I wavered between “in some ways yes in some ways no,” and “yes, entirely.”
The reason is because when I first got saved, my SIL said to go to the Presbyterian Church, not the Pentecostal, and we did! I heard a lot of Bible being preached, and the people were so kind. Then my husband had to move for jobs, and someone invited me to a non-denominational charismatic church. This church had had some real glory days, hundreds of young people and hippies being saved. Then a split.
Well, from day 1, I found the preaching shallow. It seemed like the church was more interested in putting down “old dead churches” like the Presbyterian one I had been in, and whooping it up by singing the same shallow choruses over and over. And then I met the Rapture, losing your salvation, which my husband was pretty well sold on. Till a few months ago, when I confronted him to show me the Rapture in the Bible, and of course, he couldn’t.
I know I searched in vain for a rapture, evidence I could lose my salvation and many other things in the Bible, and could not find them. And as my Hebrew professor said, if something is an important doctrine, it is going to be found all over the Bible. Like the cross, was his example.
I had long since realized my experience was not asking Jesus to come into my heart, but God sovereignly saving me. I knew that from day 1. I even remember a few years before I was saved, saying sinner’s prayer while watching a tv show, and not changing a single bit. Because I wasn’t saved. God had not saved me, and neither had decisional regeneration.
I think reading the Bible faithfully is the key to being changed to correct doctrine, and to living God’s way. And that means each one of us reading it for ourselves. No priests or televangelists to mediate the Bible for us, and block our relationship with God. And prayer, and a good church community.
So, when I was a young Christian, I certainly couldn’t articulate the things I believed. I can’t imagine why we didn’t find another Presbyterian Church when we moved, rather than looking for surface excitement, in the forum of fake tongues and even worse so-called prophesies. But, again, maybe God wanted me to dig for myself. My husband got so discouraged at various times, he completely stopped reading the Bible. It took a pastor at a church in Edmonton, before we left, who spent a long time explaining how to read the Bible, including videos in the evenings, and a yearly reading program. Then my husband picked up the Bible and started reading again.
So, now I have changed entirely. But, I think the elements of basic doctrine were always there. So, although I changed to an EFC and then Baptist churches as we moved, it helped me understand what good doctrine really was. So, I seemed to change radically from what I was hearing in Pentecostal/Arminian churches. But, I don’t think I believed any of it. So, coming back to being Reformed, was an entire shift in what I was hearing, but not much of a switch from what I really believed. And I am glad I recently became full fledged Reformed. I know that I am so much closer to the Bible, to God, and certainly to having good doctrine.
Interestingly enough, my seminary was not Reformed. What they taught us was to read the Bible, pray, and see what God is saying. They emphasized if we were going to be leading a congregation, we better know what we believed. When we did a little quiz, after we studied Calvinism as to the 5 points, our class went from 1 point, to 2 1/2 points, to 5. (And every other number!) That’s the whole gamut. And no one got in trouble for being Arminian or Reformed, or Amillennial or pre-trib rapture, but we did have to prove it from the Bible, not from what people had written, and we were just blindly following. Certainly, seminary was a huge change for me, in that I learned regardless of the wrong things my husband had been taught, it was ok for me to believe what God had shown me in the Bible.
And now, by worst luck, our new pastor is open theism. My husband was rebuking me for saying something about “God showed me.” Because our open theist pastor said people don’t personally hear from God. Well, I guess open theism gives you that, and that search committee made some terrible mistakes when they picked him, mostly that he was an ordained pastor in our conference, and so they never pinned him down to what he believed now, not 15 years earlier when he was ordained. I’m content to wait it out, as we have the most wonderful congregation, and my husband feels at home, literally for the first time ever. And if you want someone who has changed a lot, in a short time, perhaps get my husband to do this poll! (Nope, not a CC member!)