07-12-2020

Park Meadows Church

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All right. Very good. Anyway, good to have our

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Tradeway friends out there around the country and our home folks. Good to have you with us.

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We look forward to a day, one of these days we can be back in physical church, and when we do, we'll continue to broadcast so all of our friends can still be with us.

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We're living through really interesting times, and so much of it's political at this point.

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So much of the information that we've gotten has been false information.

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In fact, I just wrote a 15 -page document on my assessment of the whole virus issue, and I don't know,

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I'm still praying about whether I'll make that available to you guys or not, but I've got some good research behind it, and so maybe

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I will, maybe I won't. But anyway, I know the Lord has taken our country through some really serious times for His purposes.

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Everything has changed. If you sit there and you just think, well, where could I go in the world today if I wanted to go somewhere and just be free to maybe sit out on a beach without a face mask?

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Where would I go? You might not be able to go anywhere at this point because the governments have invoked all kinds of rules for us, and so now we're used to following their rules, and that's where the enemy wanted us to be, in my opinion.

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Have you ever thought about this? Before we started this session that we're on now in Romans 8, verse 29 -39, we were talking about right before this, in the same passage of Romans 8, is a reference to the end times, to the rapture and the second coming, and so we talked about that a little bit for a while before we got to this section on predestination.

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We're just going verse by verse through the book of Romans, so we're not preaching topical. It's just that as you go verse by verse, the great themes of the

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Bible are taught, and as we hit them, we'll study them. So it becomes topical while we're on the topic, and then we just keep going verse by verse to the next thing, and I think it's a wonderful way to study the

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Bible, but here's the thing. We've talked about what Jesus said when they asked him, tell us about the end of the age. What will that look like?

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And he talked about wars and rumors of wars. He talked about pestilences, new diseases that have never been seen before that would crop up.

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He talked about race would rise against race. In the Greek, it's ethnos against ethnos, race against race.

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We've seen that now. So what's the next thing we're looking for is a huge earthquake, right?

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And I don't say it tongue in cheek. I mean it. That's the next thing you look for. And these things are as the beginning of sorrows,

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Jesus said. It's like birth pangs. It's not that these things haven't always happened, but they're going to get closer and closer together and stronger and stronger.

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And then as we read on down through the book of Revelation, we see that there is this thing called the mark of the beast, and that anyone who takes that mark will not inherit the kingdom of heaven, the

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Bible says. So that tells us born -again Christians will not take the mark. And it says without it, you won't be able to buy and sell.

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Isn't that interesting? 2 ,000 years ago, that was written. And I've always wondered about it, and I know in the book of Daniel, the angel told

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Daniel that in the end times, as you get closer to these things, you'll understand these writings in the scripture more.

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You'll have more light on what they actually mean. I've found that to be true. I'm sure you have too. But on that particular one,

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I've always just thought it meant, well, there must be some chip they put in our forehead or in our hand.

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And if you don't have it, you can't go buy anything, because it's a credit card.

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That's what I've always thought. Well, my thinking on that's changed now, because I think possibly when they come up with a virus, which will be really interesting, because they don't have a virus for the common cold, which is a coronavirus and they mutate so often, you can't prevent the common cold.

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How are they going to prevent this? But they say they're going to have a vaccine. Do you think perhaps with all these interesting government regulations that come right in and tell you how you have to dress, what you have to wear, where you can go, where you can't go.

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Sometimes you have to stay in your home, all these things. And we've all just accepted it. And even to people that aren't ill.

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And do you think possibly it's within the realm of reason that they might chip you and say, this shows you've had the vaccine.

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So now you can go in the grocery store where all the other people are and you can buy food. So think about that.

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And it's just food for thought, right? So one thing we know the

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Lord is in control. He has told us in scripture what to do to prepare. And I think the time is now we ought to be preparing.

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I've been teaching that since 1980, but it's getting more and more close, isn't it? So I'm going to share my screen at this point and we'll get into today's lesson.

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All right. Hold on one second. I've got to get it in the right view.

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All right, that's working. That looks like that's working.

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I think I'm ready. Does it look okay to you, Dave? Yeah, it looks great.

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Looks good. All right. All right, good. Well, here's, here's where we are now in our scripture, ladies and gentlemen, and let's have a word of prayer and I'll get started.

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Father, we just thank you so much for the fact that you've given us your word.

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You've given us your spirit for without the water and the spirit, we could not have salvation. We could not grow.

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We could not function. We could not do good works. We couldn't be part of your family business.

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And so thank you that you've grafted us into your family by the Abrahamic covenant, by what

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Jesus Christ has done on our behalf as a totally unconditional covenant. And we thank you for that for without it, we would truly be lost.

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But with it, we have everything because we have you. And thank you for that.

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Now go with us during this study time. And may your Holy spirit be our teacher.

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And we ask it in Jesus name. Amen. We asked the question last time, because we find ourselves in Romans chapter eight, verses 29 through 39.

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And this is the great passage on predestination in Romans chapter eight. So I've asked the question, the ancient doctrine of predestination, is it

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Calvinism? And we talked about that a good deal last time. So I'd like to review just a little bit.

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Our beginning verse of course is for whom he did foreknow. He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son, that we might be the firstborn among many brethren.

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That short verse carries a lot of information. One thing we see is that there is such a thing as foreknowledge.

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God has it because he's God. And there is such a thing as predestination and that they are not the same thing.

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They are two different things. So the Bible is teaching both here. And there are two things we're predestinated unto.

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Number one, we're predestinated to be born again. That's found at the very end of the verse, the firstborn among many brethren.

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We're predestinated to become part of God's family. And secondly, we're predestinated to do good works and to be conformed to his image.

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So you have those two things. Now, the enemies of this doctrine will say, oh yes, God foreknew us and he predestinated.

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All he did was he predestinated that we would do good works if we do get saved. That is not what the verse teaches. It's very clear that it teaches two things.

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We're predestinated to be born and become brethren, to be saved. And secondly, we're predestinated to be conformed.

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And that's the good work side of it. So both are taught, and you cannot subtract, you can't take a pen knife and cut out what you don't like from Scripture.

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For one thing, you're not a mature Christian. If you do that, you might be a seminarian, right? I don't know.

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But one thing is you got to get over it. If you are, you got to get over being a seminarian, because they're going to teach the doctrine of their denomination, and it's going to have many wonderful truths in it, beautiful things we can learn.

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But there's going to be a lot of falsehood in there too, just to keep God in that particular box. And once we become a mature

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Christian, we're free to go to the water and the Word. That's, I'm sorry, the water and the Spirit.

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That's the water being the Word of God, and the Spirit being the Holy Spirit. And 1

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John says that we have not any need that any man teach us, but we have an unction from God.

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So the Holy Spirit will teach us the Word of God. I think men help us. They're called gifts to the church, but they introduce error as well.

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And we have to always know that, and always hold up everything they say against the whole of the Bible, because it won't contradict in one point if it's true.

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If it's true, it can't be shot down. If it's a theory, it can be shot down. And that's what should be done to theories, unless they're true, and then they become something you can teach.

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And that's the approach we take at Park Meadows, by the way, among our guys and gals that love to study.

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So this verse, we laid this out last time. But in answering the question about whether this is

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Calvinism or not, I thought what we should do before we get into the Scriptures is to take a look at church history.

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You might say, well, you know, there are groups out there that say you shouldn't look at any books. You just stick with the

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Bible only. Well, 2 Timothy 4, 11 through 13 defies that, because Paul, when he was hanging in the prison on the wall, he asked to have the parchments, which is the

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Scripture brought to him, but he also asked for his books. So the great apostle Paul studied many books other than the

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Bible. And so we need to be studying because we're not supposed to have a private interpretation, which means that we should want to know what our brothers and sisters in Christ for 2 ,000 years have thought about certain passages of Scripture.

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We may not always agree with everything they thought, but we need to read what they thought, and we need to take what we think and make sure we hold it up against all of Scripture, make sure we didn't invent something that's not true, and call it a new doctrine, which is happening all the time around the world.

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So we have to be careful about that. So on the basis of 2 Timothy 4, 11, we looked at church history last time, and what we found out was that these great doctrines of predestination and election are not

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Calvinism at all, because you can go back to St. Augustine, who was born in 354, and he was the bishop of Hippo, and if you look at his life and his teachings, he taught irresistible grace, which was one of what they say is

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Calvinism. He taught the depravity of man, which they say is Calvinism.

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He taught that we're saved as a gift, a free gift of grace from God, and that it's a calling, and that the calling and regeneration of the

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Holy Spirit is the first cause of salvation, and he taught all of that 1 ,155 years before John Calvin was born.

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He took many of his thoughts from Romans 5, 5, and 6, where it shows clearly that it's the

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Holy Spirit that saves us. It's the Holy Spirit that regenerates us. Everything else that happens after that is an effect.

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All right, so this was taught 1 ,155 years before John Calvin was born.

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Then you go back, even before Augustine, all the way back to 200 AD, Tertullian taught the same concepts of the sovereignty of God 1 ,309 years before John Calvin was born, and then you go back to St.

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Clement I of Rome. They call him St. Clemens of Rome, and he lived in 88

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AD. In fact, he's known as the first apostolic father and the bishop of Rome, and he is supposedly the third successor from St.

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Peter. So you had Peter, and oh, I knew who came next.

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I still know him, but I just drew a blank on his name, but then after that, I think of it in a minute, then after that you had

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St. Clement. So he goes all the way back, and according to Tertullian, he was consecrated as a pastor by Peter, and he knew the apostles and heard them teach.

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All right? So he also, we think, probably is the Clement that was mentioned in Philippians 4 .3,

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but the point is he taught the sovereignty of God in election 1 ,408 years before John Calvin was born.

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So then you go all the way back to the apostle Paul, who taught it 1 ,474 years before John Calvin was born, and he taught it in the text we're studying today.

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For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn of many brethren.

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So Paul taught it 1 ,474 years before Calvin, and then we have this person. Let's see if we can guess who taught this in John 6 .39.

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And this is the Father's will, which has sent me, that of all which he has given me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.

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No man can come to me except the Father which sent me draws him, that's election, and I will raise him up at the last day.

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That's none other than Jesus Christ, who said this 1 ,477 years before John Calvin was ever born.

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So this is not Calvinism. This is Christianity. All right? Now Charles Spurgeon, one of the greatest preachers of all time, we're reviewing a little bit for those of you who weren't here last time.

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Quickly, though, Charles Spurgeon is known as the Prince of Preachers. He's known that across denominations and has been for years, since his life, actually.

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He preached to over 10 million people in his lifetime, sometimes preaching 10 times a week.

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He said this about what some people call Calvinism. Whatever may be said about the doctrine of election, it is written in the

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Word of God as with an iron pin. There is no getting rid of it. There it stands.

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However much this may be disputed, as it frequently is, you must first deny the authenticity and full inspiration of the

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Holy Scripture before you can legitimately and truly deny this doctrine.

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He said this, that doctrine, which is called Calvinism, did not spring from Calvin. We believe that it sprang from the great founder of all truth.

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That's God. Charles Spurgeon said that. Then I talked about this for a little bit last time.

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I've had people come up to me and say, Brother David, you shouldn't teach Calvinism. It's not Baptistic. Well, we don't have

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Baptist on our sign anymore because we're more like Spurgeon was. We're not like modern

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Baptist, and it's confusing. So we took it off the sign by unanimous vote of the church a while back. So we're

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Park Meadows Church. We're, as Brother Otis, our old Bible teacher who's in heaven now, used to say, we are

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Biblinarians, okay? I hate to put that on the sign, though. I think it might keep people away. What do you think? Park Meadows Biblinarian Church.

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But anyway, Calvinism is not Baptistic, is what they've told me, so you need to stop teaching it.

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Well, that contradicts history so much, and it's absolutely beyond nonsense, okay?

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Let's take a look at it. I showed this last time. I'm just going to pop it up on the screen and let you just see it. These are the names.

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Other than George Whitefield, who was not a Baptist, he actually was one of the founders of the Methodist Church, but he was a

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Calvinist. He split off from John Wesley, who was an Arminian and believed that man caused his own salvation, among other things, and that you could lose your salvation.

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George Whitefield believed God caused salvation and you can't lose it because of that. He split off and went into evangelism and created the scenario for revival in England and the

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United States. And so John Calvin was left to run the Methodist Church—I'm sorry,

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Wesley was left to run the Methodist Church, and that's why they're Arminian to this day. Had Whitefield stayed, they probably would have had a big church split, and that's why he left, by the way.

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But he's the only one on this list who's not a Baptist. The reason I listed him is because he had such a huge influence on Charles Spurgeon, the

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Prince of Preachers, who was a particular Baptist. So now you can look at the list of Baptists.

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The rest of these are Baptists who were Calvinistic. Charles Spurgeon, Adoniram Judson, I mean, and these people are amazing people.

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You hear people say, well, if you're Calvinistic, you don't believe in witnessing. Listen, Judson was the first main missionary to Burma.

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He formed the very first Baptist Association of America, which supported missions. And the greatest—you look down to below that—William

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Carey was the father of modern missions, and he went to India and translated the Word of God into I don't know how many

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Indian dialects in India. Lost his wife there. She went crazy because her children had died from diseases, and as she screamed in the next room, had lost her mind, he patiently translated the

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Word of God into many, many dialects in India. And he was a

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Calvinist. So these people that say it's not Baptistic and that you won't witness if you're Calvinist are simply totally wrong.

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The greatest mission works in modern history were founded by Calvinistic Baptists, right?

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Basil Manley was president of university. He was actually president of the

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University of Alabama, but he was a great preacher, and he helped found the Southern Baptist Convention.

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He was Calvinistic. B .H. Carroll helped found Southwestern Theological Seminary and did work at Baylor University.

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He was Calvinistic. Jesse Mercer, who was at Georgia Baptist Convention, published hymnals and newspapers.

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He was Calvinistic and was a Baptist. Andrew Fuller, who started the Baptist Missionary Society, wrote the book

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The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, which took Calvinism and brought it into Baptist theology as a textbook.

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He was Calvinistic, obviously. He was also the first secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society. All these men were mission -minded.

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They all believed in witnessing. Richard Furman in the 1800s taught

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Latin, Greek, Hebrew, history, theology, medicine. Influential in writing the constitutional clauses of our

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Constitution that dealt with separation of church and state, he was Calvinist. Arthur Pink, one of the greatest authors and Baptist preachers ever,

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Calvinistic. Charles Clark, founder of Rhode Island, the state, was a

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Baptist preacher and Calvinistic. Luther Rice helped found the Southern Baptist Convention. Calvinistic Baptist preacher.

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J .R. Graves, one of the great, most influential men of the South, same thing. W .H.

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Strong, you ever heard of Strong's Concordance? He wrote it. He also wrote a systematic theology, Calvinistic Baptist.

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R .B .C. Howell, J .W .B. Tidwell, the Tidwell Bible Building over at Baylor, where I studied theology.

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It was wrong theology, but I studied that at Baylor, and the building named after this Baptist who was Calvinistic, and then on and on.

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We see that those are not historical when they say Calvinism is not Baptistic, or they say people that believe in that don't believe in witnessing.

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All of that is nonsense. So I've seen writings that said that as many in the 19th century, as many as 95 % of the

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Baptists were known as Particular Baptists, which is what Charles Spurgeon was, and less than 5 % were

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General Baptists. Particular Baptists believed that Jesus only died for the elect, and General Baptists believed he died for everyone.

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Well, we know that today that's flip -flop. Now, 95 % of Baptists believe Jesus died for everybody. 5 % believe he died for the elect.

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The problem with saying that he died for everybody is that if that's true, then everyone will be in heaven, because the only one thing that saves us is

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Jesus' death and his blood. That's what saves us, and so that logically won't work.

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Jesus said not everyone's going to be in heaven. He said there's a remnant that will be in heaven, but broad is the gate to hell.

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So it all contradicts itself. It all does like anything that's not the truth does. You can't piece it together.

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I noticed that my friend Ron Romines is on listening today. He and Pam actually moved to Corsicana so they could go to church with us and work with Tradeway, but years before that, we met through Tradeway.

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They were students. Ron, I would ask him to get up and give a testimony, and he was so great at that and still is.

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In fact, God's called him to preach since he came to Corsicana, and he's now a minister, but I'll never forget, he was sitting at a table listening to me talk to someone who someone else had brought to debate me on some of these issues, and the young man that was there debating me didn't get anything from it, but Pam and Ron went home that night.

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It totally changed their lives because we were debating whether or not election's true, predestination, all that.

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The next morning, they came back in tears and said their whole lives had been changed, and one of the things I remember Ron said, he said, you know,

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David, for the first time in my life, Romans chapter 9 fits all of the scripture, and before that, I had to just throw it out.

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It didn't make any sense to me. Well, it's true. The scripture won't fit together unless you understand these great doctrines that we're now looking at in the middle of Romans chapter 8.

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All right, so last time we jumped into the passage, and let's just take a quick look at what we looked at, because what we're going to talk about this time is like the fourth part, so we've got to look at the first three points, but anyway, here's the scripture that we start with in verse 29.

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For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

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We looked at the very definition. That's one of the great ten rules of Bible interpretation. You've got to look at definitions of words.

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God chose to write the New Testament in Greek for a reason. It's almost like math. It's very accurate.

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It's very concise. I mean, it means what it means, says what it says, and this particular word in the

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Greek comes from two little Greek words. I'll show you those in a second, but when you put them together, it means to limit in advance or to predetermine.

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It's translated into the word predetermine sometimes, or predestinate other times in the New Testament, or sometimes it means to determine before, and it's even translated that way in the

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English New Testament. It sometimes is translated into the English word ordain or foreordain or predestinate.

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All of these words come from the same Greek word, and it comes from two little words, pro, which means before, plus horizo, which means to mark out.

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So it means to mark it out beforehand. Now, when we're talking about sovereign

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God who is in the eternal now, who created everything that is, and who allowed his son

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Jesus to speak everything into existence, including all of time and space, this is the one, the great

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God of the universe, who marked out everything ahead of time. That's what the word means.

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Now, you can see here that it means to appoint or to decree something, to specify a way that something happens, to declare, to determine, to limit how it happens, to preordain how it happens.

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All of these colors of meaning are found in the one little word right here for predestination that we find in the middle of verse 29 and throughout the

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New Testament. Pro -horizo is full of these meanings, but basically it means exact, great translation here in the

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King James, predestinate. I mean, there's not much better word you can pick to describe what it means.

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Now, the next verse says, moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called. Now, look at this.

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If you start at the top of 29, it says he foreknew. Then it says those who he foreknew, he also predestinated.

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And then verse 30, it says the ones he predestinated, them he also called. And whom he called, them he also justified.

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In whom he justified, them he also glorified. And it looks like you have a step -by -step process that goes throughout time and goes out the other end of time to the point where we're with the

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Lord and we're glorified. Now, if you look at it that way, the same person who ends up in heaven glorified, if you go back in time, he was justified by God.

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It's in the passive, which means it's something someone bigger than you does to you. He justified. It's another word, he made us be saved.

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He made us right with God. But those same people are the same people he called, and a calling is a teaching throughout the

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New Testament. You have two kinds of calling. You have a universal calling taught, where it means the gospel went out to everybody in the world.

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But you also have the effectual calling, which you tell by the context. It means those who the Holy Spirit tapped on the shoulder, took your chin, and said, look at him.

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I'm opening your eyes. I'm opening your ears. I'm opening your understanding for the first moment in your life that that is your shepherd and your sheep, and he's got the food and you're hungry.

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What will you do with him? That's the effectual calling. So the same people that end up in heaven are people that were justified by God, who were called by the

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Holy Spirit, and that's when God justified them. Those same people were predestinated. Now, that goes back before time started, and those people were foreknown, and it looks like a process, doesn't it?

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Well, what's interesting about it is it's not a process, and when it says those who he foreknew, he also did predestinate in English.

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It sounds like he foreknew them first, then he predestinated them, then he called them, then later he justified them, and then later he glorified them.

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That is not at all what it means if you read it in Greek, and I'm going to show that to you. We talked about it a little bit last time. But if we just look at this little phrase here, whom he foreknew, he also did predestinate, the word also in Greek does not mean the same thing it does in modern

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English. All right, let me see if I can point this out. Also, kai in Greek is a copulative word, which means it's a word that joins two other words, and it has a cumulative force.

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In modern English, we might say it this way. Instead of saying who he foreknew first, secondly, he predestinated them.

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That's kind of what it sounds like when we say he also did. But in the Greek, it would be more like this.

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He foreknew and predestinated them at the same moment. It happened at the same time.

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They're just two words that are copulated. They're brought together as one thing. So this accompanied that.

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So the predestination accompanied the foreknowledge. Even as he foreknew, so he predestinated is another way to say it.

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They happened at the same time. It's not in sequence. They both happened is all that it means, the word kai in Greek.

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So it does not mean sequence in time as if the first thing caused the second, but rather it means both happened together and accompanied one another.

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That's the Greek word. That's just what it means. So we have to understand that or we'll get this wrong.

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Now, we talked about that last time. Now, another thing we talked about was both the word foreknew and predestinate are in the aorist tense in Greek, which

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English doesn't even have that. But aorist means without regard to time. It is not past, present, or future.

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It just is. All right, it's amazing how the Holy Spirit used Greek to write the New Testament because in other languages, you didn't have the ability to have a concept of timelessness.

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But in Greek, there's a tense for that. It's also aorist active, indicative, and active means it's done by the subject, and the subject here is

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God. So God did the foreknowing and the predestinating, not man. God did it.

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And it's active. It means God did it, but it's indicative, which means it's just a fact. It's real and it's certain and it actually has already happened.

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Okay, all of this is in the grammar. All right, now, so the second thing, the first thing is the word itself shows us what it means, but secondly, and the word kai means they happen together at the same time.

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The very grammar now shows that foreknowledge does not come before predestination, but they happen together, and both happen before time began.

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In other words, you go back to Genesis 1, 1, before that is when these two items happen.

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So they happen before time began, so there's another proof that they're not sequential. There was no time, therefore there was no sequence.

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Now, when we go into Ephesians and we see it discussing the same doctrines, it says, according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that shows us it happened before Genesis 1, 1, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children.

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That shows it has to do with salvation there at the first of verse 5, and good works at the end of verse 4, both.

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Two things. We're predestinated to be born again, but then to do good works. Both are predestinated.

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But in that context, we see clearly it's before time began, so it cannot be in sequence.

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Erist means punctiliar action without regard to time or sequence. So this passage cannot mean that foreknowledge happened first, and then this led to predestination, and then this led to the calling, and then the calling led later to the justifying, and then the justifying later led to glorification.

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It doesn't happen in sequence like that at all. Now, a third reason that we know it doesn't happen in sequence is because of the eternal nature of God.

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God is the I Am of Exodus 3, 14. If you think about it, the Father does not dwell in time.

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He is the I Am. He just knows, and things that he accomplished just are.

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Okay? He does not think or do in sequence like we do.

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We can't humanize God. So these things which God has done were not done in sequence.

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They just were. They just are. All right. So that's what we talked about last time.

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So now let's look at a fourth reason. The Bible does not teach that predestination is according to foreknowledge.

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Now, we've already established that predestination didn't happen because first he foreknew it.

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They both were together, and God had both before time began. There's no sequence.

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But the reason we have to bring this fourth point is because there's actually a passage of Scripture that sounds like it says that foreknowledge caused the predestination.

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Now, one thing—I wish I could remember who said this. I love the quote. But some smart old preacher said, it's not important what the

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Bible says. It's important what the Bible means. And the reason people don't like that is because now they have to employ the ten rules of proper

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Bible interpretation, and you can't cheat. You have to be consistent with them, and you can't cheat just to prove what you want to prove.

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Okay. So we need to look at this passage of Scripture we're about to look at here using those rules, and it's really pretty fascinating because theologians who are

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Arminians love to use this passage and try to say, well, what God did was he looked out in time, he saw who was a good person and who would get saved, and he saw who believed and he chose them.

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And Charles Spurgeon just blew that argument away. In fact, you go back and take a look at our archives at last week's sermon, you'll see the quotes from Spurgeon where he blew that concept away.

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Basically what he said was, an effect can never be the cause of the cause. And so you can't say that God, when he put his grace on us, did that because he saw grace within us.

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It makes no sense. It makes no sense at all. You can't say that we first loved

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God and then he loved us. That's what Arminianism teaches. The Bible clearly says

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God first loved us, and because of that we loved him. It's that way. Spurgeon makes that so clear. Go back and check the archives if you weren't here last week.

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Now, this passage of Scripture, those people who love to say that God looked out in time, saw who the good people were, and elected them, total nonsense, because Scripture says there are none, there are none that seek after God, not one, that our righteousness is as filthy rags, and that's what

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God would see. And if he did see any good thing in them, as Charles Spurgeon said, if he did look out there and see any good thing in them, what he would see was his own grace on them that made them be good.

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So it's the grace of God that saved them. And Spurgeon, you wouldn't want to argue with Spurgeon.

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He just ended up, he never went to college, never went to seminary, but he was the best man, best read man in England by the age of 21.

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He studied philosophy, he studied logic, he studied the Scriptures, he studied history. You're not going to out -argue him on this, and he's correct.

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He uses Scripture properly, he uses everything. Logically argument is right there.

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Logical argument is right there. You can't get around it. An effect can never be the cause of the cause. So some people, though, insist on being

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Arminian. Now, I believe this. My belief is that Lucifer was the first Arminian.

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Lucifer was the first entity who thought that he could control things and that God was not in control all the time, but he could control things.

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And that is the philosophy that theologians who are Arminians teach. So I know the source of it, and I'm not buying into it, and I never did when

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I was a brand -new baby Christian. I had a wonderful book called Unger's Bible Dictionary, and it's not a dictionary, it's an encyclopedia.

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If you're going to get one, though, you need to go to a used bookstore and go out and get one published in about the 70s or 80s.

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The new ones are not that good, but the old ones, magnificent book. But I remember the first, I think the first week or two

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I was saved, something at Sunday school I was going to got me interested, and I went and I looked up Calvinism in that book, and then

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I read, it's got four, five, six pages on it, and then I read Arminianism, and I said, well,

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I'm that one. I'm Calvinism. I didn't even know what it was. I just knew that's what the

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Bible I had read taught. Now, the

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Bible does not teach that foreknowledge happened first and that predestination is based on it, but there's a scripture that makes it sound like that.

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So let's look at it. First Peter 1, 1, and 2. Now, it would be very good for you if you could also go out to that bookstore and buy what's known as a

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Greek -English interlinear, and that's a book that will put the literal Greek, and underneath it will put the

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English, so you can see literally how it's written. Excuse me.

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I'm trying to lose my voice here. All right. Sorry about that.

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Okay. So let's look at this scripture that Armenians love to use.

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If you were able to look at this in the Greek, it is just astounding what you would see, and I'm going to show it to you.

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But here's how it reads in the English versions. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to the strangers scattered throughout

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Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the

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Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, grace to you and peace be multiplied.

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It sounds like it says that they are elect according to foreknowledge, doesn't it?

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I mean, it says that, but if we really want to look into what it means, we don't find any other scripture anywhere that indicates it, that that's how it works, anywhere in the whole

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Bible. This would seem to contradict everything that we just studied a few seconds ago.

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It would contradict the word meanings. It would contradict the tenses of the

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Greek words. It would contradict the fact that God did the knowing and the choosing and the predestinating before time began, therefore it can't be a sequence.

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It would contradict all of that if this means what it sounds like it means. So when I see a passage like that,

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I ask the Holy Spirit, this cannot contradict all the other passages. What am I not seeing here?

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And we have so many tools today. We have very few excuses to get things wrong nowadays.

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Unfortunately, a lot of times we get it wrong because we read a commentary where a human says, oh, here's what it means, and we just take that as fact.

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It's not fact. You need to study the scripture to know if it's fact or not. Now, when we're brand new

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Christians, we can learn faster with commentaries and Bible scholars and all this. Not against it.

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You just have to understand you're going to have to unlearn some things later when you start to study the Bible on your own, and that's good.

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That's fine. That's how it works. But look at this. Now, if we were to take a look at this in a

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Greek -English interlinear, you might not even believe this.

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And you ask yourself, why did this happen? I don't know the answer to that, but I do know how the

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Greek reads. In the original, the word elect that we find as the first word in verse 2, and we have to understand in the original there weren't any verses or chapters.

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It was just a letter. It's a love letter from God to us, right? It's just a letter.

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You don't have the verse numbers, so it's just a continuation of a sentence. And if you notice at the end of verse 1 is a comma, not a period.

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Verse 2 is not a separate verse. It's a continuation of the same sentence in the original. But in the original, what's interesting is the word elect is not even found in what we now call verse 2.

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It's not there at all. It's actually found only in verse 1, and it reads like this in the

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Greek -English interlinear Bible. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to the elect strangers scattered throughout

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Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia according to the foreknowledge of God the

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Father. Now, notice that the word elect, which is here, is actually found right here in between the word the and strangers in the original.

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Now, I don't know why it got translated like it did in English, but I do know what it says in the

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Word of God. It says, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to the elect strangers. The word elect is an adjective that tells what kind of strangers or sojourners these

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Christians are. They're scattered all over the world by persecution, and they are sojourners who were elected by God.

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That's what the Scripture says. It does not say that they were elected according to foreknowledge.

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It says they were elect sojourners. They were scattered according to the foreknowledge of God, etc.,

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etc. So it doesn't—there's nowhere in the Bible it teaches election according to foreknowledge because they happen before time, and there's no sequence.

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They just are. So God foreknew who would be saved. He foreknew who would never be saved.

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Goats and sheep, right? Sheep will be saved. Goats will never be saved. Wheat and tares.

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Wheat will be saved. Tares will never be saved. God foreknew who those people were. He also predestinated who they were.

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He did both, and they just are that way. That's what aorists mean. They're just that way.

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It's how it is. God is sovereign. It's how it is. Now, that's what Scripture teaches. Now, modern theologians, modern churchgoers don't like this at all because it doesn't let man have any control in his own salvation.

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It puts the complete control of salvation in God's hands. Why in the world it is we would prefer it the other way,

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I don't know. I have a lot of moms that have trouble with the doctrine of predestination at first until I ask them a couple of questions, and I'll ask them sometimes, why do you have problems with this doctrine?

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It's clearly in Scripture. Why does it bother you? And they say, well, because I've got children. I've got three or four children, whatever the case is, with particular moms

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I've talked to, and they'll say, I don't like the thought that I have no control on which one of them gets saved, or if all of them get saved, or if they don't, that I have no control on that at all.

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And I said, well, let me ask you this. Would you rather the control of that issue be in an all -knowing, all -loving, good

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God's hand, or would you rather it be in your hands a sinner who gets it wrong a lot of the times, and you would have to live such a perfect, godly, holy life in front of those children that you could save them?

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Which way would you pick? You saving them or God? And they go, well, I see what you mean. But, you know, you've got to think that through.

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And I always ask them this. I say, well, listen, if you were God, and you had chosen who would be saved, but you'd also chosen the method is they have to hear the gospel and believe it, would you think you might put a lot of those elect children in the home of a

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Christian like yours? And she says, I see your point. I said, okay, so raise them in the word.

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Raise them in the Lord. Leave it in God's hand and trust the Lord. They're going to be fine. The scripture says that the mother and the father, if they're saved, they make the children holy.

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What does that mean? What says it? All right. It also says a lot of different things. My son

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Paul and I have had talks about how the father being a godly man, it changes a lot in that whole family.

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And the mother being a godly woman and children raised in a godly home, where would

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God put the elect if he knew that they had to hear the gospel and believe it? It's logical to put them in the home of a

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Christian mother. So usually when I go through that, women feel better about the doctrine.

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But I have found that females in general, they don't like this doctrine much.

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Some men like it. I don't know why. I don't know why that is, but I've seen that difference. But I think maybe it's because of wanting control of who gets saved among the children.

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But we don't have that control. And thank God we don't. We make so many mistakes. And the older the children get, the more they know we're not perfect.

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And so if we had to be for them to be saved, they would be lost. Let's put it in God's hands.

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That's where the Bible puts it. All right. So this is fascinating stuff, don't you think?

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So why is it so important that we understand this great ancient doctrine of the sovereignty of God, election, predestination?

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Well, Romans 8, 29, and 30, if you notice, it goes on after saying that who he foreknew, he predestinated.

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In verse 30, it says, who he predestinated, them he also called. The calling is something, everything that happened in verse 29 happened before time began, before Genesis 1 -1.

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It's the eternal now. It just is, okay? But when we get to verse 30 and we go into this idea of the calling, that happens in time and space.

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So you come into your lifetime, your timeline on this earth. At some point in your life, and if you're born again today,

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I'm talking to you, you always were known by God as his own.

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There was never a time he didn't know you were his. There was never a time you were not a sheep.

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Now you may well have been a lost sheep. I was until I was 24, and God saved me in my car driving to work one day.

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The Holy Spirit called me in my car driving to work one day, and he opened my eyes and my ears and my mind where I could know the

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Lord and love him for the first time in my life. That's the calling. And that happens in time and space on your spiritual birthday, which

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God knew before he made anything. Before that, you were a lost sheep, but you were a sheep. You were never a goat, all right?

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Goats never get saved, never worry about their soul. They don't care about the things in the heavenlies. Sheep are always worried about it, even when they're lost and they're hanging out with the goats.

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They still think about those things. They still feel more guilty about sin than a goat, because goats never feel guilty too much about sin.

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They don't worry about it much. Lost sheep have really problems when they hang out with the goats and do the things they're doing.

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It makes them feel super guilty. And another interesting thing about lost sheep is they pray and even get their prayers answered before their salvation for years, because they're

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God's sheep and God knows it. The sheep just doesn't know it yet. And I love the way Brother Otis put it one time.

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He said, Brother David, he said, what we call getting saved is really just the

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Holy Spirit notifying us that we belong to the Lord. He called it being notified.

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It's kind of like how it works. That's kind of what the calling is. But the calling is more than that.

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The calling is over 33 miraculous gifts that the

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Holy Spirit gives you in a moment of time, all at once when he saves you.

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He gives you the faith of Jesus Christ, not your own faith, his faith. Your belief gets in line with that.

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He gives you a heart of repentance, which means he changes your mind. He causes you to change your mind from thinking you were

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God to knowing that you're not and that God is God. That's repentance. The Holy Spirit brings repentance to you.

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It comes from God, the Bible says, not from you. When you repent, it is an effect or response to the fact that the

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Holy Spirit caused you to change your mind when he saved you already. When he regenerated you, he changed your mind.

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You didn't do that. He did. Otherwise, you're saved by works, because I don't know what you think, but mental activity is a work.

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You've got to eat food to create the energy to make your brain work. It's a work. You're not saved by works.

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Think these things through when you have some time. But the Holy Spirit regenerated you, and that's why the

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Scripture says in more than one place that while we were yet in our sins, hath he quickened us.

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Everything else was an effect. That was the great cause of our salvation, and what the Holy Spirit did when he did that was

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Jesus had already applied his blood at the mercy seat in heaven and sprinkled it as is pictured all throughout the

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Old Testament in the wilderness tabernacle and then in the temple was a picture of the real throne of God.

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Jesus took and sprinkled his blood on the real throne of God and turned it from a judgment seat into a mercy seat, and then the

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Holy Spirit brings that blood on your timeline, on your spiritual birthday, and he wakes you up, and he applies that blood by sprinkling all over your life.

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As an individual, it's now applied, and you are born again. You had nothing to do with it. Just like a new baby getting born into this world had nothing to do with it.

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All the work was done by the parents. All the love was loved by the parents. The child just woke up, became a part of this wonderful thing.

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He's now part of that family. He thinks he's the center of the universe and caused everything, but he'll soon learn he didn't, and that's how being saved is on the spiritual side.

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Moreover, whom he did predestinate, that same group of people are the ones that in time he called, and the others he does not call.

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Let me say something, ladies and gentlemen, as kindly as I can say it. Truth sometimes is not kind. It's just truth, but if you don't get called, you don't get saved.

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If you go back in history, not that far, in the early 1900s even, when they would have a big revival meeting, when the

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Moody's of the world would come around and do tent meetings and draw more people than the World's Fair would draw.

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Things like that happened in those days, and people would want to be saved.

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They would come down an aisle if Moody invited them to come down the aisle, but what happened was so different than what happens today, where they come in and say, here, pray this little prayer.

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Dear Jesus, come to my heart and say amen. Now you're saved. That's not how it worked. Back in those days, they would say, look, do you desire the

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Lord? Yes, I do. Well, then you need to pray, maybe stay down here and pray even if it takes the rest of our revival week.

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If it takes all week down here every night, every day, you need to pray for God to call you. You need to pray for the

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Holy Spirit to show up and call you and open your eyes and open your ears and save your soul.

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Then they'd go to the next person and say the same thing. That is so different than what's said nowadays. Nowadays, what's said is, oh, well,

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Jesus died. Here's the gift. You need to make the decision to reach out and take it, and if you do, you determine your own destiny.

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The Bible never taught that, and that's not the real gospel, but it's what's shared in most churches today. It's very sad, but this calling has to happen in space and time, and if you're out there listening and you say, well,

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Brother David, I'm not sure I'm called. I'm not sure I'm saved. What do I do? Well, let me give you some good news.

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Goats don't worry about those issues, all right? Only lost sheep do, so you may not be saved yet, but lost sheep will be saved in time because Jesus said,

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I know who they are, and God will draw them to me, and of them I will lose nothing. Won't be one of them lost, so all you need to do if you're not sure is you just need to come before the

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Lord, and if you sense Him opening your eyes to the fact that you are not God, Jesus is your

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God, and that He can run your life better than you can, let Him be Lord, and you sense those things, and you desire eternal life for you and your family, then all you do is just like a bride to the bridegroom.

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You just say, I do. I mean, I don't know. It doesn't matter what you say. I'll tell you this.

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If you take Romans 10, 11, which is so often used to try to lead people to Christ, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the

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Lord shall be saved, and we tell people that, so just call on His name. Do you know that in the Greek, it literally reads this way, for whosoever has the desire to call on His name shall be saved.

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So if you're sitting there today, and you say, I don't know if I'm saved, but you have that desire in your heart, you're already saved. You're already saved.

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Because a natural man does not have that desire. The Holy Spirit put that in your heart. He's already called you.

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So I don't know any more clear way to talk about the gospel, but it's certainly not how I used to preach it as a young man before I understood these things.

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I did it wrong. I said, oh, it's a gift. God, Jesus died.

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It's out there. Now you got to make the decision. Do you want it? Now pray this little prayer. I did that so many times, and I regret it.

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But you know what? Doing that cannot unsave people either. So you might say, well, that's what

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I did. I went down the aisle, and I prayed that prayer. Does that mean I'm not saved, Brother David? No, it doesn't unsave you.

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It just means you were saved before you ever left the pew and went down there. The Holy Spirit had already called you. He had already regenerated you.

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Even your desire to want to go down the aisle and desire to want to get baptized and to want to start reading the

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Bible, want to tell everybody I'm saved, all those desires are effects. They're not the cause of your salvation.

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They're there because the Holy Spirit called you and regenerated you. Now that's the true gospel of the

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Bible, the best I can lay it out. Now, why is it important that we understand these things?

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That God has always known exactly who will be saved and has predestined they would be his children and be brought into his family as surely as we were born into our mother's family by the mother doing all the work.

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We're born into God's family the same way, and the first reason that's important to know is because it shows how special you are.

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You are so special that God has always known you were his. Even before you knew you were his, he knew you were his and loved you and caused you to have a propensity to worry about some of the sins you were doing and to come into places in your life where you did hear the gospel clearly and to bring you to that place where the

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Holy Spirit was ready at the exact right time when the Father sent him to you to open your eyes, and all that happened because you were special to God.

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Listen, Brother Otis asked me one time, Brother David, what is the worth of a thing? You're a businessman. Give me the answer, and I said,

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I don't know, Brother Otis. Tell me the answer. He said, oh, I'm so disappointed, Brother David. It's a finance question.

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It's an economics question. You should know this. You're an MBA. What is the worth of a thing? Well, I didn't want to get it wrong.

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I didn't know what he was getting at. I said, I don't know. Tell me. He said, Brother David, the worth of the thing is the price that's paid for it.

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What did God pay for you? And I burst out in tears because he gave his son's life for me.

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That's what I'm worth. That's what you're worth. That's showing that you're special because he chose you as his own child, and he gave his son for you.

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Second reason it's important to study this great old doctrine is because we are in a position of God being for us as opposed to being against us.

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And thirdly, because we own everything. We own everything.

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I see all of those second two points anyway in verse 31. For what shall we say to these things?

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What things? The fact that before Genesis 1 -1, God knew you as his own child and loved you as his own child and predestined that you would be saved in time and space.

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And then when time came, he called you and at the same nanosecond did 33 things to you, one of which was justified.

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You made you just as if you had never sinned in his sight. And then he's going to glorify you, but it's in the present tense in verse 30, which means

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God already sees you glorified. He already sees you as perfect. He doesn't see any sin. Your sins are not covered.

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They're not atoned for like they were in the Old Testament. And if you see that word in the New, it's a bad translation because now they're gone.

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He's removed them as far as the east from the west. He's buried them as deep as the deepest sea. They're not part of you anymore.

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The Father doesn't see any sin that you ever did, ever will do, or have ever done. And so that's what justified means.

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All of that has been done for you, and he sees you as glorified now. Now, what do we say of those things is what verse 31.

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What do you say when you learn those things? What if all you had in Scripture was that on a desert island? You just got that part of Romans.

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Would you have enough? Yeah, you'd have enough. This is all you would need to know. Should we say these amazing things?

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If God be for us, who can be against us? That's what we should say because we're in a position of him being for us, and we now own all things.

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Look at verse 32. For if he spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all.

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Who's the us there, by the way? The elect, the predestinated ones that are talked about in the context.

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Not all humans, not all people, only the elect in the context.

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You have to take everything in context. That's who he's writing this to, not to the world, but to the elect people. He, what should we say if God be for us, who can be against us?

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He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us, how shall he not with Jesus also freely give us all things?

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We own everything. We're co -heirs with, we're joint heirs, actually, with Christ. Everything that Jesus Christ owns, we own.

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That's all the scripture we need, isn't it? But he gave us more, didn't he? That's all we need to be joyful.

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If we just, all this coronavirus junk and the racial tension and all the things in the world, you know, we need to probably shut the news off and get back in the

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Bible a little bit and think on these things right here. The fourth reason it's great to know this great old doctrine of predestination is because we are made righteous in the

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Father's eyes. We are without condemnation in the Father's eyes, and we have an intercessor known as Jesus Christ the righteous, and that's found in the next verse.

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Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is

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God that justified us. Now, look at the logic here. If it's God, this is passive from our viewpoint, someone greater than us,

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God, justified us. It's something he did to us, not something we did for him.

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That's what religion teaches. Religion teaches you do good stuff so God will save you. That's what Arminianism teaches.

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That's what most churches today are teaching. Even Baptist churches are teaching that, and it's wrong.

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It's God who does the saving. So now think about it. The last phrase in the verse says, it is

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God that justified us. It is God that made us as if we had never sinned in his sight.

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That's what justified means. It is God who made us to be righteous. It is not our righteous acts.

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This is positional truth, not experiential. This is positional, something

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God did to you and put you in this position. You had nothing to do with it, but you can enjoy it.

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Just like the newborn baby has nothing to do with his birth, but he enjoys being around his mom especially at first, but eventually the father, right?

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So, I mean, it's just God that justified us. On the basis of that, you get the first part of the verse.

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Who can lay anything to our charge then? Who can condemn us? Who can lay anything to the charge of born -again people in this world?

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Of all the goats running around the world who want to criticize us for who we vote for, they want to criticize us because we don't like abortion.

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They want to criticize us because some of us like President Trump as awkward as he can be. I love what he believes as far as abortion, and I love what he believes as far as economy and capitalism versus socialism and communism.

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I love all that stuff he believes. I pray for his salvation. Now, but think of the things they can say against us, and they do every day in the media, but God says from my viewpoint, they can't lay anything.

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They can't charge you with anything. I see you as justified, which means I see you as righteous.

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I see you as if you've never sinned and never will sin. Wow. You don't understand that if you don't understand predestination.

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So there's the fourth reason for studying this great doctrine. Verse 34 says, who is he that can condemn you?

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It's Christ that died for you. If the God who spoke everything into existence, which the

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Bible says in Colossians that Jesus created all things by himself and for himself.

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Jesus is the creator of the physical universe and time. The Father delegated that to the

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Son, and he created it. So who can condemn us when it's the creator of the universe who died in our place to remove our sins?

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No one can. Yea, rather, that's risen again, proving he was who he claimed to be, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us before God, even when

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Satan himself comes and accuses the brethren and say, well, look how they're living. They mess up every day.

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Yeah, we do. But guess what? It was part of God's sovereign act to put this treasure, this born againness in earthen vessels.

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God did that on purpose that he would receive the glory when we do get it right every once in a while, because we don't unless he's doing it with us and through us.

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It's all part of God's purpose. So no one can condemn us because we're not perfect. And the reason they can't is because Jesus died for us and rose again, and when he came out of the grave, the

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Bible says in the book of Romans also that we came out with him. And our old man is now counted as crucified, and our new man is risen, and that's the real us, and there is no condemnation for the real us.

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The fifth reason we should study this great old doctrine of predestination is because we are secure and positionally innocent because of the truths of it.

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You can't be an Arminian and understand it. In fact, the true Arminian is logical, and he believes you can lose your salvation.

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The reason he believes it, he doesn't understand predestination in the election and foreknowledge. He doesn't understand it at all, doesn't even believe in it.

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As far as he knows, he's taken a penknife and cut all these passages out of the Bible. So therefore, he believes at any moment he could die and go to hell.

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The reason I know that's impossible is because of this great doctrine of predestination.

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It makes no sense at all that God has known me as his child forever and chosen and predestinated not only that I would be born again, but that I would do good works and be conformed into the image of his son and say, oh, but I could lose it.

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You see, that's just nonsense. That is pure Arminianism, and it's straight from Lucifer. And in case you don't remember who

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Lucifer is, that's Satan. That's the devil. That doctrine comes from Satan. Now, we need to study this great doctrine because it's the only thing that shows us we truly do have eternal security.

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What I find so inconsistent with the modern Baptists, the reason I took the name off the sign after the church voted to do it, and I agreed to take it off, is because modern

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Baptists are so inconsistent that they don't understand the doctrine of predestination and say they don't believe it, but they say, but I believe once saved, always saved.

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Oh, really? Well, that doesn't work. It doesn't work that way.

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Sorry, it just doesn't. Look at verse 35. Here is eternal security, and it's in the context of Romans chapter 8, foreknowledge, predestination, the calling, the justification, and the glorification, and then it says this.

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Who shall separate us? Who's the us? The people that have been foreknown, predestinated, called, justified, and glorified.

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Those people, that's us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation?

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Well, I'm glad it won't because we're going through that now. Shall distress? I'm glad it won't because we're going through that now.

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What about persecution? We're going to go through it. Our famine, that can be next. Listen, you just had pestilence.

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What's the next thing on Jesus' list when they ask him what will happen in the end of the age, right? Famine, nakedness, where you don't have clothing and shelter, peril, the sword.

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Can any of those things, if they did happen to us, can that separate us from the love of God? No, because we're eternally secure.

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We don't need to fear men who can kill the body. We only need to fear our Lord who can kill the soul, and understand he won't kill our soul because we're his babies.

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He loves us, and he called us, and he saved us, and he knew us before the foundation of the world. As it is written, for thy sake we are killed all the day long.

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So yes, Christians will be persecuted in time and space by the ungodly. We are accounted as sheep to the slaughter, but it doesn't end there.

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The sixth reason we need to understand this great doctrine of predestination is because we're more than conquerors, and the word conqueror means a successful person.

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Look at verse 37. Nay, in all these things, even if these things happen, even when these things happen, we are more.

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How can you be more than a conqueror, right? You're a conqueror or you're not. Scripture says we're more than that.

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We're more than conquerors through him that loved us, and then the next reason that I see that we need to study this old wonderful doctrine, let's read the next verse.

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I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come.

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Now I defy you. Can you name anything that's not included in that list in all the physical universe? It covers everything.

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So I'm persuaded that nothing, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, and that word creature means anything

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God created, nothing, shall be able to separate us. Who is the us? Those who were foreknown and predestinated before Genesis 1 -1, called in time, justified at the calling, and glorified in God's mind right now.

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That us, that us, neither height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our

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Lord. You can't think of anything that left out. You are special. You have a purpose given to you by Almighty God before he even created anything.

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You're therefore powerful in this world and will be used mightily by God. That's the seventh and last reason that we study this great doctrine, because you are loved by the author of the universe.

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You have a huge purpose. You have things only you can do in time and space, and God put you here to do them, and you can't do it if we're running from the devil.

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King David, when he was a young boy, ran towards the giant. That's a picture for us.

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We should take the equipment God's given us and the knowledge of who we are and run towards the enemy in the last little bit of time that we have on this earth.

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The entire foundation of the Western economic and military might and freedom was built on a thing that I studied at Baylor University Business School called the

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Protestant ethic. It came from John Calvin. It taught we're individuals, not collectivism, which is the opposite.

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Now what are they teaching in school? Oh, do everything in groups. We're going to have this little assignment. We're going to do it in a group.

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But that teaches collectivism, which is the same as communism. You do everything as a group. The individual is not important.

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It's all done for the sake of the group. The Bible doesn't teach that. The Bible teaches an individual is important because God knew you, the individual, before he made anything as his own dear child and called you and saved you and predestinated all that and brought it to pass.

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You're an individual. That's what Calvinism, that's what the Protestant ethic taught. It teaches hard work as opposed to laziness, which you get in this group thing.

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You'd let the other guys in the group do all the work, right? It teaches strong moral center as opposed to just whatever you want to believe is the truth.

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It teaches honesty, integrity, everything that our republic was built on.

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The citizens need to have these things and they're losing it because they don't understand these doctrines and many are not saved.

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Capitalism is taught in the Bible. All of this is part of the concept of predestination and everything that's taught in the

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Bible. And you can study history. If you go back far enough, you're going to see that the

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Protestant ethic is what the entire Western economy arose from, and everything good that we have in our society arose from that, and to the extent that we move away from that, we will lose it.

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So once you see the great doctrine of the sovereignty of God, you see it on almost every page of Holy Writ, and we will start there next

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Sunday, which is going to start right there with that verse, and we're going to take a look at some of the span of the truths of this doctrine throughout

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Scripture in one more Sunday. So, Dave, I'm going to turn it over to you, and I enjoyed being with you guys today.