“I was talking on the radio just this morning about the
continuous obsession with the Antichrist and the prophecy preachers who
speculate all this stuff about how this is the end of the world and we should be
looking for the Antichrist, and people just get obsessed with the conspiracy
things involved in that and so forth,” said Jordan in a recent study. “So when
you meet Believers who have been involved in satanic attacks and caught in the
snare, the passage Paul uses to explain to you and me how we’re to deal with
them is II Timothy 2:24-26:
[24] And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but
be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient,
[25] In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth;
[26] And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.
[25] In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth;
[26] And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.
*****
“There’s a big resurgence of Universalism today among what’s
called the ‘emergent church,’ and it’s the next evolution of the evangelical
church. It’s just all these people who’ve rejected God’s Word. They couldn’t
find a Bible with a flashlight in five years and if they did find it, they
wouldn’t know how to study it, so they’re just out there like a golf ball in
the tall weeds; they’re just lost.
“That’s just the way these preachers are. They don’t have a
Bible, they don’t know how to ‘rightly divide’ a Bible, so they wind up in
confusion, declaring, ‘Love has to win, and if love has to win, then everybody
has to be saved.’
“And so there can be no hell: ‘Nobody can die and go to hell
because that makes God a torturer and He’s worse than an Abu Ghraib kind of
thing; He’s worse than a water-boarder because He’s a torturer.’
“You get all this goofball reasoning about God and the
justice of God, and they just focus on certain things, and the things that
bother them they leave out and that’s how you have everybody getting saved.
“There are a number of incarnations of that idea. One of the
things that doctrine comes from is the idea that when Jesus Christ died, He
paid for everybody’s sins and everybody’s sins are forgiven.
“There’s a bunch of folks going around in the Grace Movement
right now that have picked up some ideas that are not new and didn’t originate
from anything dispensationally oriented.
“Now, they believe in hell. But they believe you go to hell even
though your sins are forgiven! You just say, ‘WHAT?!’
“They say that because Paul says God was in Christ ‘reconciling
the world,’ therefore all people’s sins are forgiven, and so that when people
die and go to hell, their sins are forgiven and they don’t go to hell because of
their sins because their sins are already forgiven. WHAT?!
“What they do is they don’t read that passage for what it
says; they take some ideas and impute to it. II Corinthians 5:18-19 says, [18]
And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ,
and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;
[19] To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.
[19] To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.
“ ‘Reconciling the world’ is defined for you in Romans
11:15: ‘For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what
shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?’
*****
“Paul writes in I Timothy 4:10, ‘For therefore we both
labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the
Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe.’
“Now, a verse like that kicks two different theological
camps in the eyes and just annihilates them. It’s like a guy said, ‘Those
people are so narrow-minded that a gnat could sit on their nose and kick them
in both eyes at the same time.’
“Paul says He’s the Savior of all men. There goes Calvinism,
because it says He’s only the Savior of ‘the elect.’ Then the verse says
‘specially of those that believe.’ There goes Universalism because if he just
said Christ’s the Savior of all men, the Universalists would be happy because
now everybody’s going to be saved. But then he says ‘specially.’
“There’s two different senses in which He’s the Savior, otherwise
he wouldn’t have said ‘specially.’ There’s the sense in which He’s the Savior
of all men, but then there’s another sense in which it’s only those who believe
that are saved.
“There are about 50 different explanations for that
verse but those are the two things to notice. Frankly, the easiest way to
understand that verse is just to believe what it says.
*****
“There’s a fascinating passage in Romans 3: 21-22 that for
me has always been a great deal of help in these particular areas. Paul writes,
[21] But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested,
being witnessed by the law and the prophets;
[22] Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference.
[22] Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference.
“As a cross reference, it is the easiest, simplest way to
understand I Timothy 4:10. It’s available to everyone but it’s UPON (meaning, personally
applicable) all them that believe. See the difference? He’s the Savior of all
men (meaning, it’s available to everybody) but He’s only going to give righteousness
to people who believe.
“That ‘unto’ and ‘upon’ will save you from a lot of
different kind of screwball ideas. God’s righteousness is available to everyone
because of the Lord Jesus Christ. The faith of Jesus Christ’s work at Calvary has
provided righteousness that is available to everyone.
“In Calvinistic theology they call it the ‘well-meant gospel
offer.’ You say, ‘WHAT is that?!’ The Calvinist has this conundrum. He doesn’t
believe that Jesus died for everybody; He only died for ‘the elect.’ But then
you have messages that say the gospel is to be preached to everyone.
“So you preach Christ died for your sins, but if you don’t
believe that, well, aren’t you lying? How can you ask someone to accept by
faith what God hasn’t offered to them?
“So the way they reason around it is they say, ‘Well, you
MEAN it!’
“Do you know there are Calvinist denominations that have
split over whether or not you should have a well-meant gospel offer? They
argue, fight and bite and devour one another over it.
“If you get yourself in the position where you say Christ
only died for ‘the elect,’ only a small group of people who He’s pre-chosen to
die for, and His redemption and atonement is limited to only that group, then
you don't have a way to make a legitimate offer of salvation to everybody since
Christ didn’t die for them.
“You see, you don’t have a ‘well-meant gospel.’ You’re just
lying to people.
(another article tomorrow)
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