Some profound thoughts to consider, for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.
[Books with a "®" symbol refer to "recommended reading" and are available from this ministry.]
Martin Luther was of the same mind with what I wrote in my (nearly 1,000 page) trilogy, The Sovereignty of God, Predestination, "Free Will" and the Protestant Reformation,® God and Evil,® and Does God Repent? — Can God Change His Mind?® In his, The Bondage of the Will,® Luther wrote,
“... ‘free will’ is an empty term, and God works in us both good and evil, and all that comes to pass is of mere necessity.” (p.145)
[By ‘necessity’, Luther means not by “man’s choice”, but by God having ordained it from before creation and thus it must come to pass because God has so ordered it and nothing can prevent it.]
Likewise, Gordon Clark in his Predestination® and in his God and Evil,® expressed these same sentiments, that God created both good and evil for His Purpose, and that God chooses all and that free will is non-existent.
In my trilogy I express the very same thought, in which I expound at great length, that God is utterly and Absolutely Sovereign; all that exists He created; nothing exists except that He created it (both good and evil) for His Purpose. This does not make God evil, for God is Immutable and unaffected by anything external to Himself. God is not evil for creating evil any more than He is darkness for creating darkness (and Scripture says God is Light and in Him there is no darkness at all; yet Scripture also says that God created evil and darkness).
Some, not understanding the philosophy of logic, nor Scripture, maintain that evil came about on its own. In the humanistic attempt to “rescue God from Himself and from being guilty (in fallen man’s mind) of evil” they strip Him of His Sovereignty, His Omnipotence, His Perfection, and His Goodness (and possibly His Omniscience, if they try to salvage their unsupportable case). They do not realize the implications of their rejection of the notion that God created evil, because they do not know how to think.
If evil came about on its own, and God, being Omniscient, knew that it would “happen”, but did nothing to stop it, then that is no better than if He created evil itself; it is depraved indifference and it strikes at His Holiness and His Goodness. If evil “just happened” (and if this is the case, then He is a pretty bad Creator, and not Perfect or Omnipotent) and it was not His Will, then He is not Sovereign, nor is He the Almighty, just the almost-almighty and the semi-sovereign. This means that there are things that can happen against His Will. If such is the case, then how can anyone trust God that other things that are against His Will won’t “just happen”...? and that He will not be able to keep His Word, though He has good intentions? This also strikes at His Truthfulness and even His Faithfulness.
Scripture says that all things—all things were made by Him and there was not anything made that was made except that He made it. Just because our finite minds cannot comprehend Absolute Divine Wisdom and God’s Plan, does not invalidate it. God is not limited by our ignorance. If God’s creation just “went bad” then He is not a Perfect Creator. The only solution is to accept Scripture (and not attempt futilely to “understand” God with fallen human reasoning—interpreting God’s Being and Nature according to man’s corrupt emotional thinking)—because God clearly told us what we need to know. God created good and evil. Faith that what God says that He ordained is pre-requisite to receiving greater understanding concerning why God ordained what He did. Just because our limited minds can’t comprehend how God can be both 3 and 1 at the same time, or that He never had a beginning and will have no end, or many other things, does not prevent God from so being. God is not the by-product of our thought (coherent or faulty). God does not just drift around like a vapour until some human “thinks” Him into being (and if this was the case, God would be 9 billion different ever-changing Gods, which in essence would be Hinduism).
God said that He created the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and ____ [what]... ? Good and Evil. Scripture tells us that God created this tree and put it in the very center of the garden of Eden and forbade Adam and Eve to eat of its fruit. Fruit contains seeds. Seeds are design. God created Evil. He didn’t create the tree of “the knowledge of good,” and the fruit just “went bad” on its own and some fruit turned out “good” and others turned out “evil” by mistake or some sort of “Divine Entropy.”
He created all things after the Counsel of His Own Will, for His Own Good Pleasure... that includes evil. “The LORD hath made all things for Himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil [judgment]” (Proverbs 16:4). God loved Jacob and hated Esau before either were even born, before they had done good or evil; and Scripture says “The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies” (Psalm 58:3).
[Of course the passage in Psalms is figurative, since newborns cannot speak, but it underscores the fact that all are born in sin and the wicked, having never been called out of darkness, can only continue therein.]
The bottom line is for us to trust God rather than our own fallen emotions and faulty wisdom. God is Sovereign. Man does not choose God. He chose His own before the foundation of the world. How we live merely plays out what He chose (time catching up with reality; God operates outside of time; time is external to God; God created time so we could relate to our own history). Christ Himself declared, “You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you” and that the Father had chosen us and given us to Christ before the foundation of the world. God says in His Word, “There is none that doeth good, no not one, they have all turned away, they have all gone astray, there is none that inclineth toward or seeketh after God” (sinful man may delude himself with the notion that he seeks after God, but God says that no one does on his own; and in reality, those who claim to seek after God, most often reject His Word, they reject His Self-Revelation, they reject His Being—His Sovereignty, in favor of whatever fictional “god” they want to pretend exists: the (according to man’s perverse misperceptions) “fair” god who does things the way man thinks that they should be done.
Scripture says that we are dead in our trespasses and sin (dead men don’t perform any task—at all). Christ said that no man can come unto the Father except by Him and that no man can come unto Him except the Spirit of the Father draw Him. Fetuses don’t choose to be conceived. Sheep don’t choose their shepherd. Fruit does not choose its tree. Scripture tells us, “the wind bloweth where it listeth (willeth)... so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” Christ said that every tree is known by its fruit. If a person never confesses Christ, never turns from sin and prays for forgiveness and for the Sacrifice that Christ made to be applied to his sin-debt, and continues on in his life living how he thinks “feels good” or “seems right” or “works for him” rather than how God commanded, that seems to be a clear indicator of how God chose before the foundation of the world. We are all born with a sin nature. We are all born spiritually dead. Dead men do not choose to come back to life. They are dead. Lazarus did not call and leave a message with the front desk and ask Christ to give him a wake-up call in 3 days to give him a chance to get some rest.
Christ frequently said, he that has eyes to see and ears to ear... let him see and hear... Most people misunderstand this because they have thrown out the Old Testament. “The New is in the Old Contained, the Old is in the New Explained”—or as a more precise translation of St. Augustine’s words renders it, “The New is in the Old concealed; the Old is in the New revealed.”
God clearly says in the Old (and New) Testaments that He Himself purposely blinded the eyes, shut the ears, hardened the hearts, and closed the minds of all so that they could not see, hear, believe, or understand so that they could not be saved. Then, God opened the eyes, ears, hearts, and minds of those whom He ordained unto salvation before the foundation of the world. This is God’s Sovereignty. Anyone who does not like it, can, like a 5 year old, hold his breath until his face turns blue, but it will not change reality. The only solution is to align oneself with God’s Word and Will and bow before His Sovereignty; not attempt to exert his own self will, which will only irremediably fail.
[Of course, there is also the “long shot” (delusional) option: Let whoever is not happy with how God ordered His universe, become a god himself and then he can create his own universe however he wants (and then be judged by his own puny, ignorant creation for not having done it differently). During the war, one of Napoleon’s friends and officers had expressed that after the war he was going to start his own religion. Napoleon replied, “That shouldn’t be too hard: All you have to do is die and come back from the dead.”]
“The average modern Christian uses the term ‘Calvinism’ as if it were a ‘bad word’—not even understanding that Calvin did not invent what is called ‘Calvinism’ and that Luther himself was ‘a Calvinist’ in the irrational way that modern ‘Christians’ use the word ‘Calvinist’ and that St. Augustine, likewise, 1,200 years before Calvin, and Gottshalk (about 4 centuries after St. Augustine) were both ‘Calvinists’ in the sense that ignorant modern Christians use the term.” (from my, Does God Repent?®)
What is called “Calvinism” are the doctrines upon which the Reformation was established (and everything else is Catholicism [Babylonian paganism], whether blatant or disguised). The Anglican Church (Church of England) itself held to these very same “Calvinist” views and produced one of the most accurate condensations of the Reformed position (that which is called “Calvinism”) in the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646). Most all true denominations of Christianity—Presbyterian, Baptist, Dutch Reformed, German Reformed, Anglican, Episcopal, were originally founded on these truths and this confession. Most all have departed from them. 95% of modern churches reject what is called Calvinism, in favor of Arminianism, which was developed by James Arminius (Latin name of Jakob Harmenszoon), the Dutch theologian who rejected the Reformed position. This Arminianism (which is also Pelagianism) was brought into the Protestant Church by John Wesley (and the denominations established upon his teachings, Methodists and Wesleyans, and a few others influenced by it, Nazarene, Holiness, Pentecostals, etc.) and it was further injected into Protestantism by Charles Finney. All of these unbiblical positions constitute part of the counter-reformation and a return to Rome and humanism and paganism. This false doctrine of Armenianism is the heresy of “free will” (in addition to the basic goodness of man), in that man chooses salvation and that man is not dead in sin: he’s just a little sick. This false doctrine proliferates 95% of the so-called Christian church. Arminianists believe (in essence) that man knocked God off His Throne (in man’s mind) and put himself there: man telling God that He has no right to choose who is saved or damned and that man alone has the right to choose his own destiny.
However, Scripture clearly records: “it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps” (Jeremiah 10:23) and “The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD” (Psalm 37:23) and “For in him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28) and “The LORD of hosts hath sworn, saying, Surely as I have thought, so shall it come to pass; and as I have purposed, so shall it stand” (Isaiah 14:24); and many other passages.
We now see what our departure from the true faith has resulted in, that Christendom is about to be destroyed; freedom itself, founded upon the Reformation, is down to its last glowing embers, even as is the true faith itself. Christ queried, “When the Son of Man returns, will there be faith yet upon the earth?” and He also said, that unless God draw short those days of end-time tribulation, that not even the elect would survive. That is Satan’s goal: to utterly destroy God’s seed in the earth. God promised to always preserve a remnant of His flock (which are the few remaining heirs of Christendom). Satan thinks that if he can utterly mongrelize or exterminate Christ’s bride, that He will have no one to return to, and if the remnant is exterminated to extinction, then God will have failed to preserve a remnant and if God can fail at anything, then He is not God, and Satan will then with renewed vigor step up his war against God, knowing that if God can fail in one area, then He can certainly fail in others. This is where we stand. This is why the Third world is invading all of Christendom. This is what Revelation speaks of as the dragon opening his mouth and vomiting out a flood to over take the woman and her child, and Revelation tells us that those waters and floods are peoples (those who are not God’s people).
The English Baptist Charles Spurgeon, in his sermon “Sovereign Grace and Man’s Responsibility”, declared
“If any man be saved, he is saved by Divine grace, and by Divine grace alone; and the reason of his salvation is not to be found in him, but in God. We are not saved as the result of anything that we do or that we will; but we will and do as the result of God’s good pleasure, and the work of his grace in our hearts .... Let me tell you, the reason why many of our churches are declining is just because this doctrine has not been preached. Wherever this doctrine has been upheld. It has always been ‘Down with Popery.’ The first reformers held this doctrine and preached it. .... Besides, we can point you to a string of ministers from the beginning even until now. Talk of apostolic succession! The man who preaches the doctrines of grace has an apostolic succession indeed. Can we not trace our pedigree through a whole line of men like Newton, and Whitfield, and Owen, and Bunyan, straight away on till we come to Calvin, Luther, and Zwingli? —and then we can go back from them to Savonarola, to Jerome of Prague, to Huss, and then back to Augustine, the mighty preacher of Christianity; and from St. Augustine to Paul is but one step. We need not be ashamed of our pedigree; although Calvinists are now considered to be heterodox, we are and ever must be orthodox. It is the old doctrine. Go and buy any puritanical book, and see if you can find Arminianism in it. Search all the book stalls over, and see if you can find one large folio book of olden times that anything in it but the doctrine of the free grace of God.
[Understand that the term “free grace” does not imply lawlessness or irresponsibility. Good works, obedience, keeping the Law of God are the moral requirements He expects of us whether we are converted or not; however, apart from God’s Grace no man is able to keep God’s Law perfectly. That is why Christ died; the pay the penalty for our sin. But just because we are forgiven does not mean that we have license to violate God’s Law, which was never abolished, despite the proliferation of modern false doctrine that says it was. Christ perfectly kept the Law to set the example. He sent the Holy Spirit to enable us to keep the Law: “walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh” (ie., the violation of God’s Law). When Christ forgave some of their sins, He said, “Go and sin no more.” If a father lays down the law to his young child, “no playing in the mud,” if the child rebels and plays in the mud, the father disciplines him, cleans him up, and upon repentance, the child is able to enjoy his father’s forgiveness—but just because the child is forgiven does not lift the prohibition against playing in the mud. The New Testament defines sin as “transgression of the law” and if the law had been abolished, no one could possibly sin and therefore, there would be no need for anyone to ever confess sins or even be saved. This false doctrine of the abolition of God’s Law in Christ is one of the major downfalls of Christendom. God cannot hear the prayer of or bless His children who are in sin; sin blocks His Ears.
Further, those who persist in sin and do not repent God will chasten to bring them to repentance—and historically God has often done this to His entire nation of people by using their enemies to judge them. The “Catch 22” is that because the modern Christian thinks that God abolished His Law, he does not think that there is anything of which he needs to repent... and thus it is a vicious cycle of continued sin and continued judgment with the dazed and bewildered Christian, like a pigeon that has flown into a plate glass window, being stunned, being clueless concerning why everything is going wrong and why God won’t hear his prayers... individually and nationally.
However, the answers, the remedy is in God’s Word. If Christians would turn off the tv, sports, etc., stop reading the NYT best-seller’s list and the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal and every other disinformation rag and stop watching the evening news full of propaganda, and instead read God’s Word as He commanded us, then eventually a light bulb would come on via the Holy Spirit and they would realize, “Hey, wait a minute, God never abolished His Law, and we are in sin, and that is why He does not hear our prayers and why we are being destroyed!” My book Does God Repent?® is one of my most important books, because once you understand God’s Nature, you realize that He could never have abolished His Law. He is Holy, Perfect, and Immutable—and He never said that He abolished His Law.
Read how Josiah and Hezekiah and other godly kings called for repentance and reformation. Hopefully God will use these words to cause a light bulb to come on for someone. Every tree is known by its fruit. Those who have been converted have been “called unto good works”. Good works are obedience to the Law of God. Keeping the Law does not save; it is a proof of salvation. A tree does not become an apple tree by bearing apples, an apple tree bears apples because it is an apple tree. Obedience to the Law of God (which was violated and which necessitated Christ dying for us) is a by-product of salvation: the internal desire to obey the commands of God that were violated since creation. We do not obey the Law in order to be saved, but because we are saved. Every tree is known by its fruit.
See also my edited collection of Spurgeon’s works on Predestination, titled, Salvation Results From...®]
Concerning Predestination, in their excellent 50-page Historical and Theological Introduction (which itself is worth the price of the book) to Luther’s Bondage of the Will, J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston write,
“Historically, it is a simple matter of fact, that Martin Luther and John Calvin, and, for that matter, Ulrich Zwingli, Martin Bucer, and all the leading Protestant theologians of the first epoch of the Reformation, stood on precisely the same ground here. On other points they had their differences; but in asserting the helplessness of man in sin, and the sovereignty of God in grace, they were entirely one. To all of them, these doctrines were the very life-blood of the Christian faith.” (p.58)
Luther emphatically declared that the Sovereignty of God and Predestination (in opposition to the non-existent “free will of man”) was the very heart of Christianity and all doctrine turned on this point.
Let’s again briefly consider God and Evil, for this also is a pivotal doctrine that determines whether one believes in God’s Sovereignty or man’s sovereignty.
God is Immutable and unaffected by anything external to Himself. Everything external to Himself He created. God is not a banana because He created a banana. God is not darkness because He created darkness. God is not evil or sinful or wicked because He created those things for His Purpose. Those who think that God did not create evil because it would “make Him” evil do not understand God or Logic or Scripture.
Okay, let’s say for argument’s sake that God did not create evil (let’s amputate His Omnipotence and his Sovereignty, that alone reduces Himself quite below Godhood, but let’s continue the thought). Let’s say, then, that He merely “knew” that sin and evil and wickedness “would [somehow*] happen”. Let’s also pretend that He is a bad Creator and a bad Governor and that He is not in charge of His Creation; which He is not—if some things that He did not want or create just “popped into” His universe, or if some things that He created were just “defective” and “just went bad” because of poor design. Like an author who was typing a book, someone just shoved God out of the way (and He was passive and let them change His story and let them soil His Glory) and this interloper just started writing his own ideas into the God’s book (and God was either powerless to stop him or simply unconcerned). Even if all this evil “just happened” (which degrades about half of God’s Holy Attributes or Divine Perfections) and even if God, being Omniscient, knew all these things—foresaw all these things—how then, could God have had those thoughts of all that wickedness in His Mind in eternity past and those thoughts not have “made Him evil, wicked, or sinful” for Him having thought them aeons before they ever even would come into existence...? How can one have sinful thoughts without being sinful? This of course is a false conclusion based upon a false premise, and it shows the utter logical and Scriptural nakedness of those who say God could not have created sin or evil because it would have made Him sinful or evil. God is under no obligation to (and by His Nature cannot) enter man’s delusion with him.
The solution to the problem is the proper, sane, logical, valid frame of mind. If those thoughts were in God’s Mind before they ever came into existence, before He even created the world, then did He not create them? Scripture says that God declares, “As I have thought it so shall it come to pass”. God is not passive. He does not merely have a crystal ball. His thought is determination. And if you still think that He did not create evil, how could He think evil, how could He think in His Mind about every single sin, evil, wickedness, immorality, and abomination that would transpire on earth over the past 6,000 years and it not have made Him evil or tainted His Mind? —the very same way that He created it and it did not make Him evil for creating it. God is Immutable. He changes not. He is not affected by anything external to Himself (that is, everything that is not God), and everything external to Himself He created; nothing came into being by itself. Scripture says so. God’s very Nature (as revealed in His Word) says so.
[* This is the same anti-intellectualism that evolution is based upon. “It just happened”. We don’t know how. We don’t have any proof. We can’t explain it. We don’t have any evidence. But just believe us when we say it happened “somehow”.]
God is Sovereign. How we live merely shows how He chose before the creation of the world and that is the sobering thought. Work out your own salvation in fear and trembling does not mean we earn our salvation, but that we are ever careful to examine ourselves to see whether we be in the faith (the proper fruit being the evidence). What does a branch do to produce fruit? Nothing. The branch bears fruit when it is a conduit through which the life of the tree flows. Christ said I am the vine (trunk and root) ye are the branches. Branches don’t grow themselves or run along the ground and choose to hope up onto a tree and grow (that makes about as much sense as a monkey falling out of a tree, and deciding he wants to be a man losing his tail and all his hair, gaining about 50 IQ points). The tree produces the branches. Christ also said every branch that beareth not fruit (each dead, sickly branch) is cut off and cast into the fire.
God is Sovereign. God is Immutable. God is Omnipotent, Good, Holy, Just, in everything that He does because He is Perfect and can be no other. God is not defined by what He does, what He does is defined by what He is. He is Good. He can do no other. He is Perfect. He is Immutable. Any change from Perfection could only be imperfection. But “goodness” is not defined by what sinful, ignorant, rebellious humans declare it to be.
Good and evil—reality, are what God declares them to be. Any other notions are humanism. Those who believe anything else do not understand God’s Word or God, and they have a very weak god, not the God of the Bible (and that is idolatry, whether ignorant or knowingly; and that too is a sobering thought: They are not of God). Scripture says that those who come to God must believe that He is and that He is a Rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. We must believe that He is what...? —we must believe that He is exactly as He said that He is and that everything that He has said is true... and this is done by diligently seeking Him and obeying Him (one who seeks but does not obey does not seek diligently, only out of curiosity)... and that is done by “trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding” because “there is a way that seemeth right unto a man but the end thereof are the ways of death).
Scripture also says that without faith it is impossible to please God. Those who do not trust or believe God, in what He has clearly revealed in His Word (instead believing man’s own spurious ideas) believe in something other than the true God. Whether God’s “winking at our ignorance” will cover such vast territory only God knows (and since we are commanded to study and meditate upon His Word, He expects that we will come into the knowledge of the truth; but if our “other gods”—tv, movies, sports, other literature, news, etc. are more important to us and we do not come to the understanding of the truth because we make time for those other gods, but neglect the True God and His Words of Life, then we are without excuse). It behooves those who care about their soul to examine themselves and cry out as the man who asked Christ to deliver his son from a demon that tormented him, Christ replied, “All things are possible to those who believe”—and the man cried out, “I believe, help Thou my unbelief [deliver me from my unbelief].”
God is in complete control and has fore-ordained all and created all and all creation has followed the exact Plan that He ordained it to follow and has not deviated an iota (jot).
Any other thoughts degrade God from His Absolute Supremacy and Sovereignty.
God’s ability to be is not limited by fallen, finite, sinful man’s inability to understand God’s Being.
St. Augustine said, “Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that ye may understand.”
God has hidden the truth from those whom He has deemed are unworthy of it. God’s Word is not irrational; it is super-rational (above ordinary understanding; this does not mean it is illogical—it is perfectly logical; but sinful man rejects the logic upon which it is perfectly founded). God requires faith that we believe that He is and all that He has said is true (even if at first we cannot comprehend it)... faith is the key that unlocks the door to the exclusive club membership of understanding. Faith itself is a gift of God (being in the “fruit package” of the Fruit of the Spirit).
To its credit, the Council of Orange [A.D. 529] ruled:
“If anyone assert that by reason of man’s prayer the grace of God is conferred, but that it is not grace itself which causes that God is prayed to, he contradicts the prophet Isaiah (65:1), and the Apostle Paul (Romans 10:20) saying the same thing, ‘I was found of them that sought me not and have been manifest unto them that asked not after me.’ If anyone maintain that God waits for willingness in us to be purged of sin, and does not allow that the very willingness to be cleansed of sin is wrought in us by the infusion and operation of the Holy Ghost, saying with Solomon, ‘The will is prepared by the Lord,’ and with the apostle, ‘It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure’ (Philippians 2:13)....” [from Sanctification, Gordon H. Clark, now contained in What Is the Christian Life?® (p.31).]”
Acts 5:32: “the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey Him.” Understand cause and effect. The giving is not due to the obeying, the obeying is due to and proof of the giving.
Hebrews 5:9: “And being made perfect, He [Christ] became the Author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him.” [same cause and effect.]
Works do not save and God said that there is none that doeth good, no not one. True salvation is not a choice of sinful man who does not have it in him to even incline himself toward God, it is an act of irresistible obedience in response to the call of God.
“That in all things He [Christ] may have the preeminence.” (Colossians 1:18)
“Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. (John 1:13)
“15For He saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. 16So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. 17For the Scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might show My Power in thee, and that My Name might be declared throughout all the earth. 18Therefore hath He mercy on whom He will have mercy, and whom He will He hardeneth. 19Thou wilt say then unto me [the prophet], Why doth He yet find fault? For who hath resisted His Will? 20Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to Him that formed it, Why hast Thou made me thus? 21Hath not the Potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? 22What if God, willing to show His Wrath, and to make His Power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: 23And that He might make known the riches of His Glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had afore prepared unto glory?” (Romans 9)
Most Christians use the word “Lord” in reference to Christ and God, and sing a plethora of songs calling Him “Lord” yet He is not their Lord—and they apparently do not know what the word means. Lord means “Sovereign, Master, Boss, Emperor, Ruler.” Yet most Christians believe what they want to believe, not what God has said. Most Christians live their lives the way they want, not how God has commanded. Christ asked, "Why call ye Me, 'Lord, Lord' and do not the things I say?" and declared, "Not all who cry unto Me, 'Lord, Lord' shall enter the Kingdom, but those who do the Will of My Father Who is in Heaven". This is the sinful, fallen condition of all men until God calls them out of darkness into His marvellous light. If He has not drawn you, don’t curse the darkness, get used to it: It’s all you will ever have. If He is drawing you (if you take serious the concept of eternal Judgment) then yield to Him and confess Christ and “repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is soon to come.” Cry out, “Lord save me, I believe, help Thou my unbelief, forgive my sins through Christ’s atonement and fill me with Your Holy Spirit to lead and enable me to understand Your Word and live as you require that I may be spared the wrath to come—and so convict and inspire all our people to so cry out to you or we shall surely perish!” Only a fool would not truly repent and throw himself upon the mercy of the court. Those who do not, do not have it in them, because they were ordained unto destruction.
Revelation 12 tells us:
“1And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: 2And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered. 3And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a Great Red Dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. 4And 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. 5And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to His Throne. 6And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days. 7And there was war in Heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the Dragon; and the Dragon fought and his angels, 8And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in Heaven. 9And the Great Dragon was cast out, that old Serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. 10And I heard a loud voice saying in Heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the Kingdom of our God, and the Power of His Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. 11And they overcame him by the Blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death. 12Therefore rejoice, ye Heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the Devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time. 13And when the Dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child. 14And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the Serpent. 15And the Serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood. 16And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the Dragon cast out of his mouth. 17And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the Commandments of God, and have the Testimony of Christ Jesus.”
“And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.” (Revelation 17:15)
“Here is the patience [endurance] of the saints [preservation of the elect]: here are they that keep the Commandments of God, and the Faith of Jesus.” (Revelation 14:12)
Pages 140 and 141 of Gordon Clark’s Predestination® are also enlightening, showing that the 5 points of so-called Calvinism are contained in Ezekiel’s vision of dry bones.
Clark also wrote:
“Socialistic coercion and the destruction of freedom in the United States is following the more advanced programs of the European nations. In the nineteenth century the memory of autocracy was vivid, and after several nations had rid themselves of tyranny, the acknowledged aim of government was to maintain order so that free individuals could arrange their personal, social, business, and religious affairs as they saw fit. Today, however, the disadvantages of absolute government have been forgotten, and so-called liberals, who are truly reactionaries, aim to establish a so-called demoncracy on the principles of Louis XIV. To this end taxation is imposed, not so much to pay for legitimate governmental expenses, not on the bases of services rendered and received, but with the avowed aim of impoverishing one class of people and of enriching another class. One might say that taxation is becoming legalized theft. These apostles of absolutism propose the reconstruction of society according to their own superior ideals. And one by one the liberties that were gained a century or two ago are being lost to governmental coercion. The public school systems are being used more and more as propaganda agencies for this reactionary totalitarianism. Even such a scholarly journal as The American Political Science Review has contributors who want the state supported schools to indoctrinate their pupils.
“As the love of liberty grows dim under socialistic suffocation, as coercion increases, the more brutal it will become. The basic methods of procedure were stated by Karl Marx, and they have been accepted, in varying degrees, by many who are not conscious of their origin. Marx was very deeply interested in progress,* and for him misery is a powerful instrument for gaining one’s goal. Tension and antagonism, the result of misery, are forces of progress.
[* Note, Marx’s idea of “progress” is completely different than ours. Marx’s idea of “progress” was the Statist progress, the State totally absorbing every facet of life and all individuality being crushed before it; the State obtaining all the power and wealth of the people and subjecting them as their slaves. Note mine. R.A.B.]
“For this reason a clever social planner will provoke violence and bloody conflicts. Happy men are weak, but if they can be made wretched, they can be stirred to action. Class must be played against class and hatred must be stimulated. The economy of nations must be ruined by huge governmental expenditures that lead to bankruptcy. Demagogues, willing to be looked on as God, will deceive the people with impossible promises of freedom from want and freedom from fear. Then a dictator can liquidate the remaining opposition and take control.
“The evidences of social decay in western civilization has been listed in an order proceeding from the more specific the more general, from the more obvious to the less obvious and from the more derivative to the more original. The next and nearly the last of these, the widest genus of all, immorality. The word immorality frequently directs attention to sexual offenses; and while this is not the only sense intended, the sexual aspect need not be overlooked. One of the most serious calamities, more deadly to civilization than any ordinary war, is the destruction of the family by the growing rate of divorce. Some people view divorce as a sign of the emancipation of woman and as an evidence of progress. And the accompanying promiscuity, both result and cause, would be another step in the evanescence of evil. Edwin A Burtt refers to some members of this humanistic school of thought who regard sex as an essentially harmless pleasure which should be regulated only by personal taste. Divorce and promiscuity are empirical facts, but there are other interpretations besides that of humanism. [Pitirim] Sorokin,* believing that the family exercises a powerful social function, and that the destruction of the family by divorce is an equally powerful factor of opposite tendency, writes:
[* Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin (1889-1968) Russian-born sociologist, who emigrated to the U.S. in 1923. Note mine. R.A.B.]
‘An illiterate society can survive, but a thoroughly anti-social society cannot. Until recently the family... was the principal school of socialization for the new-born human animals, rendering them fit for social life. At present this vital mission is performed less and less by the family... because the young are turned over at a very early age to such agencies as nursery schools and kindergartens, and because an increasingly unstable family is a poor school of socialization. Instead of inculcating in its offspring a strong sense of moral and social integrity, it teaches them lessons of moral laxity and loose relationships. If outside agencies performed efficiently the former functions of the family, the defect might be remedied. Unfortunately, they have not successfully replaced the family in this mission. Even an illiterate mother, endowed with kindness and common sense, appears to have been a better moral educator of children than most of the highly trained educators of schools and correctional institutions. The result is a rapidly mounting juvenile delinquency, an increasing number of people without moral integrity... who swell the ranks of criminals... from common murderers to the praetorian guards of the dictators.’
“Corroborating Sorokin, F.B.I. reports released in 1948 include these data:
“Fifteen million sex magazines read monthly by a third of the nation.
“One million girls infected with social disease.
“One hundred thousand girls enter white slavery each year.
“One million babies born illegitimately yearly.
“One in five marriages ends in divorce.
“More barmaids than college girls.
“One murder every forty minutes.
“One major crime every twenty-two seconds.
“One hundred thousand unapprehended murderers walk the streets.
“Seventeen-year-olds represent the largest criminal group.
“Sixty suicides every day.
[All one has to do is log onto the internet and find the current statistics to understand the “progress” society has experienced thanks to the Marxists that rule the nation. Note mine. R.A.B.]
“Suicide is also a moral problem, a form of immorality, and it is a symptom of the whole situation. Sorokin is particularly thorough in his attempt to show the breakdown of western civilization in many phases. He notes that popular religion has degenerated into a second-hand social gospel, a sort of political creed. He analyzes contemporary art and compares it with the past; he examines the course of philosophy; and he tries to make clear the significance of the present rate of insanity and suicide. In the United States from 1860 to 1922 suicide increased from 3.1 per hundred thousand population to 11.9. And since 1922 the rate of suicide has doubled and tripled. With suicide, and with the breakup of the family, there is the increase of mental disease. ‘This means,’ he says, ‘that western society is progressively becoming mentally deranged and morally unbalanced.’
“When the citizens of a nation are immoral, it is not surprising that the government becomes immoral. And turning again from the basic individual decay to its more obvious results, we may once more quote Sorokin.
‘There exists scarcely a single government in any of the western countries which has not broken most of its solemn pledges to the citizens — which has not changed the fundamental laws (whether constitutions or statutes) or repudiated its obligations respecting the gold currency, gold certificates, and bonds, the inviolability of the courts, and countless other matters.’
“Under these conditions mutual trust becomes less and less possible; respect for just government tends to be replaced by fear of force; and the majority begins to seize the temporary advantage of the day. In other words, society has collapsed. There are many people, naturally, who will disagree with all this. They will point out that through this discussion some moral preferences have been discerned between the lines. The facts may have been relatively accurate, but a non-empirical interpretation has been placed upon them. It is exactly this interpretation that is the most serious matter of dispute. One party calls it the breakdown of society; the other hails it as the fulfilment of their hopes. The one idealizes freedom; the other idealizes tyranny. The one allows each individual to make his own most important decisions; the other is sure the leader knows best.” (from pp.71-74 of A Christian View of Men and Things® (1952), Dr. Gordon H. Clark)
Amazing words written over 60 years ago...! I stock all of Dr. Gordon H. Clark’s books. He was a genius. The greatest philosopher and theologian of our day: an accomplished linguist, historian, and mathematician, and the foremost logician. He is ignored by the liberals, both Christian and secular, because his logic and philosophy and theology is so impeccable, he cannot be answered; thus hardly anyone even knows about him. I have encouraged people to read his works for the past 24 years. I have read most of his books in the past several years, reading some each day after my Bible reading.
[Inquire for list of Clark's titles.]
Robert
inquire if interested in any titles mentioned herein; donations to support this work appreciated.
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