I Am A Bold, Spirit-Filled, Evangelistic, 5 Point Calvinist

I believe I was Calvinist before I knew I was Calvinist. I was a Calvinistic Pentecostal! Embrace that! I was a Calvinist when Calvinism wasn't cool.


Born in 1946, I was raised a country boy in a small middle Tennessee town by poor farming parents who attended a mixture of Methodist and Baptist churches and attended one room schools in those same churches. My father was Free Methodist and my aunt led my parents into a Nazarene Church and later we became involved in a small Pentecostal church when I was one year old.


By culture and tradition I should have been Arminian. But in 1956 when I got saved and was baptized (trinitarian) I also was introduced to the working of the Holy Spirit in very unintellectual fashion. There was error all around though I did not know it.


The work of the Spirit was such that I knew that I was depraved even as a ten year old. Because of the attitude of the professing adults in church I knew I had to conceal my depravity. I accepted Christ and was baptized and knew I was a Christian but I never internalized any illusions to deny my depravity.


I lived a life of constant struggle. I clung to my young profession and never strayed far from the tarrying bench. It has not been just my belief that Christ saved me but that I was depraved.


I was a sinner saved by grace in a church that preached that there was no such thing. Internally I had the Spirit tell me over and over, "yes there is".



Without a doubt I am elected!