April 6, 2006

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us.

Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation.

If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602. Or toll free across the United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is James White.

And good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line on a Thursday afternoon. Third edition of The Dividing Line from the new underground bunker of Alpha Omega Ministries. And things are, we've got a, we've got a curtain, those aren't curtains, window blinds up.

So I can see a little better now. But it's dark because we don't have any lights yet. So I've got an old Target 40 watt bulb desk lamp sitting over there. That's about all we've got, but we'll get along with that.

And hopefully we get air conditioning this weekend because it's going to get up around 90 degrees here in the Phoenix area. So slowly but surely, everything starts coming together. Of course, there's supposed to be a little something called the Easter pageant next week.

I don't know how in the world that's going to happen. That's not got behind us. But anyway, on and onward and upward to other things. This morning was looking at a website. And that's always a dangerous thing to do.

Before we get back to the Davis sermon, it's very similar to the same topic. In fact, it's very closely connected. And there is a website that I've mentioned in the past. I have attempted to get these folks to interact.

They refuse, as most people over on this side of things do refuse to interact, at least in a meaningful fashion. There is a website called baptistfire .com. I've written to them a number of times in the past, and they are anonymous.

That always tells you something about who you're dealing with. But there is an article posted on the 15th of March titled More SBC Leaders Warn of Calvinism. Two brothers from two seminaries add their voices to a growing list.

And I just love not only the utter lack of balance in this kind of stuff and the lack of interaction with reality itself, but likewise, utter ignorance of history. Check out this first paragraph. Baptist Fire has for some time now reported on the threat of the theology of Calvinism spreading throughout the Southern Baptist Convention.

Calvinism has split Southern Baptist churches and has infiltrated some Southern Baptist schools and seminaries. Our special report, Crept In Unawares, carefully documents the spread of Calvinism and provides informative sources for pastors and church members, which, by the way, includes things like Dave Hunt.

The report also provides links to sermons and statements by influential Southern Baptist leaders who are concerned about the spread of Calvinism. Of course, the reality is if you go back to the founders, this isn't something that has come in from the outside.

It was there at the very beginning. And these folks just want to rewrite history. They just want to completely ignore the reality of the existence of James Pettigrew Boyce and what he wrote and what he believed.

And I think that's why they don't interact with anyone because the only way that their position can hold up is if people remain ignorant. And people don't remain ignorant if you interact with people. So you just put your stuff out and hope you influence enough ignorant people who aren't going to check you out to accomplish something.

It's the only way I can figure it out. I don't know how else it is. There's even a section here about these people want to do debates and debating is ridiculous and blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, that's because they know that they couldn't do it.

But then it gives this chain of events, and it's talking about, of course, the Ergon Kanner appearance on the founders blog. And I just love this. Number two says, after the article was released, Calvinists on the blog immediately started posting comments about Hunt, many of which were spiteful and hateful.

OK, here comes. Remember, Dr. Kanner says that Calvinists are worse than Muslims. Dr. Kanner, you know, just just said incredible called Calvinism a virus that doesn't get mentioned. Well, it actually does get mentioned because that's considered to be a good thing.

But here are the spiteful, hateful things said here, quoting, for example, a former disgruntled staff member at Hunt's church said, someone needs to look at the true stats of a local healthy church. You will not find it at Johnny Hunt's church, end quote.

Now, the only way that could be hateful or spiteful is if it's untrue. Is Hunt's church different than many of the mega Southern Baptist churches where the back door is just as big as the front door, where you have to baptize 60 people to get one person who attends regularly?

Is it different than that? Is that what's being asserted here? If it is, then you could you'd at least have a ground upon which to try to argue that the statements wrong, whether that makes it hateful or spiteful is something else.

But then then the other one here's here's another hateful, spiteful thing. Another said his theology and preaching are weak.

Oh, wow.

That's man. I tell you, that is nasty. Calvinists are worse than Muslims. But he's preached theology and preaching.

That's hateful.

That's I mean, the folks at this at Baptist fire just wouldn't wouldn't know the balance if if it's unbelievable. So anyway, then they put all these statements from from Dr. And some of them were obviously significantly nastier than anything mentioned here.

For example, have any of you done anything except kill your churches with sermons expounding the Westminster Confession? Probably not.

Now.

Obviously, that assumes that a person who's reformed does nothing but expound the Westminster Confession. What happened to the 1689 London Baptist Confession? First of all, secondly, people preaching on that.

How about preaching on John six or Romans nine or Ephesians one or something like that? Anyways, I would guess that unlike William Carey, most guys who are hyper about Calvinism use it to justify your laziness.

How is that not spiteful and hateful? I just wonder the the double standard is is pretty, pretty amazing. Of course, the debate challenge section and they they just notice it. It says they instead sought the services of someone who is not a Southern Baptist who evidently has made a small name for himself by issuing debate challenges.

That would be yours. Truly. That's me. And no one sought my services. Baptist fire, anonymous people who won't tell us who you are and stand behind what you say. No one sought my services. No one came and said, you need to go after these guys.

I, in fact, challenged Dr. Cantor numerous times before this. He had declined each invitation. And then when he came on the founders blog and the the conversation that took place became known, I posted on my Web site that that is what resulted in this debate taking place.

No one came to me and said, we need to bring you anything of the kind. It's just it's just silly. This is the editor's remarks. Thank God for the canners. As more SBC leaders come out strongly against Calvinism, the spread of Calvinism will slow.

Hopefully Calvinism will wane significantly in the SBC over the next several years. Well, folks, it might.

You know what?

You know that that's quite possible. But the only way to actually banish Calvinism is actually to deal with the biblical text. And because as long as the Holy Spirit's in the world, there are going to be people who care about what the Bible teaches.

And they're going to care about it more than than people like baptist fires, shallow surface level, rah rah type rhetoric and inability to engage the text in any meaningful fashion. And so that's that could be happening.

But it was it was interesting to read this. And the other lack of any any semblance of fairness or accuracy in what it was what it was saying was sort of sort of sad to observe. Well, anyway.

Yeah.

Not the text.

Let's not go there. Speaking of the text. Last week, we spent a small amount of time. Well, we spent the whole time, actually, on just two of the citations that are taken from the Dr. Davis sermon. By the way, I did, as I said I would do on Tuesday, I contacted Dr. Davis.

I let him know. And my opponent coming up on the 21st and Sedalia on the subject of Calvinism, who I discover is an associate pastor at Dr. Davis's church. He is a former assistant attorney general for the state of Illinois by the name of Pastor Wright, W .R .I .G .H .T.

And I sent this information about the programs I've done so far to Dr. Davis and asked him to pass that along. Because, again, the reason I'm doing this is hopefully to avoid spending the entire debate dealing with straw men and misrepresentations.

And so if I demonstrate and document the misrepresentations of places where Dr. Davis, for example, followed Dave Hunt and his errors, then maybe we'll have a real good debate on the 21st and that will be useful to folks.

And so I have a number of statements already queued up ready to go here in the Dr. Davis sermon. And so with that, we will press on.

What kind of love is it that will consign men to hell capriciously and arbitrarily with no chance or opportunity for those people to decide for themselves to be saved? What kind of love is that? What kind of God is that?

Is that just?

Is that righteous? Calvinism, by taking away man's will, makes God responsible for everything. The Calvinist from yesteryear, A .W. Pink, whom my missionary friend had been reading after, said this, to deny God's foreknowledge is to deny His omniscience.

But we must go further. Not only did God's omniscient eye see Adam eating of the forbidden fruit, but God decreed beforehand that he should do so. Pink thinks that because God knew something ahead of time, that God also planned and forced it to happen.

Now, can I tell you, this thinking and teaching doesn't make God greater. This makes God the author of and responsible for all of man's sins.

Now, you can see that Dr. Davis has drunk very deeply at the well of Dave Hunt's misapprehensions and use of false terminology in his argumentation. A number of errors there. The term force, of course, the idea that man has no will, another error.

Of course, Reformed people believe that man has a will. It is a will enslaved to sin. It is a will in love with sin. It is a will that outside of regeneration, renewal, will never choose God, is incapable of doing so.

Romans 8, verses 7 -8 says that. John 6, verse 44 says that. John 8, verses 43 -47 says that, etc., etc., etc. But the will is there. The will is active. But the will is in rebellion, and it needs renewal.

It needs to be freed from the slavery of sin. Again, I would ask Dr. Davis how God knows future events, if, in point of fact, he is not the determiner thereof. Is he just merely the passive observer of these things?

When he created all things and he knew what was going to take place, he did so without a purpose. You know, it's difficult for me to believe that these folks who repeat this stuff over and over again, as if it somehow is an objection to Calvinism, do not realize it's actually an objection to simple Christian theism.

And have they never thought these things through? Have they never thought what it means to say, Did God know everything that was going to happen when he created?

Yes!

But did God force it to happen?

No!

What does that mean? What kind of language is that? If God created with perfect knowledge of what was going to take place in every aspect of history, then he either did so for a purpose, which is what I believe, or he did so without a purpose.

So he knew all the evils could take place, he knew all the tragedies could take place, he knew about tsunamis and earthquakes and everything else, but he did it without any purpose. Just said, well, you know, I think I'll create and wow, a lot of bad stuff's going to happen, but okay, I'll just blame it on man's free will.

Have they never thought through this? I just, I don't understand it. It was either purposeful or purposeless. One of the two. How do you, you know, I mean, that's why I think a consistent Arminian, a consistent Arminian is going to be an open theist.

I mean, I consider open theism a rank heresy, but at least it's consistent Arminianism. At least it puts the emphasis in the right place. The source of open theism, which if you're new to the program, open theism is a belief that God does not have exhaustive knowledge of future events.

He does not know what free creatures will do in the future. He knows what he's going to do. He can predict things on a certain level, but he does not know what free creatures are going to do, so that libertarian free will on the part of the creature is true libertarian free will.

And so obviously Arminius and the early Arminians recognized that was heresy. They didn't go there, but open theists today, Gregory Boyd, John Sanders, Clark Pinnock, they are more than happy to affirm this and to try to defend this.

And of course we have a debate against John Sanders from Reformed Theological Seminary that you can listen to and see if it stands up to the word of God or not. It certainly does not, but you can listen if you'd like to hear how that works out.

But the point is at least they're consistent. At least they can say, well, actually when God created, he didn't know all this was going to happen. He didn't know Adam was going to fall. In fact, John Sanders said that God was surprised when Adam fell.

And he didn't know any one of us was ever going to exist, not a one of us. Because think of it, your existence is the result of numerous free will choices by all sorts of people. And so in light of that, God didn't know you'd ever exist.

He doesn't know when you're going to be born. He doesn't know when you're going to die. All that stuff about your days being written for you in his book, all that is irrelevant. You have to come up with odd ways of trying to figure those passages out.

I mean, it's at least a consistent philosophical system. It has nothing to do with the Bible, but at least it's a consistent philosophical system. And I can at least respect those people who will at least be consistent at that point.

But I don't understand how people can preach like this and not realize they're actually objecting to their own system. He will say, does God have decrees? Yes. But he then limits those decrees to only things in the natural realm.

God basically can do what he wants out there, and he can do earthquakes and fires and floods and whatever else is in the natural realm. But when it comes to what human beings do, let's not go over to Genesis chapter 50 and Joseph being sold into slavery in Egypt.

God has an intention. Man has an intention. Both same action. Let's not talk about Isaiah 10. Let's not go to the cross. Look at Acts 4, 27 to 28. Let's not touch these 10-foot pole. Of course, we've seen this over and over again.

It happened on a rather well-known call-in radio program back in December of 2003, too. So nothing new, but you're still not able to get folks to really engage this stuff. When you use language like forcing and things like that, as if—and it's going to come up here in the next clip, too— as if somehow if God is sovereign over things, he's forcing.

You know what the picture is. The picture is of this poor, innocent human being and just wants to do what's right, and big, mean God is behind him with his big gun saying, be bad. I mean, it's just absurd to even suggest that that is what is being said.

No one is forced. Man does what he does because he loves to do what he does. And outside of grace changing his heart and outside of the restraining grace of God— I really wonder if these folks believe in the restraining grace of God.

I really wonder if they believe that God is restraining evil in this world. I sure do. I sure do. In fact, when we see terrible, horrible things happening, we see what Islam is doing these days and the real nature of Islam coming out and the behavior of these people.

And we see these things happening where people murder all sorts of— well, remember that young man two weeks ago at the rave. Kills six people and then puts the shotgun to his face and blows his head off.

Obviously drugs and everything else involved and the culture of death and all the rest of that stuff. Those are instances where I believe God just lifts his finger of restraint. Just lifts his finger of restraint.

God doesn't have to force anybody to do that. He is actively involved in restraining the vast majority of the evil of man's heart. And every once in a while, for his own purposes, he lifts that gracious restraint and we're shocked.

And I think that's the horror of hell is that God's hand of restraint will be gone. It'll be gone. And the full scope of the evil and darkness of man's heart will be able to be expressed. Well, how could God do that from this perspective?

You know, I was listening to someone just yesterday on the way home on a national radio program that was defining the Christian position as beginning with libertarian free will. Well, how can God restrain evil?

If it's unjust for God to raise dead sinners to spiritual life. In fact, I received an email from a friend of mine at a certain very large evangelical Bible college in the Midwest. And a very well-known theologian was speaking there this week.

And he reports to me that one of his arguments made in chapel was that compatibilism and Calvinism, he was mocking both, basically teaches that God implants a chip in our brain so he can control us. That's what compatibilism is.

And I listened to this stuff and I just go, I don't understand how people can try to defend these types of systems, try to make these kinds of statements. How could God, to be consistent with a libertarian free will perspective, how could God restrain evil?

How does he have a right to do that? And if they allow that God can restrain evil, then why can he not raise people to spiritual life, make them new creatures and cause them to love Jesus Christ, because that's their nature to do so now, change them from being God-haters to God-lovers.

Why is that made divine rape or robots or puppets and all the rest of this stuff? If God restrains evil, does that mean we're puppets? I mean, I haven't mentioned this because I didn't want to completely prejudice the audience, but I suppose I should mention it now.

At one point in this sermon, I think it's coming up here, it might even be at this point. At one point in this sermon, Dr. Davis is standing before his people and he has a puppet on a string and he's dancing this puppet around as if that's what Calvinism is saying about mankind.

That's the kind of theatrics that go into this kind of presentation. It's just absolutely amazing to me. It truly is. But anyways, if I keep going like this, I'm not going to get too many clips today.

The third thing that God cannot do in salvation is God cannot force a man to love him or accept his love. If love is forced, it ceases to be love. That is the ultimate reason why God gave man a choice in the Garden of Eden to start with.

God didn't want robots who had no choice but to love him. God wanted men and women who would choose to love him.

Now again, every Calvinist that I know of, and that is a fairly wide group, believes that we choose to love God. I have chosen to love God. Now, does that make me better than someone else?

No.

And the reason that it does not make me better than someone else is because I was enabled to do so. I was freed from the just condemnation of my sins. I was also freed from the effect of that sin in enslaving my will to evil.

And I have, as a result, chosen, because it is my nature as a redeemed creature to do so, I have chosen to believe in Jesus Christ and to cling to him and to follow him. I made that choice. The difference between us is, the Arminian wants to say, and God's entire attempt to save is dependent upon that choice.

Without that choice, God fails. The Calvinist says, my entire choice is dependent upon the success of what the triune God has chosen to do to glorify himself from eternity past. One is theocentric. I'm theocentric.

When I describe, and it's interesting, I was listening to a debate while writing today, and even listening to the Christian who was doing the debate, and he did fine, but you could tell that he wasn't reformed, because when he described the gospel, he described it very much in human terms.

It's what man, it's how man can get this, and man can get that, and so on and so forth. It wasn't really what God has done so as to glorify himself. And I thought, if I were in that person's position, that I would have been describing it in a very different fashion than he was.

But we are theocentric. We describe what God has done, and that remains true for each and every generation. The Arminian is anthropocentric. He's focused upon what man does to allow God to save himself.

That's the difference between the two.

You see, God could and did create a race of people that he allows to determine their own destiny.

Determine their own destiny. Now, where do you get that from scripture? Doesn't Psalm 139 say that God has determined the very day of our death? How could that be true if what was just said is the case?

Where is this man determines his own destiny stuff in the scripture? So we have lots of stuff about choosing. I don't know what God's secret decree is, and so I choose in light of his prescriptive decree.

I choose to either do what God says to do or not. But the fact of the matter is the day of my death is fixed in God's decree. Now, if I just choose to stop doing what I've been doing since June of last year, and I decide to stop exercising, and I decide to stop getting that aerobic exercise in there that gets your heart all healthy and stuff like that, and I decide, you know what, I like honey buns.

I like cinnamon rolls, you know. Cinnabons, you know, they have those in the airport when you go through. If you look at a Cinnabon, your fingers get sticky. Isn't that the case? You don't even have to touch it.

My fingers have gotten sticky walking by the Cinnabon on the way to my gate. It is incredible. It's in the air. It just clings to you. But they are so good when they're warm and gooey with cold milk, and oh, it's just great.

And I could just Starbucks. I can't be too mean to Starbucks because my daughter works there now. But anyway, I could just eat that stuff all day long, stop exercising. And the fact of the matter is if that's all you ate, I would materially impact my lifetime from a human perspective.

I mean, ignoring things like getting run over by somebody in a truck or something like that, a person who takes care of themselves and exercises and takes care of their heart, and I've looked at my family history, and if anything is going to get me, it's going to be a cardiovascular thing, so I've got to keep on the cardiovascular stuff.

Generally speaking, a person who takes care of themselves is going to live longer than the person who shovels Cinnabon down their throat every single day. In fact, by a long period of time. So how could God know when I'm going to die?

If everything, if it's just all up to me, and I just make those decisions and make those choices on my own, and God has nothing to do with it, he may have determined, he may have given me the gifts to be able to minister for years and years and years, and he may even have it in his mind that 20 years from now, when I'm in my 60s, that I'm going to do something that's going to be used of him in a great way.

What if I kill myself with Cinnabons before then? I guess he has to start all over again. Has to start all over again. Don't they think about these things before they make these kinds of statements? Because he's even going to say here, he's going to say, well, are there decrees?

Listen.

Are there decrees in the Bible where God determines that something is going to happen? Absolutely, yes. There are decrees in the Bible where God creates the world and it is done. There are decrees in the Bible where God sends a flood upon the whole earth and it is done.

But there are other decrees in the Bible where God decrees something and gives man a choice about whether or not he is going to follow that decree or not.

That's not even a proper use of the term decree, if that's what it is. That would be a prescriptive revelation of his will rather than a decree. But do you notice that was all natural stuff? That was all stuff in regards to floods and fires.

Even though I have to say Noah's flood really trumped a lot of people's libertarian free will. They were going, blah, blah, blah. That was so much the end of their libertarian free will. But that limitation of it doesn't make any sense.

When we come back from this break, I'd like to look at some biblical passages or at least one that sort of goes the other direction, shall we say, from what Dr. Davis had to say. We're going to take a break.

Be right back.

Such a rarity today. So many stars, strong and true, quickly fall away.

What is Dr. Norman Geisler warning the Christian community about in his book Chosen But Free? A new cult? Secularism? False prophecy scenarios? No, Dr. Geisler is sounding the alarm about a system of beliefs commonly called Calvinism.

He insists that this belief system is theologically inconsistent, philosophically insufficient, and morally repugnant. In his book, The Pottish Freedom, James White replies to Dr. Geisler, but the Pottish Freedom is much more than just a reply.

It is a defense of the very principles upon which the Protestant Reformation was founded. Indeed, it is a defense of the very gospel itself. In a style that both scholars and laymen alike can appreciate, James White masterfully counters the evidence against so-called extreme Calvinism, defines what the Reformed faith actually is, and concludes that the gospel preached by the Reformers is the very one taught in the pages of Scripture.

The Pottish Freedom, a defense of the Reformation and a rebuttal to Norman Geisler's Chosen But Free. You'll find it in the Reformed Theology section of our bookstore at aomin .org. This portion of the dividing line has been made possible by the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

The Apostle Paul spoke of the importance of solemnly testifying of the gospel of the grace of God. The proclamation of God's truth is the most important element of his worship in his church. The elders and people of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church invite you to worship with them this coming Lord's Day.

The morning Bible study begins at 9 .30 a .m. and the worship service is at 10 .45. Evening services are at 6 .30 p .m. on Sunday and the Wednesday night prayer meeting is at 7. The Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church is located at 3805 North 12th Street in Phoenix.

You can call for further information at 602 -26-GRACE. If you're unable to attend, you can still participate with your computer and real audio at prbc .org, where the ministry extends around the world through the archives of sermons and Bible study lessons available 24 hours a day.

Answering those who claim that only the King James Version is the Word of God, James White, in his book, The King James Only Controversy, examines allegations that modern translators conspired to corrupt Scripture and lead believers away from true Christian faith.

In a readable and responsible style, author James White traces the development of Bible translations, old and new, and investigates the differences between new versions and the authorized version of 1611.

You can order your copy of James White's book, The King James Only Controversy, by going to our website at www .aomin .org.

Under the guise of tolerance, modern culture grants alternative lifestyle status to homosexuality. Even more disturbing, some within the church attempt to revise and distort Christian teaching on this behavior.

In their book, The Same-Sex Controversy, James White and Jeff Neal write for all who want to better understand the Bible's teaching on the subject, explaining and defending the foundational Bible passages that deal with homosexuality, including Genesis, Leviticus, and Romans.

Expanding on these scriptures, they refute the revisionist arguments, including the claim that Christians today need not adhere to the law. In a straightforward and loving manner, they appeal to those caught up in a homosexual lifestyle to repent and to return to God's plan for His people.

The Same-Sex Controversy, defending and clarifying the Bible's message about homosexuality. Get your copy in the bookstore at www .aomin .org.

Now the pilgrim's progress is not an easy way. It's a journey to the sun day by day.

God's Sovereignty Over Human Salvation and Evil

And welcome back to The Dividing Line. We are listening to a sermon by Dr. Davis on reasons why he is not a Calvinist. He's already told us he was pretty much following Dave Hunt, and so we know why someone who follows Dave just could not possibly understand what Calvinism is all about.

I was going to mention some texts, some passages. Just in passing, these are certainly passages that are familiar to many people, but one of them I've always found rather ironic, in that it is a pagan king who is used of the Lord to rebuke those, I think, who would question His control over all things.

Daniel chapter 4, Nebuchadnezzar, remember he had become very arrogant and God struck him down for a period of time and took his rationality away from him, and in Daniel chapter 4, beginning in verse 34,.

But at the end of that period I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored Him who lives forever. For His dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom endures from generation to generation.

All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, but He does according to His will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth, and no one can ward off His hand or say to Him, What have you done?

Now please notice, He doesn't just simply say, Oh, God rules over fires and floods and natural disasters. He does rule in the host of heaven, but He also rules among the inhabitants of the earth, and no one, that's a person, human, can ward off His hand or say to Him, What have you done?

God does not sit down in the dock, shall we say, and allow us to accuse Him of things. That's why when we read about the trial of the false gods, that text where so often in speaking, for example, again thinking about the LDS Easter pageant coming up next week and talking to Mormons, we go to Isaiah 43 and 44 and passages like that where God demonstrates who He truly is, what's unique about God over against the false gods.

And in the context of doing that, for example, in Isaiah chapter 43, verses 12 to 13, You are my witnesses declares Yahweh that I am God, no one can deliver out of my hand. When I act, who can reverse it?

Well, seemingly, from the Arminian perspective, everybody. God has acted to bring about salvation, but they can freely reverse it. God has decreed the salvation of every single individual, but they can freely reverse it.

Evidently, that doesn't apply to them. Isaiah 45, 7, you know, I form light and create darkness. I bring prosperity and create disaster. That's literally the Hebrew term, raw, evil. I, Yahweh, do all these things.

He's big enough to take that accusation and continue to say I am holy and just in all that I do. You can just simply throw up your hands and say, Contradiction, contradiction, or admit that God's bigger than you might want to admit that He is.

Isaiah 46, 9 through 10, remember the former things, those of long ago. I am God and there is no other. I am God, there is none like me. I make known the end of the beginning from ancient times and what is still to come.

I say my purpose will stand and I will do all that I please. Isn't that what the 133rd Psalm is all about? The contrast between man and his frustrated plans and God and his fulfilled plans. Daniel 11, 36, the king will do as he pleases.

He will exalt and magnify himself above every god. He will say unheard of things against the God of gods. He will be successful until the time of wrath is completed. For what has been determined must take place.