DEWITT TABERNACLE TEACHING SERIES
“FREE MORAL AGENCY”
ELECTION AND
PREDESTINATION
By C.W.Wood
June/July
2012
PERSONAL NOTE:
Dear Faithful Readers,
It’s time again to send you a personal greeting and to remind myself,
and you, that it’s through your faithful support that we continue to put out
these monthly sermons. Many of you go beyond the call of duty to help us keep
writing and printing. I know you everyone by name and so does the Lord. We are
now in our 19th year of trying to publish one sermon a month to be
mailed to the Bride around the world. We would not dare to say that we
understand everything that the Prophet taught perfectly, only that we have tried
to keep an open mind, so that if we get something wrong, our Lord can correct
us. May He deliver us at all times from a know-it-all spirit! Br. Branham spoke
of three Exodus’s. Number one was when Moses brought the Israelites out of
Br. C.W. Wood
This sermon is about Election and Predestination! We have titled it Free
Moral Agency because our God-given right and ability to choose our own destiny
has, as its foundation our free moral agency! In talking with and writing with
some of my good Brothers, I see a need to share my own thoughts concerning
Election, for what ever good they may be! I do respect their beliefs, and give
them the right to them. At the same time, I respectfully ask for the right to
preach it the way I see it. Then when our hearts are right before God, He will
bring us to His Light on the subject.
Now, since this sermon is meant for the Bride of Christ (They are the
only ones who will receive it), we will be giving not only Scripture for our
belief, but also the statements of a God-sent Prophet, whose Message the Bride
believes!
There is some differing of opinions in the Bride People, concerning
Election, but I want to say that this difference, of itself, does not disqualify
any of us from being Bride! So, rest assured that we are not trying to put
anyone out of the circle. We will follow Br. Branham’s advice and only draw a
bigger circle!
Our subject is so vast that we can only scratch the surface of it in one
short sermon, but we have other sermons on it. Libraries contain volumes of
books on Election and Predestination, and I have by no means studied even a
small percent of what is written, but I have for many years studied what a
God-sent Prophet taught on the subject. It is his revelations that I wish to
share with the Bride! We will first look to the Scriptures to see that God did
not create anything or anyone that was not good in the beginning! In Gen.
1:10,12, 18, 21, and 25, God pronounced what He was
creating good! Then He created man in His own Image (Gen. 1:27) and in Gen.
1:31, He said, “Behold, it is all very
good.”
We take this
statement of God to mean man also! All men were created good, but on down the
road, some of them became evil. Even Lucifer himself, who later was called
“The Evil One and The Devil” was created perfect, and later was lifted up
because of his own beauty and became evil!
In Ezk. 28:1-15, the Bible speaks of his perfection and then his
fall from it.
Ezk 28:14-18, “Thou art
the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so thou wast upon the
holy
15 Thou was perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till
iniquity was found in thee.
16 By the multitude of thy
merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast
sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I
will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.
17 Thine heart was lifted up
because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy
brightness: I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that
they may behold thee.
18 Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine
iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffic; therefore will I bring forth a fire
from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes
upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee.”
This Word of God should stop all speculation about how we were all
created! If the Devil himself was created perfect, then we can know that all men
were created perfect, and then some of them fell! These scriptures say that
Lucifer defiled himself. God did not create him that way.
The point that we wish to make with our readers is that God did not
create anyone, in the beginning, without a free will to choose their own
destiny. God did not create any robots that had no will, or choice, of their
own! None of us were puppets who were to be controlled by strings from above!
It is Holy Ghost enlightened horse-sense to understand that God could not
receive any glory at all from robots or puppets that He, Himself, controlled! He
wanted a people for His Bride who could and would, of their own free will, go
with Him as His Bride!
You may say to me that Rebecca, in Gen. 24 , who married Isaac,
was chosen of God to be his Bride. And, this is the truth, but remember, dear
Friend, that Rebecca had to say, “Yes, I will go to Isaac!” The servant did
not take her against her will. In the final wind up, she had to say yes, even
though she had been chosen by God.
This type then balances out the teaching of Election. God chooses His
Bride, but then the Bride must say yes. And by foreknowledge He knew who was
who! (Rom.
God could not create us so we had to sin and still be God! Prophet called
this the great revelation, and it is. Many don’t see it!
QUOTE: CHRIST IS THE
MYSTERY OF GOD REVEALED, PAGE 26, “Now. Oh, the great revelation now! Now,
to restore back His kinship. To bring back… Now, He had to let them get lost;
you understand it? He had to let them sin, put them on free. He could not make
them sin and remain God and then punish them for something He made them do, but
when He put man on partnership with Him, then let man act as a
free-moral-agent… See? The same thing that He’s got you on today. See? See?
You act any way you want to; you’re a free-moral-agent.
So therefore, if He put the first like that, He has to put the second
like that. He has to put everyone like that—or He acted wrong in the first
place. See? And everybody is on that same basis.” (End of quote)
QUOTE: PAUL A PRISONER, PAGE 7, “Now, we’re all born a
free-moral-agent to make any decisions we wish to. God justly does that, because
He must put every man on the same basis, or He put the wrong man on—He put the
first man on the wrong basis that He put on free-moral-agent.
See, we’re just exactly tonight like Adam and Eve. There’s no
difference. Right or wrong sets before either one of us. Life and death—we can
make our choice. It’s up to you to make it. See? That’s the way Adam and Eve
did. You see, and they made the wrong choice.
And now by that—put the whole race—the human race under death, the
penalty of death, and then God came down in a form of a man and took that death
and paid the penalty of death that its subject that desired to be free could go
free. Now if He took us without the same way that He did Adam and Eve—just
pulled up through something and said I’ll save you whether you want to be
saved or not. Then He put Adams and Eve on the wrong basis, but each one of us
has to choose this day between death and life. We get to do it.” (End of
quote)
Now, we want to show that
free moral agency, or the right and the ability to choose started in Heaven! In
Gen. 1:27, we are told that,
“God created man in His own Image, in the Image of God created He Him,
male and female created He them.”
Our Prophet said that our first creation was in a body that he called a
Theophany, and He also said that God has a Theophany, like He appeared to
Abraham in, and ate a meal with him. This is the Scripture, as found in II
Cor. 5:1-4. The Bride has a body in the Heavenlies, like God’s own
theophany body. God in a Theophany Body. The great point is this. God is not
only a Spirit, but He has an Image, a body that He uses when it pleases Him, and
the Bible says we were first made in His own likeness and in His own Image.
(Gen. 1:26-27)
The definition of “image” is “a likeness or a copy of the
original.” This being true, then all Elect were first created in the same kind
of body that God uses when He appears unto men. God has a Theophany Body, and so
do all Elect have a Theophany Body.
Let’s read this in the Word. II Cor. 5:1, “For
we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved we have a
building of God. A house (body) not
made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” This house in the heavens is a
spoken word body, we are spoken word seed. Let’s let the Prophet confirm this.
This is a key statement that unlocks some deep mysteries for the Bride.
QUOTE: “UNFAILING REALITIES OF THE LIVING GOD PAGE 30, “Let me
say one more thing. Creeds does not satisfy a hungry heart. Creeds won’t
satisfy. If a man is hungry for God, you tell him say, “Say the Apostles’
Creed, join the church, put your name on here, be sprinkled or immersed, or
whatever you want to, that will never satisfy a hungry soul. Cause, they were
predestinated, of God to search for Life. They was once the angels, they was
once an angel who did not fall. Two-thirds (one-third) of the angels of Heaven
fell; that’s these evil spirits working amongst people, very religious. You
know the Bible says that. You was just not all always right here. You were once
somewhere else.
Remember, sin didn’t begin on Earth. Sin begin in Heaven, when Lucifer
taken and made it. He said, “I want a denomination, make a great big thing,”
went on the
And those angels back there, them spirits. Well, that’s the reason, “When
this earthly tabernacle be dissolved, we have one already waiting.” See?
And that’s the reason, “Our name was put on the Lamb’s Book of Life before
the foundation of the world.” “All
the Father has given Me, will come to Me.”
Scripture for this
above quote is Rev. 12:4. It is speaking of the Great Red Dragon, the
Devil.
Rev. 12:4, “And his tail drew the third part of the stars of Heaven, and did cast
them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be
delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.” These stars
were angels that were created good, but fell and followed Lucifer.
QUOTE: GOD’S ONLY PROVIDED WAY OF WORSHIP, PAGE, 14, “And
we’ve got to have everything in three’s to make perfection. And there is one
body here, then that body there, which is the Celestial (heavenly) then the
glorified body in the Resurrection. That makes it complete. It’s not a myth,
it’s not just an idea, it’s not just a spirit, it is a man or woman like you
are, just exactly.” (End of quote)
Notice the Prophet’s teaching here! He said, “We were not just a thought
in God’s mind, but we were a man or a woman like we are here! While we were
yet in Heaven, in our theophany bodies, God allowed us to be presented with a
choice! This is because He could receive no glory for Himself if He had created
us as robots or puppets! But we used our own free-will (free-moral-agency) to
choose to stay with our Creator, and this while we were still in Heaven in our
Theophany.
He allowed the rebellious angel, Lucifer, to preach this message to
God’s created angels that He had called “very good”! (Gen. 1:31)
You might ask why the scripture says, “God
created evil for the day of evil” (Ps. 16:4). We have set forth the
overall teaching of Scripture that shows that our God did not create anyone evil
in the beginning! Then what does the Scripture in Pr. 16:4 mean that
says God created evil? Remember, we must keep a balance in the Scriptures! So,
what do we do when Scripture seems to contrast Scripture? That’s when it takes
a revelation from God that shows us how to blend the two together! In this case
the Scripture in Genesis says that all God created was, “good,
very good”! But, in Pr. 16:4, it says God created evil! As always
the revelation shows us how to blend the two sets of Scripture together. God
only created evil in this sense, that He knew who would turn out to be evil,
before He ever created them. He created them anyway, knowing how He would make
them fit into His great overall plan! Not that He created them evil, only that
He knew they would be!
Now, we will look at
Look at Rom.
Verse 30,
“Moreover whom He did predestinate, them He also called, and whom He
called, them He also justified, and whom He justified them He also glorified.”
So, we read in
Scripture that Election was based on foreknowledge! Knowledge that God had about
all people before He created any of us! He knew the end before we had our
created bodies. Then He created us in our theophany bodies, knowing who would
stay with Him in Heaven and who would follow a rebellious angel named Lucifer!
We will close with some statements of the Prophet, to back up what we
have said! He clearly taught that God did not, just out of His own mind and
because He was God and could do anything He wanted, send some men to Hell and
some to Heaven. The Prophet taught that He had a reason for some being saved and
some being lost!
QUOTE: C.O.D. BOOK, PAGE 225-226, “For there are certain man
crept in unaware, who were before of old ordained to this
condemnation….(How?)….turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness.
Ordained of old! Not that God set back on the throne, and said, “I’ll
save this man, I’ll lose that man.” That wasn’t it! God died, and when
Jesus died, the atonement covered the entire Earth for every person. But God, by
foreknowledge. Not that He will. He’s not willing that any should perish. He
wanted everybody to be saved. That was His—that was His Eternal purpose. But
if He was God, He knew who would and who would not be saved. If He didn’t
know, then He wasn’t infinite God. So the Bible teaches that.” (End of
quote) Here the Prophet asked, “How were they ordained to condemnation?”
Then he answered with the Scripture that says they turned down the Grace of God
not that He chose them to be lost!
QUOTE: C.O.D. BOOK, PAGE 226, “Do you know what the word
infinite means? Look at—look in the dictionary and find out what the word
infinite means. Why, He knowed every flea that would ever be on the earth, every
fly, every gnat, every germ. He knew it before they ever come into existence, or
He wasn’t God. Certainly He knew it. All right.
Then, in there, God could not—not say, “I’ll take you, and send you
to Hell; and I’ll take you, and send you to Heaven. God wanted you both to go
to Heaven. But, by foreknowledge, He knew that one would be a shyster, and the
other one would be a gentlemen and a Christian. See? Therefore He had to send
Jesus to die, to save that man that He foreknew that wanted to be saved. Do you
get it?”
To sum up
Can’t we see that God would have warned those angels in Heaven against
following Lucifer? We can know He warned them, the same as He warned Adam and
Eve here on Earth, not to eat of the
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.”
And so, because some of the angels in Heaven stayed with their Creator,
they were redeemable when He put them here on Earth in flesh! We could say it
like this, we chose Him up there, and with that foreknowledge He put our names
on the Book of Life never to be removed!
And He chose us here, to be saved out of our sinful flesh. Amen!