Predestination: God's Wonderful Plan

The excerpt below is taken from Ichabod Spencer’s A Pastor’s Sketches. It is the best definition of the purpose of the doctrine of predestination that I have yet read. It is unfortunate that so many look upon this doctrine as though God made some arbitrary decision who to save and who to condemn. In reality, it is the Great God of the Universe marking out a people to save in Christ in order to glorify Himself for all eternity.

The Lord’s Supper

²³ For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; ²⁴ and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” ²⁵ In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” ²⁶ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes. ²⁷ Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord.

As Jesus established His church, He appointed two ordinances (some groups call them sacraments) for the edification and encouragement of His people. The first is baptism, in which we as believers demonstrate our joining together with Christ. The waters of baptism are a symbol of the earth that covers the old body from which that same body is now raised to newness of life. It shows in an unmistakable way, how our old self is buried with Christ in His death, and a new self is raised to newness of life (Romans 6:1-4).

The Perfect Choice, Part 2

“Sorry, Mike, I used to be a 5 point Calvinist too, but consider 1 John 2:2, John 12:32, Joshua 24:15 etc.”

When considering any passage of scripture, it is imperative that we take into consideration a number of factors that go into its proper exegesis and understanding. As you can see by the quotation from our mystery commentator, many Christians (and I hasten to add that I was at one time among that number) tend to simply provide scripture references with little, if anything, more when attempting to prove a point. The late Dave Hunt was among the most egregious offenders on this point. You could often hear him say something like "there are hundreds of scriptures that prove otherwise" whenever he would face a challenge to his particular views. Somehow, the fact that there are "hundreds of scriptures" that speak to a particular subject, in and of itself, proves your point.