Eschatology

Eschatology

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Speaker: Mark Rushdoony

Subject:

Genre: Sermon Series

Lesson: 2 of 4

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Year:

Dictation Name: Lesson 10- B

[Mark Rushdoony {?}] {?} The only difference then is which choice is derived from the other? Reformed thinker says that God chooses to save a man for His own glory and draw that sinner to Himself. The Armenian thinker says that man came to God in repentance and faith of His own ability or free will, and that he then becomes one of God’s own. Now our purpose here is to look at how the premise of free will adds things to theology. Once a presupposition is accepted the implications of that presupposition keep reappearing and if the presupposition is incorrect then it causes problems in ones thinking, things don’t always make sense, and sometimes we end up adding things to scripture if our presuppositions about it aren’t correct.

Now our purpose here isn’t to refute Arminianism and our purpose here is not to prove the sovereignty God in salvation as taught in scripture. Specifically I want to look at some of the myth which Arminianism adds to scripture because of the false premise of free-will. Now not all Arminians will believe all of these things to the same extent but most accept them, most of them, to some extent.

The First myth which Arminianism adds to theology is that God needs you. Arminianism starts with man in need of salvation. In progresses in to say that God provided a plan to give man the opportunity of salvation. Now when they speak to a sinner if that sinner does not respond what they will tell the sinner is that “God wants you to be saved, it’s God’s free gift, He paid the penalty, this is God’s plan for your life.” And they’re already very close to saying “God needs you” and usually that’s what they end up saying. I heard a very famous evangelist, he’s the minister of one of the largest churches in America, I believe it’s the largest Sunday School. He preached a sermon that used as its text Proverbs 20:27. Proverbs 20:27 says “the spirit of man is accountable to the Lord, searching all the inward parts of the belly.” Now from that verse he used the following illustration. He said man is like a candle, God is like a match; he said each is made for the other and neither is complete and neither fulfills its function apart from the other. And he took a match, and remember this represented God in His illustration, by the way this was a message primarily to school-aged children, he struck the match and he says “look how long the match lasts on its own” that’s supposed to be representing God; and of course after a few seconds he had to put it out to avoid burning his fingers. He then held up the candle representing man, struck another match and said “now look how long the flame of the match lasts when it comes into contact with man, the candle.” The meaning was obvious; that God needs you, He is incomplete without you, and that God cannot really exist without you. And it’s characteristic of bad preaching that theology often comes from sermon illustrations. They may or may not start with the scripture texts, then they’ll to an illustration and they’ll say “That’s a lot like God’s love for us” or “that teaches us something about God.” And so their theology ends up coming from their illustration rather than scripture but the idea that God needs you is common to Arminian preaching.

I saw a tract once in an election year and the title of the tract was “Who you vote for” and you open it up and the gist of it once that Satan and God both want your vote, who will you vote for? And of course once Arminianism accepts this idea of a God sitting in heaven just waiting to find out who will accept Him and who won’t they destroy any kind of a concept of a God that really controls the world, that’s really in charge, that really has a law, that really has a plan, solutions for daily living.

A second myth which Arminianism adds to scripture is that Jesus came that men could have the opportunity of salvation, or that Jesus came to make possible that men could be saved. Because they think that if man’s will is free Jesus couldn’t of accomplished anything at Calvary, He only created the possibility of salvation and if the initiative of salvation is with man then Christ couldn’t of saved anyone because that would of violated Man’s free will.

So they say that Jesus Christ only made it possible for men to be saved and that the necessary fabrication, and it is fabrication that is created because it allows for man’s free will. However the Bible doesn’t say that Christ made it possible for man to be saved. It says in Luke 19:10 that the Son of man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.

A third fabrication of Arminianism is the doctrine of universal grace. Now the doctrine of universal grace is the most common way Arminianism involved man’s will in salvation. Universal grace is the idea that man does have a sin nature but that the Holy Spirit gives enough grace to all men to enable them to overcome the bias of their depraved will. Now there has been several ways in which mans will has been involved in salvation, the first is Pelagianism. Pelagianism is the idea that man’s nature really didn’t fall in Adam, he only got the habit of sin, but man can live sinlessly, he has the free will to do good or to do evil, he has no innate sin nature. So Pelagianism by allowing man a free will and no sin nature [audio cut out 6:39-6:45] to all the implications of free will and all the theological developments that are based upon free will; and his followers and men like John Wesley carried on the implications of freewill which Arminius did not.

And Arminianism very quickly, after the death of Arminius, became a badge for liberals. It wasn’t so much at that time a systematic theology as it was a way in which liberals could avoid Calvinism, it was a method of denying Calvinism rather than a systematic theology.

A fourth way in which man’s will has been involved in salvation is the later Arminianism, or the Wesleyan Arminianism. Now Wesley acknowledged man’s depravity but he held to this doctrine of universal grace, that even though man is depraved the Holy Spirit gives each man enough grace to overcome the bias of his will. Now that’s better than Pelagianism or semi-Pelagianism but it is still an invention. Well what we have today is modern liberals are basically Pelagians and Arminians fall into two camps, either semi-Pelagianism and they say that man’s will is not fallen man can totally of his own seek God, or they will say man is fallen and adopt the Wesleyan idea of universal grace that each man had just enough grace to seek God on his own.

A fourth myth of Arminianism is that the goal of preaching is a decision. Now in of itself that doesn’t sound too bad, but once you start talking about what a decision for Christ is in terms of Arminian thinking then it becomes something entirely different. Because an Arminian thinks the will is supreme and all that is really important and all that the preaching is really aimed at is to get a decision, to get the sinner to say “yes” to Jesus; and to get that decision they’ll do just about anything. They’ll use reasoning, they’ll try and prove the scriptures, see how much sense it makes to accept Jesus, but some men don’t think logically so they’ll use other tactics. They’ll use emotionalism, and preachers are often your best of actors, I’ve seen preachers go from crying to laughing almost instantaneously. They’ll dramatize, they’ll exaggerate, they’ll work up the audience to try and control their emotions and it’s all bent so that towards the end of the service the invitation and hopefully you’ve got the emotions of the audience in such a state that once you ask them for the invitation the will is ready. Another method they might use to get a decision is use fear. I’ve seen this and I’ve known people they’ve used it on, usually they’ll save this for their hard cases, people who don’t respond; and I know one boy, apparently he liked playing baseball and cutting classes too much to suit them, and they said “I pray God will make something terrible happen to you that will make you get right with God” or “that will make you accept Christ.”

If a decision is all your after then mass psychology becomes legitimate, and of course revivals are really, I think, more of a study in mass psychology then a moving of the Spirit. You begin with singing, testimonies, then the preacher often starts with jokes to soften up his audience, it gets the resistance down, people are naturally a little leery of preachers so he tells a few jokes and he softens them up and then he progressively gets into the hellfire and damnation, it can get very dramatic; and then at the end of the service everybody is to close their eyes, the audience hums –usually Just as I Am over and over again- and one voice, the voice of the preacher is droning, begging for a decision. I heard one high school student say that it took more character to stay in your seat when you didn’t mean it then it did to get up and walk down the aisle, and that’s exactly the truth and that’s exactly what many preachers do, they use mass psychology to draw the people down the aisle. And with that type of preaching and that type of revival it’s no wonder that there are so many phony decisions, because it’s so easy to raise your hand and say yes to Jesus when you haven’t the slightest idea what it’s all about.

Another option if a decision is all you’re really after, is to use free offers and sometimes promotions and Sunday School campaigns can be rather crass. I heard of one which they were offering, this is usually directed now towards the members of the Sunday School to try and see how many people they can get to Sunday School, cause they have to have the people there before they can get the decision out of them, and this one campaign they were offering a free dirt bike to the child who brought the most people to Sunday School. And after all their gospel is basically a free ticket to heaven, so why not offer promotions? And even their prayer very often, you will go down the aisle, the prayer is just “repeat after me”. They don’t have to do anything, the only thing they have to do is walk down the aisle on their own. And as a last resort I’ve even heard, at least in one case, of force being used, and I did hear one preacher say that he was in a service where a few of the elders were trying to pull a man down the aisle. [laughter]. I don’t know what they were going to do with him once they got him there but…

If a will is all that is really important in preaching, if that’s the goal of preaching what then happens is that a man’s decision means more than his morals, his life, or anything else. Because what the Arminian then has to say is “if you made a decision for Jesus then you are a Christian. If you’re living in sin it means that you’re a carnal Christian, you’re backslidden, that you’re not right with God, but you are a Christian. But the problem is obviously anybody can say “yes” to Jesus, anybody can repeat the prayer after the preacher, and supposing they really meant it, supposing their will changes, if their heart hasn’t been changed by God what good is it? Some churches have carried this idea of the will is all that is important to the extent that if you walk down the aisle and say yes to Jesus they’ll let you fill out a three by five card with your name and address and you become a voting member of the church. And of course the idea of the will is supreme then encourages pietism because if the will can determine your salvation then the will can determine your sanctification as well and then both holiness, rather your salvation, and your sanctification are outside of God and in the realm of man’s control.

A fifth myth which Arminianism adds to theology is that you may be responsible if someone goes to hell. Now not all Arminians believe this, but many do. It’s a common and a very logical consequence of Arminianism. You don’t hear this in revivals so often, and you don’t hear this necessarily by your radio and television preachers, but you will often hear it, as I have heard it when I attended Arminian schools, and they think they’re talking to Christians who aren’t going out to weekly soul winning sessions. And this is how they reason. If the will is supreme the only criteria as to whether a man will accept Jesus is if he has heard. If you tell him he has the chance, if you don’t tell him he may not get the chance, if he dies and goes to hell, well he might have accepted Jesus if you had told him, therefore you could be responsible if someone goes to hell, and they use this guilt trip to try and get people out to soul-winning.

And that always fascinated me because Arminians hate Calvinism because Calvinism has God determining whether man goes to heaven or hell, it’s all up to God and they will not have that. But then they turn around and say “You may be responsible if someone goes to hell!” and somehow they rationalize that in their theology.

Naturally the idea that you may be responsible if someone goes to hell leads to an emphasis on soul-winning as the duty of Churches and believers to the exclusion of all else. Arminian churches then are characterized by very little teaching, they don’t believe in dominion, if they talk about growth they equate growth with soul winning, and the Christian life and the life of the church then all center around the will of unregenerate men rather than doing the will of God.

A sixth myth that Arminianism adds to theology is that you can lose your salvation. Now not all arminians believe that, Arminius himself shied away from that, his Dutch followers didn’t, John Wesley also held it. But if the will is truly free why can’t it change? And it’s a logical way to deal with backsliders. What about the people who come forward and then are never heard from again? Never show any interest in Christianity again. A seventh myth of Arminianism, really the flip side of the coin on losing your salvation, is the opposite, perfectionism, sinlessness in this life. And this, again many Arminians don’t believe that, but it’s a logical consequence and it goes back to Arminianism’s ties with Pelagianism. Now Pelagianism taught that man had no sin nature and that he was free to sin or not to sin. Semi-Pelagianism said that man had to cooperate with God in salvation. Now that leaves the door open, how far can man cooperate with God? Can man achieve full cooperation with God? Full cooperation with the Spirit to the point of sinlessness?

Well the Dutch Arminians who followed Arminius and Wesley did hold that man could lose his salvation. Very unscriptural but it was a consequence of their presupposition of man’s freewill. An eighth myth which are Arminianism adds to scripture is the idea that you can accept Jesus as Savior now and as Lord later. Now most often this is a logical deduction from Arminian preaching rather than a specific teaching, though it is held and taught by many. And after all if the will is all important and all you’re really after is the decision why talk about what God requires after you’re a Christian? You talked to any used car salesman and you know I’m sure he’ll tell you [audio disruption] to accept God the will can decide how to serve God and how to obey God, then you have no law just being spiritual and following Jesus. And of course that leads to the idea of backsliding, the distortion I should say, of the idea of backsliding, of being a carnal Christian, not being right with God, and of course some Arminians have sought to correct that problem by teaching that you can lose your salvation.

A ninth myth which Arminianism adds to theology is that God would not hold man responsible for not accepting Him if man didn’t have the ability. Now it’s characteristic of Arminianism that it likes to decide what God can and can’t do, what’s fair and what’s not fair, and why God would or why He wouldn’t do something; and of course it’s always interpreted by their own standard. But the idea that God wouldn’t hold man responsible for choosing Him if man didn’t have the ability to choose God is logical to the Arminian because if salvation necessitates the exercise of Man’s will then God’s plan and His actions must all be understandable on man’s level. If man is really going to make a decision man has to be able to understand everything that God does with regard to salvation. So they say if God requires something of man, man has the ability to do it. Responsibility means ability, but God requires sinlessness of all man, yet no man can be sinless. Why? Because of the fall, it’s the fall that makes salvation necessary in the first place. God holds each man responsible for His sin even though no man has ability to be sinless. The fall destroyed man’s ability to obey God, it destroyed man’s ability to seek God. But because Arminianism has an incomplete view of the fall, it has an exaggerated view of man’s ability.

The tenth and final myth which Arminians add to theology that I’d like to discuss this morning is the idea that there’s an age of accountability and that babies who die before this point automatically go to heaven. Now this is a total fabrication, so why do they believe it? I mean it’s not in scripture, they don’t even try to come up with scripture to prove it, so why do they believe it? Because it’s a problem created by Arminianism. I’ve heard very young elementary school children come up with the problem “what happens to babies?” Because when they’re taught that salvation is up to man and you have to choose God, what happens to babies who can’t, it’s a logical problem which children often think of. Well this is how Arminianism thinks, if Jesus Christ died so that all men could have the opportunity of salvation and if all men by the free exercise of their will can repent and accept Jesus as Savior, then how could God send someone to hell who was too young to make that decision? So they say that there’s this age of accountability and if you die before that point you automatically go to heaven. It’s an invention created to make God fair to man’s way of thinking, to make God fair to the Arminian way of thinking.

Now that only produces problems though, there’s a couple ways you could view this idea. One would be that children are born in innocence and then you’ve gone back all the way to Pelagianism, that man didn’t really fall, so we can eliminate that one altogether. A second way you could view it is that children are born in sin but since they haven’t had the chance to exercise the will, God gives them the benefit of the doubt and sends them to heaven, okay but that presents added problems. There are a lot of ways that could work, you could say “well God didn’t foreknow their choice, so He gave them the benefit of the doubt and let them into heaven”. Well then you have a God that can’t even foreknow what’s going to happen, Arminianism already destroys God’s sovereignty of salvation, but if they leave it with a God that can’t even foreknow things in the future they’ve just about eliminated God altogether. You could say that God knew their eventual choice but sent them to heaven because they couldn’t exercise it. But that would destroy any concept of a just God because then you would have God saying “Well this child wouldn’t accept me, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and I’ll send him to heaven even though he’s unregenerate and he wouldn’t accept me if he did get to the age of accountability.” SO you have God sending the unregenerate sinners to heaven. A third way they could say it is God knew their eventual choice and sent them to heaven and hell accordingly; then you have a God who doesn’t control life and death because how could they have a future for God to foreknow and yet die in infancy?

Or you could say that God ordained that they would die in infancy and He determined their fate, but then you’re back to election, then you’re back to God deciding their fate, you’re denying free will and Arminians won’t have that, so they’re stuck with this idea which makes no sense at all. But it sounds good to children, the children who ask this question usually accept it, that babies go to heaven, and children don’t usually think of the implications of that idea.

Arminianism hate Calvinism because Calvinism is divine determinism, but what Arminianism always ends up with is human determination that man can determine. Maybe you will hear the gospel, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll accept it, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll hear it in an adulterated form. See, it’s all up to chance; maybe you will, maybe you won’t, so they don’t like divine determination, but they will leave it all up to chance and to man.

Another problem with this age of accountability is why is it just for children? Why is it the age of accountability? Why not just the point of accountability for all those who might have believed but never heard? Why do just infants get the benefit of the doubt? After all why not all people who died before they hear the gospel? What about the mentally incapacitated who can’t hear and understand the gospel? How ‘bout all the people of the ancient world outside of Israel? How about all the aborigine’s of North America and Central America and Australia and Europe and Asia before the coming of Christianity? When you follow this age of accountability logically, you end up with universalism, the idea that all men are eventually going to get to heaven. Because after all, might not God give the benefit of the doubt to those who did hear but might have believed if they’d heard a better presentation of the gospel? Or maybe a miracle or two? Because if God gives some people the benefit of the doubt and gives some people an easy break, why not all people?

When man’s try to improve on God’s theology he destroys it and only brings judgment on himself. Arminianism is a false system because it has false presuppositions and the further you carry those false presuppositions out the more muddled and confusing it becomes. Man is controlled by his presuppositions, what we need today is not better translations, and better paraphrases of scripture to make the Bible more understandable to man, but we need better presupposition in interpreting it, a return to the presupposition of God’s sovereignty in salvation and in all things. If man claims sovereignty in any area he makes a mess of it and it becomes a study in confusion and irrationality. The only problem man can find with God’s sovereignty however is His own ego and pride. Let’s pray.

Our most gracious heavenly Father we thank You that our salvation is in Your hands, we thank You for Your free gift of salvation, we thank You that You have changed our hearts, we thank You that You have provided a way that man is acceptable to God because of the free gift of grace through the holy Spirit, we pray that You would change the hearts of men, draw them to You so that men are truly converted in Your knowledge, in Jesus name we pray, amen.

Are there any questions regarding the message?

Well, yes?

[Audience member] It seems like a logical conclusion to your myth number ten would be for Arminians to go around and slaughter babies.

[Speaker] Yes, I almost included that. I wonder how they can consistently oppose abortion because logically they would have to say that the abortionists are sending more people to heaven then all the preachers in America. [laughter]

Any other?

[Audience member] Have you written any of this in terms of an essay or a pamphlet or anything of that nature Mark?

[Speaker] No I haven’t.

[Audience member] Because you hit on so many points that so absolutely, I mean the average Christian is out there in the Arminian churches, he never understands the implications of these ideas, and some of do reformed teachers speak in such a way that they communicate the ideas, I think you did an excellent job of, in terms of relating it to the real way the Arminians preach and the real consequence of their ideas, I think it’s a very, very timely piece especially for everything I’m working on now. But I think that something like this, “Does Your Preacher Sound Like This?” Something titled like that, and what it really means, I think a small book just mentioning these kinds of things, maybe selling in the area for nine cents and a dollar, I think it would be extremely valuable because it speaks right to the intellectual level of the average Arminian, and most of them don’t even realize the consequence of their ideas or presuppositions, I think it ought to be expanded and published and {?} level you know?

[Speaker] I learned this the hard way, I went to Arminian schools for most of my education. [laughter]

[Audience member] No, I’m very serious, I think that you ought to put together a tract of some kind and publish it because, you know then we’ll stand outside of the Arminian churches and pass them out [laughter] But I mean it. You just hit the nail right on the head for all of the how minutes you preached, and stuffed like that, and people in that camp, you just hit the nail right on the head, I thank you very much, I’m glad I {?}. I’ll be glad to help anyway I can, I’ll put money in the pot or whatever it takes, but something like this could be very valuable.

[Speaker] Maybe we should start an offering collection [laughter]

[Audience member] Unfortunately I didn’t bring any money with me this morning [laughter]

[Speaker] Yes?

[Audience member] I think that the fact that any of the seeds of education both of {?} and evangelism from the hands of the Arminianism or premillennialist shows how lax reformed Christians have been in those two areas {?} But I think that there really is a dearth of material on what exactly do they mean {?} I’d like to see that dealt with too because {?} very clear framework.{?}

[Speaker] Like I said I learned it a hard way, so this was a bit on the negative side because I sat for many years through daily chapels where you had forty-five and fifty minute chapel and I hear this stuff over and over and over again so I have heard it from more of the negative side, but reformed churches haven’t done a lot as far as the positive side of how to present the gospel and evangelism and so forth in teaching people in these terms. Most of their teaching is centered around the verses Arminians use or preaching the verses that teach the sovereignty of God rather than just presenting the gospel as the gospel to an unbeliever, they’re always refuting Arminianism or preaching what we believe and we are right rather than preaching it as the word of God to unbelievers.

Then if we’re through we stand dismissed.