What is the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry? (CARM)? CARM is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization whose purpose is to equip Christians and refute error. (Bold emphasis mine)

Perhaps one of the most loathsome things about most of the eternal security teachers is they often try to hide what they really believe. This is the case here, at least sometimes. Matt Slick (CARM) teaches a license for immorality but periodically tries to hide it. In other words, he isn’t always open and honest about his own theology. But how could he do better than teach a license for immorality since he is a Calvinist and therefore believes in the perseverance of the saints (eternal security)? In fact, in a recent email exchange with CARM this came out. I wrote to Matt the following about King David when in his sins of adultery and murder. Here is one of my emails to him:

Matthew, you never responded to my question regarding David remaining saved in his sins of adultery and murder or not! I wonder why? Could it be that you are trying to perpetuate the false image that Calvinism is associated with holiness and that Calvinism is Scripturally sound?

Matt, let’s debate eternal security.

Contending For The Faith Against False Teachers Including Calvinists,

Dan

Matt Slick’s reply to that was:

I believe what Jesus said in John 10:27-28 that those who have eternal life will never perish. I gather that you don’t believe Jesus.

Matt

Matt Slick is saying by that email:

● that John 10:27,28 shows David remained saved while in adultery and murder. In other words, his answer implies the license for immorality CARM, and all other such Calvinistic ministries, often try to hide. [Please know John 10:27,28 only applies to those described in v.27, that is, the continuous tense follower of Jesus. If one turns to adultery and murder, which a saving faith can do (as shown by David), then such a person is no longer following Jesus and that blessed promise in v. 28 no longer applies. In contrast, CARM actually thinks it does!]

● that there are Christian adulterers and Christian murderers. [The only adulterers and murderers in the Bible are always unsaved and therefore on the road to hell in desperate need of repentance for salvation.] Eternal security teachers, like CARM, would want us to dangerously believe that some adulterers and/or murderers are actually saved because they once were regenerated.

● by his ignoring my challenge to debate eternal security he is saying indirectly that he is not confident with his own theological position. He likes to teach it dogmatically to new converts and the like, but doesn’t want to debate someone like me acquainted with this issue. Without a doubt, Matt Slick (just like Mr. James White) would debate eternal security with me in a flash if he (they) thought he (they) could win. Remember this when either of them, or any other Calvinists, authoritatively teach this license for immorality commonly known as eternal security.

[Matt, if you change your mind, we could still easily text debate eternal security and place it on each other’s web sites for web site visitors to read. This would equip Christians and refute error in the truest sense.]

CARM’s alleged purpose of equip[ping] Christians and refut[ing] error is nothing but an empty and misleading false claim. If you are a Christian, please avoid CARM’s web site and all others that teach eternal security. It will be to your own risk and peril to neglect this warning. Remember what Paul wrote:

For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a man is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them (Eph 5:5-7).

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More CARM Poison

Matt, under your question found on CARM, “What do I do if I have committed sexual sin?” you wrote the following. [All emphasis is my own.]:

Christians are not exempt from sexual sin. If you are such a person who has fallen into fornication, adultery, pornography, homosexuality, lesbianism, bestiality, or any other sexual deviation, then you need to stop .... If you are a Christian involved in sexual sin then you know that the Holy Spirit has been convicting you. If you feel no conviction then you are either not really saved or are so hardened by the sin you’ve been committing that you are close to God taking your life. This is the case in 1 Cor. 5:5 where a man was having sex with his father’s wife and he would not repent. Paul said, “I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” Rest assured that God takes this seriously. He will take your life to essentially save your soul. This is a loving move on God’s part.

CARM would have us think there are Christian adulterers, Christian fornicators, etc. CARM refers to 1 Cor. 5:5 which has nothing to do with teaching such immoral people are Christian. The unnamed man in 1 Cor. 5 is called wicked in v. 13, and therefore, can not be a Christian. To teach he was a Christian while in sexual immorality is to declare exactly what the devil (and Calvinists) would like us to think.

CARM (just like Dave Hunt) would also have us think that God, in his anger, will strike an unrepentant heinous sinner dead and take him to heaven in that unrepentant state. Somehow to CARM, this is following Jesus because we are his sheep and enduring to the end because we are truly saved! The following is quoted from CARM’s page Can you lose your salvation?, a dialogue between Matt and Sam:

Matt: Can you answer the question regarding John 10:28?

Sam: I believe we are God’s sheep if we follow him.

Matt: Wrong. We follow him BECAUSE we are His sheep.

Matt: ...We endure because we ARE saved...

CARM must think the unnamed man in sexual immorality in 1 Cor. 5 was following Jesus while in this sin and if God, in his anger, kills an unrepentant fornicator, that fornicator who died in an unrepentant state endured to the end. The teaching of eternal security is absurd, unscriptural, dangerously demonic and contradictory.

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CARM’s grace illustration is demonic. The following is found under, Salvation is God’s work:

One more change. I sneak over to your house and steal your bike. You catch me. You don’t send me to jail. In fact, you give me the bike plus a hundred dollars. That is grace. (Emphasis mine)

CARM would dangerously have us thinking we receive grace from God by doing a wicked deed. But that is not all. In an unrepentant state we get that grace and a nice bonus too! Matt, you have clearly changed grace into a license for immorality. I will fight your false version of grace (eternal security), with God’s truth, as long as I live.

[Dear reader, to learn what true grace is ponder Titus 2:12, Rom. 5:2 and 1 Peter especially in light of 1 Peter 5:12. Also, please see chapter 10 on grace in our 801 page book, The Believer’s Conditional Security.]

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CARM attempts to analyze the parable of the Prodigal Son, but in doing so misquotes the Scriptures to protect eternal security. This is how CARM misstated it:

“My son was dead and is alive, was lost and is found.”

The important word again after the word alive (or life) is missing. Later Matt has it correctly stated in Luke 15:24:

for this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found. And they began to be merry.

The truth is, the prodigal died spiritually because of his sexual immorality and wild living. After he repented, his lost spiritual condition was reversed and he became spiritually alive again. Please see this article for more information http://www.evangelicaloutreach.org/prodigal.htm

Dear reader, CARM is not a ministry that Evangelical Outreach can recommend since the various points of Calvinism, embraced by Matt Slick, will be laced throughout it (especially the most deadly point—eternal security). Any teachings on grace, salvation, sin, and other related subjects, will be distorted in one way or another to allow for the heresy of eternal security and Calvinism.

The reader is encouraged to warn his friends about the dangerous distortions and doctrinal perversions found on CARM.

[Matt, my debate challenge to you on eternal security continues to stand.]

GOD BLESS YOU.

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