Until it happened it wasn't real

From a pastor's blog entry (entitled "The Church Infected With Calvinism") last week:

"There are websites that instruct Calvinistic preachers who accept calls to non-Calvinistic churches on how to gradually 'acclimate' the church to Calvinism. I saw one website with a two-year, month-by-month plan for the stealth Calvinist to take a non-Calvinistic church into 'Reformed Theology' land. It's almost cult-like and certainly deceptive . . . 

"While the Calvinistic pastor is crafting pulpit content to fortify his philosophical arguments, he will simultaneously be about the business of looking for and mentoring members of the congregation who are now open to Calvinistic logic. He'll slowly but surely transform as many of these folks as possible into full-blown Calvinists and, when possible, put them in places of church leadership, especially teaching positions."

*****

From Pastor Richard Jordan's study last week:

"God the Father and God the Son agreed that Christ would go to Calvary and die. The Father declared in the Prophets that He would, but until He had done it, was it a reality?

"In Calvinistic theology, if God thought it, it's done. That, if He decreed it, well, just go sit down because it's already happened. But that's not the way the Bible does things.

"In I Samuel 23, David's in a town and he prays and asks, 'Father, Saul's going to come and attack. Are the men here going to give me over to him?' And the Lord says, 'Yep.' So what did David do? He left town, and the text says Saul didn't come.

"Well, did the Father make a mistake? Did He say, 'Yes, he's going to come,' but then he didn't come--somehow he resisted the Father's will?

"Anytime you make a predictive statement there's a contingency involved in it. Had David stayed in Keilah, Saul would have come. But David didn't stay.

"The Lord wasn't wrong. He knew what would have happened if David stayed. That tells you that the future is not set in stone that way. If God said it had to happen ('Who by the determinate counsel of God did decree it') and yet until it happened it wasn't real.

"Jesus thought that way. When He's in the Garden, He says, 'Father, if it's possible let this cup pass.' There had to be the possibility that was crazy.

Matthew 26: [51] And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest's, and smote off his ear.

[52] Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.
[53] Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?
[54] But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?

"Don't you think if I ask the Father . . . You know, we sing that song, 'He could have called 10,000 angels.'

"But He died alone. He said, 'Don't you understand, if I ask my Father to get me out of this, He'd send the angels.'

"You see verse 54? Christ understood that until it happened, it hadn't happened. That's why I keep telling you, don't let the theologians sitting in a smoke-filled room drinking energy drinks and thinking up syllogisms to try to fool somebody else . . . in the Bible things are different than they are in theology and in church tradition. That right there just kills all the Calvinism stuff.

"So there's a contingency and Paul says in Romans 3, [25] Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;

"The Father trusted the Son to fulfill their agreement that Christ would go to Calvary and be the payment, but until He had made the payment, the payment wasn't made in reality.

"So for all that time, from Adam all the way down through what we call the Old Testament (time past) until Christ died at Calvary and made the payment and was raised again by the Father with the receipt PAID IN FULL, and He destroyed the one who had the power of death by being brought back to life-- until those events took place, it was all in prospect.

"But after He's resurrected, seated at the Father's right hand and exalted on high as the one who has the declaration of the victory in hand, now it's different. Now the reality is there.

"Now justified men, justified on the basis of the forbearance of God verse 25 talks about . . . God extends the time until the Cross, the resurrection, the exaltation.

"Now He can say the thing's actually done and the redemption is completed, perfected. There's no shadow. Exodus says, 'I will in no wise clear the guilty.' Well, now the guilt is cleared."

(new article tomorrow)