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...You have stated on numerous
occasions that every single person has a chance or an opportunity to be saved;
meaning that it is a real possibility that every
single person can in fact be saved. However,
the Bible, as you know, teaches something completely different.
The Bible is clear that not every single person will in fact be saved,
and the Bible is equally as clear that God, at the very least, already knows who
will and who will not be saved. How
then can it be true that those whom God knows from all eternity will not be
saved can still have a real possibility of being saved?
God already knows who will and will not be saved, thus the whole notion
of mere possibilities and chance is eliminated.
If God is all knowing, then that means that the destiny of every single
individual is known to God and fixed before they are even born…it was known
before time itself even began! From
God’s perspective, He already knows who the sheep are, and who the goats are.
For your statement to be true in its fullest sense, then it would have to
be said of God that He is not omniscient after all.
God would not know with absolute certainty who the sheep and the goats
were if we said that from God’s eternal perspective, every single person who
ever has lived or will live, even those whom God
knows beforehand will not be saved. Now,
we could say that from our perspective (and God’s) that the opportunity for
salvation has appeared to all men, and we are to preach the Gospel
to every creature. We could even say that
from our perspective, every single person could potentially be saved, because we
do not know who the elect are, only God does. To us, it is a real
possibility that every single person we encounter with the Gospel could in fact
be saved, and every single person who is presented with the Gospel is thus given
an "opportunity" to repent. However, only
those whom God has chosen to be saved from all eternity will act
on the opportunity. This is not
only the clear teaching of Scripture, but just plain common sense.
Only those who are appointed to eternal life actually act on the
opportunity to believe, and Jesus came to die for the sins of His people.
Unless we believe that every
single person who ever has lived or will live will be saved, we only have two
options: If God is in fact perfect,
absolutely sovereign, omnipotent and omniscient, and not every single person
will be saved, then that means that it was according to His perfect plan for
that to be, and if that is true, then all that I stated is true, and if that all
is true, then the Reformed view is true. The
only way to escape this conclusion, at least as far as I can tell, is to deny
the absolute perfections of God’s nature, which is precisely what many are
doing today. There is a whole
movement among non-Reformed “theologians” called Open Theism.
They realize that if God is absolutely sovereign, omnipotent, and
omniscient, and yet not all people will be saved, then the Reformers were right,
and Reformation theology is true. Even
if all we said was that God is merely omniscient--that He just knows who will
and who will not be saved—I would argue that the Reformed view still must
be true.
The Open Theists understand that
they cannot logically and consistently maintain their Arminianism, while at the
same time maintaining that God is all knowing in the sense that He knows the
future exhaustively. Instead of
submitting to the Biblical view, they have opted to completely redefine (in
essence do away with altogether) the infinite perfections of God’s Being as
understood by the Church through the centuries. God is not absolutely sovereign,
He is not absolutely omniscient, and He is not absolutely omnipotent.
Man on the other hand is a sovereign along with God, he is the captain of
his own ship, and God has left things hanging in the balance on purpose.
Dr. John Sanders, a key proponent
of this view states, “God does not
control everything that happens.” In passing, let me just say that
in that one statement alone Sanders has in essence confirmed what Nihilistic
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said in the late 1800’s, and what the liberal
theologians said back in the 1960’s: God is dead.
You see, if God is not in control of everything, if there is even one
“autonomous atom,” then He is not sovereign, and if He is not sovereign, He
is not God; He is, for all intents and purposes, dead. The Open Theists also
state, “the omniscient God knows all that is
logically possible to know. God knows the past and present with exhaustive
definite knowledge and knows the future as partly definite (closed) and partly
indefinite (open).” Do
you see the problems with that statement? Notice,
they use the word omniscient, but then redefine what it means.
Secondly, they state that God knows all that is “logically possible
to know.” Logically possible?
To who, man? Since when do we interpret the Scriptures through our own
grid of what is logically possible, or what makes sense to us, or what “lines
up with our spirit”? And even if
we cede to them the point that God does not know the future exhaustively, but
only partly, they are still stuck with a future that is partly fixed, and if
that is the case, they are right back at square one!
If any part of the future is known with certainty by God,
then that means man is not free in the sense that the Open Theists want to
believe. They have basically
created a god in their image, but who possesses some superhuman powers in that
he knows the past and present exhaustively, and who possesses some psychic
abilities, in that he knows part of the future—a glorified Jean Dixon, if you
will. God
has left most of the future open and unsettled, He is not absolutely omniscient
(nor sovereign), and He doesn’t know who will and who will not be saved.