Foreknowing

[James P. White]

The problem many people have when they are looking at Romans 8:29 is that they fail to take into account what kinds of words they are dealing with. When the Bible says that God foreknew and that God predestined, the words "foreknew" and "predestine" are verbs. It is God who is doing the action, and we are the one's that God foreknows.

God doesn't look down through time and see what choices that we make. God foreknows the elect. I am going to use an example from Dr. White to explain how this all fits together. Dr. White shared this story on the "Dividing Line" show:

In a seminary class a professor wrote three statements on the board.

- God saves all people

- God saves no one

- God saves some people

The God who created the universe has three key characteristics; God is gracious, God is free to do whatever God wants, and God is a God of justice. Now which of these three is God free? If God saves everyone, that satisfies God's grace, but not His justice and God isn't free to do what God wants. It has an element of being obligated to do something.

If God saves no one, God is just but that choice doesn't reflect the grace of God, nor does it allow God the freedom to choose anyone.

The third choice is the best one because it reflects God's justice (some do go to hell), God's grace (many are saved), and God is free to choose.

One criticism of Calvinists is that it says God is the author of sin, and that is not true. All human beings are born with a sin problem. We are dead in our sins (Ephesians 2:1) until God reaches down and opens our hearts. A great example of this is Lydia in Acts 16.

One key word that is important is the word "many". Isaiah 53:11-12 says that the savior would die for the "many". I believe that there will be more people in heaven than in hell. The simple fact is that God is not obligated to save anyone, but God does it because he loves human beings and grace means we are saved even though we don't deserve it.

[Parture]

God foreknowing and predestinating doesn't necessitate that God must irresistibly impose salvation. Since God predestinates by foreknowing our free choice, He is able to do what your god can't do, therefore, God trumps your god every time. God is OSAS Arminian: He predestinates by foreknowing our free choice: a conditional election, unlimited atonement, resistible grace, for the preservation of the saints (OSAS). I love how God can do this and your god can't or evilly won't.

God is, indeed, just and free to do what He wants giving us the free-choice. He would be unjust by sending someone to Hell for being born into sin by not giving them any opportunity to be saved. What love is that? God righteously obligates Himself to save a person, because this is just and righteous to do so. Whereas it would be unjust and unrighteous to save someone when they refuse His saving grace just as it would be unjust and unrighteous to send someone to Hell that which is not their fault (preterition).

God is not being just by not saving anyone, because there is no justice in sending someone to Hell when that does not reflect a person's condition of being given sufficient grace to have the free choice. It would be wrong, for example, to send someone to jail for life when that person is given no recourse.

What reflects God's ultimate power, grace, justice and righteousness is having the ability and enacting it by giving sufficient grace to all (prevenient grace) to have the free choice which God freely chooses as His design and fulfills His promise to save whosoever is willing which He can foresee the results of. He is not an Open Theist and certainly not a Calvinist. God forbid!

Your god is the author of sin, not because of everyone is born into sin, but because the sin everyone is born into is of the same character of being irresistibly denied or irresistibly forced into it. God reaches down into all our hearts that's why Rom. 1.20 says nobody is without excuse: another way of saying sufficient grace.

There will be more people in Hell than in Heaven as a reflection of the condition of man and response to the gospel. I estimate the savings ratio between 1 in 100 to 1 in 300. Whereas you put it upwards of 90% or higher of all people showing how corrupted your heart is, how liberal you are. Perhaps this gives you comfort thinking you are in such a heaping pile, but Luke 12.32 says those who are saved are "little flock". So the many Jesus died for are all human beings. It is right to say also that Jesus died for the many in another sense that being once having received salvation one can look back upon their salvation to realize they accepted the atoning sacrifice and that Jesus died for them.

Remember, God is obligated to saved whosoever is willing, otherwise he would be evil. Anyone deserves to be saved if they repent to the cross as a helpless sinner to receive the Lord Jesus as Savior. While your god says not, Christians recognize you worship a false Christ.

Think of it in these terms. How can God's morals be below our own? Since it would be evil for us to give someone no recourse, such as two children playing in quicksand by not extending an arm out to both and the ability to extend their arms out to the savior if they choose to do so then what you are really dealing with is a Satanic construct under Calvinism, so all we need do is recollect the many warnings in the Bible about false Christs.

I appreciate you may believe what you do sincerely, but good intentions pave the way to Hell. As you are this very moment, you're unsaved and going to Hell, simply because, you refuse to repent to the cross as a helpless sinner to receive the Lord Jesus as Savior to be regenerated. You reject the God of the Bible who provides sufficient grace to all to have the free choice. So you have constructed an evil god in His place.

Your faith is very much like the faith of Hitler and his evil Aryan nation. Hitler's claim was that the Jews from birth belong in the gas chambers and sends them there, while the Aryan nation were born for salvation, also not having the free choice in the matter. If it was not for Calvinism, it is quite possible Nazism might not have taken hold like it did. You can invoke any irresistibly imposed saving faith to create any evil religion you want as it follows the same precepts of Calvinism and Nazism, but it is not founded on Biblical reality.

My prayer is one day you give your life to Christ.

[clark thompson]

God knows His own.