Greetings and welcome once again to our program. I'm Larry Wessels your co-host and I want to thank you for joining us with Pilgrim Publications Presents. Today is our continuing series on the topic predestination. I know that's a terrifying topic to many of you but Just calm yourself down and rest assured that we'll try not to scare you with this very biblical doctrine and try to explain it to the best of our abilities. But to help me explain this is the director of Pilgrim Publications and noted author, Bob L. Ross. Bob, as usual, great to have you here on this program. It's always a joy to discuss interesting subjects and this is certainly one of the most interesting subjects that we could possibly discussed and one that is at one of the foundational stones of our Christian faith and certainly our Baptist and Protestant faith as we look at it historically. It sounds like you don't scream with terror when you mention the word predestination. Well you know I can understand the problems that some people would have with it because after all we all learn and there was a time in my life as a learning young Christian that i didn't know uh... a whole lot about it but that's where the bible comes in that's where good books come in that's where other uh... well-established christians come in they help you along the way and i have a lot of stepping stones that i have profited from and so maybe i've reached to that point where that it's not a frightening subject now that i understand more about the teachings of the bible on that and i'm sure that if there are those in our audience today who little bit squeamish about the subject that they'll just study their Bible and pray and seek the man of God that they will come out rejoicing in the truth on it also. Excellent, well said. I would like to mention to our viewers that this show is sponsored by Pilgrim Publications and And Pilgrim Publications is one of the world's leading publishers of the works of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the prince of preachers of the 19th century. And Bob, what I'd like you to do since you're the director and also an author yourself, tell our viewers here just briefly some of the resources we have available. And we do send some information out by simply calling the phone number on the screen or writing our address. Well, Larry, I want to emphasize the particular sermons by Spurgeon that maybe correlate with our subject, predestination. Here is the great sermon by Spurgeon on the doctrine of election. This was preached in his church in London in the 1850s, and Spurgeon was one of the very strongest on election and predestination among our Baptists of the past. And we have his sermon here on Christ crucified. which has to do with the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ, fulfilling the purpose of God, which was predestinated before the foundation of the world, that Christ would come into the world and die for our sins. And then on the question of Calvinism, what do we mean by Calvinism and what can be said in its defense? Here's a little booklet by Spurgeon called The Defense of Calvinism, answering some of the misrepresentations and questions or whatever that have been raised on that issue of the Calvinistic theology. Then one more I'll mention is free will a slave, where the Spurgeon shows that the free will of man actually is bound to his carnal nature, and that the will is nothing more than the expression of the carnal nature of man. And so consequently, it's not very free. He said, free will man once had in the Garden of Eden, and he made a mess out of it. So we're plugging these four in particular. We have hundreds and thousands of more of Spurgeon's sermons, but he was a great predestinarian, and we have another booklet of his called The Doctrines of Grace, which he discusses all five, or has messages all five of the great doctrines that we call the doctrines of grace. Free of charge, I have compiled a list. It's called the Doctrines of Grace that you were just mentioning. It's the five points of basic Calvinism, which I know a lot of viewers probably are gagging on that word, too, thinking, oh, this is some kind of false religious cult or whatever. But this is easy reading, and it's free and available for anyone that will call or write. the phone numbers or the addresses on your screen. And this will hopefully make it very clear and easy to understand what the Bible has to say about these five points that Bob was mentioning a moment ago. But for sake of time, I'm not going to go into what those five points are at the moment. But rest assured, they're mentioned in the doctrines of grace. Now, Bob, you have a few more items there you'd like to mention before we get into this Yes, I want to point out the fact that the doctrine that we hold on predestination and election and the sovereignty of God is not some novel 20th century view of scriptural teaching with regard to the sovereignty of God, but rather it's rooted in our foundational Christianity that goes back historically and in the major denominational churches, for instance, such as the Lutheran, the Presbyterian, the Baptist, the Congregationalist, the Anglican or Episcopalian. If you'll examine the creeds or the confessions of faith of these churches, you'll find that the Protestantism that grew out of the Protestant Reformation was basically affirming the predestination and the sovereignty and the providence of God, as we have generally expounded it here on this program. Now, Martin Luther, for instance, had a book entitled The Bondage of the Will. which is still in print today, and certainly affirms the sovereignty of God as opposed to the popular concept of Armenian free willism. And then... Well, by the way, Luther said, of all his volumes of writings, he said that was the most significant work he had written, The Bondage of the Will and Refuting Harassments. And then we have John Calvin, who is a great father in the Presbyterian tradition and his Christian institutes. John Calvin certainly affirmed the sovereignty of God and the predestination of God. John Knox, a great English reformer, also was a great predestinarian. And when I go back and start thinking of these men in history who contributed to the Protestant Reformation, and the English evangelicalism of England and the United States. Jonathan Edwards, whom you mentioned, for instance, his great volume called Freedom of the Will, in which he discussed the will in relation to divine determinism, and Edwards was a very strong predestinarian. And men like John Bunyan, who wrote The Pilgrim's Progress, one of the most influential books, probably next to the Bible, the most published book in history, John Bunyan was a very strong predestinarian. C. H. Spurgeon, whose sermons that we published, a very strong, dedicated predestinarian, believed in the doctrines of grace according to the I'd like to mention, too, that I know for a fact that back in the 1790s in England, some of the great missionary societies that were formed at that time were started to a man by predestinarians. The Great Missionary Society, now this is a straw man attack that's brought against predestinarians in that they say it kills evangelism. I know the Baptist denomination in particular, William Carey and Andrew Fuller, were among the first to begin to think in terms of sending the gospel to other countries at a great distance. We call them foreign countries. And these two men were very committed to the biblical doctrine, the Baptist doctrine of predestination. Now, Larry, the great book, I say the great book because I think this is perhaps the most outstanding book that I certainly have ever read, for its size at least, on the subject of predestination. I have a hardback edition, which is an older one, and then I have the paperback edition, which is more recent. But it's by Jerome Zankas, if that's the way that's pronounced. I'm not sure. Of course, that's a European name. Zankas or Zankas. Jerome Zankas. The Doctrine of Absolute Predestination. And this book, if you're looking for something to study, this book is really one of the classic writings on the subject. Now, you can also study in the Systematic Theologians. such as a strong and charles hodge and uh... and i thought and on our and so on we think of uh... the sovereignty of god by a w pink that's a very helpful book also how about uh... it was not right as the theologians these other men do but he certainly has accumulated a lot of uh... good material in that book how about a reform doctrine of predestination by lorraine bettner that's a very good book also although again better is not up to the shoulders of some of these theologians, like the Hodges, for instance, among the Presbyterians, Warfield among the Presbyterians, Strong of the Baptists, and J.P. Boyce from the Baptists, and certainly John Gill, the famous Baptist that preceded Spurgeon at the church in London years ago, and men like George Whitefield, who was a great flaming evangelist, as we think of him. very strong predestination refuted john wesley the western armenian on the subject of the predestination election the great men in our history who have made marks in history for the cause of evangelical christianity they were committed to the doctrine that's in our creeds on the providence of god the predestination of god and larry we've got down to the point today in american christianity that were down to this pabulum free willism, that God is kind of like a piece of clay that man has in his hands. you know you can't do anything unless man lets him do it now let me ask you this question on that subject you're just mentioning you think back over all the great theologians in the christian church down through time i think of the great predestinarians as you have already mentioned most of them uh... think of augustine back in the fourth century you mentioned luther calvin jonathan edwards uh... hodge and those guys but now there's this in Christian church history, who would you rank as the great anti-predestinarian theologians in the church? And if you can name, as you name them, do they rank in stature to the men I just mentioned? It seems to me if you take the ten greatest theologians in church history, at least Luther, Calvin, Augustine, Augustine, and those guys, Jonathan Edwards, would rank in at least five of those ten. Well, the anti-predestinarians within the, quote, Christian church would have to be from the ranks of the Wesleyans. Men like Watson, for instance, who was an outstanding Wesleyan theologian and anti-predestinarian, Adam Clark, the commentator, Wesleyan, Methodist, anti-Predestinarian. And then there was a Dr. Whitby. I don't think Whitby was a Wesleyan, but John Gill answers Whitby. But he was certainly an anti-Predestinarian, anti-Calvinist writer. And you go back into that era of the 1700s and 1800s, you come across some of those kinds of writers. but uh... by james armenians well armenians was not really so much of an anti predestined as he was uh... a compromising position on it they can open the door of the floodgates you so to speak to those who followed armenians i think armenians his successors his followers went far beyond anything that armenians probably would have ever said I have read the three volumes of Arminius's theology. And Arminius, by today's standards, Larry, in the generation which we live, would probably be recognized as a very strong Calvinist. That's how far adrift people are today with their concept of the sovereignty of free will. When you hear these preachers on television and radio and evangelism today, talking about uh... salvation or something why it's as if god is helpless god is doing nothing until you give him permission to do it what about penny well uh... penny was uh... he was a kind of fellow who if he went into a town and he found it was armenian generally in the religion he would preach calvinism Then if he went into a town that was strongly Calvinistic, he would preach Arminianism, and he would try to create, you know, a lot of smoke and take advantage of the situation. But theologically, Phineas' systematic theology is certainly far afield from anything that the Calvinist theologians would approve of, and even on the other side, Armenian theologians would have very little to do with it either. It's kind of a mick mash. Well, then, basically, to get back to what I was asking, then, it sounds like from what you said, and the viewers at home have probably all heard of Luther, and they've heard of Calvin, and probably Jonathan Edwards, the greatest theologian from American soil. and Whitfield sounds familiar and so forth. But a lot of these names, even I have to admit, you mentioned a few there I hadn't even heard of, for the anti-predestinarian. I would say that probably the greatest anti-predestinarian, as far as a name is concerned, would have to be John Wesley. And certainly his brother Charles Wesley, who is most famous for his hymns, and in one of his poems he wrote about that horrible decree which he was referring to predestination. And Charles Wesley, he didn't, you might say, write anything extensive, but some of the things he did write had a little slogan-type ring to them, and they've endured down through the years. But the two Wesleys, they were certainly anti-predestinarian. Well, it seems to me, though, when you look in church history, Ben, the heavyweights of theology seem to be stacked on the predestination side. And if that means anything Larry, we can take the corpse probably to the man and every one of them were anti-predestinarian, anti-sovereignty of God. That's right. So when you do an analysis of comparative religions, almost the vast majority, there may be a couple of exceptions, but the vast, vast majority of them are all in the Armenian camp, anti-predestinarian, to the last cult, practically. And furthermore, Larry, the Council of Trent, which was convened especially to try to offset the Protestant Reformation, It is certainly, the Roman Catholic Council of Trent, it is certainly anti-predestinarian and contrary to our Christian Research Institute friends who try to defend Roman Catholicism and even assert that Roman Catholics affirm predestination. If you read the Council of Trent, I think you'll see it's far afield from affirming predestination. It sets itself up against all those distinctive doctrines of Protestantism which Roman Catholicism affirms against predestination and they do take a strong position for free willism as opposed to the sovereignty of God. So if it means anything that the cults and the Romanists and the Camelots and of course the Camelots, some of them, I brought a book with me here to discuss a little bit of it. They even go so far as some of them will deny even that God foresees and foreknows things in advance, much less predestinate, Larry. This is Mr. Brents, T. W. Brents, one of the writers, called The Gospel Plan of Salvation. This was published by the Gospel Advocate Company out of Nashville. It's the Church of Christ Organization. Right. Years ago in my book on Kemalism, which I wrote it years ago, I quoted from this gentleman in the book. to show that Camelot will even deny the foreknowledge of God, that he foreknew all things on the grounds that this would contradict and conflict with the free will of man. And I quoted from this gentleman here, Mr. Wentz, who lived in the 1800s, and Larry, it's almost like reading from an infidel to read this, but let me read you what he says here. He says, though omnipotent, may there not be some things which he did not know, though omniscient. But it may be said that God cannot lie because it's incompatible with his nature, and not because he has not the power to lie. Very well, then. He did not know before making man just how wicked man would be. simply because such foreknowledge would have been incompatible with the free agency and responsibility of man. To be responsible, man must be free. If God knew before he gave Adam the law and the garden that he would violate it when given, then he was not free. Now, here's a man asserting that simple foreknowledge makes man not free. So, therefore, he's going to say that God had the power to avoid the foreknowledge of everything incompatible with his attributes and the scheme of salvation devised by him, he who says God could not avoid knowing everything limits the power of him who is omnipotent." Now, what this amounts to, Larry, is that this man believed a doctrine of freewillism which he saw could not stand up even on the grounds of foreknowledge, that he could not defend it. The point is this, he whose doctrine depends upon the ignorance of God must be an ignorant person believing in an ignorant doctrine. That's the way I look at it. And that's what I've told the Camelot through the years. If a doctrine is dependent upon an ignorant God, it's an ignorant doctrine, believe the ignorant people. And here, though, you see he's saying, well, if something can be foreknown in advance, then that eliminates the freedom of it. And so, therefore, he denies the foreknowledge of God. In other words, he's going to maintain his idol, Dagon Freewill, as opposed to the sovereignty of God. It reminds me of a philosophical question you could ask on that point, that since God doesn't really know the future, he doesn't have the adequate foreknowledge Does it mean that God is learning each day as he watches his creation unfold? He's learning new things. So, actually, after a couple thousand years, God is smarter than what he was when he created the universe. And Larry, the funny thing about this is this. Here's a God who evidently the writer of Grant's has the power to foreknow. But instead of exercising the power to foreknow and then to take measures to prevent those things that he could prevent, he chooses to be ignorant. I mean, what kind of... You know, you're driving down the highway and you look down here and you see a sign warning danger ahead. But you're saying, no, don't put that danger sign up. We don't want any advance warning here. That's what the guy's saying. And if I've got the gift of foreknowledge and I can look down the road and see what the dangers are and I have some power to correct that and avoid that, I mean, you know, we get weather forecasts, we call up the AAA and say, hey, what's the road conditions going to such and such a place, and what's the weather conditions, because we want to make plans for what we're facing. But here's the fellow who says, no, no, we've got to have free will. We don't want anything to infringe on their free will, so God can't know this. So he's going to shut his eyes. No, I can't look now. And, I mean, that's their doctrine to defend free willism. I know in some, this is just an aside, but I know in some Church of Christ or Campbellite seminaries, their doctrine of predestination, they teach that it's those that God saw would be baptized. That's their doctrine of predestination. It's the ones that God foresaw would be water baptized that are predestinated. Yeah, it's kind of like after the race is over, you know, then you can come out and make a prediction on who's going to win the race. Now we've been talking here and you mentioned the word a lot and this is a good place to pick up sort of where we left off from the last program. This is part two. I'll mention again in our series on predestination. But last time when the show ended we were on this chart here and we were talking about the word for new and we've been talking about it a lot here and I figured we'll just kind of recap a little bit and then move on through some of this information we have on predestination particularly getting into what the scripture texts say. And I want to take a look here. This is God's eternal chain of grace. We have this chain here It's based off of Romans chapter 8 verses 29 and 30 I'll read that for whom he foreknew that's God he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his son that's Jesus that he might be the firstborn among many brethren and in whom he predestinated, these he also called, in whom he called, these he also justified, in whom he justified, these he also glorified." So you have this chain of God for knowing, predestinating, calling, justifying, and then finally, glorifying those saints. Now, Bob, we were in the middle of it sort of last time when we left off. Kind of recap, go through the word for new again, and then link all that in to this passage. All right, we pointed out that the word for new, actually we're continuing from Romans 8, 28, and the last part of verse 28, referred to them who are the called according to his purpose, for whom he did foreknow." So, this specifically zeroes in on those who are called according to the purpose of God, and this foreknow indicates that there was an intimacy in the purpose of God before these people even existed in the world, before the foundation of the world, according to Ephesians 1-4. Now, Larry, what we need to emphasize to a lot of people who may have been misled or have false ideas about predestination is that predestination is to something. It's to something. There are people who say, oh, well, you know, if he's one of the elect, so he'll be saved regardless. If he's predestinated, it doesn't matter. He never has to believe, he never has to repent, he's just predestinated, marked out to go to heaven regardless. That's not what the text says, and that's certainly not what we believe. They are predestinated to be conformed to the image of his Son, which simply means they're predestinated to be saved, to be born again, to repent, to believe, to live godly in Christ Jesus. Now, a man going around here saying, oh, well, I'm elect, I'm predestinated, and he's not conformed to the image of Christ, he's got no reason to be thinking he's been predestinated to anything but be a fool. I had a fellow one day, he said something about predestination and some foolish act he was going to do. whatever, if it's predestinated, fine, if it's not, fine." I said, well, it sounds to me like you've been predestinated to be a fool. And so, the point is, the predestination that has, here in Romans 8, that's in focus, those who are called according to the purpose of God, those have been foreknown and they're predestinated to become conformed to the image of his Son, which simply means to be made like Christ. in your faith and dependence upon God, and ultimately to be resurrected with Christ, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren, and whom he predestinated, these he also called." So a predestinated man is going to be called by the gospel and called by the Holy Spirit to the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, you and I can go out preaching the gospel. We can print gospel tracts. We can have evangelistic services. We can go to the mission field. We can print Bibles. We can sow the seed all that we can and we should. We're commissioned not to try to locate who the predestinated are. We're commissioned to preach the gospel to every creature. We know that every creature is not going to respond, but we're commissioned to preach it to every creature. Okay, we can do all that. Now, what's going to happen? There's going to be a calling. And how are they called? They're called by the Word, they're called by the Gospel, they're called by the Spirit. We can preach the Gospel, but the Spirit also has to convict. The Spirit has to draw. Jesus said, No man can come to me except the Father, which has sent me, draw him. And how does the Father draw? The Father sent the Spirit. And the Spirit comes upon the Word. The Spirit rests upon the Gospel. That's why we're not hard-shelled. We're not so-called primitives Baptists. We're not hyper-Calvinists. We don't believe that men are called apart from the Word of God, the gospel. And if you're not out there preaching the gospel, you have no reason to believe anyone's going to be called, because that's how they're called, called by the gospel. 2 Thessalonians 2, verses 13 and 14, called by the gospel and empowered by the Holy Spirit. So Paul said, by all means I want to save some. What do you mean by all means? He meant by the means of preaching the Word of God to save some. So they're predestinated not simply to go to heaven, but they're predestinated to be called. They're predestinated to be justified. Justified by the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, imputed when they believe. Romans chapter 3, verses 24 to 26. We are justified by God's righteousness in Christ, Christ being the righteousness of God, put to our record when we believe in him, we are justified. Ultimately, at the resurrection, we will be glorified. Jesus in John 17 prayed for the ultimate glorification of all believers. So we don't think of predestination as simply some dark decision made off a billion years back in eternity that God just said, okay, this one's going to heaven and this one's going to hell. This predestination says these people are going to be called by the gospel. These people are going to be born again. They're going to be justified. They're going to be glorified. Now, that's the predestination that we are affirming in this doctrine here, and not just a blank decree as such, but it's God actually working out through his gospel, through his Spirit, through his power, calling, justifying, ultimately glorifying. Very well said. And you did mention one thing in that discourse there, Bob, about John chapter 6. I think it was verse 44. It says, No man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me draw him, and I will raise him up at the last day. Now it's interesting there in the Greek text, The word draw, if you go to like Kittles theological lexicon or Greek word dictionary, you'll find that the Greek word there is Kittles and other lexicons translated. I think there also means to forcefully drag. to take by force and pull you know something like that and in the context of the culture that greek word there was related to the fact that when they had a water well that was pretty deep and they would draw water out of that deep well the context of this word in that culture back 2,000 years ago was in the sense of you got to go down in that deep well and pull that water out of that well. And so, a better translation here of John 6, 44, instead of, you know, as it says, no man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me drag him. or forcefully pull him. There's a sense here of that predestinating calling where God is literally pulling that person towards the Son to match in with all these things that Bob just talked about. Well, Larry, let me give an illustration of this and go along with what you were talking about, that drawing and the pulling. I remember years ago when I was a kid, I was brought up partly on the farm for part of my life. And we had an outside well. And every once in a while, of course, we would draw water for drinking water. We would draw water for washing clothes. And we would go out there and we had this big, long device that I forget now even what we called it, but it was tube-shaped, the bucket. And it was long, and we'd put that down in the well, and we'd give it full, and then we would draw up by the rope. Now, what we were doing here, we were pulling against gravity. Gravity being weighted, this water weighting the bucket, the gravity would be pulling down, and we would be pulling against gravity. Now, what happens in salvation is, actually, a man is saved, Larry, believe it or not, against his will. Now, there are a lot of people talking about, you must be willing, and I know, I know we must be willing, but the point is, we are willing against our will, because we don't actually want to admit that we're sinners. We don't actually want to come to the Lord Jesus Christ as sinners. We don't want to repent. We don't want to return from the world and turn from sin and come to Christ in humiliation. That's not a part of our nature. That's not a part... What we want to do is to think, oh, I'm pretty good, I'm not so bad, maybe way on down the road it'll happen, but right now I don't want to be saved. How many times have you witnessed to somebody And they just didn't want to hear what you had to say, much less were they really interested. That's why the friend I was talking about before, I was so shocked to hear he come out with this, telling that he's now got the interest. He's being drawn. Well, you see, Larry, sometimes it takes a long time to God softening a man, working on a man, drawing a man. It's against his will. It's against his nature. And so while we do try to plead with people and preach to people and all this, if the Lord did not come in there and break up that fellow ground, if the Lord did not convict that heart, if the Lord did not make that person feel like something was missing and there was emptiness, and the weakness of the flesh and the uselessness of the world and the vanity of sin, if the Lord didn't do all this, no one would ever have a will to come to Christ. So, no man can come simply means in his natural carnal state A man can't even have a will to come to Christ because it's not a part of his nature. And if God doesn't work with him, this will to accept Christ, this will to believe in Christ, this will to repent will never occur. And that's why in our doctrine on the work of the Holy Spirit as contradictory, for instance, with the Camelot doctrine, the Camelots, you know, they say, well, you don't need anything more than just the Word itself. But we know from our experience and from the Word of God, the Word of God primarily, our experience secondarily, that we would have never come to Christ had not there been a work of the Holy Spirit drawing, as that text said. And what does John 6.63 say, Larry? You were in the sixth chapter of John there. Well, I've already moved off of it, but I can read John 6.63, and it puts it even more specific. Okay, John 6.63 says, It is the Spirit that quickeneth the flesh, profiteth nothing. The words that I speak unto you, they are Spirit and they are life." And it is the Spirit that quickeneth, so the power in the Word to quicken. When the Word comes, as Paul said in Thessalonians, in power and demonstration of the Spirit, then that's when the Word is really effectual. A lot of times we preach the Word, we witness the people, we give them the Gospel either by oral or written Word anyway, video or audio tapes or whatever, radio, television. It goes out there and it's just like seed on concrete. It just won't take root. But when the Spirit quickens, when that power of the Spirit goes with the Word, then that's when the job gets done. And that's in the hands of God. That's under the sovereignty of God. Well, that's where it goes right back to what we're talking about here, especially with this Romans chapter 8. In fact, almost all the way through the whole chapter, you can read the rest of Romans chapter 8, these two verses here we've got on a board, 29 and 30, but then just keep reading all the way to the end of the chapter. It's the predestinating power of God who then, effectually, through the Holy Spirit, calls you to His grace so that you can be justified and then glorified. I would like to mention, too, on this thing about the drawing that we've spent some time on, but I think it's very important. So people can get this understanding of how the predestination of God is so important in the salvation of sinners. This drawing that we've been talking about, how it can literally be translated into Greek as drag. God just drags you against your nature, as Bob was saying. But you can take that same word that's found in John 6, 44. and go over, let's say, and I've already found a place here, Acts 16, 19, where you have the exact same Greek word, and it's even rendered drew here in the text, but let's take a look at it. It says, and when her masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas and drew them into the marketplace of the rulers. Now, a lot of people, when they look at John 6, 44, they try to argue, and this is a strongman argument I'm going to try to shoot down here. They try to say, well, what that word really means is God woos them. God coaxes you. He entices you to come to Christ. So, when the Armenians or the cults or somebody, they look at John 6, 44, and no man can come to me except the Father draw him. They say, oh, that's the father wooing him, trying to coax him over, and so forth. But if you take that same definition, then, that the Armenians would use here in John 6, 44, and look at it in Acts 16, 19, which I just read, and put that definition in, what do you have? You have, and when their masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas and wooed them into the marketplace unto the rulers. Somehow it doesn't seem to have the same impact as the word dragged or forcefully pulled. I think it starts to be painfully obvious to you who don't agree with us that there's a problem in your theology if you can't understand this. And I also would mention James 2.6. I can't resist as long as I'm on this situation. It says here, but ye have despised the poor, do not rich men oppress you, and draw you before the judgment seats. Once again, it's the same situation. That word, draw, does it mean woo, or does it mean forcefully drag? And I think it's pretty obvious from these texts, the same Greek word. Well, Larry, in John chapter 6, I guess in basic context, Jesus was addressing the religious Jews, Pharisees of that time, of which Paul was one. Now, I think in the case of Paul, we have maybe one of the most extreme examples of this point that you're bringing out of the necessity of power being exerted in a sinner's life for him to come to that point of submitting to Christ. was not only a very positive person religiously as a Jew, that is, he obeyed the law, he was in good standing, he was a very, well, he was rising up the ladder, so to speak, of religious leadership at the time, a very influential person, but he not only was positive that way, but he had taken a definite stand of activism, as we would say in this day and age, a militant against the church, and he was hounding the church. He was out there looking for people that were preaching the gospel so he could persecute them. And Stephen, the first one to be stoned there in the book of Acts, Paul, they laid the clothes at Paul's feet. And so he was on his way, going down this road, was it the road to Damascus I'm trying to think of here? Acts chapter 9, and he was on his way with orders to persecute the church. And lo and behold, here's this light. Jesus Christ appears to him, and he's converted. The accounts there in the book of Acts, he's converted there on the road. Now, there's an instance of a man who was not only a sinner, but he was active against Christ. I mean, you and I, Maybe we were against Christ, in a sense, but we weren't out there trying to kill Christians. At least I wasn't. I don't think you were. But here was a man who, you know, he had a very definite agenda, so to speak. And here he is, en route to do it, and boom. He is drugged, you might say, to the Lord through this experience. But wait a minute, I hear preachers all the time on TV and radio saying, God will not interfere in your life. He will not do anything against you. Well, try to tell that to the Apostle Paul, because God certainly put a roadblock in front of him in the form of the vision of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, on the other hand, we have other people like Lydia. who Lydia in the 16th chapter of Acts was there by the riverside, and Paul went over there to Philippi, and he preached the gospel there. And we don't have any great vision. We don't have Jesus appearing in a vision. We don't have any audible voice uttered. But it does say the Lord opened her heart, that she attended unto the things spoken by Paul. So when you come to this drawing power, Sometimes, like Paul's case, it was so open and such a display thing that even blinded his companions that were with it. But in the case of Lydia, it was just an inner heart opening that she received the truth and yet it took power to convert both of them. 1614 where Lydia you have that record there. All the experiences are alike but you have to have the power of God in the sinner's life. That's right. That's right. And that all ties in what we're saying here about the predestination and the chain and the calling. Yes, and the calling. And so hopefully that's given our viewers a little taste of what some of these words mean and all the theological ramifications that are implied within them. So, you know, it's a good thing we've gone into this detail just to get an idea because so often you can read a passage, just these two verses, and it's so packed with so much theological truth, it's so easy to just run by, have it go right over your head and never even notice it. But Larry, once again, let's emphasize that these are links that cannot be isolated as if one of them can be experienced without the other. They're all tied together. If you're going to be glorified, it's because you've had all these other things. And if you're foreign-owned, predestinated, then you're going to have all these things. That's right. Because it's an inseparable link. If you're missing one, then you can't have the others. Right. You can't break that link between the beginning and the ending of the glorification. Very good. All right. With that, let's Let's move on to another chart here, and in our first show in this series, you had mentioned this passage of Scripture, and I think you might have mentioned it once already in this particular show. But we're going to move in through these charts and start to give you as much scriptural evidence as we possibly can on the doctrines of predestination, what does the Bible say, and try to expound on these things in more and more detail as we go. I know for a fact you mentioned this in show number one, Ephesians chapter one, and what we have here is verses four, five, six, eleven, and twelve. So anyone that has their Bible out there, just grab it, open it up to Ephesians chapter one, or write these down for further reference if you don't have your Bible with you. But I'll read it, and then I'm going to let Bob talk a little bit about what we're seeing here. Okay, Ephesians chapter one, verse four, it says, For He, that's talking about God, for God, for He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight and love. He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ in accordance with His pleasure and will to the praise of His glorious grace which He has freely given us and the one He loves. And then down to verse 11, in him we were also chosen having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, talking about God's will. Verse 12, in order that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be for the praise of his glory. All right, Bob, what we have here is He chose us in Him before the creation of the world. He predestined us to be adopted as His sons. We were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything in conformity. What do you have to say about all this? Well, these verses, of course, Larry, were written to inform Christians why they were, at the time, Christians. In other words, Paul is giving them a theological history or background of why they are what they are now as believers. Not because of the things they have done, but he's saying that this is due to the grace of God. Notice it says, "...for the praise of his glory." And there was another ending that was here also. Right here, to the praise of His glorious grace. Right, to the praise of His glorious grace. So what Paul is telling them is, you were chosen before the creation of the world. You were adopted in time as sons through Jesus Christ in accordance with God's pleasure and will. You were chosen, having been predestinated according to the plan of him who works everything in conformity with the purpose of his will." And what Paul is simply telling the Ephesians is, you are what you are by the grace of God. And in another place he said, if you receive this blessing, why do you glory as if you didn't receive it? Right into the Corinthians. So, the constant need for the Christian is to give glory to God for their spiritual blessings, for their spiritual enjoyment, the things that they experience spiritually. Now, I guess the greatest problem we as Christians have, I know it is with me, and I think I would represent you is, that we tend to, more or less, take a little credit and pride and a little, we want a little bit of the glory for something that we do. And if we maybe, well, let me give you an illustration. I remember one time reading a biography of, I think it was John Bunyan, and Bunyan went in the pulpit And he preached, and he preached a very outstanding message. It was very much filled with unction and anointing and all of these great things that preachers talk about. And so he left the pulpit and came down, and very shortly after he left the pulpit, someone said, gave him some kind of compliment about how great the sermon was. And Bunyan says, yes, the devil told me that before I got out of the pulpit. Well, what Bunyan was saying was his own human pride, you might say, had seen this, and he was already feeling the fleshly glory of this, and yet Bunyan spiked it. He nipped it in the bud, as Barney Fife said. He nipped it. And he saw that it was satanic. It was of the old flesh. Not that Satan himself had to be there because it was just of that nature of Satan to take the glory. Well, when you come to the Bible, you have people in the Bible. What's the biggest problem Paul faced in all his ministry? Probably the doctrine of or the principle of self-righteousness. People that were righteous within themselves. He faced this time and time again with the Jews. He faced it time and time again with the converted Christians over the Jews and the Gentiles. They were wanting to take glory and pride and credit. And Paul, in these great doctrines here, he describes you of everything. I mean, you're what you are because God chose you. You didn't choose yourself. You weren't even there to choose. And you are what you are because you were adopted through Jesus Christ. Your righteousness is what Jesus Christ did for you. It's not all the work you've done, or joining the women's baking society at the church, or doing something nice for people, or being a good person. It's predestination is why you're a true Christian. God at work in your life is the answer to every good thing. Philippians 1.6, He which hath begun a good work in you, Philippians 2.13, "...work out your salvation with fear and tribulation, as God worketh in you." God worketh in you. What about a guy that is born into just a religious family and he kind of goes to church every now and then and he feels like he's earning some brownie points with God. Is he, because he's in a Christian church, is he considered one of these guys or how would you deal with that? There's probably a lot of viewers at home watching this right now and are kind of fascinated by this whole discussion of predestination. And I'm trying to take this text and make them think about their own situation. Well, we have a man in the Bible we often call a rich young ruler. He was brought up in a religious circumstance. He was very well acquainted with the law. He professed to be a keeper of all the laws that Jesus mentioned to him. And actually, the man was very religious, and as far as we know, a high-type moral person, and all this. But Jesus said, one thing thou lackest, which basically is nothing more than we all lack. And that one thing we lack is we don't have a union with God by faith in Jesus Christ, regardless of how good we are and how much religion we may have. If we haven't come to that point of submitting to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, then we lack the one thing that's vital to our whole existence and our experience in this world. So I'm satisfied there are a lot of people in the world, some may be sitting here listening to us today, they've been brought up in religious circumstances, they're morally pure, comparatively speaking, not that they would think that they were perfect perhaps, but certainly they have not been sent to jail, they've not been convicted of a crime, Maybe they've not been guilty of adultery or stealing or lying or blasphemy or all those things. Maybe just as good as a rich young ruler. But one thing thou lackest, and you know you lack it. I don't have to tell you about it if you're in this situation. And that lack is you really do not have peace with God with regard to your soul's salvation because you know that as good as you are and as religious as you are, you know and you're doubtful and you're fearful. There's just not enough of it there. to cover up and to justify, because it won't. It won't give you peace. But if you will trust Jesus Christ, then you have forgiveness of all your sins through him. And this gives you a perfect standing before God, not based on what you do, but based on the fact that Christ loved and died for you. He gives you his righteousness, and now you're acceptable with God. You don't have to go around acting like a Pharisee anymore. trying to do this, do that, to maintain a good face before other people and maybe even God himself. There are some people, as you said, brownie points. They try to win brownie points with God. Well, I sent $100 charity to the cancer fund. I gave $100 to this, $100 to that. You know, I've given several hundred dollars and so on and so forth. I remember in my hometown where I used to live in Kentucky, not my first hometown, the second hometown, there's a man that put out a christmas charity newspaper every year larry and uh... my father-in-law in the printing business he did the printing job and this man actually told my father-in-law he said this is my hope of going to heaven i print this newspaper every year we use it to raise money for charities and he said this is my hope of making it to heaven well uh... sincere and honest and uh... and all this uh... the poor fellows so sadly deceived because You could have a hundred newspapers or a thousand newspapers you did for charity. That wouldn't be enough to pay for one sin. John Bunyan once said, the best prayer ever uttered had enough sin in it to damn the world. So, all of our works are tainted with the flesh, and we have to have the righteousness of Christ. So, coming back to our Scriptures here, it's for the glory of His grace. It's for the praise of his glorious grace, and Paul is showing us that it all goes back to the purpose of God in eternity, which the grace of God toward us arose then. So how can we possibly take any credit and glory for what God has done and is doing. I know in my own case, we were talking about being dragged into predestination and all that type of thing. I know for a fact that I have been saved. Anyone that knew me before I had my conversion experience would almost believe there's a God because of the difference in my life. But if there are viewers out there, as Bob was just saying, that haven't had this you know you kind of you're sitting there wondering i wonder if i've been predestinated you know but it goes back to everything bob's been saying here if you've got to be called by the holy spirit you have to the father of the lord has to drag you to his son there has to be some point in your life that there's been a tremendous change and it's that born again experience you were alluding to earlier And so if you're watching this thing and you're thinking, oh, this terrible doctrine of predestination, remember, it's not fatalism. In show number one of this series, we went into fatalism in quite some detail. This is the sovereign hand of God. This is the predestinating love of God. And when it's happened to you, you'll know it and you'll praise God forever for it. And I feel I need to mention this right now to our viewers at home who are maybe seeing Maybe God has a lot more power than they thought he did. Maybe he's not this big marshmallow man in the sky that, you know, well, I can make a decision any time I feel like it. You know, suddenly maybe I think what you, the way you've been talking, Bob, it's starting to look to people like, uh-oh, you mean my salvation is in God's hands and not mine? Well, it's starting to get scary for them is what I'm saying. The doctrine of grace, it is a threatening doctrine. to those who are seeking or hoping in some form of salvation but worse. Because they can see the logic of it immediately. The impact of it is, well, if it's by grace, then this destroys what I've been hoping for, for my salvation. Here I am. I've tried to do the best I can. I've been baptized. And I've joined the church. And Larry, I think we're running out of time, aren't we? That's right. We're running out of time. But it goes back to what you were about to finish as we sign off for this show. Join us for part three in the series next time. I'm Larry Wessels with Bob L. Ross. Thank you very much. you.