Commenting on the lack of assurance of salvation among many who are Calvinists and profess limited atonement, both historical and even in the modern period, one Evangelical wrote that:
With their emphasis on limited atonement, they could never be sure that Christ had died for them, hence they were forced to look inside at one’s works and the essential holiness of one’s heart rather than rely upon the promises of scripture and the experience of the Spirit. But even here there was no peace because the doctrine of temporary faith and developed stole the hole of assurance by injecting the question of one’s election into the equation: “Perhaps the ‘fruit’ I see in my life is not that of regeneration, but the pre-regenerate work of the Spirit from which I may fall away.” In San Diego, November, 1989, at the Evangelical Theological Society annual meeting, Dr. John MacArthur was asked when a believer could be assured of his salvation; his reply was that such assurance could be had only after death. (M. James Sawyer, “The Witness of the Spirit in the Protestant Tradition” in Who’s Afraid of the Holy Spirit? An Investigation into the Ministry of the Spirit of God Today, eds. Daniel B. Wallace and M. James Sawyer [Dallas: Biblical Studies Press, 2005], 71-93, 299-303, here, p. 299 n. 15)
Such a contrast being the false claim among Calvinists who claim they “know beyond a shadow of a doubt” that they are saved and will enter immediately into the presence of God when they die. It is false for two reasons: (1) the reality of their theology does not allow for such, as McArthur and more honest Calvinists will admit and (2) Calvinism is a false gospel.
