DEWITT
TABERNACLE TEACHING SERIES
ELECTION
VERSES
MAN’S RESPONSIBILITY
By
C.W. Wood
May 2006
In
the minds of many modern day Bible readers, as well as in the minds of many in
the past, there has been an unresolved question concerning the fact that God
ELECTED some to Salvation and some to condemnation
before the creation of the world. The question mainly arises over the fact that
we can clearly see in the Scriptures two major doctrines taught. One is the
complete Sovereignty of God, which places Him in control of all things, at all
times, in all places. Nothing happens in Heaven, Hell or on Earth without His
permission. Many Scriptures could be given to prove this, but we will quote one
that takes in all the rest. Isa. 45:5-7, “I
am the Lord and there is none else (no one else giving orders),
there is no God beside Me. I girded thee though thou hast not known Me. Verse
6, That they may know from the rising of the Sun, and from the west, that
there is none beside Me. I am the Lord and there is none else. Verse 7,
I form the light, and create darkness; I
make peace and create evil; I the Lord do all these things.” (Can we
believe this powerful statement?)
If you will study the above
Scripture carefully, you will have to conclude that nothing anywhere, at any
time, nor in any place, is ever out of God’s control. Our prophet explained it
like this, “There ain’t nothing out of cater.” Many other Scriptures teach
this great truth! The second major doctrine teaches that man was made a free
moral agent, with the ability to CHOOSE his own destiny. Again, many Scriptures
could be given, but we will give one important one and move on. Deut.
30:15-19, “See, I have set before thee this day Life and Good, and Death and
Evil; Verse 17, But if thine
heart turn away, so that thou wilt not hear, but shall be drawn away, and
worship other gods, and serve them; Verse 18, “I denounce unto you this day that ye shall surely perish, and that ye
shall not prolong your days upon the land…..”Verse 19, “I
call Heaven and Earth to record this against you, that I have set before you
life and death, blessing and cursing; THEREFORE CHOOSE LIFE THAT BOTH THOU AND
THY SEED SHALL LIVE.”
Not only did God
give us the ability to choose, but he also determined that we would HAVE TO
CHOOSE EITHER GOOD OR EVIL, BLESSINGS OR CURSES. There is no way to escape our
responsibility of having to CHOOSE. God
sees to that by setting both good and evil before us. So, now I pray that we can
see the two major doctrines as set forth in the Scripture. As has been said,
many more Scriptures could be given in support of each doctrine. The Bible is
full of Word declaring both doctrines to be true!
Now the great question that has confused our minds in times past is,
“How can God predetermine, or Elect, certain persons to be saved, and certain
others to be condemned, and do it before Creation? How could He make such
determinations before we ever appeared on Earth, and do it without violating our
free moral agency, which is our God-given right to choose? Rom. 9:11
declares that this is exactly what happened. “For
the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the
purpose of God according to Election might stand, not of works, but of Him that
calleth; it was said unto her, the elder shall serve the younger.”
Did
God Elect one to be saved and one to be lost without rhyme or reason by passing
man’s free-moral agency, which is His God given right to choose? No! He did
not!
There is a very simple answer that is if God will shine His light of
revelation on the Word for us. We, who are in what we call “The End-Time
Message”, have a very distinct advantage over those who do not believe in
prophets for today! Since God’s Scriptural rule is that “Surely
the Lord God will do nothing, but He (first) revealeth
His secret unto His servants the prophets.” (Amos 3:7), then we who have
accepted God’s Prophet of Mal. 4:5 can study what he taught on the
subject and be informed.
On what basis, or on what ground did God choose to love one and hate the
other?
First, we will give a Scripture that
holds the explanation we are seeking, then we will look at the Prophet’s
teaching on the same. Rom. 8:29, “FOR
WHOM HE DID FOREKNOW, HE ALSO DID PREDESTINATE, to be conformed to the Image of
His Son, that He might be the first born among many brethren.” I would
call your attention to the word “FOREKNOW.” It means to “know before
hand,” or to “have previous information about.” Now, to apply this meaning
to our text, we have to conclude that the Scripture is saying that God was able
to PREDESTINATE certain people to be saved, based on some information that He
had about them, previous to His decision. The same with the condemned ones!
To those of us who believe the Scripture, we have no
problem believing the part that says, “Declaring
the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet
done, saying My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure.” (Isa.
46:9-10) These verses tell us HOW God came by the information He had pertaining
to those He PREDESTINATED for Salvation. In simple language, He watched His
Creation, from its beginning to its final end, BEFORE He ever created anything.
In doing so, He saw the FINAL DECISION of every human being that would ever be
on Earth. Then, with this information in His great mind, and based on that
information, He chose some to be saved and some to be lost! In reality then, He
was making place for man’s responsibility to be set forth. While at the same
time, “no man can come to Him until he
is called.” (John 6:44). Here we are looking at man’s side and also
God’s side.
God’s will was that “Not any
should perish.” (II Peter 3:9) His sovereign will was exercised in that He
has, and will, call every human to Salvation at one time or another, giving them
a chance to be saved. He exercises His right to call ALL men to Salvation, no
matter how evil we have been, and this is His sovereignty in action. There is no
“Respect of person” with God as
far as Salvation is concerned. “Many (all)
are called, but few chosen.” (Mat.
20:16) All must be called and offered the remedy for their lost condition,
because we had no say in the matter of being born lost! By this calling, God retains His righteousness toward all men. There will be
no excuses at White Throne Judgment!
Referring back to Rom. 9:11-14, where God’s choice was to love
one and hate the other, the Holy Ghost then asked the very pointed question. Verse
14, “What shall we say then (About God’s decision to love one and
hate the other), is there UNRIGHTEOUSNESS
with God?” He answers his own question by saying, “God forbid.” In other words, we are to understand that God was
completely righteous in His decision about the two men. He was righteous because
His decisions were not made indiscriminately. That is to say, that they were not
made at random, or without cause. They were made before Creation, based on the
fact that He had seen their lives from start to finish, BEFORE they were ever
placed on Earth. Jacob wanted the birthright (Salvation) at any cost, but Esau
traded his for a bowl of beans. This is what we looked at in Rom. 8:29, “For
whom He FOREKNEW, He also did PREDESTINATE.” His foreknowledge gave Him
the basis for a righteous decision about the two men.
God did not just out of
thin air, so to speak, choose one man above the other. His decisions were based
on His foreknowledge of their two lives! He knew their end from the beginning!
QUOTE: C.O.D. BOOK, PAGE
225, “Jude Verse 4, ‘For
there are certain man crept in unaware, who were before of old ordained to this
condem-nation…(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 the infinite God. So
the Bible teaches that.” (End quote)
QUOTE: C.O.D. BOOK PAGE 225-226, “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
gentleman 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? (End quote)
QUOTE: ADOPTION PAGE 30-31, “According as He has chosen us…
Now, here is where the church stumbles so bad.
According as He has chosen us in Him… (In Who?) Christ!
We find out, now back in—in Genesis and in Revelation, Revelation 17:8,
that He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world. Now, the
word…Let me read the next one. Eph. 1:4-5, “Foundation
of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him…Having
predestinated us…
Now
I want to stop on that word of “predestinated.” Now, predestinated isn’t
say, “I’ll choose Brother Neville, and I-I-I-I-I won’t choose Brother
Beeler.” That isn’t it. It’s the foreknowledge of God that knowed which
one would be right and which one wasn’t right. So, by foreknowledge, God
knowing what He was going to do, he predestinated by His foreknowledge to make
all things work together for the good to them that love God, that He might, in
the age that is to come, call all things together in One, which is Christ
Jesus.” (End quote)
QUOTE: ADOPTION, PAGE 18, “Listen to this! Predestination looks
back to foreknowledge....By foreknowledge He seen that I would love Him.
What did He do? He, by foreknowledge, foresaw us, knowing that he was a
Saviour, self-existent. There was no Angels, no nothing; just God, Elah, Elohim,
the self-existent One, nothing but Him alone. But in Him was a Saviour. Well,
what’s he going to save, there’s nothing lost? Knowing that, that He knowed
that this great attribute in Him would project something out yonder that He
could save. Then when it did that, by foreknowledge he looked down and He saw
everyone that would accept It. And then by doing so, He said, “To save that,
the only way I can do it, will be come down Myself and be made flesh and take
the sin of a man upon Him, and die for him, that I might be the One that’s
worshipped,” because He is God, the object of worship. (End quote)
QUOTE: ADOPTION, PAGE 70-71, “And he made creatures, and
creatures fell. And then God, by His infinite-cy, looked down through the stream
of time and saw every man that would be saved. Every man, He knew it by
fore-…..by foreknowledge. Therefore if He, by foreknowledge knew who would be
saved and who would not be saved, He could predestinate.
The word is not such a bad word after all, is it? He could predestinate, because
He knew who would and who would not. Therefore, in order to catch those who
would, He had to make a—a propitiation for their sin. Oh, if we can, we want
to get to it, just a few verses below. He predestinated us to Eternal Life,
knowing that those who would lay aside everything, and no matter how indifferent
it would look towards the children of the world, it wouldn’t mean one thing to
them, because they were children of God. And He called them.” (End quote)
The purpose of our sermon is to merge man’s responsibility with God’s
choice of some for Salvation and some for damnation, so that one doctrine does
not contradict the other. For as we have before said, both doctrines are
scriptural and the cogs of one will mesh with the others to keep God’s
scriptural machinery running smoothly. May the Lord help us now as we try and
bring the two together.
MAN’S
PART
And
GOD’S
PART
First, we know that man’s Salvation started in the mind of God, not the
mind of man. John 6:44, “No man
can come to God, unless He be drawn by God’s spirit.” So then, man’s
responsibility does not start until God has called him. We call that conviction,
but even then some will not come and repent. Never-the-less, from that point on
man is responsible! “Many are called
but few are chosen.” (Mat. 20:16) Few are chosen because only a few answer
the call of conviction. The simple truth is that God, who knows the end from the
beginning, knew the final decision of us all, and therefore could righteously
elect to Salvation, or commit to damnation,
all based on man’s own choice! Man is responsible! God is responsible to call
all men, which He has done, and will do. He would not that any be lost. He is no
respecter of persons in the matter of Salvation. As the Prophet said, “He
looked down and saw everyone that would accept it.” Then, is He unrighteous
when He elects some and rejects others? Not at all! He receives those who receive Him and
rejects those who reject Him, and from before Creation, He knew who was who. So,
we see that God’s sovereign will is in force. Because He wanted all men to be
saved, He calls all men. At the same time, He leaves man’s free-moral agency
intact in that He abides by man’s own decision to accept or reject Salvation.
In Rom. 9:16, when the Scripture says Election is, “not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth,” it is
referring to the fact that man cannot come until God calls him! It is not saying
that man has no say at all about His Salvation! Other Scriptures that say man
must choose cannot be disregarded! In Rom. 9:21, where the question is
asked, “Hath not the potter power over
the clay to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor,” we must
understand that the power to do one or the other is only exercised after God has watched man’s final decision. Then He exerts His
power and sees that each person’s choice becomes a reality. There is a false understanding about predestination, which
is to accuse God of ignoring man’s right to choose, and electing some for
Heaven and some to Hell with out cause. Some have thought that, “God is God
and He does whatever He wants to do!” This is true in one sense, but false in
another, for “The Judge of all the
earth never does anything but right.” (Gen. 18:25)
QUOTE: JEHOVAH JIREH-PART II, PAGE 78-79, “Now, there’s a
doctrine of predestination which is rotten, nonsense. But there really is a true
predestination. God, by foreknowledge, could predestinate because He has
foreknowledge. God is not willing that any should perish, but, being the
infinite God, knew that who would perish and who would not.
That’s the reason He said before Isaac or—or…before Jacob or Esau
was born, He hated Esau and loved Jacob. His foreknowledge let Him know that
Esau was a shyster, and He let Him know that Jacob respected that birthright;
regardless of how he got it, he wanted it. Now, both boys, twins, born from the
same holy mother and father, but one was a renegade and the other was a—a
believer. Now God, by His foreknowledge, knew that.
Now, God, by foreknowledge, He—He doesn’t set His
business like…You wouldn’t do your business that way, on a loose-leaf like
that. God knew, by foreknowledge, who would be saved, so He sent Jesus to catch
those who He foresaw would be saved. Read Ephesians, the 1st chapter,
and you’ll see it. See? Now, there.” (End quote)
And so, we conclude our case for God by saying that He is truly in
control (sovereign) and also that man, in the final end, will have chosen his
own destiny, Heaven or Hell! Rom. 14:12, “So
then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.” Mat. 13:15,
“For this people’s heart is waxed
gross and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed.”
But, “He that commeth to Me I will in
no wise cast out.” (John 6:37) Amen!