And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang [it], and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead; and he fell upon his face to the earth. 1 Samuel 17:49
Without controversy the most popular representation of the Christian message of the gospel in our day can be identified by the name of… Evangelical Arminianism. We have all heard it in its various forms of presentation;
God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Christ has died for you. God wants to save you but you must be willing to receive Christ as personal savior… He is fully able to save you… won’t you come to Him now. Come forward and receive Christ. Every head bowed, every eye closed… If you want to accept the Lord now just slip your hand up… thank you, I see that hand.
And so it goes. Such a presentation of the Christian gospel is founded on two ideas that are very attractive to the natural mind. One is the notion that God loves everybody. The other naturally follows which is, since God loves everybody He has sent His Son to die for everybody. Such ideas are very agreeable and appealing to the carnal mind and are therefore very popular in the evangelical community. A gospel that tells everybody that God loves them carries little offense and is very effective in filling church pews with people who may or may not have a genuine interest in the Savior.
The prevailing notion behind such a presentation of the gospel is that… God, because He is the God of love, does not want any of His creatures to perish in hell because of their sin. Because He loves everybody He has done all that He possibly can to save them by sending His Son into the world to die on the cross for them. But His death for them will have no effect unless they… do something.
Upon introducing the necessity of some action on the part of the sinful creature in order to effect salvation and convey the saving benefits of the death of Christ to the sinner, such a presentation becomes inordinately man centered. It is a message that requires the sinner to fulfill some condition before salvation can take place. But salvation conditioned on the creature is unbiblical Pelagianism. It shifts the focus of the gospel from the glorious work of the Savior to the work of man as the determining factor in salvation. In so doing it departs from the Biblical message of salvation conditioned on the Person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ and offers a salvation that is conditioned on something the creature must do. God, they say, has provided salvation for everybody but you must accept it.
* * *
I am about to demonstrate from the Bible... Absolute,
Irrefutable
Proof...
that the message of Evangelical Arminianism is a false gospel
and all who believe it
are still lost and in their sin. By Evangelical Arminianism
I mean the belief in free
will, foreseen faith and repentance... but most especially,
universal
Atonement...
the notion that Christ died for everybody in the whole world.
And I shall do so by the use of only one, single verse of
Scripture.
Not that I
am trying to build a doctrine on only one verse; that of course
is fatal. But I will
simply show by one verse what the rest of the entire Bible clearly
teaches
concerning the gospel of salvation. That verse is the one verse that
the Arminians rejoice in as they use it against the gospel
of efficacious atonement on behalf of the elect of God and try to prove
their false gospel of universal atonement. Ask any Arminian to
show
you where the Bible teaches that Christ died for everybody and you can
almost guarantee that he will take you to…
1 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.
Arminianism in all its forms thrives on this passage and Arminians have used this verse against the gospel as a bludgeon in an attempt to beat down the truth that Jesus Christ gave His life for the sheep and them only. They say... Se-e-e! It says ‘Whole World’ so away with your notion that Christ only died for the elect. And the effect on the evangelical community has been devastating. But Arminians are thieves. This verse is one of the most glorious verses in all the Bible that not only clearly teaches the truth of the Atonement for the elect and them only... but it exposes the Arminian lie of universal atonement as a false gospel; and it does so quite easily. Now... think carefully; all we have to do is ask one very simple question about this verse of Scripture and it will unmask the enemy of the gospel and vindicate the truth. Here’s the question;
Does 1 John 2:2 INclude, or EXclude Judas Iscariot?
Now think... If it INcludes Judas...
which
the Arminians are *forced* to say
because they say that Christ died for everybody who ever
lived...
If 1 Jn 2:2 includes Judas
then...
what in God’s name is he doing in hell?
If Jesus Christ “propitiated” for the sins of
Judas
then that means that He fully
satisfied the wrath of God for all his sins. That is what the
verse says... that Jesus
Christ propitiated for the sins... of the whole world. He did
not just die for sins... His death actually satisfied
Divine
justice against all the sins of all who Christ represented on the
cross.
That's what propitiation means. And if that includes Judas then how on
earth can God send him to hell and still remain a God of inflexible
justice?
For God to send anybody to hell for whom Jesus Christ has satisfied the
wrath of God for his sin is completely unjust. It makes God out
to
be a monster who rejects the very sacrifice of His own dear Son and
sends
people for whom He died to hell any way. This is not the God of
the
Bible. It’s an idol and folks who believe that Jesus Christ died for
everybody
are idolaters and lost.
Jesus Christ came into the world to declare God to the human race and nowhere does He even allude to a god who is unjust and sends people to hell whose sins have been propitiated for by His own Son. Therefore, to say 1 John 2:2 includes Judas or any one else who ultimately perishes in hell not only makes God an unjust God but also speaks of some other Jesus than the one who came to declare the God of perfect justice. Evangelical Arminianism is another gospel that preaches another Jesus and another god.
But... and this is the glorious part of the verse... Oh the beauty of the word of the living God... if the verse EXcludes Judas... then the truth that Christ only died for His sheep is clearly established and Arminianism dies the death. If only one, single, solitary human being is excluded from the death of Jesus Christ then the Arminian notion that Jesus Christ died for *everybody* is finished and exposed as a lie! And 1 John 2:2 does that very thing. Therefore, on the basis of this one verse alone it is plain to see that Arminianism is indeed a false gospel and anybody who believes that Jesus Christ died for everybody cannot possibly be a Christian because he has denied the God of the Bible who is perfect in His justice, and rejected the gospel of truth. Such a person is an idolater, not a Christian.
1 John 2:2 has only two possible views. It either teaches election, or it teaches idolatry. That's it. One either believes in election and confesses the gospel, or one is an idolater. And no idolater has any part in the Kingdom of God. Those who say Jesus Christ has died for everybody are idolaters, not Christians. They need to repent and believe the truth of the gospel.
1 John 2:2... is the gospel! The gospel is the death of Messiah for His people; the gospel is the Atonement. The Atonement is the activity of Christ making propitiation for sins by His death; And Atonement means reconciliation. All for whom Christ died are reconciled to God. Therefore the Atonement cannot include Judas or any one else who ends up in hell.
Let the reader think very carefully on what is being said here. I have talked with men who try to tell me not only does this verse include Judas and all the reprobate that end up in hell... but they even go so far as to say that Christ actually ‘took away’ Judas’ sins according to John 1:29... and yet God sent him to hell anyway. This is the consistent outcome that the Arminian doctrine is forced to arrive at and it certainly and obviously is not the gospel of the precious blood of Messiah. 1 John 2:2 is the death knell of Arminianism and if the evangelical community gets hold of it Arminianism will soon join all of the other heresies that have plagued the Church of Jesus Christ throughout the centuries.
The false gospel of Evangelical Arminianism is a message that is dragging untold numbers into the fires of hell under a false delusion that they think they are Christians when they are not. If Jesus Christ was the propitiation for the sins of everybody in the whole world then there is no other conclusion but to say that God has denied Himself by denying His own justice in sending most of His creatures to hell for whom Christ has died. The pressure is inescapable and there is no other way out. If a person does not believe in election ladies and gentlemen then there is no other alternative but to say that such a person is an idolater because he believes in an unjust god and another Jesus and is still lost and in his sin. This one verse alone…. Is The Stone of David that slays the Goliath of the false gospel of Evangelical Arminianism even to the cutting off of its very head.
If anybody reading this is of the Arminian persuasion then you have a task. You must either prove somehow that this verse can include people who perish and God remain perfectly just… or you must own the fact that what you believe is not the gospel and you are still lost until you repent and believe the truth. There is no other alternative. If there is then you are obligated to show me that what I am saying here is against the truth of God and I need to repent and take this paper off the web. Otherwise you must recognize that what you believe is not the Christian gospel and you are not a Christian.
Further, if there are those of you reading this who fancy yourselves as either a ‘Calvinist’ or enamored with the ‘reformed’ faith, or the ‘doctrines of grace’, while at the same time you consider people who say Christ died for everybody as believers, take heed. Such people are foreigners to the true doctrine of Jesus Christ and for you to embrace them as fellow believers is for you to share in their sin of idolatry. Scripture says that such people do not have God. 2 John. Scripture commands all true believers not to fellowship with unbelievers; 2Cor 6:14ff; and if you do then you have no Biblical grounds to claim you are a Christian either. May God give ears to hear and eyes to see.