~ from email ~
The general principle is that we should respect the text’s literary genre when interpreting Scripture. This is correct. Even though I say this, I am not on the side of Calvinists and Reformed Christians when it comes to how they handle Scripture. On many issues, they are the most zealous enemies of the Christian faith, contradicting God’s word and persecuting those who believe it.
In practice, they consider no promise in the Bible that speaks to this life as a real promise, but only a vague suggestion of a possible outcome. To them, the doctrine of divine sovereignty means that God often breaks his promises, so that no promise in the Bible is a guarantee. But if a promise is a promise, then it is indeed a guarantee, and God always keeps a promise. One reason for this perversion of divine sovereignty is to hide their unbelief. When they fail to receive something from God, instead of admitting their lack of faith and hardness of heart, they blame God’s sovereignty. Regardless of what the Bible promises, this and that did not happen because “God is sovereign.”
God sovereignly makes his promises, and he always sovereignly keeps his promises. The Calvinist-Reformed Sovereign Liar is not the Christian God. Any Arminian who believes that God always keeps his promises, including his promises regarding healing, prosperity, deliverance, and material blessings, is by far more orthodox than any Calvinist or Reformed Christian who claims to affirm God’s sovereignty, but then exploits the doctrine to justify his own unbelief. No Pentecostal should be intimidated by the Sovereign Liar Heresy. In fact, if the Word of Faith charismatics were to excommunicate the Reformed for this, I would not lift a finger in protest. I cannot, since I would have no biblical basis to defend the Reformed.
Another popular principle of Bible interpretation that they have adopted is that we must not derive doctrine from the narrative portions of Scripture, but only from the didactic portions of Scripture. This is a blatant lie, and it is against Scripture’s own use of narratives. This creates a canon within the canon, and in effect becomes a denial of divine inspiration and biblical inerrancy, which in turn means that they are anti-Christian heretics. As usual, it appears one motive for this error is to sidestep some of the most explicit teachings in the Bible. An example is the biblical doctrine that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is a different and subsequent experience from regeneration or conversion.
Their approach to Scripture is correct on a number of issues, but on many others they are the most sinister hypocrites and religious charlatans. No matter what you get right, once you make God into a liar, you lose everything. They are some of the worst heretics, and at the same time the most zealous persecutors of God’s people.