40 - Calvinism vs. Arminianism, Part 2 - Unconditional Election

Well, welcome to the

Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology. We are glad to have you with us, glad for those new students who have joined us.

We do have a couple new students this week. I know, believe it or not, we're actually adding students.

I mean, well, maybe we're dropping some. Maybe people are going, what, was I nuts in joining this class?

Oh, and dropping out. I don't know, because there's only tens and tens and tens of, you know, students, right?

But for all the tens and tens of you who are watching those live and those who are watching on YouTube, we're glad that you are with us.

We welcome all the new students. We are getting into some more controversial issues, continuing where we left off last week.

Okay, I'm being told I should let you all know that the red shirt is to hide my sunburn, okay? So if I look really red, it's because I was down in sunny Florida, got to spend some time with family, enjoyed that greatly.

And so I'm wearing red to cover that up. No, I'm kidding. But it does.

The way my face matches my shirt now, you could just blend in, you know? But we are glad you're with us.

We hope that you are an enrolled student. If you are, get out your syllabus. Your syllabus will have all of the notes in here, some blank pages, you know, on the opposite side of your notes so that you can fill in all the extra notes that I give you.

So grab your syllabus, and we'll be going through the syllabus. Now, as I...

Someone is saying that the blood red or sunburn red is better than the blinding white, huh?

Okay, with loving students like this, I did see there were a couple of posts just before class where people were knowing the subject, were calling me a heretic, not knowing which side

I may land on. Remember, I said we're going to discuss these things. And then at the end, we're going to talk about which side

I take. So we're going to talk about Calvinism, Arminianism, defining terms. And one of the things

I'll say off the bat before we get into the lessons is, this is a heated topic, an emotionally heated topic.

Because people don't take the time to really understand what someone else is saying, to take the time in trying to get proper definitions.

And so I want to give you an example of this. I posted today, earlier today, that we were going to be talking

Calvinism, Arminianism. And no sooner did I post that that someone made the statement that God is sovereign in salvation.

It is impossible with man. And I made the point of saying that yes, but a non -Calvinist, because I knew this brother, someone

I know personally, and love. And I said, you know, but a non -Calvinist would agree with that. Okay.

And the person then responded, that's not true. And I tried to explain that's emotionally charged now.

Because now what they're doing is they're making something. They're not taking the time to understand what's being said, what the context is, what the definitions are.

But they're running into it with their emotional argument.

We got to be careful not to do that, okay. We want to really try very hard in this class, and especially these lessons on this topic of what people call

Calvinism or Arminianism. Now if you know, we're going to use some different terms for it. And it's not really going to be fair to say one's a

Calvinist position, one's an Arminian position. I'll get to that in a moment. But I do understand the emotions behind some of this.

But, you know, I just want to encourage each one of us. Because we're all either guilty of this or could be guilty of this, okay.

That when we say that someone else's position is wrong, but we're unwilling to take the time to understand what their position actually teaches, we have a problem, okay.

And the reason we have a problem then is because we're dealing with it not from a stance of being able to be honest with discussion, but from a stance of just emotion.

And emotion's not going to give you a good discussion. So we're going to be careful.

Do non -Calvinists believe in God's sovereignty and salvation?

Yes. Actually on the same post I had someone who's a Roman Catholic who agreed as a

Roman Catholic, he was saying yes, he could believe in God's sovereignty and salvation.

So when we look at that, the issue becomes one of trying to know what the other view holds before we go on the attack, okay.

So with that said, let us take a look. We are in book number two, book number two of our

Systematic Theology out of four books. So this is book number two and we are in specifically section number three, the doctrine of salvation.

We've been going through this and we looked at the Father's role in salvation, the Son's role in salvation, and then the

Spirit's role in salvation. And now we're looking at specifically this doctrine of what

I'm saying is God's sovereignty and human responsibility. Now we started with this last class, which

I strongly recommend that you get last class and watch it. We are looking at God's sovereignty, which

I'm saying is the Calvinism position, but it's really not.

It's really not the Calvinism position, okay. Because like I said, non -Calvinists, those that wouldn't hold to Calvinism, would argue that they believe in God's sovereignty.

So we really need to be a little bit fair. So I'm saying that up front. But when we look at the differences, really where it comes down is some people argue that the

God's sovereignty is more the area of where you have

Calvinism and then human responsibility is more the area where you have, you know,

Arminianism. But you know, it really didn't start with Calvin and Arminian. I mean, you really want to go back.

I mean, this has been an age -long debate. I mean, it really started with Augustus or Augustine, depending how you want to pronounce it, and Pelagian, Pelagius.

I mean, Augustine wrote against this and Pelagius didn't like what he wrote. And here's the interesting thing about it.

What Pelagius didn't like was that he saw people in church that were getting too lax and he attributed it, this lax lifestyle, to the issue of, you know, of grace.

I'll answer the question and then I'll get back to that. So someone's asking, since Calvinism believes in the doctrines of grace, do Arminians not believe in grace?

No, Arminians would believe in grace as well. And this is the thing.

There's actually very few people that say they're Arminian. You really, what you have is the Calvinists and the non -Calvinists.

And there's very few that actually hold to what's known as Arminianism or really Pelagianism or semi -Pelagianism, so we'll pick up there.

So you had Augustine writing and Augustine writes and Pelagius doesn't like what's going on in the church and he attributes it to this doctrine of grace that Augustine is arguing.

Now, this is actually something Jewish people even today, I remember speaking to a rabbi and he made this point that Christians just are too lax because we can go to God's presence at any time, we don't structure our day around prayer like a

Jewish individual would. And so it becomes an issue where they see us as being lax and really not taking serious the claims we make about having a relationship with Christ and wanting to please

God. Same thing with Pelagian, Pelagius and Pelagius felt the same way. And that is very interesting because what you see is that their focus wasn't so much on the scriptures but on the effect that they saw.

They saw the church kind of getting watered down. Eventually they realized the heresy of Pelagian's teaching denying original sin and the like and came up with what's called semi -Pelagianism or semi -Augustinianism.

Now I know most people only hear it taught as semi -Pelagianism because most of the people that use that term are from the

Calvinistic or Augustinian position. So it's watering down, it's saying that well you're still like Pelagius in his teaching so you're semi -Pelagian.

You're not fully on board with giving up of original sin and believing that man can save himself by his choices but you're kind of saying okay

God's grace is involved but there's still man being able to make the choice ultimately.

And so they would say it's semi -Pelagian. The irony is the Pelagians call it semi -Augustinian.

So they would say that you're not fully Augustinian, that you don't believe in that you know predestination type of stuff.

And so they argued, actually it was argued at a council,

I think it was the second council of Orange if I remember correctly in like 529, somewhere around there where this was worked out and developed and considered to be a semi -Augustinian position.

But throughout the Middle Ages I mean this was still being debated but really what we have where we get this known, it started with Martin Luther not

Calvin, you know it might surprise people to realize that Calvin was really more of a Lutheran just saying because a lot of his teachings came from Luther.

Luther was a reformer of the Church. He was looking to reform the

Church and what Calvin really was separating from the

Church being the Roman Catholic Church by the way. So you have these two guys Martin Luther who writes a book called

Bondage of the Will. He actually wrote a bunch of things but he was responding to that to a man Erasmus and Erasmus wrote a book called

Freedom of the Will. Now they were debating this topic back then. They were going back and forth and this becomes an important thing to remember because a lot of people who read

Martin Luther's book on you know Bondage of the Will, they read that and I hear so many people, man

Luther nailed him. He just crushed Erasmus. He leveled him and the question

I always ask people is have you read Erasmus? I mean did you read Freedom of the

Will? And more than not the answer I get is no. To which my response is well if you read

Freedom of the Will by Erasmus you'd realize that Luther really didn't have to do very much to level

Erasmus because the first 75 pages of the book Erasmus is saying

I don't even understand why this doctrine is important. I don't understand why we're discussing this. All my friends want me to write on this to combat

Luther but I really don't see the value and the importance and I don't get what the big deal is with this issue.

And then he just served it up for Luther to just tee it off. I mean if you read

Erasmus he demolished himself. But there's something that that ends up showing me.

When people read just one side of the issue and they think they got it and they think they know what

Erasmus' issue is and they haven't read Erasmus to realize what he was actually saying and this is what we commonly see in this area.

That people take one side of an issue, they read that one side, they say this is what I believe, I believe it and the other side is wrong in their heretics.

And when you read both sides of the issue you end up seeing there's a lot more agreement. I often find that there's some people that when they if they read

Erasmus they realize that there's an awful lot of what Erasmus taught that they actually agree with. And so it's an issue where they're reading one side of the issue and that happens to be the side they like.

Okay, so then comes in John Calvin. John Calvin comes in, he is teaching on you know from what he has learned really a lot from Luther.

He comes in, his followers however start teaching things that are beyond what

John Calvin taught. And in comes a man named Jacob Arminius.

He was a Calvinist believe it or not. He was even blessed by Theodore Beasle who was really the head of Calvinism after Calvin.

And you know he was a man who became a pastor, he started teaching.

He saw some things in double predestination and things like this he didn't really agree with.

He started to try to teach people back to what Luther, sorry what Calvin was teaching.

In that process after he died his followers went an extreme the other way and there was a senate called the

Senate of Dort. And at the Senate of Dort they came up with five points in response to the

Hyper -Calvinists, what we would call Hyper -Calvinists but of their day. And it was these are the five points.

Let me give you these five points. The first point, number one was election was conditional on foreseen faith.

So election was conditional on a foreseen faith. In other words God knew that they were going to be saved and so the election was based on something that God already knew was going to happen.

Number two, Christ's atonement was unlimited in its extent.

Then there was, oh I'm giving, I'm actually giving the other side. Wait, where are the,

I had it written down here. I'm looking at my notes. I'm giving you actually the five points of Calvinism that were the original highlight.

No, okay. The election was conditional and foreseen faith. The Christ's atonement was unlimited in extent, number two.

Number three was total depravity. So it was throwing me off because I was like wait that's the response but actually

I forgot that that's actually they both agreed in that area. There's some, and there is agreement in these areas, in some of them.

Number four was a provenient and resistible grace.

In other words people could resist that grace. I think really one of the issues I see and we'll get to this when we talk about irresistible grace, what most people are referring to when they talk about a resistible grace is the convicting work of the

Holy Spirit. That's why we did this theology based on the previous stuff because we want to make sure that we're dealing with that earlier stuff because that comes into play now.

When we understand that the ministry of the Holy Spirit that before salvation He does a convicting work, that's the thing that someone can resist.

Number five is the possibility of apostasy. In other words if somebody walked away from the faith, they claim to be a believer, they walked away from the faith, after a long enough period of time they would be apostate, they would have left the faith.

And they would say you couldn't get it back either by the way. So there was a response to that and that is what we started looking at last week and we're going to continue, is what became known as the five points of Calvinism.

Now someone I guess in the chat room mentioned should we use the term doctrines of grace to refer to Calvinism. I think the advantage of using the doctrines of grace is it doesn't have the heated emotional rhetoric that Calvinism has with people giving false definitions to Calvinism or false definitions to Arminianism too by the way, just saying.

So what you end up with is a case where the response to that at the

Senate door was what's known as the five points of Calvinism. It is put together in an acronym

TULIP. And we started last week and if you did not watch last week's class,

I strongly recommend you go back and watch that one. Well kind of too late to watch that one before watching this one but you definitely should.

I mean and I've been encouraging this throughout. I really encourage you to go to YouTube and watch from the beginning and go through all of the classes in order because as you see when we get to the issue of the irresistible grace,

I'm going to explain to you what I really think. Well I'm telling you this now. I think it's people resisting the convicting work of the

Holy Spirit and not the saving work, the regenerating work.

And I think that distinction clarifies the issue. Can we as human beings, unbelievers resist the convicting work of the

Holy Spirit? Yes, we looked at that several classes ago, I think two classes ago. We looked at the ministry of the

Holy Spirit. We saw that that could be resisted. But regeneration cannot.

Why? Because regeneration is something that God does to us. We're going to get to those things.

But repetition is a really good way of learning. Let me say that again. Repetition is a really good way of learning.

No, I'm just kidding. But it is. The reason we're going to take these lessons a little bit slower, probably give more introduction to each one, is because we do want to repeat this.

And the reason I'm spending the time repeating this is because I know, I know, I know there's so many out there that love their arguments against the other side that haven't spent the time to try to understand the other side.

All right, that's the thing. We can't say, well, someone is wrong in their teaching when we don't take the time to understand what their teaching is.

Okay, please, I'm pleading with you because this is something

I see so often. There are so many divisions and so many people hurt because of wrong views in these areas of theology.

In fact, there are people who I know who have gone not just semi -Pelagian, but have gone fully

Pelagian in their teaching because they have a hatred for a wrong understanding of Calvinism.

Okay, I also know people who've gone to hyper -Calvinism because of the things that they don't like in what they wrongly define as Arminianism.

So because they take the two extremes and they bucket everyone up into a definition that most people that hold to those views don't actually hold to these extreme positions, they end up attacking one another.

And there's a lot of damage that gets done, okay? And so we have to be careful.

We can't say one side is right and one side is wrong unless we take the time to really understand both sides.

And this is the issue that I really find because there's elements of truth in both sides and they both come to it with Scripture.

Now, I know there's the extremes. I understand that. I understand that there are extreme ends and you can look for those extremes and point them out, okay?

Now, last week I was quoting some things from R .C. Sproul, a lot of respect for the man. But he actually wrote a book on this,

I think it was called Willing to Believe, and he went through the differing views of this issue.

And the thing I thought was really bad was that he ended up saying, look, when it comes to the dispensational position type of thing, you really can't sit there and go, okay, this is the position.

Because the reality is that there are people who are going to attack it because it's just easier to go on the attack.

I understand that. And we need to be careful, all right?

And so I really want to stress the importance of taking the time to understand someone's position, all right?

Because you're going to find that there's going to be areas where there's going to be agreement with you, all right?

So with that introduction done, let us start where we left off last week.

We left off with total depravity. Total depravity is, and again, if you need definitions of this, this is what we talked about last week, all right?

And we went into what total depravity did not mean, what it did mean.

I don't have the time to go into that again as much as I'd like to.

Suffice it to say that total depravity does not mean that we are as bad of a sinner as we possibly could be.

It doesn't mean we do as much bad as we can. It means that a whole person is affected by the sin nature.

In other words, our will is slave to sin.

That's what it means. And there are many who do not hold to Calvinism that agree with that.

Like I had said, there is one individual who, you know, that very famous individual,

I'm trying to be careful because I mean, some of you will actually know who it is, but a pretty well -known individual who basically has gone into a hatred for Calvinism and really doesn't know what

Calvinism teaches. In fact, this brother actually in a conversation,

I had a lengthy conversation with him and I defined Calvinism without giving the labels and he agreed with all five points.

When I pointed that out to him, he got very upset with me. So, total depravity means that our whole body, our whole spirit, our soul, sorry, was affected by sin.

The U in total depravity is unconditional election. Unconditional election.

This doesn't mean you got to vote, okay? So, this is a case where, you know, you don't vote on who's going to be saved and not, and neither did the

Godhead. They didn't need to put it to a vote, okay? Different kind of election, okay? All right.

So, unconditional election, if you look in your syllabus, that is your blank there where it says the

U in your syllabus there, it says unconditional election is the blank and then it says

God has chosen, that's your blank there, God has chosen those who will receive him.

By the way, this is the definition of it. That God has chosen those who will receive him without regard for anything that they have done.

This is an important doctrine to understand, okay? This is actually a big reason why a lot of people argue that the five points of Calvinism are based on the first one.

If you don't understand that we, that our will was influenced and enslaved to sin, once you understand that, the rest of these things kind of fall in line.

That's why they changed the ordering of them and put total depravity first. The argument that went on is that if you believe that someone's totally depraved, how could you believe that they can choose

God? What, by what will are they choosing God if their will is enslaved to sin?

That's kind of the thinking there. The issue here is that we have to understand that this is not based on something they've done.

Now, we looked already at salvation. We looked at the fact that salvation is not by works, okay?

This is actually kind of an interesting thing because those who go into Pelagianism because they think they have the issue, there's actually a cult that we're dealing with, a recent cult that's just started up.

They too have been upset with what they see in the churches. They see weak churches and because of that they think it is a problem with this weak view of grace and people think they can just believe anything and anything can go.

Because of that, they want to get back to living this radical Christian life and the reality is in their attempt to be radical, they're going back under works, the

Galatian heresy, okay, what was going on in the book of Galatians. So, what we have here is a case where people are putting themselves back under heresy, back under works because of the fact that they're struggling with the effects of the church and they're handling it incorrectly,

I think. Alright, so, let us continue. God is the author and finisher of a man's salvation, alright?

That's the point of this. Unconditional election makes God the author, in other words, the starter and the finisher, the completer of our salvation.

We're going to look at some verses on that if we have time, I hope, but God being the author and finisher of our salvation makes

Him the one that's going to do all the work, 100%. Salvation is completely a work of God.

The work of man does not influence in any way God's decision, okay?

Remembering back, all the way back, lesson like one, two, where we said that God is outside of time.

God didn't look down the tunnels of time, knew who would be saved and then, ah, I'm going to elect that person because they did believe and I look down time.

That puts God inside of time. God knew who was going to be saved, not because we chose

Him, not because He did something to choose us because He knows everything and you and I don't think that way, alright?

He didn't do it based on observation is what I'm trying to say. He just knows. So, ah, looking at this,

God is eternal, ah, when we're, and again, this is still trying to give a definition for unconditional election.

God is eternal outside of time. When scripture says that God elected before the foundation of time, it must be understood that God is not bound by time, but God is speaking to man to explain that, ah, that God is in full control and sovereign of salvation.

This is Ephesians 4, 1. I was told I was a Calvinist because I quote this verse in my doctrinal statement and the reality is, is that what it says there is that God, um,

God is the one that, ah, is, is, um,

God's the one that is choosing us. God is the author and the finisher and it's trying to put it in baby talk for us.

I don't know how else to explain it. I mean, if you have children, you understand. When you have a one and two year old, you don't, and they go to Touch and Outlet, you don't go into explaining the dangers of electricity.

You can get, you know, X number of, you know, you know, gigawatts of voltage through you.

No, you don't. You just say no or bad. You know, you start by slapping their hands.

They know not to touch it. Then you tell them no and they get a little bit bigger. Bad. They get a little bit older.

Hurt, you know. Then when they get to be teenagers, you know, maybe they're finally listening to you.

Not, and they start to, and you can start talking about electricity and the effects of it, right?

I mean, the reality is, is you have to talk down to your young children. God had to talk down to us.

That shocks some people, doesn't it? Yeah, it's going to shock people because they like, they think that God should be lifting them up on high.

God should be so proud that I like him. That's kind of the modern gospel, isn't it?

Um, so the reality is it, you know, we're not going to sit there and, and expect

God to speak to us in his language, but dumb it down to us. Okay.

And so he's going to, he's going to do that. And the way he does that to show that he is the one in control.

He says, Hey, before the foundation of time, in other words, before there was time, I knew I did it before time.

Before you were even a thought. In other words, you had nothing to do with it because you weren't involved.

There was no time. That's the point. Okay. Unconditional election is

God's undeserved favor. That's your blank there. Unconditional election is

God's undeserved favor. A misconception is that God, is that if God elected some to heaven, that he must have then condemned others to hell.

Okay. This is where the doctrine of double predestination comes in. If God elected some, he must have damned others.

The understanding of total depravity reveals that hell is the destination for all human beings.

Without the intervention of God, all people would rightly be sentenced to hell.

In other words, if God did nothing, everyone would be damned. Okay.

It is election that saves some of us. The fact that some of us are elect doesn't mean the others are predestined to be damned.

They were already vessels of destruction in Romans 9. It's just that some were in time vessels of destruction that God knew all along would not be and he plucked them out of being a vessel of destruction and put them as a vessel of grace.

All right. Let's take a look at some verses so we can get through these. I have a couple more things I want to say, but I want to make sure we get to the passages here.

So, Ephesians 4. Let's look at this one first. This is one I said earlier. Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love.

Now, the context here is that God did the saving completely. We had nothing to do with it.

We were, as John 3, what is it? 17, 18. A lot of people love

John 3, 16, but keep reading. We're already condemned. All right. We're already in that state, but God saved us knowing what would happen.

He knew us. All right. He knew what he would do. Let's actually look at the context since we have it.

Thanks. We have the context there. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love.

He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will to the praise of his glory and grace with which he blessed us in the beloved.

What we see there is we see the context. He's basically making it really clear we had nothing to do with it.

Ephesians 2 .10, he goes on to say, for we are his workmanship created in Christ for good works which

God prepared beforehand that we should walk in him. See, it's again beforehand.

It is set before us. Let's look at a longer one though. But this is

Romans 9, extended portion here. But not only so, and not only so, but also when

Rebecca had received children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing, either good or bad, in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of but because of him who calls.

She was told, the older shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I have loved, but Esau I've hated.

What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means.

For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I'll have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom

I will have compassion. So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy.

For the scripture says to Pharaoh, for this very purpose I've raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth, so that he has mercy on whom he wills, and he hardens whom he wills.

You will say to me then, why does he still find fault?

For who can resist his will? Interesting. But, verse 20, but who are you,

O man, to answer back God? Will the thing that is molded say to the molder, why have you made me like this?

Has the potter no right over the clay to make out the same lump, one a vessel of honor and the other for dishonorable use?

What if God, desiring to show his wrath and make known his power, has endured with much patient vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory, the vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he called, not from the

Jews only, but also from the Gentiles? Let me talk about this for a moment, because some people argue there that he's prepared vessels for destruction, and that the argument there is that God has damned.

But the reality is again, when it's talking, let's put that up actually for a sec, because I want to deal with it, because I want to, the verse there, where it talks about Pharaoh, where he hardens their heart, that's the part.

This is not, if you look at that in verse 18, he's not hardening the heart of someone who was once saved, he's hardening the heart of someone who's already not believing, okay?

So, it's not that he's choosing to harden, like Pharaoh didn't have a hardened heart beforehand, okay?

He's hardening the heart Pharaoh already resisted, and now he's just making it permanent.

Let's see if I can get through all the verses, Acts 13. And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the

Lord, and as many were appointed to eternal life believed.

So, they were already appointed, and because they were appointed to eternal life, they believed. Ephesians 1 .29,

when I was preaching through the book of Ephesians, this was the one verse that got me to repent from my argument that even the gift, that even the grace, the faith that we have is a gift of God.

I resisted that until I was preaching this verse, I couldn't get away from what this says, for it has been granted to you that for Christ's sake you should not only believe in Him, but also suffer for His sake.

So, not only is the belief granted by Christ, but so is suffering.

But just as the suffering is granted, it is, he's making the point that just as we suffer and that suffering has been granted by Christ, he's saying just in the same way that your belief was granted by Christ.

Alright, 1 Thessalonians 1 .4 and 5, For we know, brothers, loved by God, that He has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the

Holy Spirit. And with full conviction, you know what kind of men we proved among you for your sake.

And one last one is 2 Thessalonians 2 .13 -14, But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, beloved by the

Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved through sanctification by the

Spirit and belief in the truth. To this He called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our

Lord Jesus Christ. And so what we see there is we see that through those verses, and there are many more, the fact that salvation was something that God did completely and utterly of His own.

And so that's the issue, alright? We have to realize that salvation is something that we end up, we can't take credit in any way, shape or form, basically is what it is.

And there's many who would not hold to the doctrine of unconditional election as they define it, that hold to the doctrine of unconditional election properly defined, okay?

Ask someone that says, I'm not a Calvinist, do you believe that God did the work of salvation,

He regenerated 100%, not based on anything that you did? And they'll say, yes, you believe in unconditional election.

In other words, it's not conditional. The choice you have is whether it is conditional based on your belief.

In other words, did you believe and because of your belief God elected? The argument I have against that is this, for God to have elected before the foundation of time, based on something you did in time, it puts

God inside of time to be able to observe that. In other words, God's not omniscient and He's, okay, and not eternal by that definition because God would had to have not known it,

He would have had to observe it. He had to look through time to figure out what would happen and based on your belief, therefore

He would then elect you. He did not elect, this is what this is teaching, that He did not elect based on your belief, but He elected based on His choice.

In other words, He started the work, He's the author, He finished the work, He's the one that's going to glorify you.

We're going to see how that comes in handy or really that helps us to understand perseverance of the saints, which is the

P or what's called eternal security because if God is the author and He's the finisher, then you have no choice in the matter.

He finishes it, not you or I, just the same way as He started it. Okay, so we're not going to get to limited atonement.

Now, I will say this, next lesson is limited atonement. It is the one that most people have issue with.

If people say they are a four -point Calvinist or John MacArthur used to for years say he was a leaky four.

In other words, he didn't completely hold to this next one, a limited atonement. That is the one that most people seem to have the difficulty with.

And we're going to go through and explain why I actually think no one has an issue with that. I actually think that there's very few that properly understood have an issue with that.

But again, it's how it's defined. If you're going to misdefine these things, then yeah, you can have your hatred, but it's not an honest hatred.

Okay, make sure you rightly divide these things and understand them in context with the right definition before you go attacking someone's position.

And if you want to know what someone said, don't just say, you're an Arminian, you're wrong, you're a heretic. Ask them what they believe and ask it without using the labels.

Now, if you can't do it without the labels, maybe you don't understand their definition either.

But the reality is a lot of people just don't like the labels. They don't understand the labels and the labels are the problem.

All right, so next class we will deal with limited atonement.

Now, if you have any questions, comments, anything else, nasty comments even, you can email us at academyatstrivingforeternity .org.

You can tell us what you think, whether you like us, whether you don't like us, whether you think

I'm a heretic. Well, everyone agrees with that. But whatever it is, if you need to get one of the syllabuses, if you just want the one syllabus, you can go to our store.

There it is, our store at strivingforeternity .org and you could pick up any of the syllabuses.

They are all there now. Also, again, time is running out. You only have a few weeks before the

Ohio fire. We're getting things together. We got all the messages being prepared. I just got the synopsis of Mark Spence's messages.

He's going to be talking on some great topics on parenting. I'm really looking forward to that.

Let me give you, I'm just trying to look up real quick, if I can, the titles of his messages, if I could find what

I did with them. But let's see. It was right there. Let's see. His messages were, the titles are,

The Wise Parent and The Parent's Lasting Legacy.

Now, if you are a parent, that is something you're going to want. If you're a grandparent, that's not if you want.

If you ever plan to be a parent, that's something you're going to want to pay attention to. So really encourage you to attend the

Ohio fire. If you cannot, well, there's still a chance you can go to heaven.

But there will be, we just secured a live broadcast that will be done during lunch of the

Bible Thumping Wingnut podcast. I don't know if we can get Mr. Ryan there, who will be attending to do something live for Witness Radio.

Just saying, Ryan, not calling you out or anything. But there's one thing about interviewing me and talking about Ohio Fire and another thing of you just coming there and doing a live show maybe and interviewing people that attend.

Just saying. But not like I'm calling him out or anything. I wouldn't do that to Ryan.

Too much. But Ryan did call me a heretic just before the class started, correct?

Okay, just checking. So I feel no problem calling you out, buddy, Mr. Witness Radio host.

But maybe, who knows? Maybe he'll do that. But there will be a live broadcast with some audience interaction of Bible Thumping Wingnut Radio.

So we encourage you to be there. That will be something that we're also adding to it. So that's really shaping up.

If you're saying, well, hey, I can't make that. Well, there's always New Jersey, the Jersey Fire, which is

July 11th and 12th. So attend that one. If you can't attend either one, well,

I don't know that you have to attend one of them to go to heaven. But I mean, really, why take a chance? I mean, you may still get there.

Just saying. But seriously, if you can't attend either, you will be able to order the messages,

DVD, CD, MP3 of those two conferences combined.

We're actually going to put those together as one set. NorCal Fire coming later, we'll deal with apologetics.

So that'll be a different topic. So we'll deal with that. But speaking of Bible Thumping Wingnut, we have our

Brother of the Week to encourage. We want to always encourage people to encourage others.

So the Brother of Encouragement. Oh, look at that. The Brother of Encouragement has posted that earlier on the show, on his wall.

And that brother is Brother Len Pettis. Len Pettis, we also have him at the

Mixler website for Bible Thumping Wingnut. He is the co -host with Tim Hurd, who we encouraged you to encourage last week.

But he is the Brother of the

Week for you to go out and encourage. And let me tell you about Len. Len is a sales guy.

But they are having a contest right now to see who can come up with the better tweets. And they have been really creative in coming up with some really, really good tweets.

And Len is a young believer who has learned much in a short period of time.

Len is someone who really wants to be faithful to the Scriptures. And the thing

I really, really appreciate with Len, and this should be a character of all

Christians. Unfortunately, it's not. It's sad that this is actually not the norm.

But Len is a brother who, if I see something that he's doing wrong, that I think is wrong at least,

I can call him up and say, hey brother, I think you need to correct this area. What do you think?

And he'll think about it and say, yeah, you know, will you forgive me? I need to deal with that. I mean, he's really humble, which should characterize all of us.

But, you know, as with all of us, we can come off on Facebook and social media as being really strong.

But I encourage you, if that's your impression of him, then get to know him personally. Friend him on Facebook, which that's not really the

Facebook, is it? No, OK. So befriend him. You have his name there at least. And go friend him on Facebook.

Get him in our, you know, the Striving Fraternity group and you'd be able to add him through there.

But encourage him this week. Doing what he does is not easy.

So I want to encourage you to encourage him as he's trying to be faithful to what he's learning and studying and then bringing it to broadcast.

They're doing a great show on their show in trying to be what they call the ESPN of podcasts.

They started this this past weekend with taking a look at all the different podcasts that they listen to and doing like a quick summary.

And Len, and I'm just saying for Tim and Colin, I'm just saying

I think Len did the best job of those. I mean, he had the most, but he really gave you the most detail on it.

And he really did a great job of summarizing a whole week's worth of podcasts in a short period of time, though he went longer than the other two guys.

But he did a lot of gave a lot of good detail in those. And that's really was helpful to say, hey, you know, this is the podcast.

If you want to deal with this topic, this is the podcast to go listen to. So as they say, they listen to the podcast, so you don't have to.

I don't think that's really what they mean. I really think they listen to the podcast so that they can tell you which ones you should go and download to listen to.

But encourage him this week if you would. Encourage you again, enroll as a student so you can get yourself a syllabus.

You can order the syllabus at our store. We want to encourage you. We this is the way you can help support us by buying things at our store.

We want to encourage you. You can. I got this. I was supposed to show us earlier. You can get these. They're not on the store.

But if you email us, we can get them to you. So email us at academy at striving for eternity dot org.

We'll get these to you. What are they? They are. Let me see if I do that. And I like their card about the academy on the back gives you.

There's no way you're going to see it. It talks about the academy and has the websites and the schools and the times and everything where people can get the show.

It's something where if you can bring them to your church, email us. We'll ship them to you. How many you need for your church?

You could slip them into the church Bolton with your pastor's approval. Please don't just go doing it, but slip them in and we could do it.

Someone's asking, do we have a downloadable version of the syllabus? No. We do not.

And I'm sorry. I know all the arguments that people have because, oh, it will it will, you know, be easier for people and it would save money because it costs nothing to download.

And that's the problem. It costs nothing for people to download it and share it with all their friends.

But it costs us money to put this stuff together. And this is really the very, very little we make off this stuff, right?

We for those who buy the syllabus, I'll let you in on a little secret. We make if you live local, like within the

East Coast, basically Northeast, we make about four dollars and 50 cents a year on your membership.

That's how much we make. If you live in California or somewhere far where the shipping costs are more, we don't make a dime.

OK, you live in Canada or or Peru or Brazil or where else have we shipped to the

United Kingdom? If you live in any of those countries, we lose money on your membership.

OK, we hope it'll all balance out. In other words, we don't do it for the money, but we're trying to hopefully hope that more people local to us will.

We're actually hoping to have enough students that we could buy these things in bulk and get them printed in bulk so that it would save us money.

And then we would actually be generating some money to pay for these classes. In other words, if you really enjoy the classes, you are more than welcome to go to the website and donate.

Actually, I should say this. Please consider seriously consider this. We need monthly support.

I don't often ask for support. I'm horrible at it. If you could, $5 a month makes a huge difference.

$10 a month, big difference. If you give $10 a month,

I forget what it is, but we give you different things. If you donate $5 a month or $10 a month,

I forget what it is, is the minimum. I think it's like $10 or $15 a month. We'll send you a free CD. If you do more than that,

I think it's $20 or $25, we send you a DVD from one of the conferences and it goes up from there, send you a whole bunch of different things just to show our appreciation for your support.

If you could support us monthly, we would greatly appreciate it. It helps us to be able to do more because there's things we want to do.

We want to be able to hire people and have a full -time staff, but we can't do that because we can't guarantee the money's going to be in to hire them.

And so monthly support makes all the difference. Consider going to the page here. Go to strivingforattorney .org,

go to the donate link, and you could donate monthly. Or just I think it's strivingforattorney .org slash donate and you could donate monthly and help us out.

It would be a tremendous help regardless of the value. Yes, we have some donors that give in large amounts, but you can't rely on those few.

We'd love to have more of them. But we could do so much more if we had people that were doing more and we really do need to get more monthly partners.

So would you consider partnering with us and helping us? If you like these classes, if you're learning from these classes, these classes are not free.

They are to you if you're watching on YouTube or on Ustream. You're not having to pay for them.

We don't want money to be an issue, but it does cost us money. And we rely on those few people that help us out.

We would greatly be encouraged if you would consider donating on a monthly basis.

It really would be a great encouragement to us. So with that said, I want to remind you, next class we'll deal with limited atonement.

Let your friends know. If you find these lessons helpful, post about it, blog about it, let others know about it.

Help them to properly define their terminology so we can be precise in our language. And remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.