S5 Ep13 Calvin Attacks the Apostles (Because He Thought God Was Kidding)

We look again at Calvin's Commentary, this time his harsh words for the enlightened and chosen apostles of Christ in Acts 1. Calvin's refusal to see that the God who promised a land and a kingdom to his earthly people will keep those promises.

In Acts 1 when the risen Lord teaches his apostles (to whom he promised would sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel in Matthew 19:28) about the kingdom, they ask him one question. The Lord does not chastise them for asking the question nor does he accused them of misunderstanding his teachings on the kingdom. So John Calvin took it upon himself to scorch the Lord's chosen.

Just as his failure and refusal to see the fulfilment of the promises to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, and the nation of Israel all through the Lord's ministry as we saw in our studies on Calvin and the Sermon on the Mount, so here does Calvin refuse to see God as a God who keeps his word.

The Lord's disciples believed the prophets and the Lord. The apostles believed the promise of the "new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah" replacing the covenant he "made with THEIR fathers in the day that I took THEM by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt." John Calvin and his disciples somehow want to make God a liar and greedily claim the kingdom for themselves.

The irony here is that in doing so, they ignore the greater hope of blessings in the heavenly places revealed through Paul for the current age.