Vol 32 Issue 21

Banner Editors Retire. 

Article VII. Who teach: That Christ neither could die, needed to die, nor did die for those whom God loved in the highest degree and elected to eternal life, and did not die for these, since these do not need the death of Christ. For they contradict the Apostle, who declares: “Christ loved me, and gave himself for me,” Gal. 2:20. Likewise: “Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth?

VIEWS DURING THE SECOND PERIOD (300-750 A.D.)  Marcarius the Elder, a gifted representative of the earlier Greek mysticism (died in the year 390), belongs to the same symbolical school; he calls bread and wine the antitype of the body and blood of Christ, and seems to know only a spiritual eating of the flesh of the Lord. 

Prayer does not change things.  And the man made slogan “Prayer changes things” is not a text of Scripture.  It is not at all unusual to hear the phrase quoted as though it were a verse from holy writ; but it surely is not.  All things are determined by the all-wise God from before the foundation of the world and all the prayers of all men together cannot make Him change one smallest element in the eternal, all-comprehensive counsel He has with Himself from all eternity. 

We now come to the last few verses of this Chapter in I Corinthians. This entire section reads, in part, as follows: “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy. For the temple of God is holy, which are ye. Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours, and ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s..” 

According to the Scriptures, the covenant with Noah, the same as the covenant with Abraham, included not humanity soul for soul but Christ and His chosen people only (and the lower creation). It was thus, according to the Scriptures, a covenant of special grace and not of so-called common grace. Let us turn to the Scriptures and see how true this is. 

Election and Reprobation  When we consider Berkouwer’s view of reprobation, we are not surprised that he does not agree with me on the same subject. In his criticism of my view, he refers only to my lecture, “The place of reprobation in the preaching of the gospel.” Unless he willfully distorts the meaning of this lecture he completely fails to understand it.

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek?”  Romans 1:16