This will be a in-depth Biblical study of Gods salvation plan. There will be no definate time schedule for this study and more material and pages will be added from time to time. If you have any questions or wish to make any comment regarding this study please feel free to either post your message on the church bulletin board, E Mail me or contact me at my IRQ. number. The material for this study has been taken from the book "Gods Magnificent Salvation Plan" by Harold Camping.

This is Page 3 of our Bible Study. On this page we will discuss unconditional election.......Brother Frank

We have discovered as we looked in the Bible that indeed, we are dead in our sins. We are incapable of ever deciding to come to Christ. We are slaves of Satan. We obey the lusts of the flesh. We are as spiritually dead as Lazarus was physically dead in the tomb before he was raised. Now we are going to examine the principle of unconditional election. The subject of election is not a happy idea to many who are concerned with salvation because it brings with it the fact that God is the one who did the electing, rather than the fact that we have chosen for God. Man by nature does not like this point of view. This is so because it underscores the spiritual deadness of man. It robs him of any self-pride. It reminds him that he is not the master of his fate, the captain of his soul. But this is the point of view that the Bible very clearly teaches.

In examining this question of election we see first of all that it is required. That is, it is a necessary part of God's salvation program. Without it, no one would besaved.

We have already discovered that man is altogether dead in his sins. He will not seek after God. Of his own volition he will never elect to come to God. If Christ had gone no further than offering salvation to the world, there would be no body of believers. This gracious, loving offer of salvation could be proclaimed for a thousand years to mankind, but not one individual in the whole human race would respond of himself. As we have already seen so clearly, man is dead in his sins. He loves his sin too much. In his very nature he is in rebellion against God. And so no one seeks after God. If God had not acted in man's heart no one would become saved.

But Christ has determined that he would build His church. The gates of hell would not prevail against him. In order to build his church, he elected certain ones who were to be saved. Thus the truth of election is absolutely essential to God's whole program of salvation.

We might wonder when God elected or decided whom he would save. When did this election take place? The Bible tells us in Ephesians 1:4 that he chose us in Christ from before the foundations of the world. In other words, God already decided whom he would save as part of the salvation program before man had ever been created, before man had ever fallen into sin.

In Revelation 17:8 God speaks of those whose names were not written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world. He is speaking here of the wicked, those who are slaves of the Beast or of the kingdom of Satan. The fact that they were not written in the Book of Life from before the foundations of the world implies very strongly that the believers in Christ, who are not slaves of Satan, were written in the Book of Life from before the foundations of the world. That concers altogether with Ephesians 1:4, where we are told that "we are chosen in Him from before the foundation of the world." The Bible shows us that this election did take place before time, before God had begun his creation.

Because God knows the end from the beginning, he knew that man, whom he would create perfect and without sin, would of his own volition rebel against God and be plunged into sin. Our Heavenly Father made provision for this eventuality by giving to the Lord Jesus Christ those whom he planned to save. We read in John 6:37, "all that the Father giveth me..." These were the elect who, before the foundations of the earth, had been chosen by God and had their names inscribed in the Lamb's Book of Life.

The next logical issue we should face concerns the nature of this election. We find this word election in some fifty places in the New Testament. It is found in the Greek language as three different greek words... ...ekloge, eklektos and eklego. These three words are translated either as elect or chosen in the New Testament. We find, for example, that God says in Romans 11:5, "There is a remnant according to the election (ekloge) of grace. In II Peter 1:10 we read, "Make your calling and election (ekloge) sure."

Again he declares in Colossians 3:12, "Put on, therefore, as the elect (eklektos) of God..." or in Titus 1:1, "According to the faith of God's elect (eklektos)." We find this idea of election in Matthew 22:14, "Many are called, but few are chosen (eklektos);" and in I Peter 2:9, "But you are a chosen (eklektos) generation..." And again, we read in Ephesians l:4, "According as he has chosen (eklego) us in him..." He has elected, he has chosen those whom he planned to save.

A corollary doctrine of the Bible describing God's elective program is predestination. Predestination, like the word election, is a very uncomfortable word for many. Many are hoping that the word predestinate is not in the Bible, that it is some kind of theological word rather than a Biblical word. They want nothing to do with it.

But the fact is that the Greek word proorizo, from which predestination comes, is found six times in the New Testament. We find it in Romans 8:29, where God declares that "those whom he did foreknow he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son." We read it in Romans 8:30, where he says, "Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also called; and those whom he called, he justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified."

We read of this predestination in Ephesians 1:5. There God declares, "Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will." Again, in Ephesians 1:11, "In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will."

This word predestinate is found in two other places in the New Testament. In one, Acts 4:28, it is actually translated in our English language as "determined before." There God is speaking about the will of God that Christ would suffer for our sins, and so he is indicating that as part of His divine plan Herod and Pontius Pilate and others were gathered together against him. In that context he declares in verse 28, "For to do whatsoever Thy hand and Thy counsel (God's counsel) determined before (predestinated) to be done." So we see, God's counsel had predestinated beforehand what was to be done.

The last place we find this word proorizo (predestinate) is in I Corinthians 2:7, where it is translated "ordained:" "But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained (predestinated) before the world unto our glory." Here he is speaking of the whole Gospel plan that was predestinated by God.

In these verses we find that God has predetermined from before the foundations of the world, not only every aspect of the salvation program, but also who were to be saved. He did not predestinate those whom he saw would of themselves come to him. That's an impossibility because all mankind are dead in their sins. There is none that seeketh after God. But as he looked down the corridors of time and saw the miserable human race as it would become after the fall of Adam, he chose some of these miserable, rebellious sinners and elected them to salvation. He predestinated them to be saved. This is what the Bible teaches concerning salvation.

We must realize, if God had simply looked for those who would come to him of their own free will and saved them, then he could never speak of them as being chosen. This would be incorrect language for it would not have been God's choosing but man's choosing. It would have been man who had elected to come to God and God would simply be recognizing those who would be saved. He could only speak of them as being the recipients of the grace of God and could not speak of electing those who were being saved. But God uses the word elect because He chose out of the rebellious human race those who were to be saved. We read in John 15:16, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you." This, is what the Bible teaches concerning our salvation. We are the elect of God if we have begun to believe in Christ as our Savior and Lord.

We must remember that the principle that is laid down in the Bible is unconditional election. That is, God elects us regardless of how terrible our sin really is. He does not elect us because we were good. He does not elect us because we were beautiful people. He elects us in spite of our sins. Remember, in Romans 3:10-18 we saw that God speaks about the whole human race, in the most ugly language, to indicate the natural wickedness, the murderous, viperous nature of man. It is these kinds of people whom He elected to be saved.

The Bible does not teach that Christ came to save those who were good but that Christ came to save sinners. The Bible declares in James 2:5, "Hath not God chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him?" We are rich in faith, of course, because that faith is given to us as a gift. We read in Ephesians 2:8, "By grace ye have been saved through faith, but that not of yourselves. It is a gift..."

In I Corinthians 1:27 God declares, "But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty, and base things of the world and things which are despised hath God chosen, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are."

In these verses God is very clearly indicating that in his choice of those whom he would save he is speaking of that which is despised, that which is of no value in itself, that which is foolish. That is our state when God saves us. Our election is absolutely and altogether unconditional. We did not deserve to be elected of God in any way.

Remember that we looked several times at Lazarus as he was in the tomb. There were many people in cemeteries in that day, as there are at any time in history. Christ could have gone to any one of those tombs and called to the dead person within the tomb to come forth, and that person would have come forth. But Christ in his sovereign will decided to raise up Lazarus. He came to the tomb of Lazarus, and He said, "Lazarus, come forth." Lazarus did not meet any conditions at all in order to respond to this command, or to be the one who was elected to be raised from the dead. He was simply one of the dead. His body was corrupting. There was nothing that qualified him to come forth, nothing whatsoever; yet he did come forth when Christ elected to raise him and then commanded him to come forth.

Thus in the raising of Lazarus God gives us a dramatic picture of unconditional election. We are elected of God to be saved by him. We come as we are, in our rebellion, in our perverseness, in our spiritual rottenness and spiritual bankruptcy. God declares, "A broken and a contrite heart I will not despise." That's the doctrine of unconditional election.

The question might be raised, "If God has elected from before the foundations of the earth those whom he would save, and if there is nothing that I can do about my election, then what is the use of trying to bow to command of the Bible to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ? If I am elect, I will believe. If I am not elect, I won't believe. There is nothing I can do to make myself elect because this is altogether God's sovereign plan."

The fact is that when God commands us to believe, we are to obey that command. Occasionally, there is someone who does obey that command. Whether he is elect or not is none of his business at that point in time. When we hear the Gospel, we are to be faithful in obeying the Gospel by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Those who do believe in the Lord Jesus Christ will afterwards begin to wonder, "Why did I believe? Why did I turn to the Lord when many others around me did not?" Then, when they examine the scriptures to find out why, they will discover it is because God had elected them. It is because God had drawn the sinner to himself so that he became a believer.

God had opened the spiritual ears and heart of this individual. God had qualified this person so that he would respond to the Gospel, even as he qualified the dead Lazarus in the tomb so that he would be obedient to the call of Jesus, "Lazarus, come forth." This is the doctrine of election.

As we send forth the Gospel, it's not our business to know who are God's elect. We know only that there are those amongst the unsaved who are God's elect. These are the lost sheep that the Lord Jesus Christ came to seek and to save. Christ knows who they are; and as we witness to the Gospel and send forth the Gospel, there will be those whom God will bring to himself as they hear the Gospel presented by us. God will draw them through this Gospel. God will draw them as we pray for them. We don't know whether they are elect or not, but God knows. We will only discover the elect as we see those who indeed do become born again.

This is a wonderful doctrine, a marvelous promise. This insures success as we bring the Gospel. The success of our Gospel presentation does not depend upon our winning ways; it does not depend upon the splendid rhetoric that we can offer; it does not depend upon our salesmanship. It depends upon God's faithfulness to His own Gospel. Through the Gospel he will seek and save those whom He has predestinated to be saved. He will call them, he will glorify them and he will justify them (Romans 8:30). This is the absolute promise of God. This is the teaching of unconditional election. What a wonderful doctrine this is! A pity it is that there are those who are afraid of this teaching.

If the doctrine of election and predestination is so beautiful, why then are so many afraid of it? Many do not like this doctrine because they would like to believe that God does not predestinate against the will of man. That is to say, man would like to believe that God predestinates those persons whom he knows will turn to him. Man wants at least a bit of the credit for his salvation.

Man desperately wants to be sovereign in his own right. This was the nature of Lucifer when he fell into sin. He wanted to be a king. He wanted to be like God, as we read in Isaiah 14. So man, too, wants to be king on the throne of his life. It is reprehensible to him by nature to acknowledge the sovereignty of God. Howerver, the doctrine of unconditional election, which the Bible very clearly teaches, underscores that God is sovereign. He saves those whom he will save! Under no circumstances is it man who does the choosing. It is God who is doing the choosing.

God insists in Romans 9 for example, as he uses Esau and Jacob as a figure of his doctrine of predestinating election:

For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand; not of works, but of him that called us; it was said unto her: the elder shall serve the younger; as it is written: Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.

There it is, God is indicating that he was completely sovereign in this. Again in verse 15 of Romans 9 he declares, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." We have emphasized all these "I wills" because this is what God is emphasizing. He is the one that makes the decision, and he adds in verse 16 of Romans 9, "So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy." This verse plainly excludes man's will.

Further reinforcement for this marvelous doctrine is seen in verse 18: "Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth." There is the doctrine of sovereign grace as it works out in God's elective program.

In Romans we were reminded of the hymn, "Thou art the potter; I am the clay; Mold me and make me, after THY will." This plea is based on the teaching of Romans 9:20-23:

Nay, but O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?' Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor? What if God, willing to show his wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction.

Here, you see, God emphasizes the fact that he is supreme; He has the power, the right to save those whom he wished to save. God is under no obligation to save a single person in the whole human race. We deserve to go to Hell. We deserve to spend eternity under his damnation. The fact that he has saved some according to his divine choosing, his elective program, is God's business altogether.

In John 1:13 God insists that we are born, not of the will of man. John 1:12 introduces this truth: "But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name." If we stop right there, it would appear as if the choice is altogether man's, those who received him. But notice the qualifying statement in the next verse, "which were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God." God is insisting that he does the electing. It is his will that decides who is to be saved. It is not our will that we would want to be saved because our will is altogether sold under sin.

The doctrine that salvation comes only to those who are elect of God is further taught in Acts 13:48. As the Gospel is going out producing converts in the early church, we read, "As many as were ordained to eternal life believed." That says it all over again. Not everybody was believing, but only those who were ordained by God to believe.

It is true that God commands men everywhere to repent of their sins Acts 17:30. It is easy to assume, that even though our salvation is all of grace, at least it is a product of my independent will that I have repented. I am the one who turned away from my sins. Logically I might conclude that because I have turned away from my sins, God will save me. Somehow I want to believe that repentance has to do with my will altogether, apart from any action on God's part. But even this thought of independence apart from God's action will not be tolerated by the Bible. In Acts 5:31 we read:

Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Savior, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.

God declares that even our repentance is given to us of God. God requires that no conditions be met before we can be saved. God takes the most unworthy, rebellious, wicked sinner and gives him repentance so that God's salvation program can proceed in his life. Ephesians 2:8-10 declares:

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God hath before ordained that we should walk them.

Can we see now that even the good work of repenting of our sins is also a gift of God?

The Bible further strengthens the total role of God in our salvation as it discusses our faith. When we read (Romans 4:3) which declares, "Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness," we might conclude that even though our works are not at all meritorious toward our salvation, in some way at least our faith must be counted toward our salvation. However, when we look at the Bible more carefully, we will discover that it was not Abraham's faith that was counted for righteousness, but it was God Himself who was counted for righteousness. In Galatians 2:16 we read:

Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law.

Reading this verse we see that God declares that it is by (Greek dia - through) the faith of Jesus Christ," and "we might be justified by (Greek ek - out of) the faith of Christ." In other words, the basis of our salvation is not our faith but Christ's faith. Because he was perfectly faithful in caring out God's salvation plan, we are saved. No wonder Christ is called "Faithful and True" in (Revelation 19:11).

Moreover we see that in Galatians 2:16 God is declaring that we are not justified by (Greek ek - out of) the works of the law. In John 6:28 the Jews asked Jesus, "What shall we do, that we might work the works of God? Jesus answered them in the next verse as he declared, "This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent." In this declaration the Lord Jesus is very definitely teaching that our faith whereby we believe on Christ as our Savior is a work. Therefore we know that we can be justified only by Christ's faith and not ours.

As Galatians 2:16 has indicated, we cannot be justified by works of the law. The grand truth of Galatians 2:16 is further strengthened by the language of Galatians 2:20, where we read, "the life which I now live in the flesh I live by (Greek en - in) the faith of the Son of God." See also Romans 3:22 and Philippians 3:9.

Returning to Romans 4:3 and Abraham's salvation, we should now read Romans 4:5, where God declares:

But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for (Greek eis - into) righteousness.

The phrase "his faith" can only refer to God's faith, that is, God's faithfulness which brings the believer into righteousness. This then explains to us the meaning of the phrase we find in Romans 1:17, where we read: For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from (Greek ek - out of) faith to (Greek eis - into) faith. God is teaching us here that the salvation of Jews and Greeks is out of faith (Christ's faith) into faith (our faith), which is a reflection or result of Christ's faith.

We can understand the language of Ephesians 2:8, where God declares: For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.

In every aspect of our salvation we merit nothing at all. To God must go all the honor and glory. It is by virtue of Christ's faithfulnss that we are counted righteous. His faith is given to us as a gift, so that we have begun to trust in Christ as our Savior.

One last verse, and then we'll be through with this principle of unconditional election, and that is John 6:37. Jesus declared there: "All that the Father giveth me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I shall in no wise cast out." Christ is here insisting that it is those whom the Father has given Him that will come to him. There is no implication here that the whole human race would come to him, but God has chosen out of the human race those whom he would save.

The logical question follows, "If God has decided by his sovereign will to save some, leaving the others to face the Judgment Throne on their own account and be sentenced to eternal damnation in Hell because of their sins, then did Christ go to the cross on behalf of every last human being? Or did he pay only for the sins of those who actually would believe on him--those whom he had chosen to be his own--a limited number?"

The church has spoken of this third principle as limited atonement or particular atonement. That is, Christ's payment at the cross was effective for only those who were elect of God. There was no provision made for those who would not believe on him.

There are those who teach that Christ actually paid for the sins of each and every person in the whole world, and it is only our rejection of Christ that sends us into Hell. It follows along with the idea that it is by our own free choice that we turn to Christ. This supports the erroneous idea that God has done all that he could, and now it's up to us. These are some of the ideas we shall explore in the next page.

We will continue our study soon on page 4 and talk about limited atonement

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