Home Topics Index Download
Transcript 009B — What Do You Think of Predestination?
CALLER: My question is about predestination. In Ephesians 1:4 and 5, it says that "He predestined us to adoption as His sons." What do you think of predestination?
HC: Now the doctrine of predestination is, of course, very clearly taught in the Bible. There isn't any question about that. Those who shy away from predestination can do so if they care to, but the Bible is very clear about it. And there's a great reason for predestination, a very great need for predestination. While the Gospel offer goes to all mankind, that whosoever believeth in the Lord Jesus Christ will be saved, man of his own volition will never turn to the Gospel. Man is dead in his sins, and the first three chapters of Ephesians 2 teaches this very clearly. Man is a slave of Satan. Mankind is infected by sin; he likes his sin. And no man, no woman, no child, without the intervention of God Himself in his life will respond to the Gospel. But Christ declares: "I will build My church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail." That is, "I'm going to build a kingdom of believers, and the prison-house of Satan, in which all unbelievers are, the whole world is, will not hold its victims. There are those that I am going to bring into My kingdom."
And the Bible teaches us in Ephesians 1:4 that these whom Christ would bring into His kingdom were named, were elected, before the foundations of the world. There has been no change in God's plan at all, as He has worked out His program of salvation throughout time. Everything is working in accordance with a very exact plan, a very exact plan. This is tremendously implied by Ephesians 1:4 where it says, "He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world."
This means that before God created the universe, He knew who our mother and father were going to be, and our grandfather and grandmother. He knew every person that would ever come into being. And He knew precisely at what time we would come into being, and He knew exactly whom He would save.
Now He saves us at birth, He saves another at the tender age of two or three. He saves another at the age of ten, and others He saves at the age of fifty or seventy-five. God has His own program as to the timing of His salvation, but those who are to be saved will be saved.
Now once God decides to save someone, He eventually will incline that person's heart. He may do this through chastisement. He may use a variety of ways to do this. But the next thing that person knows, he will begin to have an intense desire to serve the Lord, and to reach out by faith, to place his whole life in the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ. The faith that we experience, the works that flow from our life, are both a result of the work of Christ within our heart. We are not saved because we had faith. Now the Bible does say that faith is reckoned to us as righteousness, but faith did not pay for our righteousness. Faith is simply the evidence of the fact that we have been saved. It is what Christ counted as being the equivalent of payment. But the payment was actually made by Christ Himself.