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Transcript 561A — Difficulty in Understanding Pre-election
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Mr. Camping, I'm having trouble, and it's not believing, it's understanding about God saving people, about the fact that He chose to save certain men before they were created. I'm having difficulty understanding how He did it. Is it the conscience He gave to us, or what is it?
HC: Are you asking basically how He effects our salvation once He has chosen us?
CALLER: Yes. But I don't know if I'm having trouble understanding.
HC: Let me see if I can help you by using a physical analogy which is offered to us in the Bible. Let's look at a cemetery of dead people. Now all of those people are dead in that cemetery. They're all in their graves. And you could go through that cemetery, and you could shout at the top of your lungs, as persuasively as you could, with all the love that you could muster and with all the salesmanship, "Come forth! Come forth! Come forth!" and you could do this day after day after day, and not one of those people in those tombs would come forth, would they? They're dead. They're absolutely dead, and they would not come forth.
Now in John 11 God teaches us about Jesus standing outside the tomb of Lazarus. Now Lazarus was in the grave. He had been dead for 4 days. His body was decaying. He was just as dead as any person in the cemetery. Ant Jesus said, "Lazarus, come forth!" And you would say, "Come on now. Lazarus is dead. He never would come forth." But the fact is, he did come forth.
All right. Now what was the difference? Well, you notice that first of all Jesus named him. Jesus knew exactly who He wanted to come forth. He didn't just say, "Come forth" so that all kinds of graves are opened now and people are standing there. He said, "Lazarus, come forth." And so it's Lazarus who comes forth. Secondly, how was Lazarus able to do this? Did he somehow have a little bit of hearing left? Was there a little conscience within him, a little smidgen of life that still remained? No, no, he was dead. He was a corpse. He was returning to the dust.
But at the same time that Jesus said, "Lazarus, come forth," Jesus qualified him so that he could hear the Word of Christ, the command of Christ, and He gave him the will to respond to the command of Christ, and so Lazarus did come forth. Now there is a powerful picture of what happens to us who are unsaved.
By nature we're as dead as those people in the cemetery, every last one of us. But when God has decided to save one of us because He chose us from the foundations of the world, as that Gospel message goes out, while the rest of the people remain dead in their sins, and they could care less about the Gospel, they don't want to be saved, here and there will be one or another who will begin to become uneasy. They'll begin to wonder about their sins. They'll begin to listen more intently. They'll begin to become anxious. Maybe there is a hell, after all. And they will become interested in the Bible. God, you see, is drawing them. As Jesus said in John 6:44, "No man can come to Me except the Father draw him." And He is giving them spiritual ears to hear, and eyes to see. And they become convicted in their heart...oh yes, I am a sinner. Oh Lord, I need that salvation. And they will find that they're beginning to trust in Christ. And they'll find in their heart a desire to be obedient to Him. And the next thing you know, they will find that they are saved.
CALLER: So does He give it to everyone then, and still there will be some that will not receive?
HC: No. He gives the Gospel to everyone. But only those whom He qualifies will respond to the Gospel. Think of the illustration of standing in the cemetery. Christ could say, "Come forth," but only Lazarus came forth, because He called Lazarus specifically, "Lazarus, come forth" and Lazarus was qualified to come forth, and he experienced physical life. So we experience spiritual life when God calls us and qualifies us.
Now the rest of the people in the cemetery remained there. And the same is true of the rest of the people who are unsaved. They remain unsaved, and they don't want to be saved. They'll stand before the Judgment Throne. And they can't argue with God and say, "But we didn't have an opportunity." They didn't want it in any way whatsoever.
CALLER: So before a man is born God knows. Can I put it like this? Does God know if He gives the person spiritual eyes and spiritual ears, if they do come they will be saved? And He can see that if they do get it they don't want it?
HC: No. You see, God does not save us because of anything that He sees in us. When He decided to save me, He didn't look down the corridors of time from before the foundations of the earth and see this fellow that was going to be born in the 20th Century and see that yes, he's just a little bit better than the rest, because when he hears the Gospel he's going to want to respond to it, and therefore I'll elect him. That isn't it at all. He saw me, and He saw a dirty rotten sinner, just as rebellious against God by nature as anyone else with absolutely no inherent desire to turn to God.
But God said, I want him, as dirty as he is, as rotten as he is by nature. I want him. And so God drew me at a very young age, so that I became saved. And that's the way He deals in His own timetable with each individual that He's going to save.
CALLER: I have 2 children, and when I heard this, that God elects whom He wants to elect, it really scared me. And so I just . . .
HC: All right. Now let's talk about this, this matter of election. Should we be frightened by this? Actually, no, not at all. We have to remember that God's election program is God's business, not ours. It is altogether God's business. We don't know who is elect. We only know that anyone at all who responds to the Gospel, who calls on the name of the Lord in the way the Bible asks them to will be saved.
God also promises that if you bring up your children in the fear and the nurture of the Lord, or in the way that they should go, in their old age they'll not depart from it, And He commands you to bring your children up in the fear and the nurture of the Lord, And so you can begin to see that God is suggesting that in all likelihood your children will be saved also. What we have to do is claim God's promises and say, well, all right. I'm going to train my children as citizens of God's Kingdom. I'm going to train them as well as I possibly can to love the Lord. And then God in His mercy may save my children, too, because He promises He'll be a God to me and my children.
Now because I find that I have developed this love for God and I really am concerned about whether I'm elect, and so I cry out to God for mercy, finally I become saved. If I call on His name I will become saved, if I really surrender my will to Him. Then afterwards, when I look in the Bible to find out why I became saved, I'll discover it was because God was drawing me. It was because God had elected me, because if God had not elected me you can rest assured I never would have had any desire to be saved on God's terms.
CALLER: I see.