07-12-2020

The Crisis of the Virus, Government Control, and End-Times Expectations

All right. Very good. Anyway, good to have our Tradeway friends out there around the country and our home folks. Good to have you with us. 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.

We're living through really interesting times, and so much of it's political at this point. So much of the information that we've gotten has been false information. In fact, I just wrote a 15-page document on my assessment of the whole virus issue, and I don't know, 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 I will, maybe I won't. But anyway, I know the Lord has taken our country through some really serious times for His purposes. 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? 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. Have you ever thought about this? You know, before we started this session that we're on now in Romans 8, verse 29 through 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. And 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 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 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? 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.

He talked about race would rise against race. In the Greek, it's ethnos against ethnos, race against race. We've seen that now. So what's the next thing we're looking for is a huge earthquake, right? 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 sorrow, as 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.

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 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. Isn't that interesting? 2 ,000 years ago, that was written. And I've always wondered about it.

I know in the book of Daniel, the angel told Daniel that in the end times, as you get closer to these things, you'll understand these writings in the scripture more. 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, I've always just thought it meant, well, there must be some chip they put in our forehead or in our hand. And if you don't have it, you can't go buy anything because it's a credit card.

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.

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, 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, 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, so now you can go in the grocery store where all the other people are, and you can buy food.

So, think about that, and it's just food for thought, right? So, one thing we know, the 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.

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

All right, that's working. That looks like that's working. I think I'm ready. Does it look okay to you, Dave? Yeah, it looks great. Looks good. All right. All right, good. 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.

Father, we just thank you so much for the fact that you've given us your word. You've given us your spirit, for without the water and the spirit, we could not have salvation. We could not grow. We could not function.

We could not do good works. We couldn't be part of your family business, and so thank you that you've grafted us into your family by the Abrahamic covenant, by what 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, but with it, we have everything because we have you, and thank you for that.

Now, go with us during this study time, and may your Holy Spirit be our teacher, and we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. We asked the question last time, because we find ourselves in Romans chapter 8, verses 29 through 39, and this is the great passage on predestination in Romans chapter 8.

So, I've asked the question, the ancient doctrine of predestination, is it Calvinism? And we talked about that a good deal last time, so I'd like to review just a little bit. 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.

That short verse carries a lot of information. One thing we see is that there is such a thing as foreknowledge. God has it because he's God, and there is such a thing as predestination, and that they are not the same thing.

They are two different things, so the Bible is teaching both here, and there are two things we're predestinated unto. Number one, we're predestinated to be born again. That's found at the very end of the verse, the firstborn among many brethren.

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

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. We're predestinated to be born and become brethren, to be saved, and secondly, we're predestinated to be conformed, and that's the good works 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. For one thing, you're not a mature Christian if you do that. You might be a seminarian, right?

I don't know, 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, 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 Christian, we're free to go to the water and the Word. That's, I'm sorry, the water and the Spirit. That's the water being the Word of God and the Spirit being the Holy Spirit.

And 1 John says that we have not any need that any man teach us, but we have an unction from God. 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, 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.

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

So, this first, we laid this out last time, but in answering the question about whether this is Calvinism or not, I thought what we should do before we get into the scriptures is to take a look at church history.

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 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 scripture brought to him, but he also asked for his books.

So, the great apostle Paul studied many books other than the 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.

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.

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 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 Calvinism.

He taught the depravity of man, which they say is Calvinism. He taught that we're saved as a gift, a free gift of grace from God, and it's a calling, and that the calling and regeneration of the Holy Spirit is the first cause of salvation, and he taught all of that 1 ,155 years before John Calvin was born.

He took many of his thoughts from Romans 5, 5, and 6, where it shows clearly that it's the Holy Spirit that saves us. It's the Holy Spirit that regenerates us. Everything else that happens after that is an effect.

All right, so this was taught 1 ,155 years before John Calvin was born. 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. Clement I of Rome.

They call him St. Clemens of Rome, and he lived in 88 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. Peter. So you had Peter, and oh, I knew who came next.

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

All right, so he also, we think, probably is the Clement that was mentioned in Philippians 4 .3, but the point is he taught the sovereignty of God in election 1 ,408 years before John Calvin was born.

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, 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.

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, 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.

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

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. 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. He preached to over 10 million people in his lifetime, sometimes preaching 10 times a week. He said this about what some people call Calvinism.

Whatever may be said about the doctrine of election, it is written in the Word of God as with an iron pin. There is no getting rid of it, there it stands. However much this may be disputed, as it frequently is, you must first deny the authenticity and full inspiration of the Holy Scripture before you can legitimately and truly deny this doctrine.

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

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 Baptist on our sign anymore because we're more like Spurgeon was. We're not like modern Baptists, and it's confusing.

So we took it off the sign by unanimous vote of the church a while back. So we're Park Meadows Church. We're, as Brother Otis, our old Bible teacher who's in heaven now, used to say, we are Biblinarians.

I hate to put that on the sign, though. I think it might keep people away. What do you think? Park Meadows Biblinarian Church. But anyway, Calvinism is not Baptistic, is what they've told me. So you need to stop teaching it.

Well, that contradicts history so much, and it's absolutely beyond nonsense. Let's take a look at it. I showed this last time. I'm going to pop it up on the screen and let you just see that these are the names.

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

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 United States, and so John Calvin was left to run the Methodist Church.

I'm sorry. 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.

But he's the only one on this list that's not a Baptist. The reason I listed him is because he had such a huge influence on Charles Spurgeon, the Prince of Preachers, who was a particular Baptist. So now you can look at the list of Baptists.

The rest of these are Baptists who were Calvinistic. Charles Spurgeon, Adoniram Judson, I mean, and these people are amazing people. You hear people say, well, if you're Calvinistic, you don't believe in witnessing.

Listen, Judson was the first main missionary to Burma. He formed the very first Baptist Association of America, which supported missions, and the greatest, you look down to below that, William 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 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 Word of God into many, many dialects in India, and he was a Calvinist.

So these people that say it's not Baptistic and that you won't witness if you're Calvinist are simply totally wrong. The greatest mission works in modern history are founded by Calvinistic Baptists, right?

Basil Manly was president of university. He was actually president of University of Alabama, but he was a great preacher, and he helped found the Southern Baptist Convention. He was Calvinistic. B .H. Carroll helped found Southwestern Theological Seminary and did work at Baylor University.

He was Calvinistic. Jesse Mercer, who was Georgia Baptist Convention, published hymnals and newspapers. He was Calvinistic and was a Baptist. Andrew Fuller, who started the Baptist Missionary Society, wrote the book The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, which took Calvinism and brought it into Baptist theology as a textbook.

He was Calvinistic, obviously. He was also the first secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society. All these men were mission-minded. They all believed in witnessing. Richard Furman in the 1800s taught Latin, Greek, Hebrew, history, theology, medicine, influential in writing the constitutional clauses of our Constitution that dealt with separation church and state.

He was Calvinist. Arthur Pink, one of the greatest authors and Baptist preachers ever, Calvinistic. Charles Clark, founder of Rhode Island, the state, was a Baptist preacher and Calvinistic. Luther Rice helped found the Southern Baptist Convention, Calvinistic Baptist preacher.

J .R. Graves, one of the great most influential men of the South, same thing. W .H. Strong, you ever heard of Strong's Concordance? He wrote it. He also wrote a systematic theology, Calvinistic Baptist.

R .B .C. Howell, J .W .B. Tidwell, the Tidwell Bible Building over at Baylor, where I studied theology. It was wrong theology, but I studied that at Baylor in the building named after this Baptist who was Calvinistic, and then on and on.

So 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. All of that is nonsense, and so I've seen writings that said that as many in the 19th century, as many as 95 of the Baptists were known as Particular Baptists, which is what Charles Spurgeon was, and less than 5 were General Baptists.

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

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

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, so it all contradicts itself. It all does like anything that's not the truth does.

You can't piece it together. 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.

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. 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.

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

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. 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.

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. 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. God chose to write the New Testament in Greek for a reason. It's almost like math. It's very accurate. It's very concise. I mean, it means what it means, says what it says, and this particular word in the 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. 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 English New Testament.

It sometimes is translated into the English word ordain or foreordain or predestinate. All of these words come from this same Greek word, and it comes from two little words, pro, which means before, plus horizo, which means to mark out.

So it means to mark it out beforehand. Now when we're talking about sovereign God who is in the eternal now, who created everything that is, and who allowed his son Jesus to speak everything into existence, including all of time and space, this is the one, the great God of the universe, who marked out everything ahead of time.

That's what the word means. 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.

All of this, 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 New Testament. Pro horizo is full of these meanings, but basically it means exact, great translation here in the King James, predestinate.

I mean there's not much better word you can pick to describe what it means. Now the next verse says, moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called. Now look at this. If you start at the top of 29, it says he foreknew.

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

It's in the passive, which means it's something someone bigger than you does to you. He justified us. In other words, he made us be saved. He made us right with God. But those same people, the same people he called, and a calling is a teaching throughout the 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. 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. 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, 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 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? 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, 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.

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 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. In modern English, we might say it this way.

Instead of saying who he foreknew first, secondly, he predestinated him. That's kind of what it sounds like when we say he also did. But in the Greek, it would be more like this. He foreknew and predestinated him at the same moment.

It happened at the same time. They're just two words that are copulated. They're brought together as one thing. So this accompanied that. So the predestination accompanied the foreknowledge. Even as he foreknew, so he predestinated is another way to say it.

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

That's the Greek word. That's just what it means. So we have to understand that or we'll get this wrong. 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 English doesn't even have that, but aorist means without regard to time.

It is not past, present, or future. It just is. 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, 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 God. So God did the foreknowing and the predestinating, not man. God did it, 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. All of this is in the grammar. 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, the very grammar now shows that foreknowledge does not come before predestination, but they happen together, and both happened before time began.

In other words, you go back to Genesis 1, 1 before that is when these two items happened. So they happened before time began, so there's another proof that they're not sequential. There was no time, therefore there was no sequence.

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.

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 two things. We're predestinated to be born again, but then to do good works. Both are predestinated, but in that context, we see clearly it's before time began, so it cannot be in sequence.

Aorist 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.

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

He is the I Am. He just knows, and things that he accomplished just are. He does not think or do in sequence like we do. We can't humanize God. So these things which God has done were not done in sequence.

They just were. They just are. So that's what we talked about last time. So now let's look at a fourth reason. The Bible does not teach that predestination is according to foreknowledge. Now, we've already established that predestination didn't happen because first he foreknew us.

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

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 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 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. 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 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, 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. 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.

It makes no sense. It makes no sense at all. You can't say that we first loved God, and then he loved us. That's what Arminianism teaches. The Bible clearly says 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. 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 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, so it's the grace of God that saved them, and Spurgeon, you wouldn't want to argue with Spurgeon.

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. He studied philosophy, studied logic, he studied the Scriptures, he studied history.

You're not going to out-argue him on this, and he's correct. He uses Scripture properly. He uses everything. Logically, argument is right there. 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 Arminian. Now, I believe this. My belief is that Lucifer was the first Arminian. 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, 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 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. 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.