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Transcript 731B — Predestination Explained
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: I called to discuss witnessing. I've heard sceptics say, "If I'm elected to be a Christian, if I'm supposed to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and God does the saving, then I don't have to do anything. If I'm elected to be saved, I'll be saved; if I'm not elected to be saved, I won't be."
HC: Let me set up a human analogy. Let's look at that question a little bit. Suppose that you were having a picnic along with a lot of other people of your church. And it was a long ways away, way up in the mountains, and it was a long ways away from a town or from any transportation. And you were all brought there by buses, and the buses were going to come very late in the day to bring you home again. And you were all having a happy time together.
And then let's suppose that in the city, in the middle of the day, somehow the message got through that that mountain was a volcano, and at any moment it was going to erupt. And if it erupted it would destroy everyone that was at that picnic. This is a hypothetical story; we can paint it any way that we want. But I think it will serve the purpose.
But it just happens that the buses that had taken up all the people had been sent off on another mission. That's the reason they didn't stay there; they had to take another group of people to another location. And they would not be back for several hours. And yet the information was that that volcano could erupt at any moment, and it was absolutely desperate that they be taken down.
Well, there was one automobile in town, and maybe ten people could ride in that automobile. And so the mayor of the town was quickly going to dispatch that automobile at least to save ten people from that volcano. But now all the city fathers are gathered together, to figure out, "Who are we going to save?" There are two hundred people up there, and the car will only hold ten.
And so they quickly decided. They made a list of the ten people that they really felt it was most important to save. They were the ones who were to be put into the automobile. And the rest would just have to perish up there, because there was no more room.
And so they quickly sent the automobile, as fast as possible, up the side of the mountain, up to the picnic site And the driver came running up, and he said, "Look, this is a volcano we're on, and it's going to erupt at any moment. I'm sorry, I can't save all of you. But there are ten of you that I can save. That's the most that I can carry down the mountainside."
Now you were one of the picnickers up there, and you heard this statement. And you realized that this driver was for real. This was not just a joke. You really sensed that indeed you were right on the edge of death, that this volcano could erupt at any moment. And so you stood there, and you thought, "That's really something. Only ten of us can be saved. I wonder if I'm one of the ten. Well, it doesn't really make any difference. If I'm one of the ten he's going to name me. On the other hand, if I'm not one of the ten, I guess I'm just going to die here."
Well, I don't really think that that's what you'd do. I think that if you really understood that that volcano was going to erupt, and you knew that you weren't interested in dying right then, you're going to be running over to that driver, saying, "Hey! Am I one of the elect? Is there any way I can get in that car? If the ten are on there, can I get on the roof? Is there any way that I can possibly get down?" I mean, you just don't want to die. And so whether you're elect or not, you're going to use every means possible to try to be included in the group that's going to go down the mountainside.
Now I think that that is analogous to the way we're going to react to the Gospel. Whether we're one of God's elect or not is not the question. The fact is that if we begin to recognize that we are unsaved and that we're headed for eternal damnation, and this is real, that this is not just a play of some kind, or just some theological conversation, but that God really means what He says, then we're going to begin to cry out, "Oh God, I don't know whether I'm one of Your elect, but I know this. I don't want to go to hell. God, have mercy on me. Is there any way that I can be saved?"
Now the Bible promises that those who seek Him with all their heart will surely find Him, even as we read in Revelation 3:20 that He will come in and sup with those who open the door to Him. And so indeed, when we begin to cry out to God this way, we're going to be saved.
But then after we're saved we wonder, "Why was I so stirred in my heart when I heard the Gospel? Why did I become so afraid of hell? Why did I begin to cry out to God this way?" And then I study the Bible and I find that it's because I was one of God's elect, and God was drawing me.
You see, the command to us is not . . . God doesn't come to us and say, "I've elected some of you, and the rest of you aren't going to be saved. So you just wait and see what God will do." That's not the way that God puts it. God commands us to believe on Him. God commands us to repent of our sins.
CALLER: We believe because of our free will, though.
HC: If it's our free will, then two things must be said. First of all, it means that we're not spiritually dead. The Bible says that we're spiritually dead. We're like spiritual corpses. So how can any man believe of himself? That's the first contradiction you would run into.
Remember when Lazarus was raised from the dead, Jesus said, "Lazarus, come forth." Now Lazarus was dead. Did he have a free will? Could he have strength in himself to respond if he wanted to respond? The answer is, absolutely no. He was dead. And yet he did respond, and he did come forth. And in that context Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life." This is beautiful language that relates exactly to salvation, because that raising of Lazarus was a picture of salvation. Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die. Believes thou this?" (This is verse 25 of John 11, as Jesus stands outside of the tomb of Lazarus.) He's saying that as He stands there prepared to raise up Lazarus from the dead. And so this is a picture of our salvation. We are spiritually as dead as Lazarus was physically dead. And even as he could never claim any free will, that he made a decision to come out of that grave, so we can't claim any free will.
Moreover, there's something even more ominous than that. And that is that if Christ has paid for our sins at the cross, and now He comes to us with the offer of salvation, and it depends upon the action of our free will to turn to the Lord Jesus, so that effectively the salvation program would be stopped unless we would respond, and if we didn't respond, then that's too bad, we're going to hell, then effectively we have a gospel of grace plus works. We've got a gospel of the grace of God in going to the cross for our sins, and our work in completing that salvation program. And any gospel of grace plus works is a gospel that will not bring eternal salvation. From everything I read in the Bible that is what I discover. The only Gospel that will bring us salvation is a Gospel of grace alone. Our work made no contribution of any kind. And so on both counts the idea of free will is very very dangerous.
CALLER: Grace is the free gift of God. He offers us eternal life.
HC: Yes.
CALLER: If election is true, then obviously some are elected to hell, right?
HC: No. We have to be careful in our language. The Bible indicates that the whole human race is on the path to hell. Every last human being ought to go to hell. The Bible says, "There is none righteous, no, not one." And "the wages of sin is death." And the death that God has in view is eternal damnation. And God is under obligation to save not a single one of us. So He did not elect us to go to hell. We go to hell because of our sins. We go to hell because we've rebelled against God. We go to hell to pay for our sins.
Now He elected a people for Himself out of those who were going to hell, by taking upon Himself their sins and giving them eternal life. And that is election. Now why God, in His sovereign grace, elected one and not another, that's entirely God's business. God says, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy."
CALLER: So some are not elected to eternal life, right?
HC: The major part of the human race is not elected to eternal life. That is exactly true.
CALLER: The second part of my question was, how do you witness to people about this? Usually you witness to people by telling them about grace as a free gift of God, and that they should believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And you try to explain the Gospel to them.
HC: You see, it depends on what kind of a gospel we're presenting. If we're simply trying to get them to join up, to join the club, then we present to them as beautiful a picture as we can of what salvation is, that indeed we won't be miserable any longer, we'll find a purpose in our life, we will have eternal life Jesus will be our Friend, He will be our Savior, whatever that means. And all we have to do is "accept" Him; all we have to do is invite Him into our hearts. And then we will be part of this great wonderful Christian Gospel.
But that is not the Gospel of the Bible. The Gospel of the Bible goes this way. We go to the unsaved the world and we say, "The Bible declares that you are sinners, and that all men are sinners, and that we're headed for eternal damnation. And the Bible tells us that you must repent of your sins, and that you must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as your only possible way of escape. The Bible says, 'How shall ye escape, if ye neglect so great salvation?' The Bible indicates that God's wrath dwells on mankind and on you as a sinner. And you are under the hatred of God as a sinner, even though God has bestowed His love upon you in the sense that He has given you good health and placed you in a beautiful world, and has given you all these blessings. But God's hatred and wrath are upon you because of your sins. But you can know the love of God if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, if you cry out to Him for mercy, and if you seek Him as your Savior and Lord. And you can pray that God will give you that faith and that God will give you that desire to repent of your sins." That's the Gospel presentation that ought to be sent forth.
CALLER: Okay, thank you. Let me ask one more short question. I once heard you say that the unsaved would not go to hell until the second resurrection, and they would be in soul sleep, or whatever, from when they die until the time of the second resurrection.
HC: Yes.
CALLER: Is there a verse that shows that, I believe that the Lazarus story in Luke 16 is a parable, and a parable is never as bad as the real thing. So if it is a parable, that means that the man will be in eternal torment from the day he dies, forever, worse than the parable.
HC: You see, in Luke 16 it talks about the rich man dying, and yet he has a tongue. He wants Lazarus to come there with a drop of water for his tongue. And Lazarus has died, and yet he has a finger. When a believer dies his body goes in the tomb. The Bible is very clear about that. And when an unsaved man dies his body goes in the tomb. And so immediately we sense that chronology certainly is not in view in this.
And we know that this cannot be after the Judgment Day because the rich man still has 5 brothers that he's talking about, that he would like to tell about what had happened to him. And so the whole business becomes confusing if we try to look at it chronologically.
But when we look at it from the standpoint of the other spiritual truths that shine through, then it begins to make sense. God is teaching, for example, that what appears on this side of the grave is not what really is. Ultimately Lazarus was far more blessed than the rich man, even though from appearances it looked like the rich man had all the blessings. And there are such truths as the fact that once you die there is no crossing over. Your eternal destiny is sealed forever. And so on and so on.
But then we look at a verse like Rev. 20:5: "The rest of the dead lived not (that is, did not have conscious existence) until the thousand years were ended." Or we look at a verse like Psalm 115:17: "The dead do not praise God, nor do any that go down into silence." And the context there is that it's talking about the spiritually dead, because the next verse says, "But we will praise God from this time forth and forevermore." Those who are spiritually alive praise God now and continue to praise God even after we have physically died.
And so the Bible is very clear. And when we think of the justice of God, we can see why this is. God first of all has to officially put on trial those who are to be cast into hell. They are to stand before the judgment throne, to answer for their sins. Now what kind of justice would this be if a man died and then immediately would begin to suffer the torments of hell, when he had not even been tried as yet? Even though we are consigned to hell, nevertheless God's justice demands that there be an official arraignment. And that is what Revelation 20, for example, speaks about, as it says that there was a great white throne, and God sat on it, and the dead stood before that and were judged by that which was written in the books, and then they were cast into the lake of fire.
CALLER: What's the point of the parable having a man in torment from the day he went down there?
HC: Because in Luke 16 God is not giving us a chronological understanding of the details of what will happen first and next and so on. But rather He is giving us the quality of what it means to be a child of God, or not a child of God...the fact that the rich man had everything going for him in this life, and he has nothing going for him in eternity, the fact that Lazarus had nothing going for him in this life, but he has everything going for him in the life hereafter, the fact that once you have died there is no crossing over - if you're going to end up in hell, you cannot ever get into Heaven, the fact that if we don't believe in the Bible, then neither will we believe in some sign. In other words, God wants us to walk by faith and trust what He has declared in His Word, not in signs and wonders. These are the characteristics or the truths that God is developing in this parable.
But he is not in this parable attempting to give us a step by step development of what happens when we die. If that were so, this parable would be in violent contradiction not only to itself, but also in contradiction to everything else the Bible teaches about what happens when we die. Right within its own context it says that this rich man died. And yet here in hell he's got a tongue. In fact, it says that the rich man died and was buried. And then it says that he has a tongue. That's a contradiction. And so by that God is indicating that we should not look for a chronology here; just look for quality.