When our family was quite young, in fact, we only had half our family, two sons. Our third son was on the way at the time, and my wife was very sick at that time, carrying our third son. And at the same time, our second son was very, uh, behind a, uh, sort of hyper tense condition. And I was teaching with the mayor for my first time. So my evenings and nights were spent trying to keep my second son settled down and buried, and at the same time being fresh and alert for the food in the morning. And we were staying at the missionary guest home on Laramie at that time. Some of you may remember it used to be there. And I remember that I often had to get up in the night because my second son was crying, upset, angry, somers and so on. Give him a little medicine. And then I'd run... turn him over and rub him on his back and I would sing a chorus and I just got into the habit of singing for him each night the same chorus. Jesus was the one. He was the only one. And I would sing this away and I'd go to mourn for Gurds until he got so tired of hearing me to go to sleep. Then I'd go to sleep. And that went on night after night after night and that seemed to fuse with nervous conditions. I remember one day we had to Go and visit some trains. It was a beautiful, sunny day when we left and we got on the flute and the way went. And when we came back, we were just lightly clad the children and my wife and myself, and it just snowed. It had turned very cold all of a sudden. And so when we got off the train at the flute, I grabbed hold of my second son and my wife grabbed hold of the oldest boy, Peter. And she ran with him because she didn't want him to catch a cold, you know. We had to run from the station along for Laramie and then down and we were cold and they were cold and I was grabbing Steven and pulling him along the road and he didn't know why I was acting like this. I was acting like a madman, he thought, I guess. And he wondered what had happened to his dad. And as we were running along the road, he said breathlessly, Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad, take me, this is the one. Well, as I have to talk to you about the biblical balance between Armenianism and Calvinism, I feel like saying, well, somebody, please think Jesus is the one. Seriously, let's turn to the word of God, shall we? And we'll just read as a sort of theme before we start, from Psalm, I'm not going to give any extra edition of these verses. I just want to just read this part of the word of God. And I can make reference to a number of scriptures. And I would suggest to you, if you're interested in this topic at all, and want to get any value out of what I have to say, you'll probably have to use pencil and paper to make a few notes after your own sanction, according to your own style. Psalm the hundred and thirty-nine, I shall not read all the Psalms, but let's pause at the wonder of it, as we've listened to this testimony tonight from our brother Ray, which has really touched our heart, and it applies to each one of us who knows the Lord Jesus, our Savior. O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. Thou knowest my down-sitting and my not-rising. Thou understandest my thoughts afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and thou acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but lo, O Lord, Thou knowest it all together. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain unto it. So we pray. Our Father, as we read these words, we are amazed at the grace of God in our life. and what you have done for us through the Lord Jesus. And we remember that this is not only peace and joy for this life, but an eternity with our Lord Jesus Christ. And as we think of the wonder of that, we say, this is how I cannot attain unto you. And we just thank you in your presence tonight. And as we talk together about your words, we pray for grace to be determined, to prove all things, to hold fast and with His gifts. Bless us now, we pray, in our Savior's name. Amen. Well, first I want to say a few words of introduction to clear the ground, so to speak, and then I want to look at the problem of the difference between Armenianism and Calvinism in four different ways. After my introduction, I want to deal with the problem very deeply, historically, and then contemporarily, and then emotionally. And finally, what I want to get you is how to deal with it biblically. Now, by way of introduction, let's just imagine that you are traveling across a reasonably level terrain on the journey of life. And as you progress towards your goal, you are confronted with a huge mountain range. The best trail takes you right over the peak. And you're told that there's a tremendous view from that elevation. But the public, you're not sure from your point where you are now, you're not sure which is the real peak in the range. And then again you think as you approach nearer to the mountains you must be some hazard to avoid. Now in our climb of the truths of divine election and predestination we may get to the point where for the time we can go no further. We must catch our breath and view the scenery. There are things in the scriptures that are beyond the grasp of near intellect. Remember the scripture says all the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God, how unperceable are his judgments and his ways far-finding out. But yet we are responsible to discover what the word of God does say. That is, if God has spoken on these lofty prophets and given up guidance, then we have to be responsive to what the scripture does teach and not simply bury subjects. The secret things belong to the Lord our God. But the things revealed belong to us. So we want to concern finally in our thought with you tonight with the things that are revealed. If salvation can be described as it has been by someone poetically, as darkness to my intellect but sunshine in my heart, so the truth we shall consider may sometimes defy our complete understanding and look. They may produce a spirit of worship. I think of how the poet is said, When all my mercies, all my gods, my rising soul, pervades, transported with the view I'm lost in wonder, love, and praise. Now, I'm not sure where I stand in relation to the mountain peak. How far I have to go before I reach the top of our subject, and I'm able to look down with authority on what is beneath. and say that I have arrived. But I think it's important to realize that I've come a certain way up the mountain in my understanding. And I would like to call back to those who are starting the climb to warn them of some hazards that they may run into in the process of climbing. Now, if you want to do a little independent study on your own, on the subject of Calvinism and Arminianism, I would like to suggest two books that have been held to me, not because I agree with them in everything that they say, but books that have stimulated me to come to perhaps a little new understanding and perhaps to confirm me in some ideas which were even in opposition to what these books presented. The first one is God's strategy in human history. an interesting book written by two authors, Forster and Mark Kinney. It's published by Cindeo, the Y-N-B-A-O-E, and it's around six or seven dollars, I imagine, here in the United States. Then there's another book, not perhaps quite the same at all, but nevertheless, having some value, Grace Unlimited, by Shah H. Pinnock, published by Destiny Fellowship, in Minneapolis, and I think you'll get it for around five or six dollars. Now, when I first began to take these trues, or to use the analogy that I've been using, the illustration that I've been getting, as I began to climb the peak of the young man, I became fascinated with certain doctrines and certain ideas. And when I first began to attempt an ascent of our mountains, I was attracted to a path lined with tulips. Could we have this on, please? Yes. How did we go here, fellow? It looks like a whole helium. Good. Now, you may wonder why I mentioned tulips, but the word tulip is an acronym for the five points of Calvinism. I didn't realize at first just what these points were. As a matter of fact, it was many years later that I learned that there was such a thing as a tulip. And that this means was used to express the five points of Calvinism, which are, total detravity, unconditional election, limited attainment, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints. Now, I don't know where you stand in relation to those five points of Calvinism. I'm not too sure that I'm exactly interested in that. Where you stand in relation to those things, I am interested in where you stand in relation to what the Scripture has to say about election and predestination. But it is, if we're doing a study of which subjects and we're reading what writers say, soon or later we're going to run... into this acronym TULIS and all that it suggests. Now, where do you stand in relation to Calvinism and Arminianism? As you see here, just not on the screen, thank you. Where do you stand in relation to Calvinism and Arminianism? Well, I think I'm somewhere here, but I'm not sure. This is where the needle may point as far as I'm concerned. If I was to talk to you about some subject that are found in the scriptures, maybe the needle would swing over here. And when we're dealing with whether a person is a Calvinist or an Armenian, it's very hard to just discover what is meant by those terms. Let me go on a little bit more with what I've got down here to share with you. After I had begun to accept this idea of Philip without knowing what it was, I came to accept some of the things that authors who accepted that view presented, I began to see that I had taken an extreme line, one that needed to be modified because there were certain scriptures that seemed to contradict what I found under this tulip teaching. For example, John three sixteen was rather difficult to sit in there for me. that God so loved the world. I had to reconcile this with the fact that under the tulip idea, under extreme Calvinism, you get the view that God really finally only loves a certain class of persons, a certain group of people, and he really doesn't love all the world. That's in the scripture, but that's not really what God does, according to this thinking. And then I read passages in First Timothy, chapter two, verses four to six, and I understood that God will have all men to be saved. And I had to kind of twist that a little bit and say to myself, well, now if I set the pure idea, God really doesn't will that all men shall be saved. The only will that some men shall be saved. And I began to see that I was having difficulty with the position that I had espoused. And let me just ask for a moment, what is Calvinism? And what is Arminianism? And why did these two views exist? And this will bring us to the problem historically. Calvin and Arminius both belonged to the fifteen hundred. But the problem of God's sovereignty and the problem of reconciling that with human freedom baffled Plato four hundred years before the Christian era. Now, the way he resolved that was to come up with a creator limited by the obstinate and stubborn creation that he had made. That was hardly an answer that would be acceptable to us. Muslim theologians wrestle with this problem, and they arrive at a fatalistic position. It's natural that thinking Christians should wrestle with this problem also. Augustine was the patriarch of what we now know as Calvinism. For what we call Calvinism really didn't begin with Calvin. It's more hoary and more ancient than that. Calvin simply defined it more clearly and made it more popular in his time, but it really springs from Augustine at least. And then as far as Arminianism is concerned, The patriarch of Arminianism is not really Arminius, but Erasmus. Now, to put the record straight, we should understand what Arminius believes. You know, it's interesting when you hear what people are supposed to believe if they're Calvinist and what they're supposed to believe if they are Arminians. And when you get talking to them, you find that they believe something quite different. For example, is this a Calvinistic statement or is this an Arminian statement? Poland man is in a condition in which his will, if not only wounded, maimed, infirm, bent, and weakened, but it is also imprisoned, destroyed, and lost. Its powers are not only debilitated and useless unless they be assisted by grace, but it has no powers whatever except such as are excited by divine grace. It follows that our rule is not free to do good, unless it is made free by the sun through the Spirit. Now that sounds so Calvinistic to me, but it is actually Arminius who said those words. Now, let's come down to the contemporary problem. Both Calvin and Arminius have been so liberally interpreted by their followers that it's about his destinities to say that that a man is an Arminian, or a man is a Calvinist, as it is to say, a man is a Protestant. What brand? A Protestant can mean anything. Probably all of us tend to a Calvinistic view in some things and an Arminian view in others. Today, and this is perhaps an oversimplification, but for the purpose of our little study tonight... Today it would seem that a man is a Calvinist if he emphasizes the role of God in salvation, and an Armenian if he emphasizes the role of man in salvation. Now, J. Kenneth Brider of the Nazarene Theological Seminary says it may be that in the future there will be still more a conversion of the Armenian and Calvinistic theology. as the vain philosophies of men wane in their influence, and as evangelicals are taught more and more by Holy Scripture. That, to my mind, is a very optimistic view. It would seem that the doctrine of human free will, the teaching that man is responsible for his actions, that he can either alter or reject what is presented to him, and what grace makes available to him, that he can respond to that positively or negatively, that he can actually say yes or no to God, that concept is faster, free, perhaps too extreme today. Our practice in the sense that in some evangelical circles and even in some assemblies there is such a great emphasis placed upon the necessity for a person to make a response to God that God and will are virtually left out of the picture altogether. I am ashamed, brethren, at some of the things that pass their evangelism in the assembly today. I've been asked on two or three occasions to counsel in evangelistic meetings. Now, thank God this is not true of all evangelists accepted among the assemblies, but it is true of one or two that I know of, and they should be nameless out of Christian love. But I have been in those meetings seeking to listen very carefully to the message so that when someone came up to inquire, I could sort of grab hold of the message and know what they've been listening to so that I would have a handle by which to direct them to a real decision or real understanding of the work of Christ. and I've been horrified with the lack of content in the message that was presented. I could give you the gist of one message I heard, and it is characteristic of this long man's ministry, I'm sorry to say. He preached like this. He began by saying, Today we shall study the story of Gathias. That is point one. And he told a few illustrations about his preaching and his activities and so on. Then he moved on. He said, Zacharias was up at three. And he said, so are some of you people who are up at three. Now, Zacharias needed to come down. And that's what he needed to do. Come down. And then he said, you know, you didn't come here with the idea to be saved, but that's what you're going to do tonight. You're going to make a decision for Jesus Christ. Now, how many more will come before I close in prayer? There was practically no content, hardly any reference to the personal work of the Lord Jesus throughout the whole message. Now, I don't say that to be unkind. God delivered from this kind of sin. Oh, that man was Jewish, as it seemed to me, and God shall be his God, who was simply to get results. And people came forward because he was an orator. He could tell stories of the lifetime, make you cry, make you laugh, make you come forward. If you want to read more about that, we've John White, sacred cow, published by the University Press. It's a shocker. Anyway, I found that those people who came forward never wanted to have anything more to be the example again. They were thoroughly lost. They felt that they had been roped in and manipulated and I felt ashamed, though I didn't like to tell them so. One fellow who professed to be saved in that campaign, we had to work with them for years, going back over the trips he sat and fought before he came to a clear understanding of what salvation was all about. Now that kind of thing, does not give credit to God's activity in saving men. Now, in a reaction to this type of evangelism, where the pressure is put upon people to make a decision, I say, oh, that's all there is to salvation. You just have to do something to say yes to God. There's a reaction to that, and it shows up in certain seminaries and colleges, And it seems to me they're retreating into an ultra-Calvinistic case in order to preserve and protect God's autonomy. So this brings us to the problem emotionally. Most, if not all, the edicts and creeds of the church have been hammered out in the heat of controversy. Through the centuries, church councils have been characterized by disharmony and acrimony. Frequently, political considerations entered into the resulting statements of faith, personality conflicts, often influenced church leaders, to go beyond sober consideration of all that the scripture has to say on a subject. The great thing in those days, it seems, was the sore point over your adversary and the proof that he was an uncircumcised Philistine. you should remember that the passing of time has not changed human nature. Each of us would be wise to recognize, as Elijah did, that I'm no better than my father. There's a tendency when we get into debate over the subject like this to just simply want a sore point and prove the opponent wrong. Let's then try to dispense with these things after such an introduction. and look for a few moments at the problem biblically and not be concerned. This is important. The attitude with which we come to our subject. Let us not be concerned whether we're going to be dubbed as an Armenian or a Calvinist by our brethren. That is irrelevant. What other people think of you when you think is really not important. We want to know what the scriptures have to teach. Now, in the scriptures we have antimony. A theological antimony is an incomprehensible, apparent incompatibility between two lines of truth. Each of those lines of truth having undeniable Scripture support. That's our definition of an antinomy. Two lines of truth, both of them taught in Scripture, but apparently we cannot reconcile them. Now that's a little different than a mere paradox. Sometimes with Paul is that Calvinism and Arminianism or considering the fact that God's sovereignty in salvation and man's free will in salvation, that this is a paradox. But a paradox, actually, is something that is rather cryptic and yet it can be solved if we only know how. For example, Paul says things that are apparently paradoxical when he says... as deceivers and yet true. That's a paradox. As unknown and yet we all know. As trial, but behold we live. Well, the paradox is that you can reconcile them. A spiritual mind can come to those passages, read those things, say, I know what all means. So they make sense when you have your eyes open by the Spirit of God to understand what is being taught there. So that's a paradox, but an antinomy is something deeper than that. It's something that is incomprehensible and apparently incompatible with the other line of truth. For example, let's take an example. Where, to the God who knows the end from the beginning. and orders everything after the counsel of his own will. Prayer to such a God represents an antinomy. Why would he pray to a God who already orders everything after the counsel of his own will? The person of our Lord Jesus is intrusable in whom We behold two uniquely contrasting nations. Yet his person is indivisible. It's up to the Apollo, for example, to say, Jesus exists as God. He did that as man. He was dividing. He made it as man. They existed in that one person of our Lord Jesus Christ. But his being God... and being there presents an antimony. It's something that we cannot really reconcile in our mind. How can he be both at the same time? The word of God itself, the very scriptures that we read, that we love, presents an antimony when we realize that the authors of Scripture express themselves in here. For example, when we read the Gospel of Luke, we can detect that we're reading what Luke, the beloved physician, wrote. And after you have thrown a little bit on the Lord, you've read the scriptures a little bit, you come to recognize, even if you can, tell the chapter and verse. Oh, it must have been Luke that said that. Because that's the way Luke writes. Or it must have been Matthew. or that's a quotation from Paul, because that's the way Paul writes. That's the way he expresses himself. Then on the other hand, whilst you can recognize that the personality of the writer comes through in the writing, yet the scripture teaches that all scripture is given by inspiration of God. and we believe that the very words of Scripture are given to us from the Lord. Now that presents an antennae. How do we deal with that? Here are three things that I have presented to you that are irreconcilable from our present vantage point. We cannot bring those things together. We can accept them. and we believe from my trust, but they still present a problem to mere intellect. Let's look at some of the difficulties that we get into when we try to reconcile the sovereignty of God with human free will. Drinking into scripture because of one's bias is a real danger. That is, you take a scripture and your mind is already made up as an Italianist or as an Armenian or whatever view in between, whatever you happen to stand, and you lead into that scripture, what is it there? Sometimes you can even read words that aren't there. I was listening to a radio preacher for just a few months. I think after I had been asked to come and present this paper, and I was listening very interestingly because he was obviously a very strong Calvinist, so I was listening to his preaching. He said, that God might have known, quoting from Scripture, the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy which he had afore prepared unto glory. That was great. Then he went on to refer to the previous verse, And he read this, or at least he said this. What if God willing to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much long suffering the vessels of wrath he fitted to destruction? There's no he there, I heard somebody object. You're right, brother. I ran to my Bible. I thought my word. Now, I never saw that before. I'll have to see what I'll have to do with that scripture. And when I looked at my Bible, I saw there was no he there. Now, there was a he in his mind. I don't think he intended to deceive, but he wrote what was in his own mind into the scripture. At least that's the best complexion I can give to it. I hope he wasn't trying to deceive us. By inserting the he into that verse, The speaker could support an ultra-Calvinistic view of divine sovereignty, namely that God not only elects the redeemed to eternal glory, but he also elects the lost to eternal damnation. Now that is not taught in the word of God. Thank you, Boris. Don't brand him as an Arminian because he said amen. Whitewashing things is another danger that go against our own views. Now because poor knowledge presents the difficulty for the Arminians, that is the one who believes that man is responsible to make his own decisions and he's accountable for those decisions, Because foreknowledge presents the difficulty to a man who holds that view, he may be tempted to come up with a statement like this. God foreknew who would be tried for Christ, and so he chose this. Now that, to my mind, makes divine looks seem to be nothing. At least that's the way I see it. I call that whitewashing. Or it's cutting them up instead of untying them. Now, sometimes we can get help as we look at some of these difficult verses which exist on both sides of the controversy. We can gain help by getting fresh life on a passage. Let me confess to you very freely that my position, not my preaching by the grace of God, but my position that I've held mentally has had to change in the years. Now, when I say my preaching hasn't changed, I have tried to stick to what the Word of God says when I preach and not go beyond that. But my mind may speculate and wonder about things which I don't preach. If I preach what I'm speculating about, I'm only going to confuse my audience. But when I have a gospel at the Lord, then I can preach that. And we need to remember that. And we can gain fresh life on a passage. I benefited from reading the two books that I've mentioned. I haven't actually finished them all yet. And I have really thanked God for what some of the authors pointed out in those books. Now, all that the Father giveth me shall come to me and him that come unto me I will in no wise pass out is a difficult scripture for an Armenian. Again, lower down in that chapter it says, It is written in the prophets and they shall all be part of God. Every man therefore that has heard and has learned of the Father comes to me. Now that seems to support a very strong Calvinistic position. in that God himself must draw the person to Christ before he can be saved. But wait a moment. Let's remember when we read those verses, and this may not be a total answer, but think about this, that our Lord was ministering on earth between the two Testaments, between the Old Testament, And what we now have is the New Testament. There were at that time among the Jews those who had been taught of God before they met Christ. Is that clear? That is, the Spirit of God, or if you will, the Father had been working in their hearts. You remember the Lord Jesus said on one occasion, the Father worked his way through, and I am working. So between the two Testaments the Lord was standing at a point where he could look back and see of the Father working in Old Testament times in the hearts and lives of men. Now because these men were already the subject of divine working, they would be drawn to the Lord Jesus. For what the Lord Jesus was teaching was in perfect harmony. with what they had already been taught by the Father. They had been drawn. They had been attracted to the things of God. They were believers in that sense. But when Christ came, all those that were so taught of God would be drawn to him. The truth that God had been teaching you prior to that time would be evident in that you would come to Christ. If God had nearly opened your mind to his truth, and you were not merely a hypocrite, such as some of the Pharisees were, not all, thank God, but if you were a Pharisee in the bad sense of the word, you would not be drawn to Christ because you had not really been told God. You had been searching the Scriptures, for in them you thought that you had eternal life, but you will not come to me that you might have life. So that in the light of that, perhaps the verses in John six may be softened a little bit and may not just be teaching what we think on the slide of Calvinism. Let's make a careful note of the context of the verses that seem to support one's view or the other. For example, John verse sixteen says, You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you. Now that's a very Calvinistic statement, it would seem, but it's followed by the words, And I have ordained you, that you should go and bring forth fruit. In other words, the Lord is not there talking about his choice unto eternal life. but he is talking about his election of the disciples that they should go and bring forth fruit, not quite the same thing. Again, let's note Romans nine, seventeen, which causes a lot of argumentation. For the scripture says unto Pharaoh, even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might show my power in thee, that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Now is it an ultra-Calvinist or a Calvinist, whichever you want to name such a person? You would take the view that God had caused Pharaoh to come onto the scene of history, to be born into this world, to grow up into this world, simply to be a display for God's law, God's power in him. But what we have to realize is that God raised up Pharaoh within a lifetime from among his people as a sample of stubbornness and rebellion. He does not say that God forced him to be stubborn or rebellious. In fact, a close reading of Exodus shows us that Pharaoh first hardened his own heart and later God caused him to persist in his obstinacy in order that he might show his power in him. This verse then is not saying for this reason I caused you to be born. God did not cause Pharaoh to be born simply in order to display his wrath. We should recognize that election Divine election is sometimes corporate. That is, it has to deal with people rather than individuals. Let's notice the often quoted Romans nine thirteen. Jacob have I loved, but he saw have I hated. That token of the nation that descended from these two persons. not of the individual. We should also note in passing that it is not seeking of the salvation or damnation of those people, but of God's purpose for them in time. The elder would serve the younger. That did not come about in their lifetime. The elder serving the younger came about in the the history of the nations that descended from Jacob and Esau. So when it says Jacob have I loved but Esau have I hated it has no real reference to the persons of Jacob and Esau but rather to God's purpose for the nations and in time only for those nations that descended from those two men. However, we may be able to answer certain scriptures and we may be able to accommodate them through our particular understanding, but I suggest one basic problem is always going to remain. No matter how much we may be able to understand and overcome certain passages that frustrate us, we will still have a problem left, I suggest, probably to the end of our days. How do we reconcile? Not verses now. But here's a problem for you that I have been facing in this area that I had never really stopped to consider before. How do we reconcile those passages which teach that God takes the initiative in the South