Calvin and his silence about overcoming sins.

---John Calvin was a lawyer and his mind was thinking how to politically survived as a religion in Catholic persecution times. Even today, Calvinists think that if they push themselves to be elected in the government, they can bring in their Calvinist friends to “take over” worldly power and create a “kingdom of God” on earth. Help the Lord to Second Come. So to speak.

---Catholics were stressing works like buying alms or letters of forgiveness from the priests in order to forgive your sins. Without these actions and receiving the Lord’s Supper from the hand of the priest, people were lost.

---No, said the Reformers, and Calvin, justification in heaven is guaranteed on what Christ did in heaven for us in our behalf not by the Catholic created system of vicarius filii dei = substitute of the Son of God.  By the way, 50 years after Calvin, Helvig Andreas in 1610 discovered that vicarius filli dei counted in Latin up to 600 plus 60 plus 6! But modern Calvinists are just like Lutherans, silent about this and search for the Antichrist in Nero and Trajan and Antiochus Epiphanes, all decoys. So the vicarius filii dei system of religion or Catholicism of Calvin’s day was making money with salvation.

---Both religions, Catholics and Protestants tried to overcome sins or get salvation. Both had ideas.

---But somehow, even if Calvin did not say it exactly so, his followers understood “once saved always saved”. My Calvinistic relatives used to talk that way with my parents while they were arguing why the Law must still be kept.

---So Calvin did not want to know anything more than this message of Justification only by Christ.

---What about Sabbath? No. What about adult baptism instead of infant baptism? No. Shut the mouth.

---That is why pastors started arguing in the Lutheran church with Johannes Oecolampadius in Basel in 1523 about Infant Baptism. And he failed the test.

---They say he was very spiritual, more than Calvin, Thomas Myers in 1853 wrote about the two in his commentaries on Calvin. But he failed the test on infant baptism.

---So Jakobus Arminius argued with Calvinists about their suppression of the freedom of the will and the role of will in our actions. Calvinists were furious.

---What about sanctification and the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives and the freedom to choose for God? It was a difficult one for the Reformers to swallow.

---Lutheranism went back to Catholicism two years after Luther died in 1546. In 1548 they signed a law the Catholic government that they will accept some Catholic practices in the Lutheran church for the sake of peace.

---So John Wesley focused on this aspect of overcoming in the gospel. Sanctification people call it. The importance to kick habits.

---Once saved always saved, no. Said Wesley.

---Then came Ellen White. Justification is by Jesus only but after that, she said in Testimonies 5 pages 630-631 that we have to cooperate with the divine, with God to remove offensive things from our lives.

---Blessed are they that overcome, said the Holy Spirit on behalf of Jesus the Great Overcomer and Example of our lives in Revelation to the seven churches. He repeated the same message to all seven periods.

---Including the digital orientated “sleeping” Laodiceans or the digimodernists. Us.

---“God can work with his (you and me) efforts in seeking perfection of character”.

---Do not mention that word again! Says Korean society. Only Korean society? Everywhere. Because of tongue in the cheek “little foxes in the vineyard of God”. Do not want to let go on some small biblical wrong thing.

---Like Calvin also. Thus the silence to overcoming and scooping up of texts from the Bible to fortify his claim that it is not necessary. Is you pastor dodging the overcoming messages of Jesus to us with the help of the able Holy Spirit He gave to us?

---You better tell the pastor to preach both sides of the coin of the gospel Jesus gave us: Jesus our Substitute and Jesus our Example.

---When? Now today.