My Story Part 3

I ended up leaving the church and joining Christ Presbyterian Church (PCA) where the biblical doctrines were being taught. I walked into their Sunday School class where they were going through Machen’s “Christianity and Liberalism” and knew immediately I had found a home. When my new pastor did a three-part series on Covenant Theology based on “God of Promise,” I finally had the missing pieces of my beliefs put in place.

A few months before this, I started attending an Arminian, baptismal regeneration college which only solidified my assurance of the Biblical (reformed) faith. I was a four-point Calvinist, if that is really possible, until another non-traditional student, Kelvin, asked me a simple question: “Is unbelief a sin?” From that moment on, I have been firmly entrenched in the reformed faith. As the wife of one of the elders at Christ Presbyterian Church puts it, “He’s so reformed, I love it!”

While attending this school, I became friends with Jason and Kelvin, both non-traditional students like myself, and also reformed. All three of us began attending at the same time, in the middle of the school year, confirming even more my belief in providence. Being older and not afraid of speaking our minds, we were quickly branded the “TULIP Squad,” which we not only did not mind but kind of wore proudly.

Sitting under that teaching was very difficult and frustrating. The linguistic gymnastics Arminians practice boggles the mind. To listen to them say they are “saved purely by grace, all one has to do is accept Jesus”, all the while believing they are not violating the law of non-contradiction, is more frustrating than listening to Atheists. I had one professor, the so-called Greek scholar, tell me that Romans in the NIV was translated by Calvinists. Yes, he really said that. I just calmly reminded him that Romans was written by a Calvinist. I got a C in that class.