Category: Evangelism

I Timothy 2:3 it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

II Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient towards you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

Ephesians 1:11 In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will…

If God is not willing that any should perish (any understood to be all men without exception) (II Peter 3:9) then how is it possible that he works all things after the counsel of his will (Eph. 1:11?) For if he does work all things after the counsel of his will, and some men perish, then it is obvious that he willed that those who perish would indeed perish. After all, those perishing people are not perishing apart from God’s design if the Scripture is true that God works all things after the counsel of his will.

If God desires all men to be saved (i.e. all men without exception) (I Tim. 2:3) and yet all men are not saved, then how is it that he works all things after the counsel of his will? For if he does work all things after the counsel of his will, and all men are not saved, then it is obvious that he willed that those who are not saved should not be saved.

Arminians, like Dave Hunt in his book “What Love is This?” either has not considered the contradiction inherent in his affirmations, or is content to imagine that God and his Word are self contradictory. But there is no contradiction. One need only note to whom the epistle or Peter is written and understand that the Timothy passage is dealing with distinctions, not the absence of exceptions

In the Timothy passage the passage follows the Titus pattern. Paul has said that prayers are to be made for all men. He then goes on to restrict that meaning to ‘Kings and those in authority.’ As Paul narrows the definition of ‘all’ down it is evident that he desires prayer for all classes or types of people. Without such a restriction some Arminian or Lutheran literalist might have prayed for dead people since the word ‘all’ was not restricted by the word ‘living.’ In this context Paul says God desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. The context requires us to see the word ‘all’ as being restricted in the second instance just as it was in the first instance. God desires all categories of men to be saved just as he desired the believers to pray for all categories of men.

Secondly, to take this passage the way Arminians/Lutherans take it is to prove too much. If God desires all men to be saved then all men will be saved since God sits in heaven above and does whatever he pleases. Or do Arminians / Lutherans teach that God sits in heaven above doing whatever he pleases except when man informs God to, ‘buzz off’ when he desires to save him?

Concerning the Peter passage Peter writes that the Lord is longsuffering towards ‘US’. Who is the ‘US’ that Peter refers to? Obviously it is the covenant believing community. So when Peter immediately then says that “The Lord is not willing that any should perish,” it is obvious that the reference remains the believing community. God is not willing that any of His elect should perish. Hence,

John 6:39 And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.

Assist — Mark Chambers

“For He inflicts pain, and gives relief; He wounds, and His hands also heal.” Job 5:18

“Come let us return to the Lord,
For He has torn, but He will heal us;
He has stricken, but He will bind us up…” Hosea 6:1

******,

I am desperately sorry and grieved over all the terror your daughter and your family has gone through. It breaks my heart to think that a child would have to go through what your daughter has gone through.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I walk by faith as much as the next person. All I know is that when I read the Scriptures I see in Job someone who went through and experienced unimaginable suffering and the only explanation that he received is that “God is sovereign, and as the Creator He does not owe explanation to a demanding creature.” I believe that is true.

I also see in Genesis after all the trials that Joseph went through (beat by Brothers, sold as a slave, falsely accused of rape, thrown in the most disgustingly imaginable prison though innocent) Joseph tells his brothers,

“You intended your treatment against me for evil but God intended it for good.”

From this I learn that your daughters rapist intended all that he did for evil, while God intended it for good. Ask me what good there is in any of this and my answer is … “I don’t know.” I must take it on faith, just as I took all the many extreme physical abuses I received as a child as the abuser intending it for evil but God intending it for good. However, if you had asked Joseph the same question when he was languishing in Prison he would not have had any answer either in terms of how it was at that point “good.” He had to take the matter on faith as well. As God’s silver we seldom see the end when we are in the refiner’s fire.

If I flee from Christ because of my disappointments, anger,and bitterness over what He has providentially ordained where do I turn to find meaning in life? I find no meaning and nothing but more disappointment, anger, and bitterness. I am the clay. Can I ask the potter, “Why have you made me this way”?

Instead I choose to believe that those uglinesses and tragedies that have come into my life, and do come into my life, come into my life through the hand of a God who is good all the time and from a Father who loves me so much that He ordained that His Son would suffer my eternal deservings that I might not be eternally condemned. The reality of forgiveness and the gift of eternal life causes all other real hurts in my life to seem inconsequential in comparison.

I do not have the ultimate final answer to the problem of evil. I do not know why God ordained your daughter’s rape. I know God is good. I know that evil is real. And I know that God has a morally sufficient reason to have ordained these matters that I am not yet aware of. If I leave him, where would I go for he alone has the words of Eternal life?

I prayed for you and your family in our long Pastoral prayer Sunday *****. I’ve prayed for you and your daughter before I sent this. It is my earnest prayer that all of you will find not only emotional healing but that you will discover in the dark night of your soul that Christ alone is the only place where real comfort can be found.

As one pilgrim to another making our way to the Heavenly land,

Bret

“… [T]he anti-Jewish rhetoric that mars several books of the Christian New Testament has been shown to reflect not historical fact but the rivalry at the time the books were written between Jews who followed Jesus and those who did not…Although it is supposedly motivated by love for the Jews, this idea [that Jews should be converted] is inherently anti-Semitic in that it implicitly denigrates the value of Jewish belief.”

Abe Foxman,
Never Again? The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism

“I had read a position paper prepared for the (Lausane III) conference by high-level evangelical leaders. They rejected the church’s historic position of giving priority to the evangelistic purpose of missions …. But my apprehension was raised a notch by the cover story of December’s “Christianity Today” magazine — “Jesus vs. Paul.”

The thesis was that a great battle rages in evangelical circles over whether the mission of the church is primarily to follow Jesus who cared for the sick, the poor, the oppressed, or whether we should primarily follow Paul with the gospel of justification, of extending the hope of eternal salvation. The author maintained that this is the major confrontation in the evangelical churches of America today.”

Robertson McQuilkin
President Emeritus CIU
Delegate Lausane III Conference

Look’s like Abe’s viewpoint is resonating among many “Christians.”

Dear Pastor,

What are your ideas regarding resolving our economic, legal and moral bankruptcies of our great republic?

Dear Roberto,

Men will not be free of their economic, legal and moral bankruptcies until they are free from their own personal bondage. Therefore the solution is to Proclaim the Transcendence and Holiness of God, so that man, by God’s grace alone, might see their rebellion and sin, so that man, by God’s grace alone, might find harbor and safety in Christ. Once man is thrown off of himself and trusts in Christ alone he can be convinced that he must have no other gods before him — gods that include the false economic god that promises prosperity apart from labor, the false political god that promises security by surrendering liberty, the false legal god that promises virtue by redefining vice.

It all begins with preaching Christ crucified.

Van Jones: We are coming for the media and that’s not all

Forget that the guy speaking is a ideological Marxist. Just listen to the video for the strategic and tactical advice that Van Jones gives. The whole “top down, bottom up, inside-out” strategy is what I’ve been insisting upon for years in terms of how Christian Reformation must come. Now, Van Jones, desires to use that same strategy to foment tyrannical revolution and I wouldn’t doubt that Van Jones includes violence but you have to admire, absent the whole call to violence angle, from a purely strategic and tactical viewpoint, the methodology he advocates for what he believes is “renewal” is fundamental.