Matt Slick Bible Study, 4/29/21, God as 1, 2, 3 persons, Trinity, Covenant, Christianity & Humanism

The Eternal Aseity and Self-Contained Being of God

Well, if you guys want to go check, you can go check on, uh, it's either the Karm homepage might have it, the Karm YouTube might have it, or Karm Facebook might have it, should have this video. Hopefully it will.

And I apologize for those who are, who are watching, if, uh, you are watching this on my phone and, uh, we're trying to get this to look good. We've got some people here for the Bible study and hopefully everything will check out and work out.

So. All right, let's pray. We're going to get started. Let me know if you guys can hear me in the other setup or whatever, if it works, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. That's it. Let's move on. All right.

Lord Jesus, I just want to come before you and ask you, Lord, for your blessing. And as we look to your word, look to you, I ask Lord that you would anoint, anoint the words, anoint the hearing and the truth.

It is your word. I ask Lord for your mercy and your grace on the technology and that you'd bless all the people here and the blessing of the people who are listening. So Jesus, we just give you thanks.

We ask it your precious name. Amen. All right. Um, so, so last week we talked about the nature of God. We talked about the on top, the on toss of God, and we talked about divine simplicity. We talked about perichoresis, you guys remember that the members of the Godhead interdwell each other, perichoresis, the divine simplicity of God is that there's only one being who is God and that God is one thing.

He's not parts. He's not part of son, part of the Holy Spirit, not part of the father. He's not part good and part holy. He's all one essence and one thing. And we call this the divine simplicity. And so out of that and the doctrine of the, of God, remember this was dealing with God's eternal non-contingency.

It was never a condition or never a time when the Christian Trinitarian God did not exist. God has always existed as God, always as a Trinity, the father, son, and Holy Spirit. And there was an eternal time.

I don't like using the word time, but what else are we going to do on eternal time? There was an eternal time when God was existing in fellowship and in union with himself in the inter-Trinitarian communion.

He didn't need anything else and he wasn't lacking anything else. And as Dave, you were talking about that song, what was it? God didn't want to have heaven without us or he couldn't do heaven without or something like that.

What the implication is that there's a lack in God and the completeness of God is found in our existence. This is an arrogance and God does not need us. God chose out of the freedom of his own will to, to create us.

He's the one, here we go, we've got people watching, good. He's the one, let me check that, okay, good. So he's the one who decided to create us out of the kindness and the goodness of his own heart and his mind.

In fact, if you guys are in the chat room, if you could, you could just let me know if you can hear me okay. I spent an hour, two hours trying to get this to work right. I'm literally on my phone and hopefully the phone will last a while because it's at 95%.

It's losing 5 every, about a percent a minute, so it might be about an hour. So you hear me fine, perfect, Steve says good, all right, good, good, good, okay. So in the doctrine of the ascetic God, a really, really, really, really important doctrine of God, we understand this in the machinations of it, we can understand that God does not need us.

This is really important. God is eternally non-contingent, eternally self-contained, there's nothing in God that's lacking in any way. He did not look into the future to see who's going to pick him, he would look into the future to see what's going to happen, he would look into the future in order to find some need of information somewhere, somehow, by extrapolation or for, as they say, foreknowledge, in order to find out decisions that would imply the back of God and the completion of God's essence, nature, purpose, design, character, work, helps for itself.

This is impossible, it's not the Christian theological perspective. However, there are a lot of Christians who say, that stupid song lyric was, that God didn't want heaven without us, or he would imply the lack.

Well, heaven is where God is, and it's not an issue of not wanting, because that would mean then, for eternity, God was not wanting to be by himself without heaven, it doesn't make any sense. Look at what happens when we have people like from Hillsong, the amateur theologians who then start to write into their songs, bad theology, and it's bad.

I've said this before, I'm going to say it again, if you're reformed in your theology, about 90 of the heresies that you might commit through ignorance are going to manifest, because in reformed theology, the election of God, the destination of God, the greatness of God, grace of God, the mercy of God, you are centers by grace.

He didn't need you, why would he pick you and elect you from the foundation of the world of Ephesians 1 -4? Over here, DG, and I wonder that, because why would that happen? But I certainly wonder that about myself.

Why would God pick any of us? We don't know, and he does not tell us why. It's not because of some characteristic in me or in you that would then say, oh, you know what, I can see why God would pick me, because look what I can do.

That is not it. Go to James 2 -4, you'll find out that God is negating any idea of partiality. God does not show partiality. Now, Romans 2 -11, God does not show partiality, clearly says that. People will say, well, wait a minute, if God elects people and predestines people, then he's showing partiality.

That's the biblical partiality. The biblical partiality, James 2 -4, where it says that a person comes into your home, your area, and he's got a nice car, nice clothes, good looking, or she or whoever, you show favoritism to that person based on what that person has.

That's not the favoritism that God has. God has the right to decree who he wants saved and who he does not want saved through his will. And it's not up to us, it's up to him. He opens the heart of the king where he wishes it to go.

Proverbs 21 -1, he moves the heart of the king. In Acts 16 -14, he opened up Lydia's mind to understand the things that Paul was saying. In Luke 24 -39, I think, I'm trying to remember, 45, one of those, I think it's 44, I don't know, I've got so many verses in my head that are closely related.

God or Jesus opened their eyes to see the word, their mind, their eyes were open to understand the truth. So the point is that God is the one who's doing this. I go back to the issue of aseity. I want people to understand that God does not need us.

He is not dependent on us. He doesn't need us. There's no lack at all if we don't exist, period. No lack. If you get this down in your head, then when you're listening to songs, God needed us to love him.

Wrong, okay? Or God will give you permission to come into my life, arrogant foolishness, which is a beautiful praise song, and they have that, those lyrics, God will give you permission, he didn't give God permission, it's idiocy.

And yet this kind of pervasive wackiness is in the church because they don't understand biblical theology. What I would love to be able to do is have a church, put them into chairs, where once a week I teach for an hour on one topic, like the aseity, immutability, transcendence of God, just on that, go back and forth.

The next week on the nature of the Trinity, we talked about the Trinity last week too, discuss this. People need to get it in their heads so they understand who God is. Yesterday I was talking to my old professor from seminary, Dave Scheringa, and he's the guy actually who kept me in SEM, I was ready to quit, and he's great.

We're talking yesterday about the issue of God's greatness and why he would pick and why he wouldn't and who and what, and he was saying that the churches today, and I say this, the churches today don't know what's going on.

They don't understand the truth. They don't understand the nature of God very well. He said something that was very interesting. He said when he was younger, where he grew up, they were catechized. Now catechism is something normally you might think of in a context of a church.

Well, the church, Roman Catholic Church, excuse me, will catechize somebody. You have a catechism and you'll go through the catechism little by little by little, daily by daily. And he said that they did this out of reformed confessions.

They would catechize out of reformed confessions. And by the time the children were ready for high school, they already understood their purpose, God's grace, justification, sanctification, the trinity, hypostatic union.

They already had an awareness before they even got to college. They understood what the total is. But most Christians don't know. And unfortunately, I've been getting this a lot lately, where people are saying to me, Matt, you've taught me so much.

I haven't learned this in church. I've never heard this stuff. How long have you been a Christian? 10, 15, 20, 25 years or more. And I haven't learned this stuff. And it's a shame. It's a testimony to the failure of the pastors and the churches to teach what needs to be taught.

And because of it, Christians don't have the anchor of the truth of who God is. And because of that, they'll believe all kinds of false things like taught by Joyce Meyer, by Joel Osteen, by Kenneth Copeland, by Stephen Furtick.

They'll believe these guys, what they say in some things, and they don't have the discernment. Grounding of the truth is in the personal work of Jesus Christ. But this emanates out of the very nature of God's existence and his character, his holiness.

And we talked about this last week as well. Now, we kind of went through this a little bit. So what I want to do is talk about the Trinity a little bit more. We talked about it a little bit last week, but I want to talk about it some more.

I'm going to slow down a little bit and talk about why God's a Trinity. We didn't do that last week, did we? Why? Okay. And I have a theory about why God must be a Trinity. And what I'm going to do is try and make sense of something.

And if it doesn't work, that's on me. If it does work, great. Here, hold on a second. This is why I'm looking down like this is my laptop. It's like that for the people, thumbs. So hopefully everything's still working.

All right. So Genesis 126 says we're made in the image of God. We are an analogy of God. We are an analogy of God's characteristics of his essence. So what I want to do for a bit is talk about what's called the communicable and incommunicable attributes of God.

Communicable and incommunicable or communicable and non-communicable. So some non-communicable attributes of God are such things as God is omniscient. That cannot be communicated to us. We can't understand that.

God is omnipresent. We can't relate to that. We can't understand that. God is all wise, called omnisapiens. We can't relate to that, especially, but we cannot relate to what that means. I'm going to pick on each one except for the ladies.

I can't pick on the ladies or get in trouble. No sandwiches for me. Oh, they're digging a hole for myself. So God has these characteristics. He's the omni, but we can't relate to it. How about this one?

God is immutable. He's unchangeable. But unchangeableness also means eternal. Because if he came into existence, then there's a change. And if he stops being, there's a change. So he is eternal. He's immutable.

He's unchanging, Malachi 3 .6. He does not change. We can't relate to that. When I look in the mirror, there's some change. And it's not for the better. I mean, I look in the mirror. One time I thought there was a monster in the house.

It was me in a mirror in the morning with that much light on. And that's how it's going. And then this goddess walked by. Oh, there's my wife. You know, she walked by. So she always looks good. And so making up for the sandwich comment earlier.

So keep trying, she says. My wife says, keep trying. What? What's that? Sandwiches later. We have two ladies here. Maybe we can have more sandwiches in a sandwich making contest. Oh, there's cookies. Those are good cookies too.

So notice, folks, these are not the things you're supposed to do with the ladies. Say things like I do, which is stupid. All right. So the communicable attributes of God. The communicable attributes. God can think, we can think.

God can love, we can love. God hates, and we can hate. A lot of people are surprised, but God hates. Psalm 5 .5, Psalm 11 .5. God hates all who do iniquity. And so those kinds of things are communicated to us.

So God's self-aware, we are self-aware. God's aware of others, we're aware of others. So we are an analogy, an imperfect analogy of God's essence, his perfection. We are not holy in our nature and essence as God is holy.

We're not omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. We think, but we don't think perfectly. God does. We love, but we don't love perfectly. God does. We hate, but we don't hate perfectly. God does. God is rational.

We're not always that rational. And things like this. God is aware of others, but when he's aware of others, he's aware of others in completeness and totality. We are not. We have to learn about others and things like that.

All right. Now, this is important because we can then see there's a relationship between God's existence and his personhood and ours, as we can see the relationship between them. Now, not a perfect relationship, but we get the point.

That's what it means when it says we're made in the image of God. Imagio Dei, image of God. We have this image of who God is in us. Because of this, every person is worthy of honor and respect. Male, female, black, white, blue, green, orange, purple, tall, short, doesn't make a difference.

Even those with Down syndrome, even those with birth defects, even those with autism, even those who don't look good. So there are people who do. And so, because they have that image of God, theologically, we have to understand that respect is to be given to everybody.

Now, this is hard to do because we're prejudicial. We have incomplete knowledge. You know, we have these things, you know, and you used to be a cop. So I'm sure there's a lot of stereotypes you're familiar with and stuff.

And, you know, I'm a cult dude, you know, I'm the cult. So when I see certain type of cults, I have certain expectations. I'm not always right about them. So there's an imperfection in our personhood.

But by analogy, we can still relate to it. All right, now, so God is a person, but he's three persons. But sometimes he manifests as one. That's bad, almost bad wording. He appears to speak to us as one person, where God says, I am that I am.

Exodus 3 .14 says to Moses, within the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit all speak and things like that. So let's talk about personhood, attributes of personhood. So personhood attributes are things like I am aware of me, I'm aware of you.

We can communicate, we can have fellowship. There can be levels of intimacy, levels of exchange and ideas. And the full scope of personhood is manifested in God in the Trinitarian sense, where for eternity he had fellowship, contemplation, intimacy, relationship.

This is the full and most perfect representation of personhood. We understand personhood that way. If we were to take an individual and put this individual into a room and have no light and kept the temperature, let's just say it's 72 degrees.

So it's not hot, not cold, whatever's perfect for that person. And there was a bed to sleep in and there's a toilet to go, water to drink and food gets put into a dark area three times a day. No fellowship, no light, no communication with anybody else.

And that's their life. Would we consider that to be torture? Yeah, we would. That'd be horrendous. In fact, in my novel, when Zeke, my novel, Time Trap, Zeke was in just that kind of a position and it was torture for him.

Like it was torture. So if God is a single person, then it would mean that if God existed as a single person, he would have existed eternally as a single person without fellowship, without love. Without an object of love, without communication, without reciprocity.

You know, when I insult Dave over there and he insults me back and, you know, there's reciprocity. Okay, we have fellowship and things like that. Well, that's how guys are, you know, we insult each other, but the ladies are always perfect and beautiful and everything else.

So there's reciprocity because there's another person, there's otherness there. If God is a single person for eternity, none of that is possible. The question then becomes, how is he a person? Because if the full nature of personhood, by the analogy that we understand personhood to be, is fellowship, intimacy, aware of self, others, communication, that's what we are by analogy, what we are in God.

Well, then how could it be that if we're made in God's image, God's a single person? There's a disparity there. It casts doubt on the legitimacy of the idea of God existing as a single person forever because there would be no fellowship, no intimacy, no communication, no awareness of self and others.

No self, yes, but no self and others and no reciprocity. And we would consider that to be torture. We would consider that to be bad. And yet that would be the eternal state of God. And so that obviously brings problems in.

So now let's talk about the idea of God existing as two persons. And this gets more difficult to explain if God were two persons. And you got to forgive me if I don't do a good job at this, but I'm still practicing how to articulate this.

If God were two persons, then the issue of fellowship and reciprocity wouldn't exist because two persons, let's say the father and the son, they could communicate to each other. They could have love for each other.

They could fellowship. But this is where my thinking, I believe, is a little weak in this. I'm still trying to get over this intellectual roadblock, but I need to step aside here and talk about abstraction.

We talked about this last week a little. So if I think of the number two, two in my mind is a manifestation of the universal quality of two-ness, which is a universal abstraction and it exists because God exists and is a reflection of his mind.

So that concept of two in my mind or the concept of two in your mind, is it an abstraction? Yes. Now here's a question. Is the abstraction itself alive? And the answer is, well, no. It's an abstraction and the abstraction itself, my thought of two-ness is not in itself alive.

It does not have self-awareness or awareness of others. Doesn't contemplate, doesn't think. So by definition, this abstraction is impersonal. So in my mind, if I'm by myself, I can think in an abstract form and I can experience.

Now, if God were a single person, then the abstractness of his contemplations would be part of his essence. And I could see that. However, since we see the single person issue has problems, the dual person issue becomes not as problematic, but I'm seeing a problem.

I could see it, but I can't articulate it. In that the exchange of fellowship between, let's say, the father and just a son and not the Holy Spirit in a binatarian sense, it would seem that the essence of fellowship would have in itself an impersonal quality.

Because there would have to be a perichoresis, an interdwelling of the essence and the personhood. If these are to exist like this, there's an interdwelling, then one thought is another thought of another.

But that would mean that the exchange, not just the internal thing, but the exchange of thought itself is an impersonal quality. And that would tend to mean that in the binatarian sense, an impersonal aspect of existence would be a necessary part of God to have fellowship.

But that's a problem because how can an impersonal aspect of God be part of his essence? It's different when it's an internal thought in your own mind. But that's different than an exchange. If I were to say, hey, how are you doing, Dave?

You say, I'm doing fine. So that's different. And what we have here is an exchange of fellowship. But you and I don't exhibit what we call perichoresis. We don't indwell into other's minds. And the nature of God in the binatarian sense, there would have been indwelling.

And the exchange would be, it implies that the exchange itself is impersonal. There'd be a necessary impersonal aspect of God's existence in a binatarian sense. And that's a problem because of the exchange.

In a trinitarian sense, what if the exchange of fellowship is facilitated by a third person so that the exchange of fellowship, the mutual perichoresis, a mutual indwelling in the Godhead, the mutual indwelling then would not be impersonal, but the fellowship would be facilitated between any two by the third.

And that there would be then a complete personal interchange in relationship where there would not be an impersonal abstraction as the means of fellowship. Now, if that hurt you, just take me trying to explain it.

So I don't know if that's making sense, but this is something I've been wrestling with for a while and trying to figure it out. And I've talked to other people about it. And one guy had written another book where they're talking about this aspect that I just said and he was giving it to me, but I couldn't quite grasp it because that doesn't quite make sense.

And I've been working on this for a year or two now, trying to build on some of the concepts, but the idea of an impersonal aspect of God being a necessary part of his essence is a problem. And so the trinitarian sense seems to solve that problem by implying that the impersonal thing that's exchanged would then be personal exchange.

And we have a perfect communion where any two persons are mediated in their fellowship by the third. So between the father and the son would be the Holy Spirit, between the father and the Holy Spirit would be the son, but the Holy Spirit and the son would be the father as they do a mutual exchange of fellowship.

So I don't know if that makes sense. And I don't know if it's correct logically to think through it a lot more, but I want to have some discussions with some smart people, a lot smarter than me. We can discuss these issues, but I'm trying to solve just because I got nothing else to do.

You know, why is God a trinity, you know, and I've been working on that for a while. So saying, ouch, Laura says, ouch, Randall says here, Greg says, howdy, love your brother, Matt, you're a blessing, sir.

Thank you, Goran. And so anyway, so let's just move on. I hope that didn't hurt too much and cause people too much discomfort intellectually. I don't see any slobbering, so that's okay. No slobbering, no drooling.

But, you know, that's a good sign when I don't see that. All right. I've never thought about that. About what, slobbering? Never thought about slobbering? Never thought about the perichoresis in your Trinitarian communion and why the nature of God is Trinitarian?

Yeah. I think about things like this. Oh, that's cool. I think of other things, too. Like, why does my wife love me? That's a mystery. Dave's nodding his head vigorously. This is where Reformed theology comes in because God predestined her to marry me because no one else would.

I mean, come on. There's some issues here, obviously. That's right. Right, hon? Right. She says sure. Whenever I'm on camera or anything, if I call my wife, she... Okay. Hey, hon, you want to come on camera here and say hi to everybody?

Because you're a lot better looking than I am. This is how not to get sandwiches. Okay. All right. Then I'll just move on a little bit. That was fun for me. I don't know if it made much sense, but it was fun.

The Eternal Covenant, Eternal Sonship, and the Decrees of God

Now, let's get into the Trinity. Now, let's imagine, do a little thought experiment. God already has eternally known that he's going to redeem people. God has already eternally known he's going to create the universe.

God has already eternally known that he's going to become one of us. Bear our sin, die on the cross. God has already eternally known that he's going to create the universe in which all this is going to be possible.

He's already eternally known to create angels. Third gonna fall, et cetera, et cetera. All of this is already eternally known. Now, in Hebrews 13, 20, it talks about the blood of the eternal covenant.

Now, what is that eternal covenant? Now, a covenant is a pact or an agreement between two or more parties, okay? This is my water or yours? Okay, thanks. Hold on a sec here. Since, oh, here's my book, wait a minute.

This is for the people who don't, this is the book we're talking about, I was reading. And Zeke is in here with the thing. Okay, so a covenant is a pact or an agreement between two or more parties under 10 commandments or a covenant document, two documents, not one document with six and four or four and six or five and five.

It's 10 and 10, because if I were to write a contract with any one of you, you're gonna want to copy the contract. You're gonna want to copy the covenant, which we both know exactly what our responsibilities are.

The two tablets went in the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies, which is underneath the mercy seat, which is considered the footstool of God. It's in his presence. It's also the presence of Israel because they had the tabernacle and the whole bit.

And so the symbolism here is that God had the copy of the covenant and we have the copy of the covenant, 10 commandments, Exodus 21 through 17. We'll talk covenant another time. What was the sign of the covenant?

It was those commandments. What was the sign of the Adamic covenant? Tree. What was the sign of the Noahic covenant? Rainbow. What's the sign of the Davidic covenant, which is prophetic manifestation of Christ and communion.

Covenants have signs. Here's my wedding ring covenant sign. If I were mad at my wife sometime and I were to take my wedding ring and take it off and throw it in the trash, what am I saying? Saying I don't want the covenant to be in effect anymore.

I'd be saying, I don't wanna be married anymore. I don't want this. To reject the covenant sign is a rejection of the covenant. All right. So God works covenantally. Ratinum testamentum, covenant. Old covenant, Old Testament, New covenant, New Testament.

So God works covenantally and the covenant is ratified at the death of the testator. Jesus is the death where the covenant changed from the Old Testament covenant time to the New Testament. That's Hebrews 8, 13, Hebrews 9, 15 through 16.

We're not gonna get into that too much. What I'm trying to do is give you an idea what covenant is. So what happens in the eternal Trinitarian communion with the eternal covenant? The Bible doesn't say what the eternal covenant is, but I affirm in my opinion that the eternal covenant is the covenant in the inter-Trinitarian communion where the father would elect, the son would redeem the elect and the Holy Spirit would apply the redemptive work.

Now that's my opinion. I believe that's the case. I'm saying it's my opinion because I could be wrong about that. But we do know, and for example, in John 6, 37, it says, all the father gives me will come to me.

It does not say all who come to me, the father will give to me, but all that the father has given me will come to me. There's a group called the all that are given by the father to the son. And he says, this is the will of the father that all that he's given me, I lose none.

That's a great thing for eternal security. All right, now think in terms of God always knowing forever everything he's gonna do. And I think in terms of the eternal covenant of redemption, this would mean then that there was always the case that the father would send the son.

It was always the case that the son and the father would send the Holy Spirit and always the case that the son would become one of us and die on the cross. So let's look at the father-son relationship eternally.

This would then mean that it was always the case that the son was the son, right? He would always have been the one who would be sent by the father, always be in that position, that relationship with the son to be sent.

So in this, we can see what's called the eternal sonship. He's eternal son. Now, we're not gonna get into the eternal generation issue. That's, I gotta prep up on that one because there's some issues there because of the father, I mean, the son proceeding and the Holy Spirit proceeding from the father.

It gets really interesting and there's a lot of discussions over it. So, yeah, Joanne, I can't teach like this on the radio. Well, even though I want to, maybe I should do it sometime,.

But anyway, so if we were to understand.

The Trinitarian communion in this sense, it becomes really interesting when we start seeing that God, well, he can't make any mistakes about who he elects. The son can't make any mistakes about who he redeems.

There can't be any change in the eternal decrees of God because he's always known everything all the time, which necessitates election and predestination, which is taught in scripture. It is taught in scripture in Ephesians 1 .11 that God works all things after the counsel of his will, but Ephesians 1 .4, he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we behold him blameless in love.

He predestined us to be conformed to his image. Now look what it says. Ephesians 1 .4, it says, he chose us in him. Now, I want you to get this. In him is a phrase that describes a federal headship. 1 Corinthians 15 .22, in Adam all die, in Christ all shall remain alive.

In Adam, in Christ. In Adam means everybody who ever lived, in Christ means just the people that were given to Christ. So when Jesus died on the cross and was crucified, Romans 6 .6, Romans 6 .8, it could be said that we died with Christ.

We were crucified with Christ. And the Bible says that those who are crucified with Christ have died to sin, died to the world. You can go to Colossians 3, one through five is good. And also Romans chapter six, verses one, two, and three talks about us dying.

We died to sin. This is only of the elect. And Jesus canceled the sin that at the cross, Colossians 2 .14. He didn't cancel it when we believe. Now, if we look at this, we're to think about this, we look at the issue of the eternal decrees of God.

When it says in, he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that means the father chose us in him, which means that it was a simultaneous eternal necessity of God eternally decreeing and eternally choosing us in the eternal son to redeem us.

There was not a time when God said, hey, can I get an idea? Talking to other members of the Trinity. Yeah, what's that? I got this idea. That's a good idea. It did not happen like that. Open theist maybe, open theist God, God's going for a kabillion and he goes, hey, I got an idea.

That's not gonna happen. Not with the Trinitarian God, the true Trinitarian God. So this means then that the elect are eternally elect and they're eternally elect in him and they can't be elect unless they're in him.

And they can't be in him unless they're elect. Election is in Christ. And if we're in Christ, we're elected. That it might be a logical priority and some get into superlapsarianism, inferlapsarianism.

It's gonna talk about this simultaneous eternal nature of existence and the eternal nature of God's decrees, eternal way that God has always known and decreed who would be the ones that he would elect and redeem.

He chose us in him. He chose us in him, Jesus, before the foundation of the world. This is logically necessary from a being, God who possesses satiety, omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, omnisapience, whole wisdom, last one.

From eternity, who doesn't change, which means a Trinitarian nature is always existed. And he has always been what he is and we've always been elect, always been elect. Now, if you were to go, I don't have my Bible program open but let's see if I can get it open here.

If you were to go to Romans chapter eight, no, Romans, yeah, Romans 8, 29 and 30, it says, oh, here comes my wife with brownies. Those are tempting. She tempts me with brownies, those are good. You go to Romans 8, 29.

It says, those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his son. And those whom he foreknew, he also called, I think it says, those who he called, he also, what does it say, predestined?

What does it say? Get the text. Justified, those who he justified, he also glorified, right? So it goes called, justified, glorified, right? Now, notice what it says in Romans 8, 29. Those whom he foreknew, he also predestined.

Now, here's a little tangent. God does not know everyone. You go to Matthew 7, 22 and 23. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, do we not prophesy in your name? In your name, cast out many demons.