From Gary.... Beyond GENIUS

Last week I watched an old Johnny Carson tonight show re-run.  He was fantastic; his ability to "draw out" even the most shy individual was amazing.  When you couple his efforts with his sidekick Ed McMahon, you get an unbeatable combination.  Ed was a former carnival barker and had a way with words that I have always admired.  He just had a way of phrasing things that made them memorable!!!  So, when I saw the topmost picture today- naturally I liked it!!!  Frankly, it was a bit difficult to read the sentence, but when I did- WOW- What a MOUTHFUL!!! Then, when I learned that it had a incremental progression to it- honestly, I was blown away!!!  So much so that I sat down and tried to make one of these sentences myself.  Don't try it-- It gave me a HEADACHE!!!!  So, I am forced to agree with the author of the top picture- Whoever did this WAS A GENIUS!!!  Then, I saw the second picture and put the two together (and YES, the percentages add up to 100%) and asked myself... Is there anything that a bona fide genius couldn't figure out???  The answer came in the form of a question (verse 9) and that was encapsulated within the following passage from the book of Paul's letter to the Corinthians... 

1 Corinthians, Chapter 2

 1 When I came to you, brothers, I didn’t come with excellence of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God.  2 For I determined not to know anything among you, except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.  3 I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling.  4 My speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,  5 that your faith wouldn’t stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.  6 We speak wisdom, however, among those who are full grown; yet a wisdom not of this world, nor of the rulers of this world, who are coming to nothing.  7 But we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the wisdom that has been hidden, which God foreordained before the worlds for our glory,  8 which none of the rulers of this world has known. For had they known it, they wouldn’t have crucified the Lord of glory.  9 But as it is written, 

“Things which an eye didn’t see, and an ear didn’t hear, which didn’t enter into the heart of man, these God has prepared for those who love him.”

I consider Paul a genius- his insights into the Old Testament and revelations about God in the New are amazing.  When you combine this with the humility that he exhibits in this passage, you have one extraordinary individual.  Genius fits him!!!  Yet, he teaches us that what God knows is beyond our comprehension and would never even enter our minds!!!  And the topic that this applies to is one of the most basic of the human experience.  From the moment we come into this world, we are loved.  First by parents and family, then by others we gradually come in contact with over the course of our lives.  We think we know love, but the love of God is greater- and the blessings HE has in store for us is unfathomable!!! How does one think about these things and NOT be humbled.  Or perhaps you carry the same card as the character below???

Oh yes, one more thing....

From Bill Dayton... Baptism...Before or After Conversion?

Baptism...Before or After Conversion?

Ministers of the Gospel have been accused of over emphasizing the part baptism plays in the salvation of sinners. In view of what the Bible teaches, how is this possible?

 

There are five passages in the New Testament which mention both baptism and salvation in the same verse (Mark 16:16; Acts 2:38; Rom. 6:4; Acts 22:16; 1 Peter 3:21).

In all of these passages, water baptism precedes the remission of sins. Do you know of a passage where the order is reversed?

Mark 16:16 contains two conditions for salvation: faith and baptism. It also contains the conditions for damnation: a lack of faith. If you want to know what you must do to be lost, it will tell you -- all that is necessary is a lack of faith. If you want to know what to do to be saved from your past sins -- it commands you to believe and be baptized.

In Acts 2:38 Peter told a group of believers to "repent, and let everyone of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins." Our Baptistfriends often focus on the word "for" in this passage and insist it means "because of," even though it is never translated that way in any reputable translation of the Bible. We have to remind them that if baptism is "because of" the remission of sins, then so is repentance. Baptism and repentance are joined by the little word "and." Whatever one is "for" the other is "for."

After we are buried with Christ in baptism, we are raised to walk in a newness of life (Romans 6:1-4). This new life comes after baptism in water. Many preachers want to "bury" the "new man," since they claim the newness of life comes before our "burial."

Three days after the Lord appeared to Saul of Tarsus, Ananias told Saul to "arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins" (Acts 22:16). Many preachers today claim Saul was saved three days before Ananias met him. Ananias must not have known it, for he told Saul how to "wash away" his sins. If Saul had been saved on the road as some preachers claim, he must have been the most miserable saved man in the Bible. Saul was blind and spent three days praying and fasting until Ananias arrived.

1 Peter 3:21 states "baptism does also now save us." However, baptism is not the only condition for the salvation of the alien sinner. Other requirements must be met, like faith, repentance and love. I do not know of anything "alone" that will save a sinner, not even faith (James 2:24).

The Owenton church of Christ desires to “Restore Once More” New Testament Christianity. The only way that is “speak where the Bible speaks and be silent where silent.”

Until He Comes….Bill 

From Jim McGuiggan... The Calvinistic composer

The Calvinistic composer

Once upon a time, so the story goes, there was a wondrous and creative composer whose heart was filled to the brim and flowing over with beautiful music; music so beautiful that he felt he couldn't keep it to himself so he purposed a grand planetary concert during which he would play his music to gathered billions whom he would create.

Since the music rose from nowhere but himself, when he shared it with others he was sharing himself and, they, when they gloried in it were glorying in the composer.

But there was something odd about the composer for although he was said to be gracious without limit and though his music would fill a thousand creations and countless hearts with splendour, he chose, so the story-tellers say, to limit his grace and his music and the joy of his person to a tiny minority.

It wasn't that he purposed to create only one thousand listeners who would rejoice in his music. No, he didn't choose to limit himself in thatway. Instead he chose to fill the vast planetary theatre with millions of people and he would see to it that the vast majority of them would be born completely and utterly deaf. He said to himself, "I will see to it that millions will never be able—ever!—to hear and rejoice in me or my music; not a note of it! I purpose it and I will bring it about that when they enter the world at birth they will be permanently disabled so that they cannot even want to hear my music or rejoice in me; I will arrange it and bring it about that they will not want to sing or dance or rejoice; I will arrange it and inexorably bring it about that they will be incapable of really hearing my music and my love songs. I will so arrange it that it isn't that they will be able to truly hear my music and dislike it—they will not even be able to hear it so they won't be able to express an opinion on it one way or another."

And yet, the wondrous composer of this story, so the story-tellers tell, when the concert is ended will gather all the stone-deaf, all those he ensured would be and remain stone-deaf from birth—he will gather them all together and send them to eternal torture cells because they didn't rejoice in the music he played.

It's a bizarre story but one that these story-tellers say they learned from the composer. But it would be more charitable to think that such a composer was mad than to believe he was coldly logical and heartless. Many who listened to this story could make no sense of it—even within the terms of the story! They wondered, since the aim was to sound out the glory and beauty of the composer as it could be heard in the sound of music, why he created the majority of the vast audience incapable of hearing it. That is, they didn't just "happen" to be stone-deaf, the composer saw to it that they were born that way. It wasn't that they became stone-deaf at some point during the concert; the composer saw to it that they were stone-deaf when he brought them there; prior to the concert he had it arranged that they would be incapable of rejoicing. It wasn't that they truly heard the music for a while and despised it; no, the composer arranged it that they nevertruly heard a note!

During the concert one of those who could hear turns to one born stone-deaf and says, "Isn't the music wonderful?" Of course he gets no response.

One of his hearing colleagues reminds him, "The composer saw to it that he's stone-deaf, he can't hear the music."

"Yes, but the music is so beautiful only a Philistine could despise it, so if this person doesn't appreciate it it's clear he's unworthy of it."

 "His lack of appreciation for it is not a mark of his Philistine character, it's due to the fact that he was born deaf and is even now deaf. He didn't choose to be deaf and he certainly hasn't made a choice to despise this wondrous music."

"Yes, but if the composer wants him to hear it and…"

"But that's precisely the point, my fellow-hearer; the composer doesn't want him to hear it. He purposed and accomplished his purpose when this fellow was born and remains deaf. This man is deaf because the composer wanted him to be deaf!"

"But the composer is playing the music in his presence; he must want him to hear."

"You're mistaken. You clearly don't understand the composer at all. Those the composer wants to hear he makes them to hear—he gives them the capacity to hear. He's playing the music in the presence of this man but he doesn't really want him to hear. He might as well be playing to the chairs we're sitting in as play to that man. The chairs are no more deaf than he is."

"Surely you're wrong. What would be the point of saying he wants to be glorified in his music and then he ensures that most of the people present can't hear his music?"

"He wants to be glorified only in a minority."

"Yes, but why didn't he just create the minority? If he only wanted to be glorified in his music in a minority why would he create a vast majority stone-deaf in whom he can't be glorified?"

"He can be glorified in eternally torturing them for despising his music!"

"But you just said they didn't despise his music because the composer had made sure they couldn't really hear it."

"Yes, I know I did but you mustn't press me with 'alien logic'."

"Yes, but when I said the composer wanted them to hear and rejoice in his music you said he didn't want them to hear it and that's why he arranged for them to be born permanently deaf."

"Yes, I know I did but he does want them to hear though he doesn't want them to really hear."

"But how can he want them to hear when he really doesn't want them to hear, when he saw to it that they can't hear?"

"Now you can't force me into a dilemma like that using 'alien logic'. The composer could like to have one thing but want something else more. So he could want everyone to hear but want even more that only a small minority will actually hear."

"But how could he want everyone to hear when he deliberately made it impossible for everyone to hear and when he did it because that's what he eternally purposed to do? These people can't hear because the composer didn't want them to hear, they might as well be wooden chairs, you said, and now you tell me he wants them to hear. How can he really want them to hear if he arranged it that they would be born 'wooden chairs'?"

"Ah, there you go with that 'alien logic' again. Let's just accept the fact that it's all a great mystery, inscrutable in fact, and though the composer has destined the vast majority of humanity to eternal torture because like Philistines they despise his music let us rejoice that he has given us hearing. He is so wonderfully gracious."

"But…"

"Shush, isn't this music simply wondrous?"

©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.

Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.

From Jim McGuiggan... ONCE SAVED ALWAYS SAVED (3)

ONCE SAVED ALWAYS SAVED (3)

The “once saved always saved” doctrine does not rest on some texts like John 10:28 which says Christ’s sheep will never perish or be plucked out of Jesus’ protection. Certainly the text is used to support the doctrine but the arguments go on about the identity of his sheep (they are those who continue to hear his voice and follow him) and if “sheep” (a metaphor for a follower) can cease to be what the metaphor stands for.

No, the “once saved always saved doctrine” is one essential element in a theological construct and system. Joseph Henry Meeter taught the system for more than thirty years and insisted that you either take the entire Calvinistic system or you reject it all. He was absolutely right!

The teachers of “once saved always saved” teach it because they believe other things that compel them to believe “once saved always saved”.

Here’s how it works as seen in people like Augustine, Calvin and their modern popular students like Piper.

Since it’s the very essence of “Godship” that nothing…nothing…nothing outside himself in any way shapes his will and purpose then salvation and damnation have nothing whatever to do with humans and how they might or do respond to God. Their destiny is already fixed before ever they were created.

[If a man fathered a large number of children purposing to bless and protect a few and push the rest out on to the prolonged misery of the street, and then in fact carried out his purpose, we’d despise him for the villain he is.] It’s hardly surprising, then, that it’s only when they’re pressed that Calvin and his followers talk about what they say God did and is doing to multiple billions of humans whose fate he changelessly decided and sealed without their knowledge and completely apart from anything they would think or do (WC, 6). In Calvinism, of course, people only think and do what God foreordained that they think and do.

These Calvinists want to stress how “gracious” God is to give some humans eternal life and blessedness despite the fact that he is arbitrarily graceless to countless of their fellows. It’s a bit like praising the father mentioned above as “gracious” even though he ordains and damns the majority of his helpless children to lifelong misery. Oh well.

But that is the essential prologue to the main agenda. The main Calvinistic agenda deals with an existing sinful human family that is in dire need of salvation. How does it come that the human family is sinful and commits an endless stream of specific sins? The Calvinistic answer is that God foreordained it. The Westminster Confession (3.1) puts it like this: 

“God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.”

Choke on that for a while. God unchangeably foreordained whatever comes to pass so he unchangeably foreordained human sin. It isn’t that he merely knew that we would sin and acted in response to his foreknowledge—he foreknew we would because he foreordained that we would. Here’s how the Westminster Confession puts it:

“Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions; yet has He not decreed anything because He foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions.”

God unchangeably ordained Adam and Eve to sin before they were created and what he willed he brought to pass. Because Adam and Eve were the root of humanity we’re told that God imputed “the guilt of this sin” to the entire human family.

But more than “guilt” was involved. We’re told that in that sin Adam became morally corrupt and that that moral corruption is passed on to all humans in and at their birth. The ethical and moral corruption is so pervasive and imbedded that when we are born “we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil.” (Westminster Confession, Chapter 6)

It is from this original corruption that all specific sins proceed (WC) but since we were born spiritually dead in Adam’s sin and since we inherited a nature so corrupt that we are opposite to all that’s good and entirely inclined to all that’s evil, everything—without exception—we do or choose or think is corrupt and sinful.

A human family like that is in dire need of saving and cannot even think of wanting to be right with God. God decided to bring the human family into existence via Adam, decided that it should fall in Adam, decided that it should be guilty by Adam’s sin, decided that it should be absolutely corrupted via Adam so that it could want no good thing and want only evil.

Out of those sinful billions he would create, God purposed to give the gift of eternal life to some and eternally torture the rest. But how could he give eternal life to corrupt and impenitent lovers of evil who had “earned” nothing but destruction and eternal misery? If they were to be brought to eternal salvation and life their “guilt” would have to be taken care of (enter penal substitution). But their guilt couldn’t be obliterated if they remained in utter evil, holding God in contempt and since they couldn’t and wouldn’t change themselves God would have to do it. That’s where “prevenient grace” enters. God extends prevenient grace to that lucky group he elected before he created the world and it is such grace that it cannot be resisted. (In the T.U.L.I.P acronym that summarizes Calvinism it is called “irresistible grace”.)

God’s grace has to be irresistible here because otherwise no one will receive it because they’re incapable of receiving it. So if it isn’t irresistible no one would be saved. But if this saving grace is irresistible then the one God moves on will come to Jesus, he will be made to love Jesus; when God does to him what he does, the person will want to love Jesus.

It’s clear from this teaching that in some way God can make a person love Jesus without violating his humanness or over-riding his capacity to choose. [Of course, if he could do it for one he could do it for all his human children. Why would he not do it for all of them? Many have told me that God doesn’t “owe” anyone anything and if he chooses not to be gracious to us all that’s his right. They say there’s nothing “unjust” about it since we’ve all “earned” damnation and he is gracious to allow any of us in. I take it then that if he had chosen to show grace to none of us we should still think him to be a gracious God. Oh well; I suppose that’ll satisfy some people.]

Meanwhile, back at God’s saving purpose. We’re told, since God unchangeably ordained to bring some sinners to eternal life with himself and had Jesus come to die for that very purpose and since God’s unchangeable will cannot be thwarted those he set his grace on will come to him and will gain eternal life that issues in glory and immortality.

This means that a person whom God has set his grace on before the world began cannot resist that grace either in coming to him or staying with him. He cannot keep from being saved and he cannot so act as to be finally lost. If he could keep from being saved when God wanted him saved then God is not truly Almighty God. If Jesus died for a specific number of “elect” (WC: 3.4) on whom God set his grace before the world began we can’t have one of them defying God and succeeding to be lost. If Jesus died to take all the elect to glory and immortality we cannot have some of them thwarting God by finally missing it.

So in working with the “once saved always saved” doctrine it isn’t just a matter of arguing about certain specific texts.

(To be continued, God enabling.)

©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.

Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.

From Jim McGuiggan... ONCE SAVED ALWAYS SAVED (2)

ONCE SAVED ALWAYS SAVED (2)

There are those who teach that once a person is saved that it is literally impossible for him, under any circumstances, to be lost.

These people insist that the moment a person becomes a Christian he is saved because in that moment he became united to Jesus by faith. They rightly insist that salvation cannot exist apart from a relationship with Jesus because he and he alone is the Saviour—we do not save ourselves! They insist, of course, that faith is essential to that relationship with Jesus though faith doesn’t earn the relationship; the relationship and the life that comes with it is a free gift of God. So far so good!

Since Jesus alone is the Saviour and true faith is essential to a saving relationship with Christ it follows that if once the person is saved he cannot possibly be lost it must mean he cannot possibly cease to have true faith (ongoing faith) because if true faith doesn’t exist there can be no relationship with the Saviour. [Calvin himself insisted on this in the bluntest fashion.]

So, to be saved one must be saved in relationship with Jesus.

    True faith is essential to that saving relationship with Jesus.

    So, if once saved it is impossible to be lost, then true faith in Jesus can

    never cease to exist because without it you can’t be saved.

    To be saved you have to have true faith in Jesus—it is indispensable.

    If you are saved you must have true faith in Jesus.

Therefore if you are always saved you must always be a true believer.

This means that “once saved always saved” means “once a true   

 believer always a true believer”.

Of course this flies in the face not only of texts and sections of scripture but it flies in the face of what we’ve all seen in life when people who were devout Christians turned back to the world and now hold God in contempt and live degenerate lives without apology.

The response to that by the “once saved always saved” school is that such people never truly believed or that that is a passing phase and that they will turn back to God before they die.

But that doesn’t work! Remember that “once saved always saved” requires “once a true believer always a true believer”. To say that someone who was a devout servant of God could later live for years in contempt for God and in degeneracy and still be saved during while living that way would require that he is still a true believer while he impenitently holds God in contempt and rejoices in immorality and cruelty.

No one with a Bible in his hand would say such a thing unless he was married to a theory that demands it of him. [Some consistent Calvinists did and were branded as antinomian heretics for doing it.]

The upshot of the doctrine of “once saved always saved” is that we should be compelled to admit that an outright moral villain is still saved and is still a true believer even while he rejoices in evil and contempt for God and his ways.

There are some who hold the doctrine and see that that won’t work so they plainly tell us that such a person was never saved and was never a true believer to begin with.

This introduces a problem Calvin was never able to solve. Here we have two people, both prayerful, kind, compassionate, generous, patient, forgiving, honest and just, church-attending, family loving and always praising God for his saving grace.

One is said to be a true believer and the other a counterfeit—a fake! And how do you know that? Because one has plainly turned to a life of profound wickedness and unbelief and cannot possibly be saved! But what if he had really been a true believer and under the onslaught of life, ill-health, bereavement and weakness to temptation he turned from faith? We’re told that wouldn’t be possible because a true believer is saved and “once saved always saved”. We’re told that the man never really turned from God because he had never truly turned to God in the first place and when we ask how they know that we’re told once you’re saved you’re always saved and once you’ve truly believed you always truly believe.

This means you wipe out the previous thirty years of devotion, sacrifice, compassion, kindness, patience and fervent prayers of the now fallen-away person and call it all a satanic counterfeit to true faith. It takes nerve to do that when you're preaching week after week after week, year in and year out to people who show absolutely none of the depth of compassion, sacrifice and service in Jesus' name shown in the past by the one who has now fallen away.

But it gets worse! We could tell no difference between the two for both their lives were exemplary and led others to honour God and we were told we only know that one was all along a satanic counterfeit when he folded under great pressure. Had we asked him before he fell-away did he love God and did he seek to please him in all he did, the fallen-away one would gladly swear if needed that that was all he had in his heart. In his joy-filled service for God and his fellow-man he had no idea that one day he would fragment and spiral down to faithlessness.

What then of the one not yet fallen; what of the one who feels as the fallen one felt? Is his faith true? Is he really saved? Is he, unknown to himself, a satanic counterfeit? Even if his life doesn’t descend into open degeneracy—only into a loss of caring, weariness with God’s service, bitterness toward his fellow-Christians—might he not be a counterfeit without his knowing it? His fellow-servant and fellow-worshipper was a fake without his knowing it. All along the now fallen one thought he was saved but all along he was in fact an unbeliever while thinking he was a true believer. How do we know that isn't the case with the one presently still standing?

Calvin admits this is a great problem and is never able to deal with it. In fact, Macleod Campbell, author of the rightly famed The Nature of the Atonement was driven to write his book because of this very problem. His devout parishioners were mortally afraid that while they thought themselves true and saved they might in fact he false and unsaved and they’d never know it and he wrote to console and strengthen them. Yes, but what about how they felt and acted and believed—was that not proof enough that they were saved? Calvin and his followers confessed that the experience of “the apostates” (who in fact all along never belonged to God) was the same as the elect of God so there is no comfort in what your heart and practice told you. You might still have been passed over in God's eternal decrees, you might still be one of those positively destined by God for eternal torment even while you live a lovely life.

How’s it possible that the “once saved always saved” doctrine which was supposed to generate assurance generated so much fear and worry? What led John Piper to say to people that they’re not to worry that God might not love them with saving love because they had no good reason to believe that? He didn’t offer each individual assurance that God loved them because he doesn’t believe there are any such scriptures. The best he could do was to say that they had no good reason to believe God didn't love them. Yes, but neither did the one who fell away after years of devoted service to God.

Piper believes that God eternally purposed to save some humans out of multiplied billions and that he set his love on them and foreordained the rest to eternal torture for no other reason than it pleased him to do it. I’ve met a few“once saved always saved” people who when pressed on how they knew they were part of “the elect” kept saying they just knew. That’s what the young Momon people tell me when I ask them how they know God’s Spirit told them that Mormonism was true. When asked how they know it was God’s Spirit they just keep saying they “just know”.

That’s why people worry that they might not be loved by God no matter how they have responded to the Gospel. Their response might all be satanic delusion as surely as the “fallen away” one's was satanic. 

To hold on to a doctrinal system the “once saved always saved” teachers insist that you can live for years in what has all the signs of a gallant obedience of faith and service and it be a satanic con. This school is supposed to proclaim the profound assurance of the true believer when in fact it leaves us unable to know what a true believer is.

How did all this hurtful silliness take hold? It took hold because Augustine had an argument with Pelagius and set the pattern for thought in this area. It took hold because Calvin and Luther followed Augustine when they fought the worst face of Catholicism’s “works” doctrine and because of the Dominican John Tetzel’s blasphemous “indulgence” sales that brought money into the papal treasury.

When the smoke cleared we were saddled with a twisted Reformed doctrine of “election” and the claim that God has made it impossible for true believers to turn away. [The other side of that Reformed coin teaches that God has made it impossible for humans to turn to him unless they’re the ones lucky enough to have been chosen in eternity to be given God’s saving love and grace.]

[To be continued, God enabling.]

©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.

Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.

From Jim McGuiggan... It isn't God we question!

It isn't God we question!

 Hard-line Calvinists insist on embracing what looks like opposing truths and chide people for trying to work them out rationally and logically in the light of scripture. "Clay has no right to question the Potter," they say, as if they were using the imagery in the same way Paul used it in Romans 9. But having chided others for working with apparently contradictory claims they themselves go to extraordinary lengths to make their proposals appear rational and logical and morally beautiful. You see this every time one of them "picks up his pen". They profess they're only interested in proclaiming what the Bible teaches and then they go on to attempt to show their "biblical" views are rational and logical.

One Calvinist tells me that what keeps him in good temper and on an even keel is that God saves us whether we're Calvinist or Arminian. There's the consolation—we're saved! The fact that on Calvinist terms God has created billions for lifelong misery in this life and eternal torture after judgment doesn't rock his boat or disturb his equanimity.

We'd jump up in protest if someone were accusing a mere friend of ours of consciously putting some poor soul in a no win situation that must end in prolonged misery! We'd demand proof of the highest order to support the accusation and if we got it we'd go deal with our friend, hoping to bring him to his senses. And are we to respond with "friendly jibes" at some coffee-house Areopagus when God is saddled with such conduct? In the face of the (alleged) truth that because it pleased and glorified him God created billions of humans and put them in a no win situation we're all to smile and be happy that he saves the Arminians and Calvinists and purposely damns entire nations, generation after generation?

The no win situation isn't created by humans—sinful or otherwise! We're told that it was God alone who purposed it and brought it about and sustains it. Why are humans sinners? Why do they love sin? Why do they act sinfully? How does it come that they came to be sinners who loved their sin? Gordon H. Clark (Religion, Reason & Revelation, 238) makes no bones about it. He asks if Calvinism "makes God the cause and author of sin?" and answers: "Let it be unequivocally said that this view certainly makes God the cause and author of sin." [Whatever is to be said about Clark's views, you almost always knew where he stood. These others who like to run with the hares and hunt with the dogs and smile while they talk about billions who inherit damnation are an entirely different breed.]

Clark insists that we're responsible for our sins and therefore deserve eternal conscious torture at God's hands. We might think that we are responsible on the basis of our free will, our knowledge of God's will and our choice to reject it. Not a bit of it! Using Romans 5:17, 19, he insists (page 231) that "our responsibility is not ultimately based on our choice at all." And what's more, so you know that I'm not misunderstanding him, he offers this (page 222) under the heading of the will of God: "I wish very frankly and pointedly to assert that if a man gets drunk and shoots his family, it was the will of God that he should do so." So there we have it:

God is the cause and author of sin!

If a man sexually abuses his child for years, it was God's will that he do it.

Such a man deserves eternal torture but not because he chose to sexually ravage his child because God ordained in eternity that he should do it. 

Clark doesn't mean that God used an already wicked man to do the wicked things he chooses to do, things that God will use to further hisredemptive purposes; no! Clark means that God eternally purposed this man to be wicked, brought it about and is the author of the man's sin. "There was never the remotest possibility that something different could have happened," says Clark (238) of any historical event because God authored and arranged them all so that they would happen.

If you want to see what running with the hares and hunting with the dogs means, take a look at John Piper's attempt to sidestep his hard-line Calvinism in the matter of infant damnation. It turns out that all dying infants are saved (apart from faith and the new birth) because they're not capable of hearing and rejecting the will of God. He tells us they're born corrupt in sin, alienated from God, spiritually cut off and then die without faith but they're saved because of John 9:41. Absolutely marvellous! [http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Articles/ByDate/2006/1622_What_happens_to_infants_who_die/]

His congregational colleagues say that the death of an infant is "a sensitive thing" so they skate all over the place trying vainly to offer hope for dying infants, despite their Calvinism which consigns them to hell (as John Calvin himself stated). In the end they confess they can't offer assurance of salvation to all dying infants. They end up passing the buck to Piper who, since it is a sensitive matter [do you tell broken-hearted parents their dead baby has gone/will go to hell?], makes eternal lostness conditional—something he elsewhere flatly denies! It's a good political move for congregational leaders since it removes the offence of a barbaric doctrine at a point where its offence is more obviously felt.

But what makes the death of a child "sensitive" in this area? A little child is incapable of obeying God's will not, says Calvinism, because it is mentally incapacitated but because first and foremost God eternally ordained that it would be incapable! According to Calvinism its mentalinability has nothing to do with the baby's inability to obey God—that's a secondary issue and Piper and his colleagues know it.  (That's why Piper's congregational colleagues look for (alleged) "exceptions" like John the Baptist and David.) But babies are no more incapable of obeying God than adults because the adults that once were babies were rendered incapable by God at conception and God saw to it that they remained that way. Calvinism says God predestinated every single human—baby or adult—to moral and spiritual corruption, rendering them incapable of obedience to God. Piper and his colleagues believe and teach this and then talk about the death of a child being a sensitive matter so they skate around their doctrine looking for loopholes!

The predestinated moral corruption and death of any human is a "sensitive" matter. Calvinists cover the barbarism of their doctrine by the fact that humans are very sinful and so "they deserve eternal torture"! But that's a shrewd manoeuvre! It's shrewd and masks the doctrine because according to Calvinism God who cannot be resisted planned and brought about the sinfulness of humans. So when he tortures them eternally he does so because humans were what he irresistibly made them to be.

John Piper insists that God irresistibly ordained every single human to be morally blind, deaf and paralysed and then writes a book calledWhat Jesus Demands From the World. Is that not astonishing? He's running with the hares and hunting with the dogs.

All this they say and then skate all over creation trying to make it look morally Christ-like and in the same breath claiming we're clay and God's the potter so we have no right to question him. And, perhaps what makes me cringe more than anything else—they go on and on and on about God's holy generosity and grace! This is how they respond to the stupidity of the worst face of Arminianism that has believers shaking in their shoes about whether they're saved or not and damns people without hope who were unlucky enough to be born in the wrong part of the world! Click here.

It isn't God we question!

These aren't issues to be discussed with light hearts and "friendly jibes" in a coffee-house Areopagus where the disputants can cross textual swords and admire one another's dexterity and erudition. [The thought of it makes you want to wretch!]

He was talking about people with the sovereign power to do it, people who ordained others to lifelong slavery, who so arranged things that the children and grandchildren of those under their power were born into the same misery—he was talking about that entire situation when he said:

I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen;—but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch— AND I WILL BE HEARD. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead.  William Lloyd Garrison (American abolitionist, journalist and social reformer, December 12, 1805 –May 24, 1879)

©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.

Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.