Let's start with a word of prayer. Our gracious Heavenly Father, again, we thank you for that grace to us, Father, and for the privilege that we have of even knowing and being able to talk about these things and studying them from your word and just what a great privilege that is. Freedom to do it in this nation, Father, still. We thank you for that. And Father, we ask your blessing now on these things, and that our eyes would be open to your word, and that our hearts would be open to your word also, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. I want to start this study by just doing a whirlwind tour of some scriptures, which, well, let me back up and just say this. I'm always, and a lot of us are always encouraging people to read through the Bible, read the Bible, study the Bible. Do it. Okay. Well, if you do that, it's not too long, probably, before you come up against this word chosen. And you start to see this word. God chose so-and-so for this. He chose so-and-so for that. Chosen, chosen, chosen, elect. Predestination or predestined. All these words. His elect angels. And I think initially you can just kind of skim over those words, but sooner or later you're going to come to grips with what does that mean? What is the essence of God's choosing? And when you start to do that, you find that if you go to talk with people who know the Lord and are saved, you're going to find that there's two really main camps concerning this subject. There is a blending. I mean, there's some give and take between the camps, although I would say not a lot. But there is some. So that's what we're going to be covering. Let's go to Colossians 3, verse 12. And here we read, And so, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Directed to whom? Those who have been chosen of God. Romans chapter 11, verse 7. In Romans 11, Paul is dealing with Israel and God's plans for Israel. And we read this. What then? That which Israel is seeking for, it has not obtained. But those who were chosen obtained it, and the rest were hardened. Concerning Israel. Matthew 12, verse 18. This is a very interesting one. Because this is talking directly about Jesus Christ. And we have here in the New Testament a quote from the Old Testament. Behold, my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased. I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall proclaim justice to the Gentiles. He will not quarrel nor cry out, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. A battered reel he will not break off, and a smoldering wick he will not put out, until he leads justice to victory. And in his name the Gentiles will hope." So here this concept of chosen is even directed toward the Son of God. certainly the humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so I say, if you're... I'm already getting biased here. But I say this, if you're going to have a scriptural view of chosen, you have to work in to that view, the fact that whatever you're going to say about his choosing in other areas, does it match his choosing of his own son? You see all what I'm saying? Is there a consistency in your thought there? Does that make sense? Evidently not. He had no one else to choose but Christ. Okay. My point being, if I'm going to say, well God's choosing is just God looking forward into the future to see if I would choose Him and then saying, well He chose me so I'll choose Him. Is that what He did with Christ? Or is it more determinative than that? See what I'm saying? Try to have in all of this a consistency in this whole concept of God's choosing. Matthew 22, verse 14. Simple verse. For many are called, but few are chosen. Acts chapter 9, verse 15. This is just a small group of verses. The word is full of this concept. Acts 9, verse 15. This is concerning Paul and Ananias being contacted by an angel to go deal with Paul right after he's been knocked off of his mount and brought face to face with who Jesus Christ is. But Ananias answered, Lord, I've heard from many about this man, how much harm he did to thy saints at Jerusalem. And here he has authority and so forth. Verse 15, but the Lord said to him, go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel. 1 Peter 1 Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who reside as aliens scattered throughout Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, that you may obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with his blood. every member of the Godhead mentioned here, the choosing of the Father, the sanctifying or setting apart work of the Holy Spirit, and obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with His blood. The whole Trinity is there. And for the Father, it speaks of those who are chosen. We can go back just as early as Genesis chapter 18. Verse 19, and this is what the Lord said about Abraham. For I have chosen him. I love to think of that. What would Abraham have been had God not chosen him? We'd never hear his name. We'd know nothing about him. He'd have stayed certainly in Ur of the Chaldees. He'd be unknown to us. But God chose him to be not only the pattern for faith, but the father of the Jewish people, and so he's famous. In fact, unbelievably famous, stretching throughout the whole world. If you're a Muslim, he's famous, you know. If you're a Jew, he's famous. If you're a Christian, he's famous. He's just, when God said, make your name great, he made his name great. Okay. Titus chapter 1, verse 1, and then we'll be done with that part of it. Paul, a bondservant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the faith of those chosen of God and the knowledge of the truth, which is according to godliness. If you're interested, well, we're going to hit those anyway sometime here. I won't worry about that. Okay, now, two more things. First of all, in any, I believe, in any group of believers, you know, you always have levels of growth, levels of understanding, different backgrounds, and so forth. And so, I recognize, I don't want you to think that just because I am convinced in my own heart about certain things here, that I expect you to be convinced the way I am. My whole issue here is, look, stick with the scriptures, go to the scriptures, study the scriptures. If what I say does not line up with the scriptures, then don't take it. Always, that's the message. For years, I was a dyed-in-the-wool Arminian. Absolutely. I mean, for many, many years. And some of the verses I just read you, and many, many more, I'll say this, I'll say it now, I kept, what is that? And just not wanting to deal with it. Because I did not like the idea of God choosing. I liked the idea of me choosing, but I did not like, to be honest, I did not like the idea of God choosing. And so I kept, I always pictured it in my head as I had this shelf in this closet, And I kept sticking all these extra verses up there that I didn't want to deal with until, and Jonathan was talking about this, the verse about Lydia and Acts brought the whole shelf down on my head. And I had to start to say, well, what is this about? This is too big in scripture and too important. For me to, I can't ignore it. I have to, I have to grapple with it and deal with it. And so, I certainly have no animosity towards a person who is Armenian. And, but I do believe, and the thing I love about the interest here is that this, these are, these are huge subjects. These are things about which certainly people have died. These are important issues in your understanding of who God is, and I'll say this also, in your appreciation of His saving you, it has a bearing on that also. Then one more thing, and that is, you and I, We cannot trust our hearts in this subject. Because if there's any subject that our heart is going to come down on the wrong side of, you know, that heart that's deceitful and so forth, it's this subject. And this is a book by Arthur Pink, A.W. Pink, and I just have always been taken by the majesty of this passage and the power of it. This is a book on the attributes of God which I would recommend to anybody by Arthur Pink. He was a reformed theologian. It's kind of interesting. Pink has got quite a history. There were people that absolutely hated him. He wasn't the kind of person that Didn't cause controversy where he went and where he spoke and so forth and and the things he wrote But the thing I love about him is in his lifetime He read the Bible through 50 times and he read over a million pages of theology And I love reading, I don't always agree with him certainly, but I love reading what he wrote because his comprehension of, I love people that have been through scripture enough that their ability to pull this and this and this and see how it relates, and he really had that ability. But he's talking in his chapter on the sovereignty of God, which is really the foundational issue here of what we're studying. Okay, that's what really we're grappling with, And that's what the human heart has a reaction to as he says here. So, he's quoting Spurgeon from a message that Spurgeon preached on that passage there, the terrible laborers. Remember that? And at the end of that, well, he hires them, you know, 6 in the morning and then later and then later and then finally the last guy's work, one hour. And he pays the last guys first. And he pays them a full day's wage. And so the rest of the people, especially the ones that bore the heat of the day, as they say, starting at 6 in the morning, said this isn't fair. And yet he had made an agreement with them that he would pay them also a denarius, or the money for a day. And then he says this, do I not have the right to do as I want with what is mine? You know, this is my money, and I hire you, and do I have the right to do this? And the whole message of Scripture, which we have lost sight of today, you know, in our, and today we would say, no, you don't have the right. You can't do that. Okay? And so Spurgeon is preaching on that, and he says this. There is no attribute more comforting to his children than that of God's sovereignty. Don't you love that? Because if God isn't sovereign, he can't take care of me. Under the most adverse circumstances, in the most severe trials, they believe that sovereignty has ordained their afflictions, that sovereignty overrules them, and that sovereignty will sanctify them all. There is nothing for which the children ought more earnestly to contend than the doctrine of their Master over all creation, the kingship of God over all the works of His own hands, the throne of God and His right to sit upon that throne. On the other hand, there is no doctrine more hated by worldlings, no truth of which they have made such a football, as the great, stupendous, but yet most certain doctrine of the sovereignty of the infinite Jehovah. I love this section. Men will allow God, now I want you, I can't, I got to keep commenting here. I think this is so fascinating because here he is writing back in the 1800s and now some of the things that he says about what the world accepts and doesn't accept, that's even changed in our own day. He says this, men will allow God to be everywhere except on his throne. They will allow him to be in his workshop to fashion worlds and make stars. Not today. Okay. They will allow him to be in his almonry, you know, place where the alms are, to dispense his alms and bestow his bounties. Not really. You are lucky, you know. Okay. Then he goes on and he says, They will allow him to sustain the earth and bear up the pillars thereof. Not anymore. Now it's global warming and we're ruining the place. Fascinating, isn't it? It just shows how far we've come. He's talking about unbelievers. Okay. They will allow him to sustain the earth and bear up the pillars thereof, or light the lamps of heaven, or rule the waves of the ever-moving ocean, But when God ascends His throne, His creatures then gnash their teeth, and when we proclaim and enthrone God, and His right to do as He wills with His own, to dispose of His creatures as He thinks well, without consulting them in the matter, then it is that we are hissed and execrated, and then it is that men turn a deaf ear to us. For God on His throne is not the God they love, but it is God upon the throne that we love to preach. It is God upon His throne whom we trust. That's a powerfully presented piece. Okay. So with all that in mind, we'll start by taking a look at the background of this. And there was a man named Jacob Herman. By the way, if you were to Google these words, you could find some very, very pertinent information. The last name Herman, H-E-R-M-A-N-N, is the man who is also Jacobus Arminius in Latin. So, all we're dealing with here is when we're talking about Arminianism, we're talking about that which Jacob Herman, who is also called Jacobus Arminius. Okay, and notice that I said Arminian, not Arminian. We're not talking about the country that was a republic in Russia. We're talking about Arminianism. I-N-I-A-S-M. Okay. I-S-M I should say. All right. He was, initially he was a Calvinist. Okay. And he was Dutch. He lived from 1560 to 1609. Okay, so he was a Dutch Calvinist who, as a pastor, as a leader, developed what he believed was a scriptural approach to this question of election and free will and what does it mean when it says you're elected and can you, you know, really what are the depths of the fall and all of these things. He then died. As we all do. And some years later his followers kind of codified or put into five points what he had taught. Okay. And then they went before the Dutch Parliament to present their five points. Okay? And the result of that was the Council of Dort, D-O-R-T, in 1618, where the church convened this council to look into this question of these five points of Arminianism And here's the whole question. It's the whole question we have tonight. Are these things scriptural? Now, I'm not saying that Jacob Arminius thought they were. And by the way, you're going to meet people who are strongly on the side of Arminianism, or strongly on the side of Calvinism, and both groups are going to be absolutely convinced that their position is what scripture teaches. Don't misunderstand that. Here's the thing that amazes me. That council met for 154 sessions. So they searched this out. They went to the scriptures to see, well when he says this, does this line up with what scripture teaches? Okay. The answer was, the answer they had, the Council of Dort, was definitely not. This is heresy. This is not scriptural. Okay. And as a result, the Calvinists then, under the acronym, or the acrostic I should say, of TULIP, matching Arminius' five points, put their own five points, so that's why I did that, that little print up across from each other. This is what, it started with this, and this is what the Calvinists said, okay? And so, that's fairly simple. Now all we have to do is look at what really both groups are saying, and that's what gets a little weighty and a little difficult. Yes? What group was it that put together the five points, or what person or group? Just followers of Arminianists, so they're right now called Arminian. No, the Tula. Oh, a group just the Calvinists, the Dutch Calvinists. Okay. Okay. But we don't have a name for them. No, no, that was their name, the Dutch colonists. In other words, the people that, they were really the ones being attacked by this going to the parliament, the Dutch parliament, with this other, in other words, what they were doing was they had, I broke that down, they had what they called a remonstrance, which means a complaint with reasons against, some position and theirs was against this reformed view of how God saves people. Would you say that that was the predominant view and that. Which one now? The Calvinists. Absolutely. And that these people came along and said hey. We don't agree with this. By the way I didn't mention they were a break off group. They separated from the Calvinists. Had their own group under Arminius. Okay. And they were teaching. What's that? It's just his name in Latin. Okay. Okay. Okay. Then that makes it confusing because now, you know, we've got two names we're dealing with, but it's the same guy. Okay. Yes. Council of Dort came out very strongly and said, this is heresy. These five points, we do not accept them. In other words, they, you know, the possibility was they could have said, you know what, we've been wrong all the way along, and Arminius is right, but they didn't. They came out, of course, in opposition, which, to be honest, I would expect them to do, because they were Calvinists, you know. But Calvinism had not been codified, at least at that point, into those five points. That's true. You know, I would say, They hadn't been put under that acrostic in that order, but everybody knew that this was what the Calvinists believed, and it was that belief that the Calvinists held that Arminius was objecting to. He was saying in these five areas, you're wrong. Yes, and then, and putting it into a form that would exactly match what, Armenia said. Is there some historical understanding that the Calvinist position was further understood by this deeper scrutiny, or is there nothing new other than the five points? I really can't answer that. I would always think that whenever a side is pushed, Out of it comes further, you know, this is why it's so great to ask questions and have your nose rubbed in what you don't understand, so to speak, so that you have to start to deal with, well, I need to, you know, and these things constantly turn both sides back to the scriptures. You know, which is... Would you say that Calvinism was well mature and then all of a sudden Arminianism was born? Yeah, I would say that although I think, you know, we're always dealing with what we, just the things that have been revealed historically and it, you know, and that's not the whole picture. The picture could well be, and I would suspect that all down through history people who read the Bible saw what they considered to be the free will passages and held a position that wasn't You know, the Calvinistic position hasn't always been a comfortable position. So I would suspect that all the way along, but under Arminius, it got energy and codified and a group of people said, we stand for this. And they were proud of the fact that, you know, evidently, because they went before that, before the Dutch Parliament. Okay. All right. Calvinists were the ones that you referred to as the reformers. Yes. Yes. Can you? define quickly. You're scaring me. Just to put some of these terms into, sometimes you use reforms. Oh, and this is a huge, huge area, but most fundamentally when we talk, when we use the term reformed, we are talking about the body of doctrine that came out of the Reformation. Okay. And those are people who, Calvin, Zwingli, Luther, ultimately, these are people who were making a fierce frontal assault, so to speak, on the Roman Catholic Church. And that protesting resulted in what we call the Protestants, okay, as they protested against the things that the Roman Catholic Church held. Wasn't Augustine, though, the first one to do this? He had thought, so once again, we're dealing with the melding of all of this, and he was along those lines. Absolutely. Absolutely. But he was earlier. Much earlier. Okay. So, but the thing is that when these people, so to speak, left the Roman Catholic Church, They brought with them a body of doctrine, and I always like to think of it this way. I believe they were very inaccurate in their eschatology and their understanding of who Israel is and who they were, you know, thinking that they take the place of Israel and so forth. Well, and to be fair to them, they were fighting a battle basically about how is a person saved. You're saved. by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. That's like their banner, that's their motto. That's what they fought for. And that took, as far as I can tell, their undivided attention like it would. You know, picture yourself in a battle situation and you've got one sniper on the west side of the camp, but on the north side of the camp, there's a thousand people trying to get through the wire. Well, you're not worrying about the sniper on the south side. And later on, people can say, you know, you never did anything about the south side of the camp. Well, it didn't make any sense to do anything about that. You had to fight the battle that you were fighting, and their battle was salvation through faith alone, in Christ alone. Okay. And so was Scriptura. You know, only Scripture. You cannot allow the Church to dictate what these things mean and say, or tradition, or any of these other things. We always, all the time, in every generation, have to go back to the Scriptures. If the Scriptures are the Word of God, they're authoritative, and answer these questions for us, and so that's where we go. Okay? So, they brought with them all these doctrines as they came, and that body of doctrine is called Reformed. Okay? I don't know if that makes any sense. But let me just caution you that People have all kinds of ideas when they hear the, when they use the word reformed. You know, some people will say, if they heard me say, well, okay, I'm a Calvinist, they'd say he's reformed. And I'm not reformed in the absolute sense because I believe that Israel and the church are two separate entities and, you know, have a whole different view of those things. Okay. So. So reformed has a huge amount of, categories and doctrine in it, and then Calvinism can be a part of what they believe, but we're dealing with one specific part. Yeah, absolutely. We're dealing with probably the most famous part of Calvinism, okay, and the one that's readily identified with Calvinism and therefore reformed. Okay, and I've got a paper that a theologian wrote, The Danger of Calvinism The danger, how does that work? The danger of the five points of Calvinism, I'm not going to pull it out right, but the whole idea is this, that when you, the writer of this article said, the writer of this paper said, you've got to be careful what you're buying into here because when you start to go down that Calvinist road, it includes a lot of things you don't agree with. Okay. And I agree with that. There's a lot of things you don't agree with. Okay. But that's. That's probably pretty close. And then, but the problem is as soon as you say that you're going to be, and what I mean by that, because you cannot trust that your terminology is their terminology is, you know, it's just, it won't work. Believe me it won't. Okay. Well, that didn't take long. So, let's just start. We're going to start on the left side, or the first page there. And, let's start with Arminius's, or the Arminianism view of the first thing, which is free will. Arminius said, Fowler said, man has a free will. The interesting thing is, the Reformers also said man has a free will, but because of sin, and because of slavery to Satan, man can't use his free will. Okay? We're so held, what they were saying, we're so under the power of Satan, and so under the power of our own sinful heart, that this will that we have is already in bondage, and so it's unable to respond correctly to the things of God in and of itself. Cannot do it. And this, how you come at this, takes you exactly back to the fall. Because the whole question here is, What damage did the fall of Adam do to humanity? What did it do to the human will? Huh? Spiritual death. Okay. How did that affect the will? That's the whole question really that we're dealing with here. And both groups understood this is a question about the fall. Okay. We're putting it as free will. Okay. Let me continue the truth. The reformers acknowledged that man had a will, but they agreed with Luther's thesis in his book, The Bondage of the Will, okay, that tells you where he was coming from, all right, that the fall of, I'm sorry, that it was not free from bondage to Satan. Arminius believed. that the fall of man was not total. Okay, now this is a really important point. That the fall of man was not total, and he held that there was enough good left in man for him to will to accept Christ for salvation. Right away. I say there are certain scriptures that come to mind immediately. There's none who does good. There's none who understands. Okay. The fallen man was not total and he held that there was enough good left in man for him to will to accept Christ unto salvation. The Arminian position said. And you wonder then, well, you know, and that's not fair to them, but I would ask the question, right, well, what did the fall do? You know, what, is this a skinned knee? You know, where we get right back up and we maybe limp a little, but we're still in operation. So, that's the first thing. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to just try to, this week and maybe next week too, I don't know, but we'll try to explain each one of these categories. Then we're going to look at some scriptures that would be, gone to by both sides. I want to try to be fair about that. Because there's certainly passages Christ said, and you will not come to me. There's the word will, you know, but the question is why? Okay. Next one is conditional election. And this is the one that I would say is most, this is a really widely held position today. He believed, Arminius and the followers of Arminianism, believes that that election is conditioned, see that it's a conditional election, is conditioned on God knowing the future and looking ahead in the future to see what you'll do when you're confronted with your free will to the gospel. And so God looks ahead, and he says, there's one that'll believe in me. I'll elect him. Okay? So, you know, my question is, and again, I'm being biased. I can't help it. But who's really choosing there then? This is one of the things that used to bother me and finally just grabbed me around the throat. Listen, does God not say what He means? Could He not say it? Why does He keep saying, I chose you from the foundation of the world if it was really me choosing and then He chose because I chose. Why didn't He just say that? To me, that's a huge issue. Because you would have to say, just ordinary language, whether you're in the Greek or in the Hebrew or in the, you know, that when it's presented that way, anybody reading that should say, that means God chose me. And to turn it, to me, it's turning it on its head. Absolutely upside down. No, he didn't choose me. I chose him, so then he chose me. Because that's then saying, I chose. So, Arminius further taught that election was based upon the foreknowledge of God as to who would believe. In other words, man's act of faith is the condition man's act of faith that God's looking forward to and seeing is a condition for his being elected by God or chosen by God to eternal life. You know, I can remember as I was just reeling and battling with all these things some years ago. And I always have to mention this because you know how it might not affect somebody else but you know how there's certain things in your life that you read or you come across and it just absolutely shocks the daylights out of you. You know, and you can't ever be the same again because this new area of thought has been opened up to you. And it was in Lewis Ferry Schaeffer's theology, and he just said, basically, I'm paraphrasing now, but he said this, you've got to understand, God has nothing to look ahead to unless he ordains it. You know, in other words, it's a blank scale. that God in his plan doesn't create, doesn't do, doesn't... So there's nothing... You know, this idea of, oh, he just looks ahead to see what's going to happen. Why is it going to happen in the first place? Because a sovereign God brought it into existence and has a plan that's moving, and that just stopped me in my little Arminian tracks. I just didn't know what to do with that. I just said, wow, that is, it's a blank slate. for him to look at unless he does everything necessary to fill the future up. And if he fills the future up, it's his plan that fills it up. Okay. So conditional election. An election conditioned on me and you. Okay. Probably the most prevalent thought held today in this area. All right. Next one. Universal atonement. I'll say, I commented on this this morning, this is the one where there are many who would consider themselves to be on the Calvinist side, flinch a little bit, and say, well, there certainly is a teaching in scripture that Christ died for the whole world. And, you know, we'll be looking at the fact that the Calvinist says, well, the world then can only be the elect. And I can't go there. But, on the other hand, I have to say this, that in the final analysis, those who are saved are the ones Christ died for. So, you can get all the way to the end of time and look back and say, look, it's pretty clear that the blood-bought ones, the ones who were brought to eternal salvation, are the elect. And that's where this thing gets really, you know, wraps your mind around a post or something. And by the way, I should have said this right from the beginning. We're grappling with things that are beyond us. These are the things of God. We're supposed to grapple with them. But, I think like David, he said something along the lines of, such things are too high for me. You know, David said, there's things that are just too high and in this subject you're going to come to the end of the road and you're going to lay awake at night maybe at the end of the road and then come at it from another direction and come at it from over here and you know but you keep coming to the point where you say I cannot I can't reconcile these two things the way I would like to and it's been my contention that I've never read anything that I felt Really perfectly reconciled all of scripture to either of these positions including Calvinism okay, I do believe that the the huge weight is on the side of Calvinism, but That's because of the things like that. We just looked at the thing about the fall the fall is total I mean but death sinners, all condemned, spiritually dead, you know, huge things. But anyway, okay, so universal atonement. Inasmuch as it was their further conviction that God loves everybody, that's so familiar today, okay, that Christ died for everyone and that the Father is not willing that any should perish, Arminius and his followers held that the atonement or redemption was general. In other words, that Christ died for everyone because he loved everyone. In other words, the death of Christ provided grounds for God to save all men. And I absolutely have to agree with that statement that in the death of Christ. But, you know, the Calvinist says something very similar. He says, the blood of Christ is sufficient for all and efficacious for the elect. And I cannot disagree with that. Efficacious means absolutely effective to accomplishing the goal. Okay? So it effectively saves the elect. that it is sufficient for all men. But the box you get into here is if Christ truly, in the same absolute sense, died for all men, then the argument of the Calvinists is going to be, well, why are not all men saved then? That's quite a question. I mean, if it's the same for the elect as it is for the non-elect, Then this makes the separating difference. That's where it's going to go. And that's exactly where they're going to go. That's where they do go. Okay. All right. That brings us to number four. Wow, we're out of time already? Obstructible grace. You know, we talk about an obstruction. Let me just read this paragraph. The Arminian server believed that since God wanted all men to be saved, He sent the Holy Spirit to woo, draw, call all men to Christ. However, since man has absolute free will, he's able to resist that call. And he's able to resist God's will for his life. And then this last one, although the Arminian says he believes that God is omnipotent, see this year in another box here, believes that God is omnipotent, he insists by this obstructable grace concept that your free will can stymie God's omnipotence. You see that? In other words, Both sides have to account for why some people are saved and some aren't. The bottom line is we know there are vast numbers of people that are not saved and there are people that are saved. The Arminian lays that at the foot of man's free will and that he is unwilling. You can see where that goes then. How does that make me think of myself? if I was willing in and of myself. Yes. I mean, all of a sudden, to me at least I can say, I'm better than the guy next door. He never believed. And I did. And it's all me. Yes, the Holy Spirit wooed me, but the Holy Spirit wooed the guy next door too. And he didn't and I did. Versus the awesome Looking at it from the other side, we were all unwilling, and God chose someone to salvation, and by His sovereign omnipotence brought us to faith in Christ. We'll do the last one. Falling from grace. This is absolutely consistent with the rest of the other four points, and that is this. since this is all conditioned on man's free will, okay, yeah, I can, and they would say, and people do, change their minds midstream. And if they change their minds, since it was conditioned, since the, you know, like I said to somebody this morning, the trigger for this thing, since I triggered it by my faith, I can undo it by my faith also, and I can fall from grace. And so, you will notice, you know, right in our own Toba County, there are churches that are Arminian, and they believe you can lose your salvation. Whereas the other side of it is, that if this is all of God, He planned it in eternity past. He, by his power, brought it to pass. He's not going to undo it. He knows the end from the beginning. And so, you know, it was mentioned as I was talking about this this morning also, just in conversation. Well, there are Armenians who believe in eternal security. But my comment on that is, but they've got nothing to hang it on. Now, they may go to some scriptures that show that You can't lose your salvation. But the pillars of their doctrine, they're not supporting this. Because they believe it was you that got the salvation. So, consistence demands that you could lose it. You can see this is a huge, huge area. We've only just touched the surface of it. It has huge ramifications in the one that comes to mind, the largest one today is depending on your position in one camp or the other is how do you evangelize? Because really what you come down to is from the Arminian perspective all I have to do is get you to change your will. And so it makes sense to think anything I can do in and of myself to get you to change your will, see, is what's at stake. And that's, I believe, absolutely, that's why we have these movements today. There are these huge movements to no offend in any way people, you know, take the church, you know, there's no cross, there's no blood, there's, there's, you know, no sin, you end up, well, where's the salvation message? But the whole idea there is we want to keep, we don't want to ruffle anybody's will, you know, and so we, in the other camp we say, you know, we, we fearlessly preach the gospel. And our desire in both camps, certainly their desire is to live a godly life, okay? So that God will bring to himself those that he has called, okay? Those who are elect. We want the gospel to go to all men, okay? Because we have God's promise that whoever calls on him, you know, will be saved, alright? And so we present it. We have never known whether we're dealing with a person who's elect or not elect. We don't know that. We don't even know after they've slapped us in the face and rejected the gospel for 16 years. We still don't know. We have our, you know, but I think, but it doesn't matter what we think. And there are people that are saved, you know, 10 minutes before they die, you know, and so prove to be elect. Okay. Father, we thank you for the privilege of talking and looking at your word and studying these things. May they draw us closer to Christ and cause our worship of you to be so intensified because of what you've done. We thank you for these things in Jesus' name. Amen.