A God-Centered God versus Man-Centered Men

I often get a challenge, both from atheists and from cults, "Why did God do X?" The thing about that challenge is its irrationality. Given belief in God, why would a believer expect - or be expected - to be able to explain the actions of God?

Except in the cases where Scripture gives god's explanation, the most we can say is that He chose to act for the sake of His own glory: "So that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory" (Ephesians 1:12; see also verses 6 and 14, and I Corinthians 10:31). This shows us why the unbeliever does not understand that answer. the man-centered mentality believes that it is exists for its own glory. In fact, even many professing Christians share that mentality. Such Christians are worse, though, because they also imagine that God exists for their glory. Their worldview is the reverse of their profession.

However, God does not sympathize with the man-centered mentality: "For My own sake, for My own sake, I do it, for how should My name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another" (Isaiah 48:11; see also 42:8). We see here God's god-centered attitude, quite contrary to the expectations of sinful men. that is why he feels no compulsion to explain Himself to mere creatures: "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law" (Deuteronomy 29:29).

As the great Southern Presbyterian theologian James Henley Thornwell said: "His works are so many mirrors in which He reflects so much of His own image  as they are able to behold. There they may read what he is by contemplating what he does. They cannot approach His awful throne: the light would be intolerable to created eyes. But they can behold Him veiled and shadowed in His works. They cannot fathom His glorious essence, but they can learn His character from what He hath wrought before them and around them. It is this manifestation of His character and perfections, which in themselves are infinitely glorious, that the Scriptures mean when they speak of God's working all things with a reference to His glory" (from "The Gospel, God's Power and Wisdom").

The Empowerment of the Church Under Persecution

There is a saying: "Whoever forgets history is doomed to repeat it." And we are seeing an example play out before our eyes.

Tyrants have persecuted Christians throughout history. We often forget that all of the Apostles except John died violent deaths. The first one is described even within the time of the Bible: "About that time Herod the king laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church. He killed James the brother of John with the sword" (Acts 12:1-2). Yet, persecution has never destroyed the Church; it has only made her stronger. Eventually, the Christian faith overthrew the pagan religion of Rome, and became the religion of the empire.

However, the tyrants of China seem to have ignored history (a common fault among Communists), as they have started a new persecution of Christians there. But the Christians have not capitulated. Rather, they have been empowered. We may live to see the day when China, too, becomes a Christian nation.

These events make me think of another thing, though - the somnolent, flabby, and ineffectual church in America. Will god see fit to reform her through persecution? My hope is that He will not. Rather, may she instead be revived to the duties and power she has from Christ her Head.

Jacob & Esau and the Arminian Election Dodge

To my mind, Romans 9 is one of the easier bible chapters to understand. It is straightforward narrative, not poetry or apocalyptic imagery. Yet, some people go through some amazing acrobatics to avoid accepting what it says.

Here is one example: "When Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of Him who calls— she was told, 'The older will serve the younger.' As it is written, 'Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated'" (Romans 9:10-13, including a quote from Malachi 1:2-3). This seems clear, doesn't it? Before the men had been distinguished by any moral acts of their own, God had sovereignly and mercifully determined to place His love on Jacob, while He placed His just hatred on Esau.

However, Arminians cannot allow that truth to stand, lest they surrender their doctrine of human sovereign will. They claim that the passage isn't about Jacob and Esau as individuals, but rather as the nations that sprang from them. And, in their defense, that is the use of the names in Malachi.

However, look at the other words in the sentence. Paul refers to the brothers in the womb, something which cannot apply to nations. He also refers to their being too young to have acted morally, again not applicable to nations. Therefore, while Malachi used the names to describe the nations, working from type to antitype, Paul backtracked to the brothers themselves, working from antitype to type. These factors do not allow a national interpretation of the passage.

On the other hand, let us allow the Arminian assertion, for the sake of argument. Let us suppose that Paul is describing the election of the nation that arose from Jacob, i. e., Israel, and the reprobation of the nation that arose from Esau, i. e., Edom. How does that avoid the sovereign grace implication that the Arminian rejects? In order to elect or reprobate nations, wouldn't God have to elect or reprobate individuals that make up those nations? Surely logic would tell us that He cannot determine the course of a nation if the individuals of that nation are able to determine their own fate! Moreover, if the election and reprobation of individuals is immoral, as the Arminians claim, then the election and reprobation of entire conglomerations of individuals must be exponentially worse, right?

And one last consideration: the Epistle to the Romans is an entire book about justification. It tells us of the sinful nature of men and what are the consequences of that sin, and the requirements for salvation from those consequences. Yet, the Arminian wants us to think that Paul set aside that purpose in chapter 9, to discuss the national privileges of Israel, and then returned to justification for the remainder of the epistle. Where does the text give any indication of a change in subject? I can certainly understand why the Arminian wants there to be a change, but where does the author indicate it? He never does. It is a case of begging the question by the Arminian theologian.

The Land Promises and the Unity of the People of God

One of the main distinctions between dispensationalism and covenantalism is over the relationship between Israel and the Church. The covenantalist sees them as different administrations of the same thing (see, for example, Acts 7:38 KJV). In contrast, the dispensationalist sees them as radically discontiguous, there having been no church in the Old Testament, and Israel's having a future separate from the church.

One aspect of this is the frequent references dispensationalists make to the promises God made to Israel. While the covenantalist takes the remaining promises to be given to the church, the Israel of God (Galatians 6:16), the dispensationalist sees them as necessarily remaining to be fulfilled to Israel, i. e., the Jews, in their distinct character.

I want to consider the land promises, in particular, here. Are there remaining land promises for the Jews? I don't think that Bible allows that conclusion, even apart from the identity of Israel and the church.

In Joshua 21:43-45, given after the conquest of the Promised Land, we read this comment: "Thus the Lord gave to Israel all the land that He swore to give to their fathers. And they took possession of it, and they settled there. And the Lord gave them rest on every side just as He had sworn to their fathers. Not one of all their enemies had withstood them, for the Lord had given all their enemies into their hands. Not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass." Thus, the land promise had been fulfilled, not waiting for the modern state of Israel.

Furthermore, in I Kings 4:21, we read this: "Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms from the Euphrates to the land of the Philistines and to the border of Egypt. They brought tribute and served Solomon all the days of his life." This describes Solomon's enjoyment of that Land, not waiting for it. This is repeated in the parallel passage in II Chronicles 9:26.

In other words, the land promises to Israel aren't waiting for fulfillment! They were fulfilled three thousand years ago!

Moreover, something that dispensationalists fail to recognize is that the fulfillment of God's promises is always far more than the literal promise. In this case, by denying the bitestamental unity of the people of God, the dispensationalist is blind to Psalm 2:8: "Ask of Me, and I will make the nations Your heritage, and the ends of the earth Your possession." This promise is part of the intra-Trinitarian covenant, made before the world was created, and is a gift from the Father to the Son. And then in the New Testament, that same Son promises it to His church: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:18-20). The rigid literalism and minimalism of dispensationalists causes them not to enjoy the real promises of God, and also to deny them to those same Jews that they have cast out of the church.

Predestination in the Epistle to the Philippians

"It has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in Him but also suffer for His sake" (Philippians 1:29).

There are two common arguments used by Arminians against the biblical doctrine of predestination. One is that God foresees (an inaccurate view of foreknowledge) who shall believes, and then He predestines them to all of the means to achieve that. The other is that predestination refers to national destinies, particularly of Israel, not to individuals.

Both of those arguments are refute by the verse above. How so?

First, note to whom Paul addresses his comment, "to you." "You" whom? To the saints at Philippi. That is not to Israel, or to people in general in the future. It is to a specific group of individuals at the time that Paul wrote this letter to them! Prior to his writing to them (specified as before the creation in Ephesians 1:4), God had mercifully granted that they would come to have saving faith in Christ. God's mercy was the a priori condition that induced the response of the Christians (Romans 9:16, Philippians 2:13). There is no hint that His predestination is a reaction to anything foreseen in the future. Second, Paul refers not just to predestination to salvation but to suffering. Now, it is certainly true that Israel has suffered, and continues to suffer. However, by no definition can it be claimed that they have suffered for Christ's sake. But also, if it is unacceptable for God to cause us to believe in Jesus apart from our sovereign wills, how can it be acceptable that He has chosen for Christians to suffer apart from those same sovereign wills? Does that not mean that the Arminian has rejected the sweetness of the one while he has swallowed the bitterness of the other?

Can Baptism Save When There Is No Water?

In various conversations, I have dealt with Oneness Pentecostals, Roman Catholics, Mormons, and Church of Christ members who claimed that I Peter 3:21 teaches Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you

." That is all they quote, and trumpet, "See! Baptism saves you!" And those words look pretty definite. However there is more to the passage than that one sentence.

Notice what Peter says: "which corresponds to this." Ah, now the obvious question should be, corresponds to what? Yet no one ever asks that question.

In the immediately preceding verse, Peter says, "when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water." 

Ah, so the comparison that Peter is making is to Noah, his wife, three sons, and three daughters-in-law, who were preserved during the Flood. Where were Noah and his family during the Flood? "Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood" (Genesis 7:7). Noah and his family weren't in the water. In fact, everyone in the water died. Noah and his family remained dry.

So, Peter is comparing a situation in which people remained dry to water baptism! If his point were that baptism is salvific, then Noah and his family would have been the only people not saved during the Flood! And such an absurdity proves that baptismal regeneration is not what is taught in I Peter 3:21.

Rather, continuing in that verse, "not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience." So, not the baptism per se, but rather what it represents, "a good conscience," a synonym for "faith." Peter is actually teaching the opposite of what the sacerdotalists claim for him, justification by faith alone, not by the addition of any ritual.

Does a Command Imply the Natural Ability to Obey?

A common argument I see from Arminians is to cite a biblical command, such as the command to repent in Acts 17:30, and then to assert that the command implies the natural ability to obey the command. In actuality, there is no such logical necessity. Rather, the Arminian assertion includes itself as an unstated premise in the argument, producing a circular argument.

Moreover, the argument is contrary to reason, not the result of it. When Jesus arrived in Bethany at the request of Mary and Martha (John 11:1-44), He had delayed too long, and their brother Lazarus had already died, in fact, days earlier. Yet, what did Jesus do? He called into the tomb, "Lazarus, come out" (verse 43). And, indeed, the revived Lazarus did exactly that. He rose from his grave, and came to Jesus, still in his funeral garments. 

Now, my question, Mr. Arminian, should be an obvious one: Did Jesus's command to Lazarus to rise from death imply that Lazarus had a natural ability to do so? 

Only a madman would say "yes," so the Arminian assertion is demonstrated to be false.

Southern Presbyterian Theologian James Henley Thornwell addressed this question: "If God still continues to be man's sovereign, and man God's lawful subject, [and] if the Lord still possesses the power to command and man is still under obligation to obey, it should not be thought strange that God deals with man according to this relation and actually enjoins upon him an obedience to law which He has no determinate purpose to give. This can be regarded as nothing more than the rightful exercise of lawful authority on the part of God; and to deny that He can consistently do this without giving man the necessary grace to obey is just flatly to deny that God is sovereign or that man is subject"

Mormonism: The Devil Made Me Do It

In the Bible, the temptation that Satan made to Adam and Eve is quoted in Genesis 3:5: "God knows that, when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." This doesn't mean "knowing" in the sense of "recognizing," but rather in the sense of "determining." Satan tells the first couple that disobeying God will liberate them from the control of God, so that they can determine good and evil for themselves, apart from the standards of God.

That temptation is a lie (John 8:44). There is no autonomy from God, not even for Satan himself (Job 1:6-12). It should be obvious that Satan cannot give what he himself does not have.

In Mormonism, there is a doctrine that says that Jesus and Satan were brothers in their preexistence. The Father put a challenge to them to carry out His plan of salvation. Satan offered, instead, a plan of universal salvation. The LDS website explains it this way (references are to Mormon scriptures): "It was in this setting that Satan made an unwelcome and arrogant proposal to change Heavenly Father’s plan so that it provided universal salvation for everyone (see Moses 4:1). Before we discuss how he claimed to accomplish this, it is important to note that Satan is referred to in these verses as 'the father of all lies' (Moses 4:4). On another occasion he is called 'a liar from the beginning' (D&C 93:25). We would be absurdly naïve to assume that Satan was telling the truth when he made this exaggerated claim of universal salvation."

According to Mormonism, how is the individual supposed to make the right choice between the Father's plan of salvation and Satan's? Their answer is found in Doctrine and Covenants 9:8: "Behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right."

Do you see any parallels there? While the biblical God commands us to believe on the basis of His word alone, the Mormon God says that each person will be able to decide on the basis of a subjective feeling. Go back to Genesis 3:5 above. Is that not the same thing that Satan offered, falsely, to Adam and Eve?

While Mormons claim that their doctrine is the rejection of Satan's lies, that doctrine is the same as Satan's lies, as recorded in the Bible.

The only hope for the Mormon is to repudiate his autonomous determination of what is right or wrong and to submit to the infallible declaration of truth by the triune God of the Bible.

The Self-Refuting Logic of Arminianism

Anti-Calvinists often resort to a circular definition of predestination: God foreknew who would believe, and predestined those people.

However, there is a serious flaw in that argument, even beyond circularity.

If God knew it in advance, then their conversion was predetermined. Predetermined by what? Not by the will of the person, who wasn't born, yet. Not predetermined by God, the Arminian claims. That leaves what other options? Another god? Satan?

The logic of the Arminian cannot avoid predeterminism. It is only GOD's predetermination that the Arminian rejects. Isn't that unbelief?

The One and the Many: Trinity in Unity in the Bible

"They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met Him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before Him. And crying out with a loud voice, he said, 'What have You to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure You by God, do not torment me.' For He was saying to him, 'Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!' And Jesus asked him, 'What is your name?' He replied, 'My name is Legion, for we are many.'"
- Mark 5:1-9

When I interact with anti-Trinitarians, whether of the Arian or Sabellian varieties, one strategy they all seem to try is to describe the Trinity in this way: "One plus one plus one equals three, so you believe in three gods." For some inconceivable reason, they think this is a very clever argument, even though math has nothing to do with it. Or, if you want to do math, why can't it be one times one times one equals one? Or one cubed is one? If you see what I mean, the argument is nowhere nearly as clever as they think it is. We talk about things as unities in one sense but manifold in a different sense all of the time. Have you heard of the three branches of the one federal government?

Yet, the anti-Trinitarian desperately holds on to this argument. Their answer is, "Well, we do that, but the Bible doesn't."

Really? I guess anti-Trinitarians don't read Mark 5. Notice the interaction between Jesus and the demoniac. Actually the demon in the demoniac. Notice that Mark refers to the demon consistently as "he," not "they." And notice that the demons say "me," not "we," except one time in verse 9. Even in verse 9, the demon says "my name is," not "our names are."

My point is that the Bible certainly does refer to things as one in one sense and manifold in another. In this case, we see one demon also described as a legion, a unit of Roman military consisting of about 6,000 soldiers. If the demon of Mark 5 can be 6,000 demons described as a unity, then why can't the three Persons of the Trinity be one God?

The Watchtower: Jumping Through Hoops for False Doctrine

The Watchtower Society (the corporate name of the Jehovah's Witnesses) claims that the kingdom of God is something that will appear in the future. Their website says, "'This good news of the Kingdom will be preached in all the inhabited earth for a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.' (Matthew 24:14) Once the good news has been fully preached, the Kingdom will come to bring the present wicked system to an end."

Do you see the bait-and-switch in their statement? They quote a verse regarding the preaching of the kingdom, and then apply it to the kingdom itself. Matthew describes a worldwide preaching of the kingdom. While I consider this a reference to the period prior to the Roman sacking of Jerusalem in 70 AD, the point is the same if you apply it to the period before His second advent. The Watchtower then interprets the verse to mean that the Kingdom will not appear until He returns.

However, what did Jesus say about His kingdom? "The kingdom of God has come upon you" (Luke 11:20). He spoke to His audience during His first advent, telling them that they were witnessing the appearance of His kingdom. On another occasion, He told them, "Behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you" (Luke 17:21). Twice, then, Jesus vocally told His First-Century audience that the kingdom had come among them in the presence of His person. This is consistent with the Old Testament prophecy of the coming of the kingdom: "The stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth" (Daniel 2:35; see the entire vision in verses 31-45). The kingdom would start as just a small rock (see Matthew 16:18), and grow until it fills the earth. That is what is happening between the first and second advents. That is why John can refer to Jesus as "the ruler of kings on earth" (Revelation 1:5) at the beginning of that book.

The Watchtower is aware of this weakness in their doctrine, and try to address it: "The Kingdom of heaven was 'with' or 'among' the Pharisees, in that Jesus, the one designated by God to rule as King, was standing before them.​—Luke 1:​32, 33." Here they change what Jesus says, "Kingdom of heaven," to a reference to Himself as coming King! Another example of bait-and-switch!

To my mind, to use such blatant fallacies to support their doctrine demonstrates that the Watchtower Governing Board is well-aware that their doctrine is unbiblical. And that brings up an obvious question for Watchtower members: If your leadership is so clearly aware of the falsity of their doctrines, why do you remain loyal to those doctrines?

Oneness Refuted by the Words of Jesus

According to the doctrines of Oneness Pentecostalism, when we look at Jesus in the New Testament, God the Father is the deity in heaven, while the Son is the flesh on the earth. The Son did not exist, except in the mind of God, before His incarnation in the conception in Mary's womb.

That assertion is contrary to more biblical texts than I can address in just one blog post. I have cited some of the Old Testament examples of the presence of the Son before (click the "intra-Trinitarian" tag at the bottom).

Here I want to mention a New Testament example: "Now, Father, glorify Me in Your own presence with the glory that I had with You before the world existed" (John 17:5). This verse is spoken by Jesus as part of His high-priestly prayer (John 17:1-26).

There are several elements in this verse relevant to the topic of the preexistence of the Son. First, it is Jesus who is speaking, explicitly addressing the Father. That prevents some of the customary Oneness dodges when confronted with Scriptural evidence against their doctrines, such as that it was a vision, or it was spoken erroneously by someone else. Second, He says that He was with the Father, not that He was the Father. That refutes the Oneness claim that Jesus was the Father before the incarnation. Third, it is addressed to the Father at the time it was spoken, refuting the Oneness claim that Jesus is the Father, or that Father and Son are successive manifestations of the Godhead. Jesus is distinct from the Father, and co-existent with Him, at the present time when the verse was spoken. And fourth, He explicitly states that He was with the Father before the Creation, not just before the incarnation. That again refutes the successive nature of manifestations claimed by Oneness. But, more importantly, it demonstrates the preexistence of the Son as a Person, not as a mere idea or prophecy of the Father. Ideas don't have glory, especially not a glory comparable to that of the Father!

This one verse precludes many of the assertions of Oneness Pentecostalism regarding the Son.

The Continuing Obligation of the Law of God

Among professing Christians, there is a competition to find ways to twist the second clause of Romans 6:14: "You are not under law but under grace." For some reason, those interpretations never involve the first clause of the sentence. You will hear different versions, such as that the Law was done away in Christ, or that it was only for Jews, not Gentiles. But, in whatever way, such people think that the truly spiritual person despises the biblical Law.

I don't believe any such thing. Nor did the author of Romans, the Apostle Paul.

Consider what he said earlier in that same epistle: "Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them" (Romans 1:28-32). OK, so "they" who? The context is a description of the unrighteousness of unbelievers. And to whom is the passage addressed? While the Church at Rome included Jews, it was predominantly a Gentile church, including members even of the emperor's family (Philippians 4:22). So, Paul is talking to Gentile Christians about unbelievers, and describes horrific sins that are properly subject to capital punishment. According to what? Not according to Roman law. Rather, according to God's law (compare I Timothy 1:8-11).

These verses are contrary to the whole popular evangelical theology of Law, which is properly known as antinomianism. The moral law is still in force, whether for Jew or for Gentile.

The Westminster Confession of Faith (XIX:5) correctly summarizes this: "The moral law doth forever bind all, as well justified persons as others, to the obedience thereof; and that not only in regard of the matter contained in it, but also in respect of the authority of God the Creator who gave it. Neither doth Christ in the gospel any way dissolve, but much strengthen, this obligation."

Faith of the Prophets versus the Faithlessness of Arminianism

"O LORD, You are my God; I will exalt You; I will praise Your name, for You have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure" (Isaiah 25:1). 

Recently, I have been in conversations with Arminians in which they claimed that predestination is based in foreknowledge. That part is fine. However, then they claim that "foreknowledge" merely means knowing in advance, denying any element of predetermination. Thus, they claim, God predestines those whom He knew

in advance would believe in Him. That imposes a tautology on God.

However, these Arminians build their doctrine on their (ab)use of one single word (used in various forms five times), and ignore everything else.

Note, for example, the verse quoted above. If that isn't predetermination, then language has no meaning. It makes no allowance for a passive deity, who merely rubberstamps the sovereign choices of men. The Prophet describes a God who makes and actualizes His own sovereign plans.

And notice, too, that Isaiah considers that concept one for which to be grateful!

So, when Arminians are doing their handwringing for the same thing for which Isaiah praises God, what are we to surmise about the faith of Arminians? 

For one thing, it certainly isn't biblical!

The Daughter of Jairus versus Soul Sleep

In Luke 8:40-42, 49-56, the Evangelist tells us the story of Jesus's healing of the daughter of Jairus, the leader of a synagogue. We aren't told what the girl's malady was. However, Jesus is interrupted on His way to her when He was distracted by the woman with the issue of blood (verses 43-48), and the girl dies. To say that He was interrupted is not to say that He was caught by surprise, of course. These events happened according to His providence.

In the case of the girl, Luke the Physician makes an odd observation: "Her spirit returned and she arose immediately" (verse 55). I don't recall a similar comment from any of His other healings or resuscitations.

I want to focus on that one phrase, "her spirit returned to her."

As is commonly known, Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-Day Adventists assert that the spirit has no existence apart from the body, commonly called "soul sleep." While the details differ, they both claim that whatever spirit there is remains in the grave with the body.

But then we have this verse. "Her spirit returned."

If the spirit of the dead is unconscious, remaining with the corpse, as SDA's believe, or obliterated, to be re-created at the Judgment, as Jehovah's Witnesses claim, then from where did her spirit return? At most, it should have remained unconscious in her body.

Of course, the orthodox view has no problem explaining this, since we understand that the existence of human spirit, while joined with the body, is distinct from it. When a believer dies, he or she is immediately ushered into the presence of Jesus in Heaven (II Corinthians 5:8, Philippians 1:21-23). The spirit of the unbeliever is immediately dismissed to Hell (John 3:18, II Peter 2:9). That is because each person is judged by his condition at death (Hebrews 9:27). Witnesses and SDA's (together with many misinformed Christians) wrongly believe that the judgment awaits the great Judgment at the return of Christ. Really? Are we supposed to believe that Jesus doesn't know our spiritual condition until then? No, but rather that judgment is a public display of the righteousness of God's justice.

Whether the girl was regenerate or not, we are not told. Whether she returned from Heaven or Hell, we cannot know.  Why she should want to return if she were in Heaven, we do not know. Those questions are often asked, but any possible answer would only be speculation.

Think of Pilate's judgment of Jesus. Pilate examined Him privately, and then went out to the crowd to announce his judgment. He didn't make that judgment in front of the crowd, but announced it "at the feast" (Matthew 27:15, Mark 15:6, Luke 23:13). This is the same division between the personal judgment of each person at death and the general judgment at the end of history

Jesus and Alcohol

I often see people of various Christian professions - fundamentalist, Mormon, Jehovah's Witness, etc. - who claim that drinking alcohol is an absolute sin. Even my own church, which does not hold to that doctrine, serves grape juice for communion, in order not to offend teetotalers, in spite of the explicit biblical instruction that it is to be wine!

I have dealt with this question before. However, this time, I am going to take a different tack.

In Luke 7:33-34, we have the words of Jesus: "John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!'"

Do you see His complaint? The Pharisees had seen John the Baptist, not drinking wine, and criticized him for it. Now, they see Jesus, drinking wine, and they still criticize in the opposite direction. His point is that the Pharisees were more about criticizing than they were about consistency or real morality.

Yet, we must not gloss over His own words indicating that He drank wine! 

Thus, my question to those who claim that drinking alcohol is always a sin is this: Are you not putting yourself in the same place as those Pharisees, for which Jesus rebuked them? And, furthermore, do you believe that your standard of holiness is higher than that of Jesus?

The Salvation of Men: Impossible for Us, but Certain by Jesus

I have been having a lot of interactions with Arminians recently. They all want to hold on to some natural ability in men to bring themselves to Jesus, a form of Pelagianism. And this in spite of what we are told in Scripture: "No one seeks for God" (Romans 3:11). They just can't let go of some modicum of sovereignty for the human will. 

Jesus addressed this same attitude in His disciples. The Bible tells us the story of the interaction between Jesus and a rich man (Mark 10:17-31). To show where the man's true loyalties lay (as addressed in the First Commandment), He commanded him to give all of his wealth to the poor, and then to come follow Him. However, the man chose his possession rather than Jesus.

In response, Jesus told His disciples, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God" (verse 25). Shocked, His disciples despaired, "Then who can be saved?" (verse 26). 

The response of Jesus is the climax of the story: "With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God" (verse 27). The disciples thought what many today still think, that it is easier to trust God when you're wealthy. Yet, Jesus tells them that it is impossible for a rich man to come to Jesus on his own. And if it is impossible for the rich man, who would have the least reason to resist, then how much harder it must be for anyone else. With man, it is impossible. Or, as Paul put it, "No one seeks for God."

Yet, Jesus did not leave His disciples in their despair. Rather, He told them, "Not with God, for all things are possible with God" (verse 27). God does not leave men in our natural, unsalvable condition. Rather, He announces, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion" (Romans 9:14). Where men are naturally unsalvable, hardened and lost in our sin, impossible to save, He presents Himself in His mercy, which overcomes our resistance, and saves us by giving us faith in the finished redeeming work of Jesus. 

This is the marvel of what Calvinism has over Arminianism. The Arminian defends that which is impossible, leaving sinners with no hope of salvation.  The Calvinist looks to Jesus alone, and trusts Him to break through our resistance, causing us to love and obey Him, and to turn to Jesus alone for our eternal life.

 

The God of the Covenant versus the God of Dispensationalism

The doctrine taught by dispensationalists (that is, classical dispensationalists, such as Scofield) that I find most objectionable is that God has provided different methods of salvation down through history, as man has failed each previous one. Some of them claim, for example, that Jews were (or still are, some say) saved by obeying the Law. They claim that salvation by grace through faith only became an option when the Jews rejected their Mosaic Messiah by killing Jesus. Grace through faith is Plan B. Actually it is Plan G, if you go by Scofield's seven dispensations.

I think that is ridiculous! And, apparently, so do most dispensationalists, because few still hold to that doctrine. Yet, even these progressive dispensationalists, as they call themselves, place a firewall between the Old Testament and the New Testament. In order still to be applicable, they claim, an Old Testament commandment must be repeated in the New Testament.

Where is the biblical justification for that claim? I can't seem to find it.

Rather, I find just the opposite.

One problem with that is that it has God coming up with a new plan, because His previous ones have failed. What kind of God is that?

In contrast, the bible tells us of God that, "God is not man, that He should lie, or a son of man, that He should change His mind. Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not fulfill it?" (Numbers 23:19). And, "The Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for He is not a man, that He should have regret" (I Samuel 15:29). In other words, the God of the Bible is not a bumbling human being, who cannot achieve what He says, and has to come up with contingency plans! Yet, that is exactly the God described by dispensationalism.

In contrast, the God described by covenant theology is a God who has had one plan from before the creation of the world. He has had one expectation, that man would fall into sin; it was not a surprise. And He has had one plan to deal with sin, to send His divine Son to shed His own blood for those sinners chosen for salvation. That plan was first revealed, in seed form, in Genesis 3:15, called the Protevangelium by theologians: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel." And that plan has been shown in increasing light ever since, until it was achieved on the cross and in the resurrection of that same Son, Jesus Christ. More light, not different light.

The True Tradition of the Eucharist Held by the Reformed

The Church of Rome teaches that the elements of the Eucharist - or communion, if you prefer - are literally changed into the flesh and blood of Jesus. The Council of Trent made that dogma official: "Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly His body that He was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Council now declares again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of His blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation." Notice especially the assertion that "it has always been the conviction of the Church of God." 

However, I deny that it has "always been the conviction." Rather, within the Catholic Church, there was a debate on the topic, and the doctrine of transubstantiation merely became the dominant view.

For example, Saint Augustine very explicitly states that Jesus is present in the Eucharist, but only to the faithful! He starts Sermon 272, which is about this very topic, with, "What you see on God's altar, you've already observed during the night that has now ended. But you've heard nothing about just what it might be, or what it might mean, or what great thing it might be said to symbolize. For what you see is simply bread and cup - this is the information your eyes report. But your faith demands far subtler insight: the bread is Christ's body; the cup is Christ's blood. Faith can grasp the fundamentals quickly, succinctly, yet it hungers for a fuller account of the matter." I recommend reading the whole thing (it is very brief), so that you can see that I have not  misrepresented his overall message. He describes the elements as the body and blood of Christ to the faithful, not as a physical reality to which the unbeliever would have access.

This view was unchallenged until a debate broke out between Radbertus and Ratramnus in the Ninth Century. Radbertus advocated the doctrine of transubstantiation as we now know it. Ratramnus defended the Augustinian view of a spiritual real presence to the believer only. The position of Radbertus came to dominate, and was later spread further by Aquinas and, as quoted above, Trent.

The significance of this is that the view expounded by Augustine and Ratrumnus is exactly that taught by Calvin and held by the orthodox Reformed (excluding Zwingli and his descendants) to this day. For example, the Westminster Confession of Faith XXIX:7 (1646) says, "Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements in this sacrament, do then also inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally, but spiritually, receive and feed upon Christ crucified, and all benefits of His death: the body and blood of Christ being then not corporally or carnally in, with, or under the bread and wine; yet as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers in that ordinance, as the elements themselves are to their outward senses."

What we see here is that the claims of Rome to be holding to the "traditional" view in her doctrine of transubstantiation is committing historical revision. The fact is that she repudiated what had been the historical view to adopt a particularly-superstitious perversion. It is the Reformed alone who hold the historical doctrine of the church.

Oneness Claims Refuted, and Trinity Sustained

One of the arguments that Oneness Pentecostals use to argue against the Trinity is analogy to a man. A man can be a father, a son, and a brother, yet he is just one person in different roles. That is how they believe God is.

The problem with that analogy is that those roles are defined in terms of what a man is to other people, not to himself. That is completely unlike the respective Persons of the Godhead. The Father is a father, and the Son is a son, and the Spirit proceeds, all in internal relationship to each other. They would be the Persons they are even if the world had never been created or any other sentient creature were ever born.

The Oneness analogy fails because the man is not father to his own role as son. Yet that is exactly what the Oneness believe about the Godhead, which helps to explain why Oneness arguments are convincing only to

themselves.

The analogy also ignores what Jesus Himself says. For example, in John 8:18, He tells us, "I am the one who bears witness about Myself, and the Father who sent Me bears witness about Me."

Jesus is referring to the two-witness rule: "A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established" (Deuteronomy 19:15). His own testimony of Himself, corroborated by the testimony of the Father, proves His messianic ministry.

No individual man can fulfill this requirement, no matter how many roles he fills, because he is counted as only one witness, not one witness per role. Therefore, the Oneness analogy is false, and their doctrine is refuted.

The Storm Is from God's Hands: Contra American Deism

It is popular among Christians of every theological stripe to quote II Chronicles 7:14: "If My people who are called by My name humble themselves, and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land." And there is good reason to quote it; it is a promise that inspires great hope.

However, verse 14 is the second part of a sentence that begins in verse 13, which I have never heard quoted: "When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people..." That makes most people too uncomfortable. How can God say of Himself that He is the one who sends natural catastrophes?

The answer is that most American Christians have no concept of a biblical worldview. While nearly everyone claims to believe in Jesus, American religion is actually Deism, not Christianity, as I have said before. "God" is the name we put on our religious stuff, but it has nothing to do with the rest of our lives. We talk about God when someone is extremely ill, or has died. We don't talk about God when it comes to our jobs, child-rearing, politics, our relationships with our neighbors, or natural events.

As the saying goes, God don't play that. He claims absolute control over all things, including the weather or agricultural disasters. As I write this, it has been two weeks since Hurricane Florence brought massive flooding to my home state. I deny the Deist claim that a hurricane is just a natural event. Rather, it happened according to the purposes of God, even if I don't know what those purposes are. It was a supernatural event!

The Flood and the Sinfulness of Those of Any Age

I often hear people claim that children are not accountable for sin. Some people say that there is an age of accountability, not because Scriptures say so, but just because it just must be. Others state it in a more-sophisticated way, saying that a person can only be held accountable for what he understands to be sin, on the supposed basis of Romans 4:15 (while ignoring Romans 2:15). And others claim that children are innocent (not comparatively, but absolutely).

However, not only does Scripture not exempt any class of people from accountability for sin, from conception until death, but rather it makes explicit statements regarding the universality of sin.

The first such statement is in Genesis 8:21: "I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth." This is the statement by God after the Flood that He will never again judge the world in that way. Why? Was it because sin had been eliminated? No, it was because the elimination of sin would require the elimination of mankind, "from his youth." God here explicitly states His perfect judgment that there is no such exemption on the basis of age or mental sophistication.

God says one thing but human sentiment insists on the opposite. Why? Because human sentiment is part of that very sin nature!

The Words of Jesus Contra "Soul Sleep"

The Seventh-Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses have a similar doctrine regarding the intermediate state of the human spirit. According to that doctrine, the soul sleeps (SDA's) or is destroyed (JW's) after the death of the body, only to be awakened or reconstructed at the judgment. Both deny that the spirit of the Christian goes to heaven. However, whichever view one considers, it isn't biblical.

The proof is actually very easy to find. In Mark 13:27, Jesus says of Himself, "Then He will send out the angels and gather His elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven." The essential element here is the last phrase, "the ends of heaven." That is, Jesus Himself, surely a trustworthy witness regarding the matter, tells us that some of the elect are already in heaven. The others are on the earth, i. e., still alive.

Jesus, the God of the Burning Bush

"Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, 'I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.' When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, 'Moses, Moses!' And he said, 'Here I am.' Then He said, 'Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.' And He said, 'I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.' And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God" (Exodus 3:1-6).

This scene is one of the best-known stories of the Old Testament. In fact, the picture of a burning bush is used in a lot of church imagery, such as stained-glass windows, and the symbol of my own church. Yet, O think that little attention is paid to what happens in it.

Most importantly, I want to look at who is speaking. Everyone knows that it is God, of course. But is that all we are told? No, it's not.

Notice first that "God" is not mentioned until verse 6. Before that, Moses tells us that it was the Angel of the Lord, and then just the Lord. That is not God the Father! And, when Moses does refer to God, he says that he was afraid to look at Him. That clinches the exclusion of God the Father, because we know that no one has ever seen the Father (John 8:46). Both this and the reference to the Angel of the Lord tell us that this appearance was by the preincarnate God the Son, whom we know as Jesus Christ.

Jesus Himself would later confirm this identity. As Moses continues, He tells us that the Person who addressed him indicates that His name is I Am (verse 14). Then, during His earthly ministry, He told the Jews that He was that same I Am (John 8:58). Some cults try to deny that it was His purpose to identify Himself with the God in the burning bush. However, the Jews understood exactly what He meant and sought to stone Him for His claim (verse 59 and John 10:33).

This is an extremely important claim. By claiming to be the Person who spoke to Moses from the bush, Jesus claimed to be the same God who redeemed Israel from Egypt. He was (and ever shall be) fully God, and their and our salvation depends on that truth!

Jehovah's Witnesses try to pull all sorts of tricks to deny the deity of Jesus. But the fact that their claims are contrary to the profession of Jesus about Himself proves that they are beyond the pale of the Christian faith. No matter what terminology they use, their claim to be Christians is refuted by the denial of the glory of the Christ from whom that name is derived.

American Pharisees: Lost Without a Physician

"There are those who are clean in their own eyes but are not washed of their filth. There are those—how lofty are their eyes, how high their eyelids lift!" (Proverbs 30:12-13). 

Among Americans, Satan's primary attack against biblical Christianity is not atheism, alternative religions, or evolutionism, as bad as those things are. Rather, he attacks the faith through complacency.

Luke describes the conversion of Levi (another name for the Apostle Matthew): "Levi made Him a great feast in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them. And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, 'Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?' And Jesus answered them, 'Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance'" (Luke 5:29-32). At the house of Matthew, Jesus sat at dinner with tax-collectors, a class hated by the Jews, and other sinners. The Pharisees saw this, and rebuked Him for His bad taste in companions. After all, were the Pharisees not the cream of Jewish society? 

But the rebuke of Jesus must have caught those Pharisees completely flat-footed: "I have not come to call the [supposedly] righteous but sinners to repentance." In their moral satisfaction, the Pharisees had no desire for what Jesus had come to give, redemption in His blood. However, the tax-collectors and sinners in Matthew's house knew their spiritual condition, and were looking to Jesus to forgive their sins and restore them to righteousness: "Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of Your name; deliver us, and atone for our sins, for Your name’s sake!" (Psalm 79:9).

And this explains the spiritual anemia of America's professing Christians. Too many of us are satisfied with our moral superiority. Rare is the man who can say from his heart, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" (Luke 18:13). Yet Jesus tells us that is exactly the point to which we must come to find Him.

The Example of William Carey: The Two Sides of the Missionary Endeavor

There is an unfortunate tendency among Christians to define everything in two opposing theses. That is unfortunate because life doesn't work like that. It has a lot more than just two options in almost any circumstance. Think of a questionnaire that asks your favorite flavor of ice cream, and then gives only the options of vanilla or chocolate. Can no one prefer strawberry?

One particular example is the definition of mission. Liberal churches still send out men and women that they call missionaries. However, their work is devoted to social activism or welfare institutions. Under no circumstances do they call anyone to repent, believe in Jesus, and form Gospel-proclaiming national churches. On the other hand, fundamentalist missionaries define their task strictly in terms of how many people have been called to believe. Social institutions are poo-pooed as diversions from their task.

That is a false dichotomy. Have we forgotten William Carey, a pioneer in the modern missionary task? While he translated the Bible and preached the Gospel, in order to gather converts, he also built a missionary infrastructure, such as colleges and orphanages.

Does the Bible address this dichotomy? Yes, it does. "Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy" (Proverbs 31:8-9).

God's concern is certainly the spreading of the Gospel to unbelievers. The Great Commission is a command to that end, and is so important to Him that He repeated it in different words in Matthew 28:19-20, Mark 16:15, and Acts 1:8. But He also tells us, "If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, be warmed and filled, without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead" (James 2:15-17). The Christian who preaches the Gospel, but has no concern about the physical well-being of the people to whom he ministers is practicing a truncated and unbiblical Christianity. 

I didn't quote that great Commission on purpose. I will do so now: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you" (Matthew 28:19-20). Notice that it doesn't tell us to explain only how to be saved, as vital as that it, but also to observe, or obey, everything that God commands. And that necessarily includes a concern for the less-fortunate.  

Abraham, the Ancient Christian

There is a heresy which has been going around at least since the time of J. N. Darby in 1830, that says that people in the Old testament were saved in a different way from the people in the New Testament. Sometimes it is said that Israel was saved by following the Law. Other times, it is said that they were saved by faith in the sacrifices. This doctrine is associated with various forms of the hermeneutical system created by Darby (and made popular by C. I Scofield) known as Dispensationalism.

Both forms of the doctrine are wrong.

Orthodox Protestants all agree that a Christian is saved by grace through faith, not by obedience to the Law, even in part. This is stated repeatedly in Scripture, such as Acts 13:39, Romans 3:28, and the whole Epistle to the Galatians. Where the Dispensationalist is wrong is his assertion that Old Testament believers were saved in a different way. The Apostle Peter, himself a Jew, said, "We [Jews] believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they {i. e., the Gentiles] will" (Acts 15:11).

And to be more specific, the Apostle Paul, another Jew, tells us, "And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, 'In you shall all the nations be blessed'" (Galatians 3:8). Notice that Paul doesn't say just "faith," which might allow for faith in a different object. Rather, he explicitly states that Abraham received the Gospel! That is why Jesus could say, "Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see My day. He saw it and was glad" (John 8:56).

Would the content of the Gospel to Israel have been more obscure? Sure. We understand that the Gospel was given under types and shadows (Colossians 2:17), so that Old Testament faith was more difficult to attain. That is why the New Covenant, the Gospel in the New Testament, is described by the Epistle to the Hebrews as far superior: the types and shadows have been removed, so that the reality is displayed in all its glory!

Can Kids Sin? The Age of Accountability

There are things in the Bible that can make a man uncomfortable. That is no criticism. It represents historical situations without modern parallel. We simply have no comparable experiences in our lives. We no longer live on farms, where we face the daily reality of, for example, the butchering of animals for our food. Meat is something we get in plastic wrap from the grocery store. We are completely separated from how that meat was prepared before that point.

One issue in particular is the Conquest, the period of time in which the nation of Israel, after having been rescued from bondage in Egypt, is called by God to take the Promised Land from its inhabitants. And not just to impose their rule over those inhabitants, as we think of a conquest, but rather to eliminate them: "We captured all his cities at that time and devoted to destruction every city, men, women, and children. We left no survivors" (Deuteronomy 2:34; cp. 3:6, etc.). However, that action was only as God had commanded them: "But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction" (Deuteronomy 20:16-17).

This offends our sense of justice, because God judges even the children to destruction. How can God do such a thing and remain just?

The problem is that we think of children as innocent. And, comparably speaking, that is true. Children haven't committed murder, for example (and even that is no absolute). We are justified in saying that, for example, abortion is evil, because it is exactly that, a genocide of the innocent. The relatively innocent. This has led to a manmade doctrine called "the age of accountability," according to which there is some age under which God does not hold a person accountable for sin.

The problem with applying that to God is that He doesn't judge on the basis of relativity. In His omniscience, He knows what is in the heart of every person, whether it is expressed in action or not. We cannot do the same because we are not omniscient. In addition, we judge as one sinner looking upon on another. That is why we are able to think only in terms of relative innocence. But God's commands to Israel show that He holds all humans to His holy standards, regardless of age, gender, or social status.

God, however, in His absolute knowledge and holiness says that even infants have wicked hearts (Psalms 51:5, 58:3). Therefore, He alone is just in determining to destroy the wicked, even children, in pursuit of His purposes. The doctrine of an age of accountability accuses God of injustice for the inclusion of children in His judgment on the Canaanites.

What the modern mind rarely grasps is that what Israel did to Og and his people or Sihon and his people is what He could properly do to every human in existence. Is it unjust that He exercised His justice in those cases but does not in our modern world? Of course not. That isn't injustice; it is mercy.

Autonomy: The Error of Atheists and Nominal Christians

When Christians talk about atheism, most would say that the fundamental error of the atheist is his denial of the existence of God. After all, that is the meaning of the word. However, they are mistaken. As we see in Romans 1:18, there is no one who doesn't know that God exists. An atheist pretends that God doesn't exist.

Rather, the fundamental error of atheism is its belief in human autonomy. The atheist must convince himself - and others, if possible - that God doesn't exist, and then he will be free to live his life as he desires. This is exactly what Satan offered to Adam and Eve in the temptation: "You will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Genesis 3:5). In this context, "knowing" does not mean merely "knowing about," but "deciding." Satan convinced Adam and Even that rebelling against God and His word would leave them free to decide what was right and wrong for themselves.

That assertion was false. Whether Satan himself believed in what he was offering, I do not know. Often a liar starts to believe his own lies.

The Bible says otherwise: "The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; He turns it wherever He will" (Proverbs 21:1). This is a statement from the pen of Solomon, the greatest king that Israel would ever know. However, he confesses that, regardless of whatever intentions he might have had, his actions were always those determined by God.

The Glory of Solomon

My question to the atheist is this: If a rich and powerful king came to realize that he was always under the providential hand of God, how can you rationally believe that you are independent of that same God?

However, I am saddened to say that this error is not limited to professed atheists. Far too many professing Christians make the same essential assumption as the atheist, that we can decide for ourselves what belongs to God and what does not. Many of us divide life into a "religious" part and a "regular" part, with God in control of the first part, but with our having autonomy in the second. I am sorry, snowflake, but there is no such division: "So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" (I Corinthians 10:31). God claims all of your life, not just whatever dregs you are willing to give Him. If you are claiming autonomy in part of your life, then you are professing the same lie as Satan and the atheist, no matter what title you claim for yourself.

Jesus made the same point to the Pharisees: "He said to them, 'Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me; in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.' And He said to them, 'You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! For Moses said, Honor your father and your mother; and, Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die. But you say, If a man tells his father or his mother, Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban (that is, given to God)— then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do'" (Mark 7:6-13).

Are Children Culpable for Sin?

I run into a lot of people who deny the sinfulness of children. Some of them claim that there is an age of accountability, below which children are not accountable for their actions. When asked for the biblical evidence for that, such people merely turn purple and claim that I am wicked for questioning them. Others claim that sin is only recognized in those with the mental capacity to recognize the nature of the child's actions. Again, where does the Bible say any such thing? The answer is usually something to the effect of, "Well, it just has to be that way."

On the contrary, there are several Scriptures which teach the exact opposite, such as Psalm 51:5 and Psalm 58:3.

The one I want to look at now is Proverbs 20:11: "Even a child makes himself known by his acts, by whether his conduct is pure and upright."

Notice that Solomon here doesn't even say that we see the nature of the child, but rather that his nature is revealed by his actions. That is exactly the same as the words of Jesus in Matthew 15:18-20: "What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person." Both passages tell us that external actions are not what makes the sinner, but rather the heart that produces those actions. We are not sinners because we sin; rather, we sin because we are sinners.

And Solomon tells us that the heart of the child, whether it is upright or sinful, is also revealed in his actions. That necessarily precludes any supposed sinlessness in children. That doctrine is manmade sentimentality, not a biblical principle.

This is my question to anyone who holds that children aren't sinful, or are not culpable for their sin: Why don't you kill your children before your age of accountability? After all, if they are truly held to be sinless, then killing them now would guarantee that they would go to heaven, wouldn't it? The fact that you don't do so demonstrates to me that you don't really believe what you're saying. And that is often the case. A person's theology of the heart is often better than is his theology of profession.

Is There Injustice in God?

A lot of people, both among professing believers and among unbelievers, express moral objections to the commands of God to the Israelites to exterminate the Canaanites - man, woman, and child - during their conquest of the Promised Land. For example, we read in Deuteronomy 7:1-2 God's commandment: "When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you, and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them."

And we have the record of Israel's partial obedience to the commandment: "We captured all his [i. e., King Sihon of Heshbon] cities at that time and devoted to destruction every city, men, women, and children. We left no survivors" (Deuteronomy 2:34). The same thing happened in the defeat of King Og of Bashan: "We devoted them to destruction, as we did to Sihon the king of Heshbon, devoting to destruction every city, men, women, and children" (Deuteronomy 3:6).

Is that harsh? I think any sane person would say so. But does that mean that it was unjust? That I must deny!

The problem with the objections to the Canaanite pogrom is that these objectors have an unbiblical view of man.

According to the Bible, all human beings (excluding only Adam and Eve before the Fall, and Jesus) are sinners, rebels in our hearts against our Lord and Creator, the triune God in Heaven (Romans 3:23). And the consequence of sin is death: "Behold, all souls are Mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is Mine: the soul who sins shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4). This is the point of error in the argument of those who accuse God of immorality; they fail to understand the wickedness of men or its consequence.

However, we notice that, though all are sinners, not all die at any particular time. That is certainly true. God restrains His justice for a time - for most. And that is the issue. After giving them 400 years to change their ways (Genesis 15:16), God chose to apply His justice to the pagan residents of Canaan through the Israelites at that time. If He chose to carry out His justice on those people at that time, but restrains it for a time for the rest of the world, is that injustice? No, it's mercy. When the false believer or the unbeliever accuses God of immorality in ancient Canaan, he is really denying the mercy of God to the rest of the world in the rest of history.

And that error is deliberate. Unrighteous men are not ignorant of God. Rather, they "suppress the truth through unrighteousness" (Romans 1:18). They throw up this smokescreen in their minds, so that they can avoid their innate knowledge of the reality of God and our accountability to Him. This is the moral equivalent of the child who sticks his fingers in his ears and sing-songs, "La-la-la I can't hear you," when his parents are chastising him for misbehavior. Does that exempt him from the consequences? Of course not! Nor does this smokescreen from unbelievers protect them from the justice of God.

Contra Modalism: Jesus Cannot Be the Father

Jesus said something in Matthew 24:36 which has had Christians scratching our heads for the two thousand years since: "Concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only." Since He is God, how is it possible that He not know something? In fact, Jehovah's Witnesses cite this verse as supposed evidence that Jesus is not God.

The answer has long since been given: Jesus was speaking in His humanity, not in His deity. People often forget that Jesus was, is, and ever shall be, truly human. That is not to say that He is not God. Rather, He unites in one person two separate natures, the divine and the human, each with its proper attributes remaining intact. This is correctly summarized in the Definition of Chalcedon: "One and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ." And, as a human with the same limitations as any other human, He would not have had the Father's knowledge of the future. As God, He certainly did, but decided not to reveal that knowledge.

I bring up this verse now because of its impact on the modalist doctrine of Oneness Pentecostalism. That sect claims that Jesus is the Father incarnated. Yet, He explicitly distinguishes between Himself and the Father in this verse, showing that the modalist doctrine is false. The Law of Non-Contradiction tells us necessarily that A cannot be both B and not-B at the same time. Yet, that is what the Oneness theologians would have us believe.

The Sovereignty of God: Over Dice, Over Mice, and Over Men

"The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD" (Proverbs 16:33)

We humans can have hopes for the future, or even plans for the future. However, what we cannot have is knowledge of the future. There is virtually an infinity of factors that will affect what happens tomorrow, and even more so as you consider further into the future. It is common to apply our human limitations. God cannot decide what will happen in the future, can He?

The problem is that such an assertion applies human limitations to God. They do not, and cannot, apply. Unlike men, God is omniscient. That is, He knows exhaustively all things, past, present, and future. And that is not only what will be, but what might be, every possible outcome from every possible contingency. "I distinguish the end from the beginning, and ancient times from what is still to come, saying: ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure'" (Isaiah 46:10). Notice that He asserts not just passive knowledge, but rather determinative knowledge. He knows for a certainty will will happen because all things happen according to His prior determination of them.

That is the fundamental difference between the knowledge of God and the knowledge of men. It isn't a difference of quantity, with God's knowing more and man's knowing less. Rather, God's a priori determination and exhaustive knowledge are inherently joined. This is repeated throughout the scriptures.

"In His hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind" (Job 12:10).

"In Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).

"He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:17).

Men cannot know the future, because the universe is autonomous of man. However, God can know and determine all things because no one and nothing is autonomous of Him.

Which brings me to the Proverb quoted above. Nothing could be more contingent than the casting of lots. In fact, we do so, i. e., throwing dice, exactly because the result is random, and cannot favor either party. However, as I noted above, nothing can be autonomous from God. Therefore, there can be no such thing as chance to Him. And if He determines even the rolls of dice, than which nothing can be freer from the human perspective, then neither can men expect to be autonomous from His sovereignty in our own choices, even the most powerful among us: "The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; He turns it wherever He will" (Proverbs 21:1).

Sin and Guiding Principles

"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death" (Proverbs 16:25). 

Our society has become very mystical. Just listen to how we express ourselves. It is rarely "I think" now. Everything is prefaced with "I feel," instead. Movies advise us to "follow your heart." The heroes in the Star Wars movies - of which, I admit, I am a fan - are told not to think, but to let "The Force" guide their actions. 

I think that is a very dangerous way to live.

Look at the Proverb that I quoted above. Doesn't it address exactly that kind of subjectivist mentality? It warns that following feelings will lead to a deadly consequence. Why is that? "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick" (Jeremiah 17:9). 

Subjectivism, the feelings-based worldview, is based on a false, unbiblical supposition, that the heart is necessarily and naturally good. Therefore, in a confused and disturbed world, we are supposed to be able to rely on that internal compass, just as we can rely on a physical compass in a wilderness where every direction seems the same.

However, as Jeremiah tells us, the heart is not good. It isn't even neutral. Rather, it is given over to wickedness. Jesus explained this to the Pharisees in Matthew 15:18-20: "What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone." Rather than as a source of guidance, it is our heart which produces every error and wicked act that we commit. To follow your heart is, just as Solomon said in the Proverb, to follow a path to death.

Picture it this way, to return to my compass analogy. If a hiker were trying to find his way through the wilderness with a compass that was broken somehow, such that it always pointed the wrong way, what would be his fate? Lost, starved, probably dead. The same is true for any man who follows his heart.