Woe to us! We have patterned-sleepers for saints! At ease, never-troubled, quick-speaking, tearless, no-weeping Calvinistic saints, fast asleep and comfortable in their beds of iniquity! Sleeping soundly, they can’t wake up…because they have been taught to believe they can’t ever die! Wake up! Wake up! And lo, the whole company cries for the “Christian” SNOOZE… The Holy Ghost saith, “Arise from the dead”, “arise from the dead”, “awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead” (Eph. 5:14), but they are caught up in their dreams already, and in them, lo, they are everlastingly alive!
In “An Alarm to the Unconverted”, by Joseph Alleine, he wrote in disdain of misappropriated doctrines of election that hindered the initial salvation of unconverted sinners; however, there are like misrepresentations that hinder the present progressive and final salvation of converted saints. He said to the unconverted sinners, “You begin at the wrong end if you first dispute about your election. Prove your conversion, and then never doubt your election. If you cannot yet prove it, set upon a present and thorough turning. Whatever God’s purposes be, which are secret, I am sure His promises are plain… Do not stand still disputing about your election, but set to repenting and believing. Cry to God for converting grace. Revealed things belong to you; in these busy yourself. It is just, as one well said, that they who will not feed on the plain food of the Word should be chocked with the bones.” -Joseph Alleine, “An Alarm to the Unconverted”
In Calvinistic circles, the common and practical relationship with God is directly affected by misappropriations of sovereign election. The common individual does deduce: “Because I am saved, therefore I am elect. Because I am elect, God cannot be, and will never be, angry with me again…even when I am struggling with turning from this sinful affection or that. Therefore what I need to hear at this time of struggle (because I am God’s regenerate son and a true Christian), is a greater revelation of His love – this is the answer to all my spiritual inadequacies. I am always loved by God, and it is not possible that God could ever have any other emotion or mind toward me, because I am always viewed in the finished work of Christ. God is eternal and therefore, so is His love toward me…therefore God never reveals sin to me as a message or means to condemn me, or having a mind or will to condemn me, but He reveals sin in my life to convict me – that is all. I must not mistake the revelation of my sin as a message of my condemnation in sin.”
What saith the scripture? The common Calvinist is completely unconscious of “God in the ways of man” and outright denies Arminian aspects of God’s circumstantial, reactive anger, which can include the potential of damnation. For the common Calvinist, “God in the ways of God” is all of God’s relational ways in which He uses to think about, speak to, and perform works with mankind. As they understand God to be, that is all they believe exists – namely, His eternal, unchanging attributes (God in the ways of God). They do not relate to God by His condescension, and they are therefore snared in a misappropriation of the doctrine of election, which is a misappropriation of the higher, secret, and hidden things of God. Jeremiah, Joshua, Jacob, and Josiah did believe in the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation, predestination, and election, as a Calvinist would believe it, but they did not misappropriate God’s higher ways to subvert and nullify His condescended ways.
In “An Alarm to the Unconverted”, by Joseph Alleine, he wrote in disdain of misappropriated doctrines of election that hindered the initial salvation of unconverted sinners; however, there are like misrepresentations that hinder the present progressive and final salvation of converted saints. He said to the unconverted sinners, “You begin at the wrong end if you first dispute about your election. Prove your conversion, and then never doubt your election. If you cannot yet prove it, set upon a present and thorough turning. Whatever God’s purposes be, which are secret, I am sure His promises are plain… Do not stand still disputing about your election, but set to repenting and believing. Cry to God for converting grace. Revealed things belong to you; in these busy yourself. It is just, as one well said, that they who will not feed on the plain food of the Word should be chocked with the bones.” -Joseph Alleine, “An Alarm to the Unconverted”
In Calvinistic circles, the common and practical relationship with God is directly affected by misappropriations of sovereign election. The common individual does deduce: “Because I am saved, therefore I am elect. Because I am elect, God cannot be, and will never be, angry with me again…even when I am struggling with turning from this sinful affection or that. Therefore what I need to hear at this time of struggle (because I am God’s regenerate son and a true Christian), is a greater revelation of His love – this is the answer to all my spiritual inadequacies. I am always loved by God, and it is not possible that God could ever have any other emotion or mind toward me, because I am always viewed in the finished work of Christ. God is eternal and therefore, so is His love toward me…therefore God never reveals sin to me as a message or means to condemn me, or having a mind or will to condemn me, but He reveals sin in my life to convict me – that is all. I must not mistake the revelation of my sin as a message of my condemnation in sin.”
What saith the scripture? The common Calvinist is completely unconscious of “God in the ways of man” and outright denies Arminian aspects of God’s circumstantial, reactive anger, which can include the potential of damnation. For the common Calvinist, “God in the ways of God” is all of God’s relational ways in which He uses to think about, speak to, and perform works with mankind. As they understand God to be, that is all they believe exists – namely, His eternal, unchanging attributes (God in the ways of God). They do not relate to God by His condescension, and they are therefore snared in a misappropriation of the doctrine of election, which is a misappropriation of the higher, secret, and hidden things of God. Jeremiah, Joshua, Jacob, and Josiah did believe in the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation, predestination, and election, as a Calvinist would believe it, but they did not misappropriate God’s higher ways to subvert and nullify His condescended ways.
Jeremiah
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We know that Jeremiah was the elect of God after the Lord’s eternal counsel (God in the ways of God). Why? God said of him the famed and beloved scripture, "The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee" (Jeremiah 31:3). Blessed be God that Jesus said, “no man can come to Me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw him” (John 6:44). If God loved Jeremiah with “an everlasting love,” then this means everlasting…therefore there could never be an interruption of His everlasting, eternal, unchanging love; it is everlastingly the same and unchanging. God also, in His sovereignty and ways, is an everlasting, unchanging Being in will, counsel, decree, mind, emotion, and heart. True; however, there is a simultaneous, condescending will and relationship of God which can contradict and be wholly separate from the everlasting will of God. It is not that there could ever be an interruption of God’s everlasting will, but that there is a separate will of God that is just as genuine, yet it can change, and it is confined to the reactive limitations of the ways of man – and also, this will of God is frightfully relevant to the daily, practical walk of a believer in Christ. Reader, let me get straight to the point of how relevant it is that we understand the simultaneous and contradictory wills in God – If Jeremiah did relate to God only based upon His “everlasting love” and higher ways (God in the ways of God), then he would be in hell right now! Why?
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If Jeremiah did relate to God only based upon His “everlasting love” and higher ways (God in the ways of God), then he would be in hell right now! |
Did you know that even though God loved Jeremiah with “an everlasting love”, the Lord intended to damn, and declaratively damned, Jeremiah during a specific time period of his sojourning as a prophet? This means that God was angry enough with Jeremiah that He desired to send him to hell. Jeremiah was disqualified from his prophetic office, promises, and covenant for a time, and he scarcely escaped damnation but by the surmounting mercies of an everlasting love. Jeremiah was loved with an everlasting love, and therefore was of “the elect” according to Romans chapter 9. An account of his election, ordination, and prophetic covenant is in Jeremiah, Ch. 1. Of Jeremiah’s ordination, covenant, and promises, God said to him:
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Did you know that even though God loved Jeremiah with “an everlasting love”, the Lord intended to damn, and declaratively damned, Jeremiah during a specific time period of his sojourning as a prophet? This means that God was angry enough with Jeremiah that He desired to send him to hell. Jeremiah was disqualified from his prophetic office, promises, and covenant for a time, and he scarcely escaped damnation but by the surmounting mercies of an everlasting love. Jeremiah was loved with an everlasting love, and therefore was of “the elect” according to Romans chapter 9. An account of his election, ordination, and prophetic covenant is in Jeremiah, Ch. 1. Of Jeremiah’s ordination, covenant, and promises, God said to him:
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Jeremiah was given one condition: “be not dismayed at their faces, lest I confound thee before them.” While fulfilling this condition, Jeremiah was confirmed with the oaths and promises emboldened above. Along Jeremiah’s pilgrimage, he fell into sin. Though he was in sin, he did not realize he was condemned in the sight of God – that is, until God confronted and verbally condemned him. Jeremiah was used to hearing the word of the Lord just drop upon him, suddenly, as it would happen to God’s prophets, and yet in Jeremiah chapter 15, God delivered to Jeremiah the word of the Lord that condemned Israel, and this time, Jeremiah was included in the company that was condemned. God told Jeremiah that he too was under the burning fire of His wrath.
Jeremiah did not immediately fall after his prophetic ordination, which was at the beginning. It was a good while into his ministry, and after he had suffered much for the cause of God, for by this point in time he could call himself “a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth” (Jer. 15:10). This was after the people of Israel did “curse” Jeremiah (Jer. 15:10). Jeremiah’s situation was heated, and persecution had already mounted upon him, so that without the preventative hand of God he would have been martyred. There were men that covenanted to kill Jeremiah, saying, “Let us destroy the tree with the fruit thereof, and let us cut [Jeremiah] off from the land of the living, that his name may be no more remembered” (Jer. 11:19). This plot was unknown by Jeremiah, therefore he said, “I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter and I knew not that they had devised devices against me” (Jer. 11:19). Yet the Lord protected him and revealed to Jeremiah this plot with the definitive judgment of God upon these scheming murderers…
Jeremiah did not immediately fall after his prophetic ordination, which was at the beginning. It was a good while into his ministry, and after he had suffered much for the cause of God, for by this point in time he could call himself “a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth” (Jer. 15:10). This was after the people of Israel did “curse” Jeremiah (Jer. 15:10). Jeremiah’s situation was heated, and persecution had already mounted upon him, so that without the preventative hand of God he would have been martyred. There were men that covenanted to kill Jeremiah, saying, “Let us destroy the tree with the fruit thereof, and let us cut [Jeremiah] off from the land of the living, that his name may be no more remembered” (Jer. 11:19). This plot was unknown by Jeremiah, therefore he said, “I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter and I knew not that they had devised devices against me” (Jer. 11:19). Yet the Lord protected him and revealed to Jeremiah this plot with the definitive judgment of God upon these scheming murderers…
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“Therefore thus saith the LORD of the men of Anathoth, that seek they life, saying, Prophesy not in the name of the LORD, that thou die not by our hand: Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts, Behold, I will punish them: the young men shall die by the sword; their sons and their daughters shall die by famine: and there shall be no remnant of them: for I will bring evil upon the men of Anathoth, even the year of their visitation.” (Jer. 11:21-23)
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Up to the time of Jeremiah 15, Jeremiah had experienced the faithful promises of God whereby he was securely protected. He was imperishable like a “defenced city,” “an iron pillar,” and “brasen walls!” He experienced the blessed promise, “they shall fight against thee but they shall not prevail against thee; for I am with thee, saith the LORD, to deliver thee” (Jer. 1:17-19). Nevertheless, God departed from Jeremiah in this instance of his ministry. Read carefully to see Jeremiah’s inclusion in the prophetic woe of condemnation to Israel:
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"Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have neither lent on usury, nor men have lent to me on usury; yet every one of them doth curse me. The LORD said, Verily it shall be well with thy remnant; verily I will cause the enemy to entreat thee well in the time of evil and in the time of affliction. Shall iron break the northern iron and the steel? Thy substance and thy treasures will I give to the spoil without price, and that for all thy sins, even in all thy borders. And I will make thee to pass with thine enemies into a land which thou knowest not: for a fire is kindled in Mine anger, which shall burn upon you." (Jeremiah 15:10-14)
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The emboldened verse above is directed toward Jeremiah. Jeremiah is the “you” in the passage. Recognizing this word of condemnation and God’s burning wrath, Jeremiah pled his case before God in hopes that He would repent of this word in Jeremiah 15:15-18. God responded to Jeremiah’s prayers in Jeremiah 15:19-21. First, look at Jeremiah’s prayers for mercy:
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"O LORD, Thou knowest: remember me, and visit me, and revenge me of my persecutors; take me not away in Thy longsuffering: know that for Thy sake I have suffered rebuke. Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and Thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart: for I am called by Thy name, O LORD God of hosts. I sat not in the assembly of the mockers, nor rejoiced; I sat alone because of Thy hand: for Thou hast filled me with indignation. Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable, which refuseth to be healed? wilt Thou be altogether unto me as a liar, and as waters that fail?" (Jeremiah 15:15-18)
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Jeremiah understood this word given in Jeremiah 15:10-14 as a message of condemnation to himself. He pled in verse 15, “take me not away in Thy longsuffering”, because the word of the Lord was that he would be taken away from the land of Israel in the burning anger of God. Jeremiah pled for mercy from God by reminding Him of the suffering he had undergone in the Lord’s service as a prophet (“for Thy sake I have suffered rebuke,” “I sat not with the assembly of the mockers, nor rejoiced; I sat alone because of Thy hand: for Thou hast filled me with indignation”), and the joy and gladness he received upon his ordination and experience as a prophet (“Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and Thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart: for I am called by Thy name”). Jeremiah felt deceived by God. He felt as though he had done right, and therefore deserved to be protected by the promises which were formerly given, and since God’s word was to take him away by wrath, he felt as though God had lied to him…Jeremiah’s heart was deceiving him (Jer. 17:9). God set Jeremiah straight on how He had justly spoken this word of condemnation to him, when the Lord said:
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"Therefore thus saith the LORD, If thou return, then will I bring thee again, and thou shalt stand before Me: and if thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth: let them return unto thee; but return not thou unto them. And I will make thee unto this people a fenced brasen wall: and they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail against thee: for I am with thee to save thee and to deliver thee, saith the LORD. And I will deliver thee out of the hand of the wicked, and I will redeem thee out of the hand of the terrible." (Jeremiah 15:19-21)
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Do you see how Jeremiah was disqualified from his prophetic office because of the unrepentant sin detailed above? God gave three explanations of Jeremiah’s rebellion that had caused this disqualification and condemnation, and God assured him that if he were to repent of his sins, God would grant the mercy he was seeking after, namely, that it would be restored, and He did this by reiterating the promises first given to Jeremiah at his prophetic ordination: the promises of God’s delivering, protecting, and empowering hand, that he would not be taken away in the Babylonian Captivity, nor overcome by the people of Israel. Jeremiah’s command by God to repent was, “if thou return,” “if thou take forth the precious from the vile,” and “let them return unto thee but return not thou unto them.” The re-initiation of the prophetic office based upon his repentance was spoken in the word, “then will I bring thee again and thou shalt stand before Me,” and “thou shalt be as My mouth.” Standing before God and being His mouth are terms of a prophetic office (Jer. 15:1, 1 Kings 17:1, Ex. 4:12-16). With the prophetic covenant reestablished and unbreached, then God’s delivering, protecting promises were re-initiated so that Jeremiah would again be “a fenced brasen wall,” because God would be with him to deliver him like in former times.
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Now consider this! Jeremiah was loved with “an everlasting love” (Jer. 31:3), and yet God was burning with anger in the intent of his damnation. Jeremiah was the foreknown elect of God (Jer. 1:5), and yet God had a simultaneous, contradicting will which was reactive to the disobedience of the chosen saint. God’s eternal, irresistible, immutable, unchanging will and counsel is unaffected by the obedience or disobedience of the chosen saint; on the contrary, it is the determiner of obedience and disobedience. This is the hidden counsel of God in the higher ways of His secret workings, that it is “not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (Rom. 9:16). Yet there is a relational will of God which has infinitely condescended to man by operating in the ways of man, and therefore it is reactive and responsive to the obedience and disobedience of men. If the higher, hidden, and sovereign ways of God had been Jeremiah’s sole meditation, had he believed that there could be no danger, damnation, or anger in God because of an everlasting love, it is then that he would have perished in his own self-justifying and unrepentant deceit. Nevertheless, Jeremiah did repent and was reinstated as God’s prophet, but had he been indoctrinated with the system of theology called Calvinism, he would have perished! This misappropriation of the doctrine of election has become a complex snare of the devil that seduces God’s people into an unbiblical confidence of salvation, a supposing that God accepts them while in a state of unrepentance. It is the age-old voice of the false prophets, saying, “Peace, peace; when there is no peace” (Jer. 6:14). “They say still unto them that despise Me, The LORD hath said, Ye shall have peace; and they say unto every one that walketh after the imagination of his own heart, No evil shall come upon you” (Jer. 23:17). Since the ancient times God has warned of these deceptive and twisted teachings that give the people an unalterable assurance in the promises and blessings of God, irrelevant of their behavior and performance. As it is written since the days of Moses:
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The scarcity of salvation for those who do endure to the end cannot be properly understood until we are conscientious of the dual, simultaneous, and genuine wills of God that are actively working all the time in tension / contradiction one with another, that God could have an everlasting and immutable will to save, and yet, a conflicting, condemning, wrathful will at present. |
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"Lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turneth away this day from the LORD our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood; And it come to pass, when he heareth the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart, to add drunkenness to thirst: The LORD will not spare him, but then the anger of the LORD and His jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the LORD shall blot out his name from under heaven. And the LORD shall separate him unto evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this book of the law…" (Deuteronomy 29:18-21)
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Just as “a root that beareth gall and wormwood” sprung up in the Old Covenant (Deut. 29:18), the same “root of bitterness springing up” is warned of in the New Covenant (Heb. 12:15). The waters of salvation will not “fail” (Jer. 15:18), nor will God make His promises mutable as long as you diligently obey His voice: “looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God” (Heb. 12:15). Is this not enough for you? Then we will look at the lives of Joshua, Jacob, and Josiah. God wants us to understand that “the righteous are scarcely saved” (1 Peter 4:18). The scarcity of salvation for those who do endure to the end cannot be properly understood until we are conscientious of the dual, simultaneous, and genuine wills of God that are actively working all the time in tension/contradiction one with another, that God could have an everlasting and immutable will to save, and yet, a conflicting, condemning, wrathful will at present. What does this cause us to understand? We must consider our deeds and understand that they can provoke Christ (1 Cor. 10:9), and we must appropriate our everlasting election in a manner which does not disconnect us from our present progressive faith and repentance toward God, which then will connect us to a mindful care of our fruitfulness (2 Peter 1:8), to the end we would make our “calling and election sure” by what deeds of faith we, with perseverance, are ingratiated to “do” (2 Peter 1:10). “Do these things,” Peter says, and this is a good trust in the finished work of Christ; thereby we are confirmed that He is finishing His work in us. “Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall:" (2 Peter 1:10). Have you an appropriation, a doctrine, or an understanding of election? Let it be consistent with that holy charge and concern of the apostle Peter, a charge based upon what a saint does DO. It is an assurance based upon the sureness of election (“election sure”) which is not dislocated from a man’s performance, but vitally hinging upon one’s own works done in and through Christ. So many are assured of their election but their election is not sure – therefore reader, make it sure!