The Common Conception

Several years ago, a man, quite worried over the sub­ject of predestination, went to a certain minister.

“Do you believe in predestination?” he asked.

“The Bible teaches it, brother,” was the minister’s reply.

The minister tried hard to explain. “But that doesn’t really mean,” he said, “that you have nothing to do with your own salvation. It doesn’t mean that it is all set — your decision and eternal fate all determined for you in advance. You are to make your own decision. But God knows all things, even in advance. And so He knows before­hand how you are going to decide.”

This didn’t satisfy the troubled man at all.

“If God knows beforehand how I am going to decide,” he reasoned, “then it is all predetermined. If He knows in advance I am to be LOST, then that’s the way I’ll have to decide in the end. And since I’ll lose out anyway, why try? On the other hand, if He knows now I’m going to repent and accept Christ and be saved, I’ll have to do it in the end anyway, whether I try or not. Then my ultimate fate is predetermined. Isn’t that what predestination means — that the ultimate fate of each one is PREdestined — des­tined, or determined, in advance? And if that’s so, then we simply are not free moral agents, and we have nothing to say about it.”

The poor man was more discouraged than ever.

And no wonder. Neither could convince the other, because both were arguing from a false premise — that predestination has to do with whether each individual shall be lost, or saved.

Does the Bible teach that your ultimate fate is already predestinated?

Neither the preacher nor his perplexed questioner had read carefully what the Bible does say.

What confusion we are in today — what Babylon! Let’s understand this!