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Other Articles on
Predestination
Vs
Free Grace
Calvin Vs Wesley
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Part VII
Conclusion
Christian people generally believe that God’s
blessings are all and only for the selected Church. Now we begin
to see that God’s plan is wider than we had supposed. Though God
has given the Church "exceeding great and precious
promises," he has also made bountiful provision for the world
which he so loved as to redeem.
The Jews made a very similar mistake in
supposing that all the promises of God were to and for them alone.
But when the "due time" came and the Gentiles were
favored, the remnant of Israel, whose hearts were large enough to
rejoice in this wider evidence of God’s grace, shared that
increased favor, while the rest were blinded by prejudice and
human tradition. Let those of the Church who now see the dawning
light of the Millennial age, with its gracious advantages for all
the world, take heed lest they be found in opposition to the
advancing light, and so for a time be blinded to its glory and
blessings.
How different is this glorious plan of God for
the selection of a few now, in order to the blessing of the many
hereafter, from the distortions of these truths, as represented by
the two opposing views– Calvinism and Arminianism. Calvinism
both denies the Bible doctrine of Free Grace and miserably
distorts the glorious doctrine of Election. Free Grace
denies the doctrine of Election and fails to comprehend the
blessed fulness of God’s Free Grace.
| Calvinism says: God
is all-wise. He knew the end from the beginning. As all
his purposes shall be accomplished, he never could have
intended to save any but a few, the Church. These he
elected and foreordained to be eternally saved. All others
were equally foreordained and elected to go to eternal
torment; for "Known unto God are all his works from
the beginning of the world." |
| This view has its good
features. It recognizes God’s omniscience. This would be
our ideal of a great God, were it not that two
essential qualities of greatness are lacking, namely, love
and justice, neither of which is exemplified in
bringing into the world one hundred and forty-two billions
of creatures doomed to eternal torture before they were
born, and mocked with protestations of his love. Since
God is love, and justice is the foundation of his throne,
such cannot be his character. |
| Arminianism says:
Yes, God is love. In bringing humanity into the world he
meant them no harm– only good. But Satan succeeded in
tempting the first pair, and thus sin entered into the
world, and death by sin. And ever since, God has been
doing all he can to deliver man from his enemy, even to
the giving of his Son. And though now, six thousand years
after, the gospel has reached only a very small proportion
of mankind, yet we do hope and trust that within six
thousand years more, through the energy and liberality of
the church, God will so far have remedied the evil
introduced by Satan that all then living may at least know
of his love, and have an opportunity to believe and be
saved. |
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While this view presents God as a being
full of loving and benevolent designs for his creatures,
it implies that he lacks ability and foreknowledge
adequate to the accomplishment of his benevolent designs: that
he is deficient in wisdom and power.
From this view it would appear that
while God was engaged in arranging and devising for the
good of his newly-created children, Satan slipped in and
by one master-stroke upset all God’s plans to such an
extent that, even by exhausting all his power, God must
spend twelve thousand years to reinstate righteousness,
even to such a degree that the remainder of the race who
still live will have an opportunity to choose good as
readily as evil. But the one hundred and forty-two
billions of the past six thousand years, and as many more
of the next, are, according to this view, lost to all
eternity, in spite of God’s love for them, because Satan
interfered with his plans. Thus Satan would get thousands
into eternal torment to one that God saves to glory.
This view must exalt men’s ideas
of the wisdom and power of Satan, and lower their
estimation of these attributes in God, of whom the
Psalmist to the contrary declares that, "He spake and
it was done; he commanded and it stood fast." But no!
God was not surprised nor overtaken by the adversary;
neither has Satan in any measure thwarted his plans.
God is, and always has been, perfect
master of the situation, and in the end it will be seen
that all has been working together to the accomplishment
of his purposes. |
While the doctrines of election and free grace,
as taught by Calvinism and Arminianism, could never be harmonized
with each other, with reason, or with the Bible, yet these two
glorious Bible doctrines are perfectly harmonious and beautiful,
seen from the standpoint of the plan of the ages.
Seeing, then, that so many of the great and
glorious features of God’s plan for human salvation from sin and
death lie in the future, and that the second advent of our Lord
Jesus is the designed first step in the accomplishment of those
long promised and long expected blessings, shall we not even more
earnestly long for the time of his second advent than the less
informed Jew looked and longed for his first advent?
Seeing that the time of evil, injustice and
death is to be brought to an end by the dominion of power which he
will then exercise, and that righteousness, truth and peace are to
be universal, who should not rejoice to see his day?
Who that is now suffering with Christ, inspired
by the precious promise that "if we suffer with him we shall
also reign with him," will not lift up his head and rejoice
at any evidence of the approach of the Master, knowing thereby
that our deliverance and our glorification with him draw nigh?
Surely all in sympathy with his mission of blessing and his
spirit of love will hail every evidence of his coming as the
approach of the "great joy which shall be to all
people."
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