07/17/2025
A follower shared this image and asked for my thoughts.
I think this image reveals more about modern Christianity’s celebrity addiction than it does about the bible. This entire idea, that Calvinism is somehow dependent on three American pastors betrays a tragic ignorance of history and Scripture.
Calvinism did not begin with John MacArthur, R. C. Sproul, or John Piper. It did not rise in the 20th century and it certainly will not fall because of their absence. These men are not the foundation. They were stewards. And faithful ones. But the truth they preached did not originate with them.
Let’s go back to the beginning. In Genesis 6:5, the Lord saw that “every intention of the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually.” That is total depravity. Not a theological invention, but a divine verdict. After the flood, man remained the same. In Genesis 8:21, God declared again, “the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth.” No one taught this to Moses. It was God's own conclusion about human nature.
Move forward to Abraham. He was not chosen because of something noble in him. He was an idolater in a pagan land (Joshua 24:2), yet God called him out and made him the father of many nations. That is unconditional election. God did not ask Abraham’s permission. He simply called, and Abraham followed. The covenant was God's initiative.
Go to Exodus. God chose Israel, not because they were greater in number or better in heart, but because He loved them and had set His affection on them (Deuteronomy 7:6-8). Pharaoh’s heart was hardened by God (Exodus 4:21), and Paul later explains why in Romans 9, that God may show His power and proclaim His name in all the earth. That is divine sovereignty. And it is offensive to human pride. But it is the testimony of Scripture.
Go to the Psalms. David declared in Psalm 51:5, “Surely I was sinful at birth.” In Psalm 14:3, “There is none who does good, not even one.” Go to the prophets. Isaiah said in 53:6, “We all like sheep have gone astray.” Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.” These are not the words of a theologian. They are the Word of God. They reveal a humanity that cannot and will not come to God unless He intervenes.
Then comes Christ. In John 6:44, He says, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.” That is not an offer. It is a limitation. Salvation is not possible without the sovereign drawing of the Father. In Matthew 11:27, Jesus declares, “No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.” That is divine election, not corporate, not general, but specific and personal.
When Jesus laid down His life, He did not do it as a vague offer for a world that might believe. He did it for His sheep (John 10:11), for His people (Matthew 1:21), for the church (Ephesians 5:25). And He said all whom the Father gives Him will come to Him, and He will raise them up on the last day (John 6:37-39). Not one will be lost.
After Pentecost, the apostles preached this same message. In Acts 13:48, “All who were appointed to eternal life believed.” In Romans 8:29-30, Paul lays down the unbreakable chain: “those whom He foreknew He also predestined… called… justified… glorified.” In Ephesians 1:4-5, “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world… predestined us for adoption.” That is not man’s gospel. That is God’s gospel.
Now trace that forward. The early church fathers affirmed God’s sovereignty in salvation, even if not with perfect clarity. Augustine stood firm in the fifth century against Pelagius, declaring that man is unable to turn to God without grace. The Council of Orange in 529 upheld that salvation begins with God, not man.
A thousand years later, when Rome had buried the truth under layers of tradition and works, God raised up Reformers not to create a new gospel, but to recover the old one. Men like Luther and Calvin and Knox simply opened the Bible again. And the truths poured out, unchanged, undiminished, and still offensive to human pride.
Calvinism did not begin in the 1500s. It began in Genesis. It echoes through every book of the Bible. It rises from the pages of Scripture because it is not a system it is the very story of salvation from the fall to the cross to the return of Christ.
You want to talk history? Calvinism survived the death of John Calvin in 1564. It endured bloody persecution under Roman Catholic rulers. It outlasted the Synod of Dort’s opponents in 1619. It flourished through the Puritans, was revived under George Whitefield, and shaped the greatest mission movements through men like William Carey and David Brainerd. Charles Spurgeon thundered it from the Metropolitan Tabernacle and called it “the Gospel and nothing else.”
Did it die with Calvin? With Knox? With Bunyan? With Edwards? With Spurgeon? No. Because the truth does not die when a man dies. And if the truth can die with a man, it was never truth to begin with.
What is being buried is not Calvinism, but the shallow, personality-driven version of Christianity that cannot see beyond a few preachers. The Word of God is not bound. And the doctrines of grace will keep marching on not because men protect them, but because God sustains them.
Will Calvinism survive? Ask the God who declared the end from the beginning and does all things according to the counsel of His will (ephesians 1:11). If He is sovereign, then His truth cannot be buried.
No man carries the Gospel on his back. The Gospel carries men. And when one dies, God raises another. That is why the church still stands. That is why Calvinism will never die.
It is not built on Calvin. It is built on Christ.
He, who has ears to hear, let him hear.
Jeremiah Knight
The Reformation Resurgence
