what has led Baptists and others from a Calvinistic creed to an Arminian practice. You have tried slowly over a period of time to simplify and make plain, as you tern it, the truth of God's Word so that unsaved religionists can understand it, but you can't do it. Brother, the natural mind cannot understand spiritual truths; only a born-again believer can grasp and understand a spiritual truth. god has to awaken and quicken that individual who is dead in sins and give him a new nature before he can ever understand spiritual truth.

Only a born-again believer can grasp and understand spiritual truth! The natural man cannot understand it; according to I Cor. 2:14 the natural mind cannot understand the things that are spiritual, and that's why unsaved religionists hate the doctrines of Calvinism today as they do. That's the reason you Arminians hate it. You don't understand it with your natural mind. The only light the average individual has today is the natural light of reason. You don't have the Divine light, the Holy Spirit. That's the reason they cry down and hate the doctrines of God's Word that I preach, or that any other man preaches under the power of God's Holy Spirit. There has to come a quickening – there has to come an awakening. Now you can hate it all you want to, but it does not get you anywhere except to buy you a one-way ticket to Hell. That's all.

Let me call your attention to the first great truth set forth in Calvinism; and that is, every sinner is dead in trespasses and sins, according to Eph. 2:1, "And you hath he quickened (made alive), who were dead in trespasses and sins." You see, Calvinism and God's Word coincide, because the doctrine of Calvinism does nothing but set forth the truth of God's eternal, verbally-inspired Word. Calvinism believes in verbal inspiration, that is, that God's Word is verbally inspired. I've often been asked, "Brother Shelton, do you believe in the verbally-inspired Word of God?" I reply, "So much so as if God had handed down from Heaven a completely bound Bible as we have it today and said to me, 'This is My Word'." I believe just that much it is verbally inspired. "Well," you say, "I don't." I can't help that – I can't help it if you are ignorant. I can't help it if you are stupid. I can't help it that you don't believe it, because of your unbelief. God pity you!

Every sinner is dead in trespasses and in sins, so deeply buried in the dungeon of sin that only the power of God can resurrect him, and salvation is the resurrection of a sinner from death unto life. Now, I know Arminianism teaches that there is something good in every sinner, that the only thing you and I have to do is to bring out that good and bring that individual to a decision for Christ, and, "oh boy, he is saved!" Brother, that isn't salvation! The Bible does not teach that. No, sir! Now, that's a bible truth – that's a truth from God's eternal Word, and you as a sinner are dead in your trespasses and sins.

Another great truth that Calvinism declares is that man has a will and is not a machine, but that man's will is bound by Satan, according to II Tim. 2:26, "And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil who are taken captive by him at his will." I have been accused since I preach that God is sovereign and salvation is of the Lord, of making man a machine. No, he isn't – man is not an automation. Man is a free moral agent, according to God's Word, but man does not have a free will of his own. No, he doesn't! He is not a free-willed individual, because his will is held captive by Satan. Now every individual convicted by the Holy Spirit can say, "Yes, Preacher, that's so. If I had a free will I would flee to Christ without a moment's notice. I want Him; I believe that He is the Son of God." But your will is shackled, isn't it? Your will, which is held captive by Satan, has to be unshackled and set free by the power of the Holy Spirit, before you can believe. That's so. You see, man is a depraved individual (that is another great truth of Calvinism), according to God's Word, and has no righteousness of his own; therefore, he is corrupt and vile and wicked, and his depraved nature is under the control of Satan, who controls his will.

Man is totally depraved, but you don't believe it. You don't believe that man's will is held captive by his old depraved nature that is dominated by Satan. Nevertheless, man's will is held in slavery; it is held captive by Satan, and the will of man is not free to act until it is set free by the power of God. Now, brother, how many of you folks out there are smoking, and can't quit it! How many of you folks are drinking, and can't quit it! How many of you folks are committing a sin that you can't quit? How many of you folks would like to come to Christ, yet you can't come? How many of you folks would like to do good, and can't? Your will is held captive by your old depraved nature that is dominated and controlled by Satan! Christ said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free... if the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed" (John 8:32, 36). Now this Doctrine of Depravity as set forth by Calvin is a great doctrine of God's Word, but unsaved religionists and Arminians will not have it – they hate the Doctrine of Total Depravity. Therefore, man's will being shackled by Satan, held in bondage by his depraved nature, can only choose that which is evil.

Arminianism teaches that man is a free-will agent (not a free moral agent, but a free-will agent), that his will can choose good, and that he has the power to either choose Christ or not. Everyone of them will give you this Scripture, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever" will believe – whosoever will, let him come. Yes, it does say, "Whosoever believeth, whosoever will let him come." All right, it is true that man is responsible. Come on to Christ, you awakened sinners – come on! I plead with you to come, and you ask, "Well, how in the world can I come? I can't come. I want to come – I want to be saved, but I can't." Why? Your will is held captive by your depraved nature that is controlled by Satan, and you don't see that until God opens your eyes and lets you see it. Then after you are saved, your will is held in control by your new nature that is controlled by the Holy Spirit. You see, you never are a free-will agent – you are a free moral agent.

In other words, man chooses only that which is evil, and man does not seek God of his own will. This is clearly stated in Rom. 3:11. "There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God." Man of his own will never seeks God, but Arminianism that is prevalent today everywhere teaches that man does seek after God and has a free will to choose God. They overlook one fact, that man by nature is religious – man is a religious being. The fact that man is a religious being doesn't mean that he seeks after God, but he seeks after a god of his own imagination, a god that he has created within his own mind, and back of that imaginatively created god is a demon spirit, which he is seeking. All of your religious seeking, apart from Holy Spirit conviction, is nothing more than natural man in his natural, depraved state, held captive by Satan, seeking after the god of his own imagination, back of which is a demon spirit or demon spirits, which give him religious experiences and religious feelings, and which imitate or try to imitate the Lord God of Heaven, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. They can and do imitate every work of the Lord.

Unsaved depraved men and women, not knowing the true God, believe then that man is seeking after God because they've never sought after God themselves, but after the god of the world, Satan, which is behind the god of their own creation. Did you ever hear a fellow say, "All right now, get your faith image." That is a god of your own imagination! That is not the true God! Wake up, my friend, before it is too late. Now that is a pivot truth, and if you don't know that thing, brother, you had better get out of the pulpit. If you can't tell the difference between a man seeking after a god of his own imagination and one seeking after the true God, one who is under Holy Spirit conviction, you had better get out of the pulpit because you are blind, and the blind can't lead the blind, but they will both fall into Hell (Matt. 15:14). Now there is out trouble today. Brother, I am not ashamed of the doctrines of God's Word. I am not ashamed to stand up here, if I stand alone, and proclaim these great truths.

Now let's notice another great fact about Calvinism, and that is, that Christ died only for the elect in a saving sense. Now, I know a lot of you fellows champ your bits when I talk about God saving only the elect and Christ dying only for the elect in a saving sense, that He died only for those elected from the foundation of the world, which leads to the belief of a limited atonement. And you say, "I don't believe in any such thing!" All right, wait a minute; I want to show you how inconsistent you are. There is no such doctrine taught in God's Word that Christ died for everyone. If Christ died for everyone, and everyone's sin-debts were paid, there would have to be universal salvation. Now, there would have to be! There is a group of people who do believe in universal salvation, that Christ died for everyone and that every sinner will be saved and no one will ever go to Hell. Now, if Christ died for everyone, then they are right in their conclusion that everyone would ultimately have to be saved. Brother, if Christ died for every individual and paid every individual's sin-debt on Calvary's tree, then God would be bound to save every individual and to take every individual to Heaven.

Yes, that teaching of universal salvation is greatly prevalent today. Listen to John 10:15, "As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep." He didn't say He laid down His life for the goats, but He laid down His life for the sheep – that is, God's elect – and Christ died in a saving sense according to the Scriptures for only His elect. This truth is also brought out in I Pet. 2:24, 25, "Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls." So we see here that Christ laid down His life as the Good Shepherd for His sheep. Now who God's elect are only Christ knows, but He died for God's elect only. NOw, I don't know who they are, but He does. That's Bible truth that you can't get around if you have any spiritual sense at all. A blind dog in a meat house could see that.

Then in connection with this truth, there is another great truth that stands out in God's Word, and that is, Christ saves whom He wills. That makes Him Lord. Listen to John 5:21, "For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will (makes alive whom He will)." You see, a sinner is dead in trespasses and sins. That's our major premise that we started on from God's Word. We have to keep that fact in mind. A sinner is dead in trespasses and sins, and, preacher, you can't awaken him! Sunday School teacher, you can't awaken a sinner and I can't either – that is the work of the Holy Spirit. All right, who commands the Holy spirit? You don't. I don't. He is sovereign – He has a will of His own, and He "quickeneth whom he will." That's a truth that makes Arminians so angry – that God is sovereign and Christ is Lord – and they think that is one of the greatest evils of the Calvinistic system of doctrine. But that's God's Word. My friend, this same truth is brought out in Rom. 9:18, "Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth." Now you turn to Rom 9:18 and read it. That is in the bible. It's right there! And it is just as much God's Word as John 3:16 is. You put that down! Now either God's Word is true, or God is a liar; but the Word of God says, "Let God be true, but every man a liar" (Rom. 3:4).

Now let's consider that statement again that if Christ died for everyone, then everyone would have to be saved, because He paid the sin-debt for everyone and God cannot collect a sin-debt twice! Suppose here is an unrepentant sinner who is not saved, but Christ died for him – Christ paid his sin-debt in full for him. Now, mind you, He went over there and signed that bond. He paid that bond in full. That sinner one day comes up to the Great White Throne Judgment, and looks God in the face and says, "Listen, Christ paid my sin-debt – You can't send me to Hell. You can't collect that debt twice. You can't collect it from my Surety and them collect it from me." God would have to let that rebel go to Heaven because his sin-debt has been paid. Do you see how warped and twisted your thinking is? And yet you are using God's Word to support your own idea.

Brother, let me tell you something – God is sovereign! If I went to the bank and paid your note in full, the banker could not collect it from you. You have the receipt that I paid it; he can't collect it from you. If Christ paid your sin-debt in full, let me tell you, brother, God could not send you to Hell! He couldn't. Do you know that thing? That would mean universal salvation. How warped and twisted you Arminians are! I am hewing right to the line here, and you are going to sit there and listen to me! Yes, you are, and God is going to open the eyes of some of you to see the truth of this thing. God has laid these messages on my heart for someone.

These truths being facts, we face another fact – that the Holy Spirit creates, or gives, real repentance and saving faith in the hearts of those for whom Christ died. Heb 12:2 says that He is the Author and Finisher of our faith, and II Tim. 2:25 says, "God peradventure will give them repentance." Acts 5:31 says, "Him hath God exalted... to give repentance to Israel," and Acts 11:18 says that He "granted repentance unto life" to the Gentiles. So then Repentance and faith are gifts of grace to the sinner that God raises from the dead by His power unto salvation in Christ Jesus our Lord.

You ask, "Is there any hope for me?" Listen man – listen, little girl sitting there – listen, thousands of others who have been touched by the Holy Spirit! If God has touched your heart and awakened you to the fact that you are a lost sinner, then look to Him, because God paid your sin-debt in full through Christ. Why don't you just look to Him? That is all you can do. You can't pay that sin-debt, not one penny of it, so why don't you look to Him, and let Him show you that He has paid that sin-debt in full? Will you do it? Will you believe as He has awakened you and showed you your condition? That is the only way I know; that is the only means God has to save you. God doesn't tease a sinner. god doesn't laugh at a sinner that He is dealing with. Look to Him.

"Ah," you say, "I have done this, and I have done that." Friend, salvation is by grace, and not by your merits. You cannot merit a thing in the world before the Lord. Your sin-debt is paid in full and given to you freely. May God show you that thing today and bring you to rest completely upon Him and look to Him. It is Christ alone.

Now let me give you this closing thought. The great truth of the Sovereignty of God is the foundation doctrine of all the teachings of God's Word, the foundation doctrine of Calvinism. Christ crucified, buried, and risen is the central doctrine of all the doctrines of God's Word. Christ crucified, buried, and risen as our Lord, our Saviour, our Surety; our Mediator is the center, the central doctrine of all the teachings of Calvinism and of God's Word. Did you get that thing? Do you know Him? Is He magnified in your heart and your life? My friend, may He be today.

One of the great doctrines of Calvinism, which is a doctrine of God's Holy Word, is the Sovereignty of God and the teaching that God's purpose or purposes can never be defeated. Now that's true, my friend, regardless of what you think or say. You cannot reason out these truths; you accept them by faith until they become experimental in your own heart and life. Arminians exalt man and say that man controls the destiny of his own soul, not realizing that God's purposes can never be defeated. Isa. 46:10, 11 says, "My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure...I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it." Now let me tell you, friends, it is one of the greatest moments of your life when you come to see, to know, and to acknowledge in your heart that God is on the throne. I don't mean just to believe in the Doctrine of the Sovereignty of God, but to know a Sovereign God. Psa. 115:3 also sets forth this same great truth – listen, "But our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased." When you honestly face God's Word, you run up against this great Rock of Gibraltar, that God does as He pleases and no man can stay His hand (Dan. 4:35) or change His will. Why? Because God is sovereign.

The fruit of Arminianism is, "God may be sovereign, but man is also sovereign." One of our religious leaders made that statement in print the other day. Unsaved religionists hate the Sovereignty of God and gnash their teeth at the doctrines of Election and Reprobation. They will readily tell you that Satan will never have a chance to be saved; they will tell you that fallen angels are doomed forever in an endless Hell, but when you tell them that God's Word teaches that God has elected some to salvation from among Adam's race and some to damnation, they rise up with all the fury of Hell and say, "I'll not have it!" But remember, friend, Satan and all the fallen angels are greater, more noble creatures than man ever dared to be, and God will never save Satan or any of the fallen angels or demon spirits; He has never made any provision for their salvation. Then when you find in God's Word that God has elected some out of Adam's race for salvation in Christ and then elected others for damnation in Hell, why should you object to that! You won't have it, will you? God does not have to save any of us. Did you know that? He did not have to make provision for any of us, but He did, and I praise Him for it. I praise God that I was one of His elect.

You know, the fact that they reject the plain teaching of God's Word is a sign of utter rebellion against the Word of God and against the Sovereignty of God, and it shows that they have never been saved. To them God's Election is one of the greatest evils of Calvinism, and to justify their own rebellious, Christ-rejecting hearts, they will brand the individual who preaches the Word of God as a Hypercalvinist, or something else. They do not know the difference between Calvinism, Hypercalvinism, and Arminianism! Now, brother, that might be some stiff preaching, but it is right down the line where religionists live today. If you want a book that will open your eyes, you write for my book on "Doctrinitis."

Now let's discuss one of the first great evils of Calvinism as viewed by the unsaved religionist; and that is, "Calvinism Abases Man." In this day modernism, which exalts and deifies man, humanizes the Lord Jesus Christ, and whittles the Word of God to pieces, is in the ascendancy, and when you talk about man's condition as God's Word describes him, you are teaching a great evil in the eyes of the wicked world and the unsaved religionists. The teaching of God's Word on the Sovereignty of God and Total Depravity of the Natural Man, I believe, are the most hated, despised doctrines of the Bible among unsaved religionists. Men hate God's teachings on the Sovereignty of God and the Total Depravity of Man, and every individual who does not know Christ hates those doctrines as well as Calvinism, because God's Word cuts across the thinking of present-day religious circles.

A man came into my office one day and said, "You're a disgrace to the present-day ministry because you preach Bible Repentance." If a man were not totally depraved, he would never have to repent. Never! Let me tell you something: if God for one moment should find any merit in man, He would have to acknowledge that merit; then salvation would be by works and not by grace. If God should find one scintilla of merit in the heart of a sinner, that sinner would never have to repent. Now that is where the pulpit and the pew have gone astray today. They teach all over this country that there is a certain amount of good in every man and it's up to us preachers to bring it out. Therefore repentance is the missing note in present-day preaching and the Person and Work of Christ is the missing note in the present-day testimony. Now you get it.

So Arminianism has boiled salvation down to a mere mental assent to Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and has done away with Total Depravity and Bible Repentance. Why? Because they hate the doctrines of the Sovereignty of God and Total Depravity. Therefore, they exalt man and say that man is good and that the only thing we preachers have to do is to bring out the good that is in man. My, my – what a job we preachers have if that is so! I am glad that's not so. I am glad salvation is wholly of the Lord, that salvation is by grace. All right, now, hold both rungs of your chair, lest you fall off; I want to show you something. You listen.

It is being taught all over the country that it is not a sin question we face today, but a Son question. They say that a sinner doesn't go to Hell because of his sins – he doesn't go to Hell because of his wickedness, his iniquities, his sins – gambling, drinking, etc.; but he goes to Hell because he rejects the Son of God. Let me tell you, my friends, there never was a more damnable lie ever taught out of Hell! There never has been a greater error, a more subtle falsehood preached from our pulpits than that one statement, that it is not a sin question today, but a Son question, and that a person doesn't go to Hell for his sins but because he rejects Christ! that is not so! My friend, it is a sin question! It's a sin question that every sinner faces, and you go to Hell not for rejecting Christ, but you go to Hell for your sins – and you will be punished in Hell throughout eternity for your sins! Don't you get away from that.

When you say it is not a sin question but a Son question, you do away with repentance and put salvation on a basis of merely simple faith in Jesus Christ without repentance. But when you preach what the Bible teaches, it is a sin question. So then every sinner must be brought before the bar of God's justice where the Holy Spirit opens his eyes to see that he is a sinner by conception, a sinner by birth, a sinner by nature, a sinner by practice, a sinner by God's decree – under condemnation, totally depraved, lost, doomed and damned forever, and that justly. Then he stands before Christ – not to accept Him, but to be either accepted by Christ or cast into Hell by the Son of God. It is a sin question, that you face, and don't you get away from it!

Calvinism takes away every straw that man can lean on, and sets forth thousands of Scriptures which always prophesy evil for the man who does not know Christ. Now there is where your blood boils, where mine used to, before God saved me. Every time you turn to the Bible you find condemnation, condemnation, condemnation! And that's all you will find until you repent; and when you repent, you will find promises that will lead you to Christ. Calvinism leaves a poor old wicked sinner without one straw to lean upon, and his only hope is the crucified, buried, risen, exalted, living Christ. Christ Jesus came forth from God to undertake for us. He signed our bond back in eternity when God wrote in the Book of Predestination (get it, now!) the name of every one of God's elect throughout all ages! The Lord Jesus Christ signed the bond for every one of us, and in time He came and paid that bond in full on Calvary's cross.

Then the Holy Spirit was sent into the world to make real to the heart of God's elect one that he is a lost, doomed and damned sinner, and to bring that sinner to know Christ as his Lord and Saviour because Christ signed that bond and paid in full every one of his sins. When that takes place, He makes him a new creature in Christ, and in Christ He undertakes for him until He gets him home to glory. Praise the Lord – that's shouting ground! That is a foundation to stand on. That won't rock in this day of unrest. That will stand when the stars pale into insignificance. That will stand when the worlds dissolve and pass away. That will stand when the skies roll back like a scroll, when the sun ceases to shine and the moon turns to blood – yea, when Hell moves from beneath! Brother, that is the sure foundation on which the elect stand! Christ Jesus cannot fail. He can't! He never has – he never will!

Calvinism says that Christ is Lord of all, and there is none else beside Him: Christ will not take second place to any other god (Isa. 42:8). This truth is clearly stated in II Chron. 18:7; when the king of Israel, talking to Jehoshaphat about Micaiah, the man of God, said, "I hate him; for he never prophesied good unto me, but always evil." How many have said that about this preacher; "I hate the Parson because he always prophesies evil to me"! Brother, there is nothing else that I can prophesy unto you but evil if you are out of Christ, because, according to Rom. 8:7,8, "The carnal (fleshly) mind is enmity against God: it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God."

Calvinism puts man down where he belongs, as a totally-depraved, Hell-born, Hell-bent, Hell-deserving, ill-deserving, undeserving sinner, because he is evil by nature and is a child of wrath, a child of Satan, a child of Hell, condemned to die (and that justly) and must pay his sin-debt in Hell unless he has a Substitute, and the only Substitute that will satisfy is Christ. Don't you feel sorry for these seminary professors who sit in the chair of learning and rear back on their 24-inch seat of dignity and say, "You know, we are living in an enlightened age today. We don't believe any more in the substitutionary death of Christ on the cross for sinners; we will work out our own salvation"? Huh? Ah, God pity you, man! When you wake up in Hell, you'll wish to God you had a Substitute, Christ Jesus your Lord. God's Word says in Eph. 2:3 that "by nature" we are "children of wrath"; it also says in Eph. 2:1 that we are "dead in trespasses and sins," having "the understanding darkened" (Eph. 4:18). Also our minds are blinded (II Cor. 4:4), and our hearts darkened (Rom. 1:21) by the god of this world, and we are more stupid than an ox or an ass. That is God's Word; read the first chapter of Isaiah. That is what Calvinism teaches, brother, and I believe it with all my heart.

Now that puts a sinner in a place of hopelessness apart from the power and grace of a sovereign God, who does as He pleases. That makes sinners gnash their teeth; that makes unsaved religionists in the pulpit and the pew foam at the mouth. They think they are free to choose as they will, not knowing that man in his natural state is free only to choose sin, and that no man in his natural state can voluntarily choose good. Oh, you may make a mental assent to some things, but your will has never been bent in that direction. The will of the natural man is controlled by his depraved nature.

A man said to me one day, "Preacher, my will is free; I can choose any time and anywhere I want to." He's crazy – He's blinded. This same preacher said, "Give me a sinner, and with my Bible I can lead him to Christ in ten minutes." Now, that is the salvation you Arminians have today – and that's all you've got! You have nothing to stand on. No wonder you are on sinking sand. Your will is controlled by your old natural, depraved heart. How many of you sinners sitting there listening to me have been brought under conviction to the place where you would give a million worlds, if you had them, if you could choose Christ at this moment and say that you are saved! You would. But God gives Christ to whom He wills and to whom He pleases, and when a sinner gets saved, he knows one thing – that he was saved by the sovereign, free grace of an eternal, omnipotent God. David Brainerd said (and I recommend the book to you, The Life and Diary of David Brainerd), when he came to that place, he was walking in a pine-sapling thicket; he said he gnashed his teeth and cried out, "Am I at the disposal of a Sovereign God that I can't choose as I will and I can't choose Christ at my will?" When he came face to face with that fact and found that his will was shackled and controlled by a totally-depraved nature and that God was eternal and sovereign, he said, "I never realized that I was in such rebellion against God until then, and I began to cry for God to break my rebellion and free my will that I could choose Christ and choose good." Now, that doctrine is not preached today; and it is hated worse than I hate a rattlesnake. Listen to God's Word! "And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved" (John 3:19, 20).

Christ said in John 5:40, "And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life." Listen again: man left in his natural state, apart from the convicting power and influence of the Holy Spirit, cannot and never will choose that which is good of his own will.

Now, here is where the rub comes in: man does not like to be told that he cannot do anything he wills. The very moment you cross man's will, he will fly back at you – I don't care who he is, whether he is a D. D. in the pulpit, a deacon in the pew, a teacher in the classroom, or a drunkard on the street, he will tell you, "I've got a will. I will do as I please."; But you only have a will to reject Christ and the truth. That's all. Let me say again, man does not like to be told he cannot do anything he wills. Rom. 3:11 says, "There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God." Now, you hold that truth. I know the unsaved religionist hates it. I know you hate it, if you are not saved. Listen to John 5:40 again: "And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life." You have willed not to come, because your will is controlled by your old depraved, damnable, wicked, sinful nature.

John 6:44 says, "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day." No individual has ever, does now, or ever will, come to the Lord Jesus Christ unless he is drawn by the Holy Spirit; and Christ said, "No man cometh unto the Son except the Father draw him." Man, you can't draw a sinner to Christ! You can break the cord, but you can't bring him a hair's breadth. And no sinner would ever get saved if he could help it! One of the most helpless situations in which I find myself is to try to draw a convicted sinner to Christ. As long as you can lead a sinner to a decision for Christ he is not under Holy Spirit conviction for salvation. I can break the rope, but I can't budge a sinner a hair's breadth toward Christ. In Matt. 23:37 we find these words; Christ, sitting on Mt. Olivet and weeping over Jerusalem, said, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!" "and ye would not!" Why don't you come to Christ right now. Because you don't want to come, you have willed not to come, and your mind is set that you will not have Christ because you don't want Him to rule over you. You have a will to choose against Christ and to choose evil and sin, but you don't have a will to choose Christ, or you would. Now that is why the unsaved religionist hates the doctrines of Calvinism, because Calvinism with God's Word puts natural man in his rightful place at the feet of a sovereign, eternal, omnipotent God as a helpless, hopeless, unrepentant, Hell-deserving sinner.

The natural man likes to think that all men are good, that they are seeking God and will someday get saved. He knows that the breath of every man is in the hands of a sovereign God, and that God does with every man whatsoever He wills, yet at the same time God holds man responsible for every act he commits because God is not responsible for man being in the condition he is in. Brother, you are in that condition because of your own choice. You can't blame anybody else.

Every individual who ever gets saved has to admit in his own heart that he is helpless and hopeless and doomed and damned, and that God can do with him as He pleases. Have you ever been there? I have. One day I lay in the dust of repentance at the feet of a Sovereign, Eternal, Omnipotent God and cried out from the depths of my heart, "Save me, Lord, or I perish." Now, I could not do one thing about it; couldn't save myself, and I couldn't make Him save me. But I have never yet known a sinner whom the Holy Spirit had brought to that place that God didn't save. Brother, that puts us where we belong.

Now this is a great teaching of Calvinism that unsaved religionists call an evil and they hate it with undying vengeance. Praise God He brings every one of His elect home. He brings them to the feet of Christ as lost, doomed, damned sinners, and there is the place where God pardons a sinner. Are you there? Oh may the Spirit of the Living God bring you there today. May you rest at His feet, and look up into the face of a Sovereign God who died for you and say, "Lord, save me or I perish!"

Let me say in the very beginning of our study today that everyone who claims to be a Calvinist is not saved. You don't have a through ticket to Heaven just because you wear the name, Calvinist. Being a Calvinist from the doctrinal viewpoint is not salvation. Many an Arminian, or free-will professor, has gotten his eyes opened intellectually, yet has never experienced Christ in his own heart as his Lord and Saviour. Last spring I met an individual who was one of the most Calvinistic Bible students I had ever met: he was a Calvinist to the core, clear on every one of these great truths. He was a middle-aged man but he did not know Christ. One night he came out and told me, "Brother Shelton, I know the doctrines intellectually, but I do not know Christ." You can know all the doctrines, be a Calvinist, be as clear as a bell doctrinally, and yet go to Hell, because you have never experienced Christ in your heart as Lord and Saviour.

Now you get this great fact. You may change from and Arminian to a Calvinist and go to Hell – you may change from a Baptist to a Catholic or from a Methodist to a Baptist, or from a Catholic to a Baptist viewpoint doctrinally, and yet go to Hell. That's true. Someone has put it like this, "He is afflicted with doctrinitis, but has never come to know Christ experimentally." A lot of Calvinist's in belief are afflicted with doctrinitis; they have contracted the doctrine but do not know Christ. They have the doctrine, but they don't have Christ. They have knowledge, but they don't have Christ. They have a conversion, but not regeneration, or the new birth. Therefore, the only thing they can talk about is doctrines, and very seldom, if ever, do you hear them magnify the Lord Jesus Christ. A person can talk about only what he knows. Now, that's a settled fact isn't it?. Just before the service today, an individual and I were talking about a given subject, and someone listening in said, "I don't know a thing in the world about it, so I don't know anything about what you are saying." That's so.

There are five great teachings of God's Word that stand out as the heart of Calvinism. The first is the Sovereignty of God; second, Total Depravity of Natural Man; third, salvation by Grace, or Blood Redemption in Christ; fourth, the Bible teaching of the Holy Spirit and His work in redemption; fifth, the imminent Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ back to earth. In salvation every individual who gets saved experiences these five great Bible truths in their own heart. That's so. There is where you learn them in embryo. Now you may learn these great doctrines intellectually to a certain extent, and teach them and preach them, but it is only the work of the Holy Spirit in a sinner's heart as He brings him to Christ that makes these truths experimental in the heart of the individual. Then they are just like ABC's to him; he has learned them. Where did he learn them? He did not learn them in a Bible school; he learned them in the School of Holy Spirit Conviction, in the Classroom of Repentance. Now, where did you learn what you are teaching? Did you learned from reading books, or did you learn it in the Classroom of Repentance with the Holy Spirit as your Teacher?

In our last study, we noticed the first evil of Calvinism as viewed by the unsaved individual – and that is, Calvinism abases man, or puts man in his rightful place as a totally-depraved individual, which is a doctrine the unsaved religionist or the wicked world hates. Our present subject is the second evil of Calvinism in the eyes of wicked man, and the Arminians, and that is, "Calvinism Exalts God and Magnifies Jesus Christ as Lord." The Lordship of Christ is one of the most neglected subjects today, one of the most neglected teachings of God's Word. Calvinism puts God on the throne in His rightful place. When the Lord Jesus Christ had finished the work of redemption on the cross as the Substitute for sinners, had been buried as our Scapegoat, and was raised as our Justifier (Rom. 4:25), God's Word says He then ascended back to Heaven and is seated on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty on His throne. God is on the throne; Christ sits on the throne with the Father as Lord of lord's and as Priest-King. So God is sovereign, and according to Psa. 115:3, "Our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased." Then in John 5:21 we see the Lordship of Christ, "Even so the Son quickeneth (maketh alive) whom he will."

Arminianism (that is, Freewillism or Believingism) teaches that a sinner can come trotting down the aisle, and trust Christ at his own will, regardless of what Christ says about it. It doesn't matter when a person wants to (so Arminianism says), when he gets ready to be saved, at his own will he can turn to Christ trusting Him, and Christ saves him right there. Now, brother, there is no such scripture or doctrine taught in God's Word. "Well," you say, "doesn't the Bible say, 'Whosoever will'?" Who makes that will want to? Who releases that will? I will read you another Scripture found in II Tim. 2:26, "Taken captive by him (Satan) at his will." all right then, whose will is it? Satan holds your will, for and it is only by the power of God's Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Triune God, that the power of Satan is broken over your will and you are given a desire and the will to choose the truth, to decide on the side of truth – the will to turn to Christ. You put that down and hold it.

The Arminian takes the attitude that Christ is so glad to have the sinner come until he would not turn down the opportunity of saving him. Brother, there is no such Scripture taught in God's Word. Now let me make this statement again, and let me make it plainly. You listen. Christ never stands before a sinner to be accepted or rejected by that sinner! No! Every sinner stands before Christ to be accepted or rejected by Him, and before God ever offers you Christ (you get this now – it is not a contradictory statement either), you will come to want Christ more than you will want anything else under the sun. You will want Christ more than you will want your life, or anything in the world that pertains to you before God will ever reveal Christ to your heart. If you turn anything down, you turn down the truth as the Holy Spirit reveals it to your heart about yourself. If you won't have the truth about yourself as a totally-depraved sinner, God never offers Christ to you as your Lord and your Saviour. He never does!

All right, take this illustration – here is a young man and a young woman courting. One day he asks this young woman to be his wife. Now, she can never except him or reject him until he first excepts her. When he accepts her as his bride in his own heart and mind, then he asks her to become his bride and she can except him. Until the Lord God of Heaven brings you as a poor, lost, doomed, damned sinner at the feet of a Sovereign God, at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ, and accepts you and puts in your heart a desire to except Christ, a longing to know Him, and then breaks the power of Satan over your will, and releases your depraved will, you can never receive Christ as your Lord and your Saviour. There is no such expression in God's Word as "accept Christ." There is the phrase "receive Christ," which is vastly different. Then and when God offers Him as a gift to your heart, you come to the place where you want Him more than anything in the world, and you receive Him. "But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name" (John 1:12). Now, you think that thing through, and you think seriously.

In this way our churches have become filled with unsaved material. The slogan is "Hit the Trail for Christ." Calvinism teaches what God's Word teaches, that God is on the throne, the Lord Jesus Christ is on the throne. God is sovereign, Christ is Lord and therefore He is sovereign, and according to John 5:21, "The Son quickeneth (or makes alive) whom he will." Now, that puts you at the disposal of God, doesn't it? You see, my friend, every sinner is dead in trespasses and sins, and before that sinner ever gets saved, he has to be quickened, made alive by the Lord Jesus Christ. No preacher can make him alive – I don't care how much you preach to him and persuade him and get him to crying; I don't care how many decisions you get him to make, it is the work of Christ through the Holy Spirit that quickens that dead sinner, and the Scripture says "The Son quickeneth whom he will." You can't make Christ save you; you are not saved by running out and making a decision for Christ. Arminianism, or freewillism, preaches human works for salvation, holds up a defeated God, a disappointed Christ, and the Holy Spirit as a weakling, because they teach that Christ died for the whole world and that the Triune God is standing on the sideline watching sinners with the hope that they will come to Him, and then when one comes to Him He is so glad that He just saves him without a question. Brother, no such salvation is taught in God's Word! I challenge any man to show me such salvation taught in God's Word without twisting the Scriptures.

I heard a noted evangelist say one day that election is on this order – God votes for a sinner, the devil votes for a sinner, and then the sinner casts the deciding vote. If that were so, that would make God a defeated God and put Him on an equal with Satan. That takes God off the throne and as the all-powerful, omnipotent, eternal God, and makes Him a helpless being, as helpless as Satan is. That makes the Lord Jesus Christ a mere lad with no power, then the Holy Spirit an errand boy. Now, brother, that's the heart of Arminianism, or freewillism. It makes man supreme; it puts man in the place of authority and makes him sovereign, and makes God the beggar while the sinner rears back on his almighty dignity and tells God where to head in. That's exactly what we have today in the religious and the political world. Now you let that soak in. Man today has put himself on the throne and has all but taken the universe away from God (in his own mind) and said to God, "You go fishing – we'll run this thing; I'm sovereign." Now that's man's attitude everywhere you turn today.

Listen to God's Word, "For I am the LORD, I change not" (Mal. 3:6). Did you get that? "I am JEHOVAH, I change not." Listen to Dan. 4:35, "And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?" Listen again to God's Word, "Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth...Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?" (Rom. 9:18). What are you going to do with those scriptures? You don't like them, do you? There is not a Freewiller who likes them. You will champ your bits because I read them to you. Eph. 1:11 says, "In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will." Freewillism or Arminianism exalts man and places man's will on the throne as supreme. Calvinism exalts God, the sovereignty of God, and the Lordship of Christ, and places man at the feet of God begging Him to accept him for Christ's sake. In other words, Calvinism places man as a beggar at the feet of Christ.

Now, everyone of you saints know what I'm talking about; you finally saw yourself as a "beggar from the dunghill" (I Sam. 2:8). Brother, you were begging God to save you; you were using every plea under the sun that the Lord have mercy upon you, and there you lay as a "beggar from the dunghill." You did not deserve mercy, and you came to the place that you knew you didn't deserve mercy, but you were begging God to save you. You would call yourself every name under the sun knowing you were not worthy, pleading one thing, the blood of Christ, the blood of the Son of God. Listen, friend, Calvinism puts man before the bar of God's justice to be saved or damned. Arminianism puts Christ before a sinner to be accepted or rejected.

Now let me sum it up in these words – God does not stand before you for you to accept or reject Him; you stand before God's justice to be saved or damned, according to the will of God. Now that's God's Word, whether you like it or whether anybody likes it, whether you believe it or whether anyone believes it. I know in your unsaved mind you can't see it. It is all confusing. You say, "If that is so, why preach, or why do this and why do that, and why do something else?" Well, you listen to me through these messages.

The God of the Bible is sovereign on the throne, and no man commands or even suggests to God what to do. No saint would even dare suggest to God what to do. Every sinner who ever gets saved bows in the dust of repentance at the feet of a Sovereign God, surrendered completely for God to save him or damn him as God pleases. Let me tell you something: Every sinner who ever gets saved, and as old Bunyan put it in his book, "The Holy War," comes as it were with a rope around his neck and falls at the feet of Christ begging for mercy, realizing that God could hang him – God could damn him, God could send him to Hell – because he deserves to go to Hell, and he comes throwing himself completely upon the mercy of a Sovereign God in Christ. Now that is the position every sinner comes to before he ever gets saved. Have you ever been there? Do you know what I'm talking about? You know that you rested one day at the feet of a Sovereign God with a rope around your neck. I mean by that, you came before God realizing that He did not have to save you, He did not have to show mercy upon you. But you came there imploring the mercy of God for Christ's sake because Christ died for sinners. Christ is your Pardoner and you presented yourself as a poor old lost, doomed, damned, guilty sinner at the feet of a Sovereign God, knowing that Christ died for sinners. Then you wanted salvation in Christ, and you would not let Him go. Now, there is where you came, and there is where God for Christ's sake pardoned you. Grace is free, but grace is in the hands of a Sovereign God, and God gives it to whom He will and when He will. Did you know that? That's God's Word, because it says that Christ "quickeneth whom he will."

I had a letter the other day from an individual who said, "Brother Shelton, you are standing on dangerous ground in these messages." No, I am not; I am standing on solid ground – it's not shaky, it's not trembly. I am standing on the Rock of Ages; I am standing on the Word of God that cannot be broken, and I am standing right there, four-footed as it were, upon the Eternal, Unbroken, Verbally-Inspired Word of God, which is a foundation to everyone who comes to know Christ. God is Sovereign, and I praise God He is. That's God's Word, because it says, Christ "quickeneth whom he will."

Sinner, you can run out and make a decision ten thousand times; God won't save you until He gets ready. That's right. Do you know when He gets ready? When He has broken you completely at the feet of Christ, and you lie in the dust of repentance with a rope around your neck, having signed your own condemnation, and you are at the disposal of a Sovereign God to give you His free grace or not to give it to you as it pleases Him. Now, you let that soak in!

You say, "Trailblazer, that discourages sinners." Well, if it does it will just have to discourage them, as Spurgeon said. They said, "Mr. Spurgeon, that discourages sinners." He said, "All right, if that discourages sinners, let it discourage them. It is God's eternal Word." So let it discourage them. "Preacher, such doctrine hinders sinners from coming to Christ." Brother, if it does let it hinder them. The preaching of God's Word will either draw sinners to Christ, or damn him – one of the two. Now, let me tell you something, awakened sinner, this is the greatest foundation you can rest on. You who are awakened to the fact that you are lost and on the road to Hell and you know it, your hope lies in the Sovereign God, and the All-powerful God, the Eternal God, and you can rest there and look to Him and trust Him with the faith that He gives you to trust Him.

Listen. Every sinner, before he gets saved, realizes that God doesn't have to save him, and that if He ever does save him, it will be by His sovereign, eternal, free grace. I will forever and ever praise, honor, magnify, worship, and adore the Lord Jesus Christ for saving me. I stood there one day. Brother, I know what it means. I know what I am talking about; I am not going off at a tangent. I stood before Him knowing He could save me or damn me. He saved me, and I praise Him for it. Are you saved? I will give you this thought. It is my deep conviction that God never brings a sinner there and leaves him, because that is the place of salvation, and a sinner cannot come there without the work of the Holy Spirit.

All these fellows running around here magnifying something else, something other than salvation in Christ have never gotten to Christ; they do not know Him. They always express a "holier-than-thou" spirit, and their own dignity, and there own decision. But the individual who has gotten to Christ, who has been drawn there by God's Holy Spirit, will forever magnify the Son of God, the One who died for him, who was buried, and rose again, and who lives for him at the right hand of a Sovereign God. I praise God for such salvation in Christ!

Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ? If you know Him, you will understand what I am talking about, because you have been there. The Holy Spirit has brought you to lie in the dust of repentance at the feet of a Sovereign God in Christ. There is where God found you; there is where God brought you; there is where God saved you; there is where God delivered you. There is where Christ became precious to your heart, because you were hopeless, helpless, hapless, doomed and damned forever; and there is where He lifted you up and made you His own in Christ. How marvelous and gracious that is! I praise God for that today. I know there are times when I am so discouraged because I see the power of Satan and evil working around, and they begin to close in, but I praise God He has never left me. He has not left me, and He will never leave me. He said He wouldn't (Heb. 13:5), and I know He won't. Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him (Job 13:15).

The one outstanding evil of Calvinism is viewed by the unsaved religionist, or the Arminian, is the Sovereignty of God. Now let me hammer on that thing – I'll get to the responsibility of man after a while. A lot of folks are writing in saying, "What are you going to do with 'whosoever will'?" We are going to leave it right there in God's Word, just like we are going to leave the Sovereignty of God in God's Word. Let me say here that the great truths of Man's Responsibility and God's Sovereignty are two eternal truths that flow right through God's Word from Genesis to Revelation. They never conflict except in your depraved mind. Now you get that. These two great truths – the Responsibility of Man and God's Sovereignty – never conflict; they run parallel throughout God's Word. I preach both of them. As I said, they never conflict except in your depraved mind. That you may jump up and say, "Well, if God has elected folks to be saved, then what is the use to pray for them – what is the use to preach to them, etc.? They will be saved anyway." You can't understand it, because the conflict is not in God's Word but in your depraved mind. There is no conflict in the mind that has been opened by the Holy Spirit; to that individual those truths are clear, but to the unsaved mind you ask, "Well, Brother Shelton, can you reconcile them?" No – I don't try. "Do they ever meet?" Yes, before the throne of God's grace at the Mercy Seat. So that me state again: one outstanding evil of Calvinism as viewed by the unsaved religionist, or the Arminian, is the Sovereignty of God.

They will not have it that God works all things after the council of His own will according to His own purpose as He pleases. Now I am honoring my Lord this morning. Now you get it. It seems almost a shame that these fellows didn't live back in Eternity before God so they could have instructed the Lord God of Heaven. As the Word of God says, they are wise in their own conceit (Rom. 11:25; 12:16). Let's read Eph. 1:11, "In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will." Look at that expression, "who worketh ALL things." How? "After the counsel of his own will." Did you noticed that expression, "His own will." God never consults man, and God has never consulted man about one thing. And God doesn't consult a sinner when He gets ready to save that sinner. Did you know that? That's right. God never consults a sinner when He gets ready to save him! God comes and broods over that sinner by the power of the Holy Spirit, opens that sinner's heart, mind, and understanding, and lets the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ shine into that sinner's heart. Brother, that's the most unexpected thing that sinner ever witnessed in his life! When that sinner comes to know Christ in full assurance, then he never ceases to rejoice that God elected him, called him with the effectual call, and revealed Christ to his heart. He never does! God does not now, and never will, consult man about anything in the world. Every sinner who ever gets saved gets saved on God's terms, and every individual who walks with God walks with God on God's terms. That's right. Now you remember that.

Now let's look at Rom. 11:34-36, "For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen." That puts God on the throne and puts man at His footstool begging for mercy as an object of His grace, doesn't it? Now that's the true relationship. Job 12:10 says, "In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind." My friend, I care not who you are, what you are, or what you can do – whether you are saved or lost, whether you are on the road to Heaven or on the road to Hell – you are in the hands of God like I am. Even your breath is in His hands, and He does with you as He pleases, and you cannot tell Him, "Nay." We find in Proverbs 21:1, "The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will." God's one look at you disarms you. Now, brother, you can strut your stuff, you can do this or that, but one look from the Lord God of Heaven can disarm you and make you fall that His feet. That is all. That night when He looked at Peter – just one look, and Peter went off to the wailing wall. One look from the Lord God of Heaven, and you will go to the wailing wall. That's right.

God can break that will of yours if He wants to, if He wills to do it. He can break that stubborn will of yours. He can. He can break that self-will of yours. He can break that rebellious heart of yours. I don't care how sinful, I don't care how rebellious, I don't care how hard – He can soften that heart: it is in His hands. "Well, why doesn't He save everybody?" I don't know – you ask Him. I am glad He saved me. Has He saved you? That's a truth of Calvinism and the Bible that every Freewiller, or Arminian, hates, yet it is as much God's Word as John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." "For God so loved the world of His elect, the world of believers." That is what it means – "The world of His elect." I will challenge you on that thing. "That he gave his only begotten Son." John 17:6 He says, "Thine they were, and thou gavest them me." "Father these were Thine; You gave them to Me." Seven times in that 17th chapter of John Christ said, "You gave them to Me." It is because of your depraved, wicked, self-will that you stand in defiance of a Sovereign God who is on the throne. Now there's what we face today everywhere. Brother, if we preachers would put God on the throne in our preaching, and in our thinking, and then preach a Sovereign God to a depraved people, the Holy Spirit would bless that message.

Our subject is, "Calvinism Honors Christ's Death." Calvinism exalts the death, burial and resurrection of Christ as the only hope for an awakened sinner. Every unsaved religionist hates blood redemption. They may mention it in their preaching and in their teaching, but they never magnify it above everything else for the salvation of a lost soul. The Bible teaches that Christ actually died in the sinner's place as the sinner's Substitute. Listen, awakened sinner, Christ died for you! Yes, He did; He died for you just as much as He died for me. Now let me say this here, and you get it – the death, burial, and resurrection of our blessed Lord is the central doctrine of God's Word. The Sovereignty of God is the foundation doctrine of the Word of God, and the death, burial and resurrection of Christ is the central doctrine or teaching of God's Word. Don't you get away from that fact. Any individual, I don't care who he is, who emphasizes any other doctrine of the Word of God above the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is a false prophet! Now that will hold them. We read in I Cor. 15:3, 4, "For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures: and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures." Rom. 5:8 says, "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Calvinism magnifies the substitutionary death of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary.

There isn't anything in the world that Satan and his unsaved emissaries hate any more than the substitutionary death of Christ on the cross. Why? Because, as we said, it is the central doctrine of the entire Book, the Bible. They hate it first as they hate the Sovereignty of God because it is the foundation, the basic doctrine, of God's Word. You ask the average Arminian why he doesn't magnified the death of Christ, and here is his usual answer, "Oh, don't misunderstand me now, I believe in the death of Christ for sinners." That's his answer. "Why, what are you talking about? Don't you know everybody believes that? That's taken for granted," and that's exactly what they do – they take it for granted! Just as a preacher said one day, "I don't preach on the New Birth because, you know, I take that for granted. Folks don't understand it, and I just don't preach on it. I take that for granted." And so preachers have taken for granted the death, burial, and resurrection of our blessed Lord for sinners, until the average person has never heard it preached, and doesn't know it today. They have substituted everything else; most of them have substituted a little program. Being blinded, they do not see that blood redemption is the heart and center of all the doctrines of God's Word, and in their preaching or teaching they are always stressing some other portion of the Bible, largely along the line of sin and so-called Christian living. Now you listen to the average preacher, and that is what you hear. Naturally they let blood redemption in Christ drift into the background.

A man visited Spurgeon in London, and that night he preached on the New Birth; twenty years later he visited him again, and again he preached on the New Birth. The man said to him after the service, "Mr. Spurgeon, you haven't grown one bit. You are preaching the same thing that you preached twenty years ago." Mr. Spurgeon answered him, saying, "Yes, you have to be born again today just like they had to twenty years ago. There is no difference, and if I live twenty years from now I'll be preaching on the New Birth, because sinners have to be born again." Brother, you have to have a Substitute today just as you did two thousand years ago, or five thousand years ago. There is no difference.

All men are not saved. This is brought out so clearly in Matt. 7:13, 14, "Enter ye in at the strait gate; for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." My listener, have you found that way of life? Do you know that you are saved? Have you entered into that strait gate? That word "strait" means narrow. Then if all men are not saved, Christ could not therefore have suffered and died for their sins. If He had, all men would be saved. All right, listen to John 8:24, "I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins." Therefore, we find that the sins of unbelievers remain.

There is no such thing as universal salvation taught in God's Word. There is no such doctrine taught in God's Word that Christ died and paid the sin-debt of the whole world. That's right.

Study your Bible more closely, my friend. If Christ died for that man out yonder who rejects the truth and goes out under the cloud unsaved, paid that man's sin-debt in full at the bar of justice, that man would have to be saved. Did you know that? Listen, let me tell you something, if Christ paid for the sin of every man on the cross of Calvary, every man would be saved, and there would be universal salvation. God couldn't turn around at the Great White Throne judgment and demand that that individual pay for his sin-debt in Hell. He couldn't, if Christ paid for it. If God in Christ paid that sinners sin-debt in full, and that sinner rejected the truth of God's Word and went to the Great White Throne judgment, he could stand there demanding that he go to Heaven, because he could say, "Christ paid my sin-debt in full. Now God cannot collect a sin-debt from me after He has collected it from Christ." That's right.

In I Tim. 2:5, 6 we find these words, "For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; who gave himself a ransom for all (his sheep), to be testified in due time." Well, now you say, "Doesn't that mean that He died for all?" No – He died for all His sheep. Now, that is a Scripture that Arminians want to quote and say, "Well, didn't Christ give Himself a ransom for all?" Yes, for all His sheep, because Christ says in John 10:15, "I lay down my life for the sheep." One Scripture does not contradict another; you cannot array one Scripture over against another. Now, if you take a Scripture out of its setting, you can prove anything in the world. That's the reason there are so many cults today. There isn't a religious cult in the world but whose basis for their teachings is the Word of God. If John 10:15 is so, Christ laid down His life for His sheep, then I Tim. 2:6 would have to mean, "Christ gave himself a ransom for all (His sheep)," because that is what is inferred from the first Scripture. Now, just let the Bible speak for itself.

Another Scripture that Arminians like to quote is II Peter 3:9, "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any ("us-ward") should perish, but that all ("us-ward") should come to repentance." I want you to notice that word "us-ward." The true meaning of a verse of Scripture many times turns on one little word, and in this verse that word is "us-ward." Who did Christ die for? "Us-ward" – His elect. Let's turn now to I John 2:2, "And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world" (world of believers, which means God's elect). This is one of the great doctrines of God's Word that Arminians hate with undying vengeance. The reason they hate it is because it throws them completely back upon God, a Sovereign Potentate, who does as He pleases, saves whom He pleases and when He pleases. All right, let's look at that Scripture again. He says, "…but also for the sins of the whole world," "The whole world" of what? Of believers, which means God's elect. "Well," you say, "you are misquoting it." No, I'm not misquoting it; it is the whole world of believers. "Well," you say, "that word 'world' isn't used in that respect." Well, you need to study your Bible. Turn to I John 5:19. It says there, "The whole world lieth in wickedness (lit. in the lap of the evil one)." Now God's children don't lie in the lap of the evil one. He is talking about the whole world of unbelievers that lie in the lap of the evil one. You see there, the whole world of unbelievers lie in the lap of the evil one, because God's children have been delivered from Satan's power, and they don't lie in the lap of the evil one. Then when He says Christ is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world – it is the world of believers. The zealous Arminian says, "We have to go out and win the world to Christ." The Lord Jesus Christ didn't say, "Go out and win the world": He said, "Go…and preach the gospel to every creature," and those that believe should be saved. The Word of God, when rightly understood, throws us back completely upon the Lord God of Heaven as Sovereign – and that's the way it should be. It breaks the saint or sinner that the feet of Christ; it develops a prayer life and sends the individual crying unto Him who sits on the throne. It works patients in that individual's life and leads him to surrender unto the Lord and unto the Sovereign God of Heaven to trust Him for everything in the world. Now you can be brought to that place by the power of God's Holy Spirit to rest at His feet and to trust Him for everything in the world. Now that's what it does. But the doctrine of Arminianism, of freewillism that exalts man, exalts the self-will of man, and puts man's will above the will of God. Now who is the voice of authority – you or God? Its God.

On the other hand, Arminianism sends a fellow fourth to win the whole world to Christ; it reduces salvation to a mere decision for Christ, exalts the evangelist or pastor above measure, sets him on the throne as a great dignified, exalted individual. Instead of being Christ-centered, while a cover up there emptiness with such terms and slogans as, "A Christ-centered program," or "The World for Christ," and so on. They put the emphasis on man, and man's will, and not on Christ and Blood Redemption, where the emphasis belongs. They have zeal without knowledge, according to Rom. 10:2. By praise God for the zeal of any man – I like zealousness; I do. But, my friend, when there is zeal without knowledge, it is blindness, it is ignorance, it is folly.

But Calvinism with the Bible puts the emphasis upon God as Sovereign, as on the throne; it teaches the Gospel is "the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth" (Rom. 1:16), and makes the Gospel the center of all the teachings of God's Word. The Gospel rests upon the Sovereignty of God and flows out from God's Elective Grace; you cannot have Salvation by Grace apart from God's Election. Then it puts man as the footstool of the Lord God Almighty and as the bondslave of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ is exalted and magnified, and the individual is not afraid to rest everything in the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Sovereign God. Now, there's the difference between Calvinism and Arminianism, a vast difference. And so let's rest our hope, our salvation in Christ, in the hands of a Sovereign God, and not in the decision of a little frail sinner like you and like me. My friends, this is God's message today to your hearts. I have brought it has God has led me, with all the tenderness He has given me. I can't open your heart, I can't make you see it, but thank God, He can, and I am praying with every breath that I breathe, "Lord, open their hearts and let them see it and understand their true condition before God." May He turn you today.

There isn't a true Arminian today who will accept the power of the Holy Ghost in old-time Holy Ghost conviction that leads to repentance, in the pulpit and out of the pulpit. Why? Because Holy Spirit conviction stirs the human heart, opens the human heart and let's the sinner see what a sinner he is, breaks him completely at the feet of Christ crying for mercy, shuts him up with the Lord Jesus and Him alone for salvation. They count such work of the Holy Spirit unwholesome and undigestible! That is the reason I was turned out of the Association; it was those grounds – not because I was teaching fase doctrine, not because I wouldn't cooperate with the brethren, but because my messages stirred them as the messages of the Apostle Paul stirred the hearts of folks in his day.

For four years, from 1950 to 1953, I was under a tent, which I pitched here and there, sometimes out in the middle of the piney woods, sometimes at the edge of a city – it didn't make much difference to the folks who wanted to come – and I preached to large crowds. God would bring some under Holy Spirit conviction, and when He did every Arminian preacher would get mad, quit the meeting, and go off criticizing me. Finally they said, "We have to get rid of that preacher because his messages are unwholesome to us; they are not digestible. We don't understand them." They told the truth. They thought they had put me to death, but here I am pleading with sinners. Brother, if I go down, I'll go down with my guns blazing with the truth of God's Word, pleading with sinners to repent, and trusting the Holy Spirit to do His work in the hearts of individuals.

The work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the sinner and the saint is mysterious and cannot be understood by an Arminian. The Arminian puts the emphasis on the will of man, the personality of the preacher, his intellect, etc. As one such preacher said to me one day, "You know, Dr. So and So is having great success, Bro. Shelton, and I finally came to the conclusion why. It is due to his fine personality and his ability to manipulate his invitations to get sinners on a decision for Christ, and because of his understanding of human nature and his knowledge of how to get along with folks." Yes, he was getting them into the church, and that is all they are teaching in the majority of the seminary's today. Now you get this statement. I will back it anywhere. That's all that is being taught in the majority of our seminaries today! They are teaching those preachers how to draw their breath, draw their salary, get along with folks, and let their congregation go to Hell! Brother, if you take a bite of that in New York, it will taste the same in San Francisco – it's like bologna sausage: it never changes its taste. They are putting all preachers in a mold.

Another individual said to me one day, "We had a great service Sunday night; all the members of my Intermediate Department were one to Christ." I said, "That is wonderful, but did they get to Christ?" The way he did it was by his charming personality, the manner in which he gave his invitation, and the power he had in getting them to step out for Christ. Now, my friends, that's Arminianism to the core! True Calvinism recognizes only the power of the Holy Spirit to win men to Christ, regardless of the instrument God uses. Do you know, the most useless thing in all of God's creation to bring men to Christ is one of these so-called educated, refined, charming personalities called a preacher! He is the most useless thing in all of God's creation. He is one of Satan's means to damn souls to Hell! "Well," you ask, "Preacher, do you cry down education?" No, I certainly don't! I am not what you call and educated man, a scholar, from many angles – I know that, but I am the author of nearly 90 volumes, and we are caring on an effective radio ministry. I have a personal library of around 7000 volumes, and I am constantly studying. I can use everything in the world that I learn, and any preacher – God's preacher – can use everything in the world he learns, from knowing how to raise chickens to laying brick, if you need that.

The sinner is dead, and that sinner has to be raised to life in Christ to be saved. He can only be raised to life by the power of God's Holy Spirit, regardless of what type of personality a man may have. Paul's said on one occasion, "Brethren, ... I came to you ... not with enticing (persuasive) words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God" (I Cor. 2:1-5). Let me ask you something, friends, How can a sinner be raised to life except by the Holy Spirit, regardless of what type of personality the preacher or any other individual may have? Now, I am not saying that a preacher should not be educated. As I said to a young preacher the other day, "Learn everything you can, because you will need everything you learn in the ministry." But, my friend, only God has power to give life to a dead sinner. I wish we preachers recognized that thing. You haven't the power to do it, and neither have I. The Bible gives all the glory to the sovereign Holy Spirit in bringing sinners to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Man has such a little part in the salvation of a sinner, until when God saves a sinner God gets all the glory. Listen to I Cor. 1:27-29, "God that shows in the foolish... weak... base things of the world, ... and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: that no flesh should glory in his presence." Let me tell you something, my friend: God never saves a sinner until He gets all the glory! That's right! And there are no hard cases with God.

Now you may think certain individuals cannot be saved, and you may consigned them to Hell and sit on the lid, but God will blow the lid off to get them out in spite of you, me, or anybody else! Listen to John 6:63, "It is the Spirit that quickeneth (maketh alive)" – not the preacher, not the evangelist. Listen again, "It is the Spirit that quickeneth (maketh alive); the flesh profiteth nothing." It is not the preacher, not what the preacher says, nor how he says it, nor is it the manner in which he says it, nor illustrations he may use; it is not anything that anyone can do that quickens a sinner. It is the work of the Holy Spirit. He may do it when a preacher is a thousand miles away. Yes, sir! That sinner may be reading a message: that sinner may be reading God's Word; that sinner may be listening to the radio, there alone, nobody knows he is there. His family may have forbidden him to tune in, but he is off in a corner somewhere quietly listening to that radio, and all at once the Holy Spirit thrusts the Word home to his heart like a twoedged sword, and he is never the same from that moment on. The Holy Spirit will bring that sinner to Christ in spite of Hell and high water.

Now, how does He do it? "By the foolishness of preaching" the Word of God (I Cor. 1:21). I don't care whether an ignoramus preaches it or whether a D. D., an L. L. D. or a Th, D. – or anybody else – preaches it; if the Word of God is preached and that man is born again, it is by the preaching of God's Word under the power of the Holy Spirit. It is the foolishness of preaching – the foolishness of preaching the Gospel – by which the Holy Spirit takes the Word of God and convicts the sinner and brings him to Christ, and He alone does it. Now you get that truth, and you hold it. Oh, may the Holy Spirit carry home the truth of God's Word to your heart! May He open your heart and mind to see what fools we are to try to take into our hands the task of winning a soul to the Lord Jesus Christ. We can witness, we can tell him what God has done for us, we can bring the message to his heart, we can pray for him; but that's as far as we can go. Now here is another fact we face in the salvation of a sinner – that work must be wrought in the heart by the Holy Spirit. (If you do not believe that salvation is an inward work of the Holy Spirit wrought in the sinner's heart by the Holy Spirit, I have no message for you, and the Bible has no message for you – it is a closed Book.) this salvation gives God all the glory and leaves man destrutted and deflated in the dust of repentance where he belongs. That's the reason Arminianism hates true Calvinism, because man has nothing to brag about or boast of: it is all the work of the Holy Spirit. Man is only an instrument, and what a poor instrument! God calls him, an "earthen vessel" (II Cor. 4:7).

You will notice that I used the expression, "true Calvinism." Some of you Calvinists are so elated and so puffed up with pride, and you think you are the only ones who have the truth and you are the only ones preaching the truth, until God can use you. Your message is stilted, cold, and formal, and God is not using you to awaken sinners. Though you may be preaching the truth, you don't know Christ as your Lord and Saviour. Throw away your religion, my friend, throw away all your stiltedness and coldness, and led God overflow your heart. Get down on your knees and then go to your pulpits pleading with sinners that they may be broken at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Sinner, let me tell you something – the greatest thing in the world is to know the Lord and to be broken at His feet in dust and ashes of repentance God help you! I am pleading for your soul, young man, I am pleading for you, young woman. I know Satan is fighting; I know he is doing everything in his power to keep me from bringing God's message, but, my friend, are God is on the throne, our God is able to break sinners.

Preacher, the Holy Spirit is able to break the hardest sinner at His feet. Let's trust Him. Let's abandon ourselves unto Him. Let's preach with that zeal of knowledge that only the Holy Spirit can break a sinner at the feet of Christ. God help us in this hour! It is the Holy Spirit who gives the new birth to whomever He will. Christ in speaking to Nicodemus said, "ye must be born of the Spirit," and the Spirit "quickeneth whom he will" (John 3:3-8; 5:21).

If the average preacher today had to rely on just the Gospel he preached to get men to Christ, he would never have any converts. That is the reason he has to add his little two cents worth by manipulating invitations to get men to walk the aisle, make a profession of faith, and join the church – he has to make a showing or lose his job! The Gospel he preaches has some similarities, but makes no unpleasant demands. He offers the same things the world does, only on a higher plane. He says and affirms that Christ is the only Saviour for sinners, which is correct, but he teaches that Christ becomes the sinners Saviour only by the sinner's consent. Therefore, he will give his invitations and so manipulate them as to bring that sinner to a consent to Christ, or make a decision for Christ, but, brother, he never asks that the sinner be broken or give up anything. Let me tell you something, sinners. Listen! I don't offer you an easy path, I don't offer you a bed of roses; I don't offer you anything but suffering, tribulation, trials, heartaches, and troubles, but I offer you victory in Christ Jesus my Lord. Sinner, may you be broken at the feet of Christ under the power of God's Holy Spirit. May God help you; may God lead you!

Some will go so far as to teach that conviction of sin is the Holy Spirits work (and that's right), and they also teach us that the Holy Spirit shows us our lost condition and our need of Christ (and that's right), but they will tell that sinner then to make a decision for Christ, come down the aisle, confess Him openly by giving the preacher his hand or signing a card, follow his Lord in baptism, dedicate his life to the Lord, live the best he can, and he'll go to heaven when he dies. Now, let me say again, That isn't salvation! It is only the power of God's Holy Spirit that will break a sinner at the feet of Christ and bring him to know Christ as his Lord and his Saviour. That individual may be sincere – the speaker may be sincere, but it does not keep it from being false. That isn't the way of salvation! Such an individual is blind and misses Christ altogether. Why? Because the emphasis is put on the sinner's intellect, on his will, to make a decision for Christ, not realizing that the sinner is totally depraved, held captive by Satan, and cannot choose Christ or choose the truth until his will has been delivered by the power of the Holy Spirit. He does not realize that it is the power of the Holy Spirit that gives the convicted sinner repentance and faith and gives him power to decide. Therefore, the speaker puts the emphasis on numbers, baptisms, programs, making a show, and the emphasis is not on blood redemption in Christ. Now there is your Arminianism; there is your freewillism.

You ask, "How do you know, preacher?" I was there for a number of years. I was a Calvinist at heart when it came right down to the heart of the doctrine, but I was an Arminian in practice. Brother, no one ever lived who knew how to manipulate invitations any more than this preacher did. I would get them out on decisions for Christ by the thousands! But that is also the thing that finally broke me: I saw they were not getting saved, they were not getting to Christ. There was no power in their hearts and lives to live the Christian life. They would go back to the world, back to their old sins, and I would have to go and drag them out again and get them to make another decision for Christ! No, that did not save them.

The Holy Spirit must convict of sin (John 16:7-11), because the sinner is dead; his will is shackled by his depraved nature, his heart is darker than the darkness of Egypt, and his mind is blinded. His eyes have to be opened to see by the power of God's Holy Spirit, and brother, when he does see, he looks within and sees the bottomless pit of Hell in his own heart and life, he beholds his corruptness and vileness under the illuminating power of God's Holy Spirit. Then he is made to cry for mercy: "God be merciful to me a sinner." It is there that sinner comes to know that he is a child of Satan, a child of Hell. He knows that he is bound by the cords of sin. He knows that Satan holds him prisoner. He knows that unless the Holy Spirit breaks him and delivers him he will never be broken. But when God unshackles his will, when God delivers him from the power of Satan and translates him into the kingdom of the Son of God, brother, he will never cease to praise the Lord.

It is only the Holy Spirit who can raise that sinner to Christ, and before he gets to Christ, he may make a thousand decisions for Christ. There is one thing sure, he will always make his decision on the side of truth. Every time the Holy Spirit shows him a new truth about himself from the Word of God, he wills say, "Lord, that's right." He consents to the truth that the Holy Spirit teaches him as He brings him down the way of grace to the dust of repentance at the feet of Christ. Whether that truth is about Christ, or whether that truth is about his own depraved human nature, he consents to it and decides on the side of truth. Now that's the kind of decision I believe in, and that's the decision that counts. Those are the decisions that will keep his face toward Heaven, and he is making them because the Holy Spirit is showing him and giving him power to repent!

Now why does he always decide on the side of truth? It is because the Holy Spirit (and not the preacher) has written the Law of God within his mind (Heb. 10:16, 17), and because the Holy Spirit has sealed the instructions (Job 33:16) in his heart. And the Law of God that the Holy Spirit writes in the sinner's mind is identically the same that he finds in the Word of God. As he reads the Word of God, the Holy Spirit shows him that the thing he sees there is what is already written in his mind and his heart. Then the Holy Spirit seals the instructions or writes the Law of God into the sinner's heart – not "on" it, but "into" it; when He does this, the sinner always decides on the side of truth in Christ.

Then it is the work of the Holy Spirit to reveal Christ to the heart of that sinner. No preacher, regardless of how smart or highly educated he may be, or however much he may no how to manipulate invitations, has the power to lift the veil from that sinner's heart and to reveal Christ to that heart as the sinner's all-sufficient Lord and Saviour. Now that's so. Preacher, you can't do it; you don't have the power to do it. There is no preacher living who can do it. No priest can do it, I don't care who you are.

I know the average preacher doesn't know what I'm talking about. The average church member doesn't know what I'm talking about. A fellow said a while back, "Well, I don't preach on the new birth any more because the folks know nothing about the new birth." No, that's right – they don't – and the reason they don't is because the average preacher doesn't know a thing about the new birth, he never preaches on it! You think that, because that is all the salvation that you know anything about; and you will try to make that poor old sinner think he is saved, and you may convince him that he is saved until the Holy Spirit gets hold of him.

When the Holy Spirit takes hold of a sinner, you can't do one thing about it! You have to back off and leave him alone. He may not like it but you can't do a thing about it. When the Holy Spirit its hold of a sinner, and breaks that little religious covering he is hiding under and lets him see that he has missed Christ, the sinner doesn't know what to do with himself – you and I don't, either. Now that's the heart of the matter. That's the reason you get mad. That's the reason you count the work of the Holy Spirit in His work of conviction and repentance an evil. That is the reason you hate Holy Spirit conviction. Every Arminian that I have ever met – and I've met thousands of them! – hates Holy Spirit conviction, because he does not know what to do with a sinner who is brought definitely under Holy Spirit conviction. They will sit there and marvel – they don't know what to do with him, and I want to tell you my friends, a lot of folks who call themselves Calvinists hate Holy Spirit conviction just as much as Arminians do. I have preached to preachers who call themselves Calvinistic preachers – they believe all the great fundamental doctrines of Calvinism – and yet they will not have Holy Spirit conviction. When it gets under their old rhinoceros hide and exposes their unsaved hearts and wicked practices, they won't have it. They cry, "Away with him! Away with the man who preaches it!"

That's the reason you Arminian's hate the power of the Holy Ghost – because when the Holy Ghost brings a member of your church under Holy Spirit conviction, or brings your wife under conviction, you think you have to do something, and you get mad when you find out you can't. I have had preachers bring their wives who were under conviction to my office and then get mad at me because I left them in the hands of the Sovereign Eternal God and the Sovereign Holy Spirit to lead them to Christ. One preacher said to me, "You got her into this mess, now can't you get her out?" I replied, "I don't bring a sinner there; that is the work of the Holy Spirit." I can't get them out! I will pray for them, I will be true to their souls, but I can't get them out of the "mess" they are in, that is the work of the Holy Spirit. Arminians and unsaved Calvinists will belittle, cry down, make fun of, and try to disassociate themselves from true Calvinists who preach the Gospel under the power of the Holy Ghost, and to look to the Holy Spirit alone for results. I'll stake my destiny upon the work of the Holy Spirit alone in getting men to Christ.

The Gospel I preach is the power of God unto salvation to every one who believes (Rom. 1:16). It is made so by the power of the Holy Spirit. The New Testament preachers did not know one thing about giving open invitations; their whole message was one invitation to a sinner to come to Christ. They preached the Gospel under the power of God's Holy Spirit and left the results with Him to bring men to Christ. Now, preacher, are you willing to do that thing? I am. That is the only way I know to do – just preach the Gospel in the power of God's Holy Spirit and then leave the results with Him. I leave the results of this message in the hands of everyone who has heard it. If you turn the truth down and go to Hell, that's your fault – not mine. If God brings you to Christ, I will rejoice with you throughout eternity. The greatest thing in the world is to know Him, and brother, when the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Triune God, brings you down in the dust of repentance broken at the feet of Christ crying for mercy, "Lord, be merciful to me a sinner," it is there that the Holy Spirit opens your eyes and reveals Christ to your heart as your Lord and your Saviour. There you see your sins upon Him who died for you, who paid your sin-debt in full, and God cannot collect a sin-debt twice – from your Surety and then from you. May God help us in this hour!

Salvation is either wholly of grace or wholly of works. Paul says salvation must be all of grace "That no flesh should glory in his presence" (I Cor. 1:29). You can't mix grace and works. As Paul said in Rom. 11:6, If it is of grace, then it is not of works. That's right. Now you think seriously. What is the foundation of your hope for Heaven? Is it based on your church membership? Is it based upon your water baptism? Is it based upon what you believe? Is it based upon your good works? If so, my friends, it is based upon a sandy foundation, and when the storms of the wrath of God shall come in it will cave out and you will go under. You will have no foundation to rest on. The foundation of my hope today is wholly of Christ by the grace of God.

This whole situation of salvation hinges largely on the persons concept of man's natural condition. The Bible teaches that every sinner in his natural state is totally depraved. You see, it brings us back to the age-old Doctrine of Total Depravity. If a man is totally depraved, then grace has to do all the work in the salvation of that sinner. Old Jonah learned that in one of the strangest schools to which man ever went: he spent three days and nights in that schoolroom – it was in the belly of the fish at the bottom of the sea. There he came to find out, as he cried out from the belly of the fish – "Salvation is of the Lord." A lot of our preachers and teachers have gone to school for years and never found that out. Old Jonah learned it in three days and nights. If man is not totally depraved, then man can have a part in his own salvation, or the evangelist or pastor or so-called personal soul winner can have a part in that sinners salvation. Therefore, you have mixed grace with works, or works with grace, which is contrary to the Word of God.

Why don't our preachers see and understand the Doctrine of Total Depravity? Why do they teach that there is some natural goodness in man? Why do they teach that there is something good in every man, and that it's the preachers business to bring it out? Why do they teach that the salvation of every soul rests in the hands of that individual, and men can come to Christ as they will? Why do they teach that the sinner's will is greater than the will of God, and that the sinner decides his own destiny by his own will? Why do they teach that salvation is a mere profession of faith or a decision for Christ by the sinner's own intellectual power? It is because they have never known Holy Spirit conviction; therefore, they have never seen themselves as totally-depraved sinners, helpless and hopeless and doomed apart from the grace of God. Therefore, they can only preach and teach what they know. They seem so blinded to the great truth that salvation is wholly of the grace of God.

Now, my friends, salvation by grace does not for one moment violate man's responsibility to God. It doesn't! I know blinded men can see it, but I don't fall out with you because you don't see the great truth I am preaching here in God's Word. God had to open my heart and mind to see it. He had to open my darkened heart and enlighten my understanding. That's right – and He has to open yours. If you disagree with me I won't fall out with you – I am going to preach what God has taught me, what God has shown me in His Book. There it is – I am not violating any of God's Word.

You see, the sinner is dead in sin, according to Eph. 2:1. He is buried so deeply in the dungeon of sin until only the resurrection power of God can raise that sinner from death unto life. As I sat here listening to the choir sing a while ago, I was thinking of the thousands in radio land and (many I am preaching to today) who are just as dead – just spiritual corpses, and I have no power to raise you to life. And as I sat thinking of the message, thinking of you, I was praying (as I am praying with every breath in my heart now as I bring this message), "Lord, awakened some sinner, resurrect some sinner. May the sword of depravity, the sword of justice, the sword of truth strike deep in the heart of some individual out their today and he be awakened to his lost condition." If you are ever awakened, that will be the most unexpected thing that has ever happened to you!

The sinner hates God, according to Rom. 8:7, with a hatred that cannot be described, except in the language of Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, "The carnal mind (man) is enmity against God." He is not at enmity, but man himself wholly and and completely is enmity against God. Just as God is love, so man is enmity. Don't you see the great gulf between a Holy God and a totally-depraved sinner! How in the world can that dead, depraved sinner who is enmity against God, with a depraved will, ever pierce through to the Divine and lay hold of Christ as his Lord and his Saviour! My friend, he can't it, but God can move with His resurrection power, the same power that raised Christ from the dead, and He can raise that dead sinner to life in Christ. I thank God He can do it, and my heart cries out in praise and thanksgiving unto Him who is "able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think..." (Eph. 3:20).

Man so hates God until all the human appeal that you can make to that human heart will never break him. You may preach to him the blessings of Calvary, but that will not subdue him; you may preach to him the roarings of an eternal Hell, but that will not faze him. He'll stand there and laugh at you and say, "I don't believe there is a Hell." He'll laugh at it. He may make all the decisions that you might want him to make, but he still hates God in his heart. It is only the grace of God under the power of God's Holy Spirit that can break that sinner's heart at the feet of Christ and make him willing to want to be saved.

No sinner in his natural condition wants to be saved. No, sir, I don't care what you say, he doesn't. Let me repeat: No sinner in his natural condition wants Christ. Therefore, the sinner in his natural condition deserves the wrath of God, according to John 3:36. It is while man is an enemy to God that Christ died for him. It is while man is an enemy of God that the Holy Spirit approaches him in the grace of God and woos that sinner until He brings that sinner at the feet of Christ crying for mercy. To do that thing the Holy Spirit has to put a new nature in him; He has to make him a new creature in Christ Jesus, our blessed Lord.

Now here is a truth – get it! God owes the sinner nothing. He doesn't have to save a single sinner. As we have said, it is not God standing before the sinner begging and pleading with the sinner to accept Him as Lord and Saviour; it is a doomed, damned and Hell-deserving sinner standing before a Holy God to be saved or to be damned at God's will. Now you may make fun of that statement all you want to; you may say, "I don't understand it." Well, brother, I do! Because I was there one day. And every sinner who ever gets saved stands there and bows to a sovereign God. The sinner was elected in grace and then the sinner is called in grace (Rom. 8:30). I should have said in the beginning that the sinner is predestinated in love by the grace of God (Eph. 1:4,5), elected in grace, called in grace, then justified in grace. Then, according to Eph. 1:6, he is accepted by grace, or accepted in grace.

The death of Christ on the cross in dying for sinners, and His burial and resurrection for the justification of sinners, does not mean one thing to the sinner in his unawakened condition. He pays no attention to it; he'll even laugh at it, make fun of it, call it "slaughter-house religion," or say, "Oh, I get tired of hearing that preacher," he even denies the substitutionary death of Christ on the cross. Now, why does he do it? Because of the natural condition of the sinner's heart – because of his totally-depraved condition. It was the grace of God that Christ came and died for sinners; then the Holy Spirit has to call that sinner with an effectual call that awakens him, shows him his awful, ruined condition, and then shows him his need of a Saviour. And I want to tell you, my friend, that's all of grace: God does not have to do it. But, oh, how the unsaved religionist, or Arminian, will champ his bits at the great glorious doctrine of God's eternal Word, and especially the doctrine, Salvation by Grace, salvation wholly of grace. "Salvation is of the Lord."

Every awakened sinner who is brought to the place of "no return" knows what I'm talking about. That sinner knows that God didn't have to call him; He knows, first, that God did not have to elect him, that Christ didn't have to die for him; and then He knows that God owes him nothing but Hell. Let me tell you something, if God should choose to send me to Hell now, I could only say "amen" to my own condemnation. I don't deserve anything but Hell – I know that. That is the thing that keeps me humble. He knows it is only by the grace of God that he is out of Hell, and it will be wholly the grace of God if he ever gets to Christ. It will be wholly of the grace of God if he ever gets to Heaven. I am dependent wholly and completely upon my blessed Lord to get me there. Every individual who is ever saved never ceases to praise the Lord for such marvelous grace. He can never understand why God in Christ should die for such a sinner, should call such a sinner, and should save such a sinner as he is.

You see, when the Holy Spirit awakens a sinner and brings him to Christ, there is the most intense cry in that sinner's heart; he is crying after the Lord. It is the Spirit of the Son of God that is leading that sinner to cry after the Father. Strangers do not understand this cry and the nearness of the believer soul to God in Christ Jesus; no, they don't, and because the world cannot understand it, and because Arminians, or unsaved religionist's, cannot understand that cry, usually they will sneer at it and mock that individual, because they don't know what to do with him – he is a peculiar being.

Someone in my office the other night said, "Pastor, I want to ask you one question: does a sinner have to beg God to save him?" I said, "No, he doesn't particularly have to beg him but, brother, he sure will." He said, "Well, I thought salvation was free." "Sure it is," I said, "but it is in the hands of a Sovereign God." Yes, sovereign grace is free, but it is in the hands of a Sovereign God to give to whomsoever He will. "Well, do you have to beg Him to give it?" Not primarily so, but you will. You say, "I don't understand it. No, and you never will until you come there, and when you get there you won't have to ask anybody – you'll know it! A sinner who is dead in trespasses and sins doesn't know that thing and when somebody approaches him to lead him to a decision for Christ intellectually and to a mere assent to Christ, his soul may be stirred a little bit. He'll be crying over his sins, and when he makes a decision that they want him to make, there may be a certain joy, a certain peace, a certain satisfaction. He'll come out and make that decision and join the church, and they will put him to work. Such an individual never can understand the intense cry after the Lord in the awakened sinners heart.

Where does God find a sinner? He finds him on the scrap heap of the world, according to David in Samuel. He finds him on the dunghill of the world. That's the garbage heap of the world. He finds him in an utterly dead state. He finds him as the son of Satan. He finds him bound in sin, and bound by Satan. He finds him a totally-corrupt, vile individual who has no righteousness, no natural goodness, nothing in the world that can commend him to God. When God creates a new nature and raises that individual unto life in Christ Jesus by giving him what we call the effectual call, that sinner wakes up; that is, he is awakened. He is awakened in the dungeon of sin and when he awakes there, he finds himself in that awful condition. "I am a son of Satan. My, my, here I am bound by sin, bound by Satan, a child of Hell. I am corrupt inside-out and outside-in." He finds himself in an awful condition. He has himself in the most confused state, and he doesn't know whether his head is up or down; he is confused from top to bottom.

In the midst of that state that new nature begins to cry unto God the Father, first, for deliverance from his sins, and from his awful state as he sees his guilty distance from a Holy God. He says, "I never will get to God! Who will get me there?" Now he begins to find out that his whole nature is one of unbelief, and he hates God. He finds out that he has no righteousness, no cloak for his sins, no covering for his soul. There he is. The bed is too short, and the blanket is too narrow, according to the old prophet Isaiah (Isa. 28:20). No, brother, you don't have to beg – but you will do it! You'll begin to cry for mercy, you'll beg God to save you, to deliver you. My friend, it is a cry of a beggar who is starving to death. It's the cry of a beggar who has no clothes, and is freezing to death. It is the cry of a condemned criminal who is sinking down to eternal Hell. It is the cry of a captive who is led captive at Satan's will by his power (II Tim. 2:25). It is a cry for the covering of the righteousness of the Son of God, and, brother, that cry is by grace. You have never cried like that before in your life! "Yes," you say, "I have never been over this road before. God help me. God save me lest I perish. I am going to Hell, and I deserve it." The reason you are crying – you have come to see that you have a Partner, who is Christ. You cling to Him – you look to Him – you turn your eyes to Him to intercede for you, and to deliver you and present you unto God the Father in His own righteousness.

That sinner is crying – not after gold, not after fame, not after money, not after position, but that sinner is crying after the Father. That's the reason unsaved religionists hate the Doctrines of grace. Abraham's tenderness to Isaac made Ishmael jealous and caused Ishmael to laugh and sneer and poke fun at Isaac, but Isaac had no cause to be ashamed of being ridiculed, since the mocker could not rob him of the covenant blessing. Awakened sinner, you who are crying after the Lord, after the Father, you have no cause to be discouraged. You haven't, because no man – no devil, not even Satan – can rob you of the covenant blessing; because you are one of God's elect, so cry on, my sinner-friend, cry on! You are crying after the Father. Someone asked me one day, "Will that cry ever cease?" No! Never! When once you are delivered, that cry will continue, "My Lord and my God!"

Yes, beloved, the Spirit of God makes you cry, "Abba, Father." I know the cry is mainly within your heart, and it has become the habit of your soul to cry after the Heavenly Father. It has become just a habit, and you can't help it. It is an every-day cry. Wake up in the morning and the cry is there, and if it is not there, you think something is wrong; all during the day, when you are released from your work, you find that cry in your heart. Go to bed at night, and the cry is there. If it is not, you begin examining yourself and cry, "Lord, search my heart; break up the fallow ground!" You are saying, "My Father, my Father, don't leave me; my Father, help me in this hour." When alone, you are not alone because the Father is with you, and in the midst of the crowd you are not in danger because the Father Himself loves you. Oh, awakened sinner, oh, my beloved saint: give reverence unto Him who put that cry in your heart because it is all of grace. Honor Him by resting at His feet this day, by looking wholly and completely unto Him.

The unsaved religionist doesn't understand what I'm talking about, but you do. I don't feel hard towards you, unsaved sinner-friend. You can say hard things about me all you want to; I don't feel hard toward you, because I was once there myself. I praise God that He opened my heart one day. I'll never forget that time, or that place – it was the most unexpected thing in the world, but I praise God that He opened this old sinner's heart – and put that cry in there. That cry will never cease – it never will! I know it never will until I walk through the Pearly Gates, and then I don't think it will cease there.

I believe the only thing I, or any other saved sinner, will want throughout eternity is to be with my blessed Lord, the One who died for me, the One who loved me so. Don't you like to be with the one you love? Don't you? I said to a young man and a young woman this morning as they came into the choir – they are in love, and I said, "what are you fussing about this morning?" They always sat there so quietly looking at each other in the eyes, holding hands for hours and then go off feeling they had a most wonderful time yet never saying a word. Why? Because they are in love. Oh, when we come to know God loves us and we fall in love with Him, then, my friend, we can spend hours with Him, never say a Word or look up and thank Him and tell Him how much we love Him, and magnify His love to us.

That is one of the evils of Calvinism as seen through the eyes of the unsaved religionist or Arminian, but to them who are called and justified it is the greatest truth found in Christ Jesus our Lord. And because your salvation is wholly of grace you cannot utterly fall – you are kept by the power of God (I Peter 1:5). Isn't it marvelous to think about, that you are kept by the power of God, you are elected by His for knowledge, sanctified by His Spirit, begotten by His grace, and kept by His power (I Pet. 1:2 -5). Yes, "kept by the power of God," and "elected by his foreknowledge," and "sanctified by his Spirit," and "begotten by his abundant mercy," and "kept by the power of God!" Isn't it marvelous to be presented blameless before the throne of His grace, to be presented by the Holy Spirit now as conformed to the image of the Son of God (Rom. 8:29)! "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him" (I John 3:2). Isn't that marvelous?

Go on, sinner; continue to cry after Him; go on, believer; continue to cry after the Heavenly Father. Let the world sneer, mock, laugh, and ridicule all they want to; they can't rob you of your covenant blessing. There isn't any individual or a group of individuals in this world or out of this world, that can rob me of the covenant blessing that is guaranteed by my covenant Head, who is Christ, my Lord and my God. I have nothing to be disturbed about. One of the sure signs that you are in grace is that folks make fun of you and laugh at you – not because of your peculiar ideas and cranky notions, but because of the Grace of God.

Now let me confront you in closing with this one question: Do you know Christ? My boy, my girl, have you been awakened to your lost condition? My man, my woman, has the Holy Spirit ever awakened you? Have you ever been brought down the Way of Grace? Have you ever come to lie at the feet of the Blessed Lord in sackcloth and ashes in the dust of repentance? Have you ever been made to lie there and look up to Him, crying for mercy, "Lord, be merciful to me a sinner? I'm gone – I'm sinking! Lord, save me or I perish"? Have you ever come to feel the keen edge of the sword of justice? Have you ever been cleft asunder by the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God? Have you? My friends, do you know what I'm talking about? I commend you unto the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. May a great fear of God fall upon the hearts of thousands today.

Then, in the second place, being blinded to the truth of God's Word, about God's decrees, you have the wrong concept of soul-winning and evangelism. Evangelism, to the average Arminian, is merely a social Gospel, institutionalism, professionalism, and outward showism, because you exalt the will of man and the dignity of man, falsely so-called, and your converts know nothing of experimental Christianity. Now, brother, that will hold. You let these facts soak in. Now, let me suggest possibly a third reason; and that is, you cannot see on the one hand God's great decrees and on the other hand, man's responsibility. If you did, you would not be asking those questions. Now there was a day I didn't see that but I praise God He has opened my heart, my understanding, and my blinded eyes, and has let me see it. And He can open your eyes! Go through your Bible and pick out God's decrees – write them down on the one hand. Then on the other hand go through and pick out man's responsibility, and write those down. God's decrees make the firm, unshakable foundation on which the saints of God rest and, brother, that is where I rest. That is my resting place; that is my place of encouragement. On the other hand, man's responsibility fires my soul, based upon God's decrees to tell men about such a blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

I am a Calvinist to the core – not a Hypercalvinist. I cannot be still for preaching the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ that one of God's elect may be saved. During the year 1954 I averaged preaching twice daily for 365 days. First Baptist Church, Algiers, New Orleans, is preaching to more people every week than practically all the other churches combined, and that's not boasting – that is just stating a plain fact. True Calvinism will put enthusiasm, zeal, and
soul-compassion into soul-winning, and mission work. Now let me give some reasons why that is so.

Here are six reasons why Calvinism gives fire and enthusiasm to true soul-winning or true evangelism. First, we know that God has a people who will hear the Gospel and be saved, according to II Tim. 2:10. "Therefore I endure all things for the elect's sakes, that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory." Isn't that wonderful! Every saved person wants to see God's people brought in. There is a fire and enthusiasm in your heart that you can't let go. The Apostle Paul was one of the truest Calvinist's, from the standpoint of doctrine, who ever lived. When he went forth to preach, he knew that God's elect would hear him; whether he was in prison, whether he was standing before kings or queens, whether he was out there facing a mob, or whether he was just there facing one or a few, he knew God's elect would hear him, and he could endure all things for the elect's sake. Contrary to the concept of Arminian's, in the heart of every true Calvinist there is a burning desire to see God's elect get saved.

Let me tell you something right here – you Calvinists who sit down on the stool of Do-nothing and say, "Well, if they are elected, they will be brought in," I doubt your salvation. Friend, if you are saved, you know such a wonderful Saviour, you know such a matchless Saviour, you know such a precious Saviour, until you want everybody else to know Him, too. That desire fires your soul. It is not a doctrine you have – it is a Living Christ that you have, and whom you want to make known.

The true Calvinist knows that as God has ordained men to be saved, He has ordained the means to salvation; and I know there are men and women who will hear the Gospel that I will preach in spite of Hell and high water. In spite of all the opposition that Arminian's may raise, God's elect will hear the Gospel; and when they hear, there is no power in earth, sea, or sky that can hinder them from getting to the Lord. They will ultimately get there. Now, I know that thing, and every true Calvinist knows it, and that is the basis on which I rest in my labors with my Lord.

The second reason is, we know that there is a certain number whom God has given to His Son, and He will not lose one of them, according to John 6:37. "All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." When I go forth to preach, I know that there is a certain number that God has given to the Son, and He says in His Word, "They shall come to Christ." Isn't that encouraging! Then I am not beating the air with uncertainty as to results. I know that God has some people out there whom He has given to His Son, and when I preach the Gospel to them under the power of God's Holy Spirit, they will come, they will be awakened. They "shall come." "Shall come" will bring them, because they were ordained to eternal life. Now that is true. (If you want it, I will send you in connection with these messages my booklet, "The Effectual Call." I wish it were in the hands of every listener, "The Effectual Call" – God's effectual call to sinners. Write me and I will mail it to you).

But you Arminian's – you just don't know whether anybody is going to be saved or not. You are hoping they will, you are hoping you will have a certain number of additions to the church, and you will go out and set a goal of so many that you are going to try to win to Christ this year. Well, that is none of your business; it is within God's decree who is going to be saved. It is your responsibility and mine to preach the Gospel to every creature. Let me tell you something, saint, as you are sitting there in your home this morning, will you let me tell you something? You and I are responsible for every individual, with whom we come in contact. May there burn in your heart a desire, first, to see your loved ones saved, and then to see others saved. My responsibility is to every creature, but I rest upon God's great decrees as the foundation of my hope. But you Arminian's don't have anything to rest on. That is the reason you have to put in your little two cents – persuade them, manipulate invitations, put on decision days. You have to buttonhole them and use a thousand-and-one methods to get them out on a decision for Christ and into the church, and you call that salvation! There is a book put out by a certain press, "A Thousand and One Ways of Giving an Invitation" (it may be a hundred – I don't remember). Man has ransacked his brain to produce every method under the sun to bring a person out on a decision for Christ and call it salvation. That is nothing in the world but freewillism and showism, and you make men twofold more the children of Hell than they were before. Then you want to jump up and say that I am judging. No sir, I'm not judging; I am just stating a fact, as a physician would make a diagnosis of a case. I know.

Then the third reason why true Calvinism gives fire and enthusiasm to true evangelism is, we know that Christ lay down his life for His sheep, and they will hear the voice of the Son of God and follow Him. How do we know that? Acts 13:48 says, "And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed." Paul did not know those who were ordained to eternal life – neither do I – but, thank God, He does! He said, "The foundation of God standeth sure, having is seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his" (II Tim. 2:19). Brother, when I go forth preaching, I expect results from this message today. Somebody is going to be awakened; some saint is going to be encouraged; some awakened sinner is going to be drawn closer to the Lord. Yes, I expect results. I look for results. I heard a preacher say once, "Well, I never look for results." Brother, I do! Brother, I look for results. The Bible says, "Watch and pray" (Mark 13:33). "Watch and pray." As you pray you watch, and as you watch you pray. I know they are coming, because God has some of His elect there and they are going to hear, or He wouldn't have sent me there. They are ordained to eternal life, and "shall come" will bring them. Now, I don't have to sit down and beg them, or manipulate invitations, or put on decision services or any such thing. I preach the Gospel and leave them in the hands of the Holy Spirit, and He'll bring them to Christ.

Listen to God's Word, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me" (John 10:27). John 10:16 says, "And they shall hear my voice." Brother, I like those "shalls" of God, don't you? I never worry about the results of my preaching. If you are one of God's elect, you are coming in God's time. You may say, "I will not believe," but you will believe. You may say, "I will not hear that preacher any more," but you will hear this preacher, because "shall come" will bring you. I have made this statement a few times that Baptists have a Calvinistic creed, but and Arminian ministry (and I can say that because I bear the name Baptist, but I am of the old school). Therefore, mission work has largely been reduced to a social gospel, institutionalism, and teaching heathen how to milk cows. Yes, that's so! Now I read that in one of their magazines. Let me tell you, brother, the responsibility on us is to preach the Gospel. If we will preach the Gospel, and men and women get saved, then their lives will be cleaned up and they will start living right – and if they have a cow, they will learn to milk it!

The fourth reason Calvinism gives fire and enthusiasm to evangelism is, we know God's Word will not return unto him void. Isa. 55:11 says, "So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing where unto I sent it." I do not know where God will send forth His Word, but He does, and He will bless it, and He will make it prosper in the thing whereto He sends it, as He pleases and as He will.

It may make you so mad until you will champ your bits, and you could bite tenpenny nails in two, but, brother, when you get mad and go to stamping, something is going to happen. You are either going to hit it to the briar patch like a cottontail to the broomsage, or you are going to get saved. We are to walk in His will and way. He says, "My child, here is the path; walk ye in it, and blessing I will bless thee; I will prosper My word that I send forth through your mouth." We are too never take our eye off the Lord Jesus Christ. We are to preach His Word and leave the results with Him. Listen! We are to preach His Word and leave the results with Him! If the average preacher did that, he would not have any results, would he? No, because the Gospel he preaches wouldn't move a flea. Do you believe the gospel you preach? Do you believe the gospel you teach in your Sunday School?

The fifth reason is, we know that by the foolishness of preaching God has ordained to save them that believe, according to I Cor. 1:21, "For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe." He didn't say by foolish preaching or by visual aids, or religious moving picture shows, nor by pictures: He said, "By the foolishness of preaching." When God's man stands and preaches His Word under the power of God's Holy Spirit – I don't care who he is – he need never fear about results. That's right! He may be as ignorant as he can be from the standpoint of the world, but if God has given that man a message, and if he will stand there, though he may wreck the King's English to a Queens misfitting and everything else, God will bless it and He will convict sinners, because He has said that through the foolishness of preaching God has ordained to save every one that believes. Acts 18:27 says, "Which had believed to through grace." It's all of grace.

The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ preached under the power of the Holy Spirit will call out every Arminian who is ordained to eternal life. And he ceases to be and Arminian five minutes after he is saved. Brother, if any of you Armenians get to Heaven, and I hope a great number of you do, you'll be a Calvinist two seconds after you land in Glory. You'll know that God did it all. When God takes hold of that individual's heart – he may be one of the best members of your church – you won't know what to do with him. There has been so little Holy Spirit conviction in this age in the average church, and the average preacher knows nothing about Holy Spirit conviction. You may try to persuade him that he is already saved, but he won't believe you; now he knows better, because the Holy Spirit has opened his heart and he sees himself a lost, ruined, Hell-deserving sinner, whose cry is, "Pastor, I want to get to Christ; I'm lost." You may try every way in the world to quench conviction, but God has written His Law upon that man's mind and into his heart, so that he is convinced without the shadow of a doubt that he is lost and cannot be convinced otherwise. A Calvinist or an Arminian can't do one thing in the world with him, except let him alone, and let the Holy Spirit bring him to Christ.

The sixth reason is because we know that God has much people, and we can do all things for the elect's sake, "Then spake the Lord unto Paul in the night by a vision, Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace: for I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee: for I have much people in this city" (Acts 18:9, 10). When God calls a man to preach, He calls a people to hear him. Let me emphasize it, When God calls a man to preach, He calls a people to hear him! If you say that you are called to preach and nobody will listen to you, then you had better go back and first examine your salvation, because God never wastes His ammunition. He doesn't. All the powers of darkness cannot keep God's man from preaching, and God will give him an audience – it may be prisoners, it may be kings and queens, it may be one man at midnight, it may be multitudes in the marketplaces. That man will preach, and God will call out His elect through him from among those He has sent to hear him. God knows those that are His – we don't. We are to preach to every creature. I keep emphasizing that today.

I may have used a little sarcasm to get you to thinking. Once I was there myself, I know what Arminians teach. I also know what God's Word teaches. I praise God that one day He awakened me, a lost Arminian, and brought me to know Christ as my Lord and Saviour, and He has taught me His Word, and I thank Him for it. Now He has sent me forth to preach under the power of His Holy Spirit and the results are His. I am to follow Him in prayer for His own. Brother, I don't know who God's elect are, but He does. I'll give the general call; it's God who gives the effectual call.

* These sermons were first given over the Voice Of Truth program by L. R. Shelton Sr. Audio files of these sermons are available at www.sermonaudio.com