Whosoever Will, and Her Three Brothers

Why I Went Through This

Dedicated to my son Paschal, whose question would not let me go, and to my best friend Ted.

Let me tell you why I went through all of this, because the reason is the whole heart of it.

We have heard that God is a God of choices, and that He has chosen some for salvation and some for damnation. At least, that is what I have heard, and for a time, I ran with that understanding.

Many years ago, my son asked me a question while I was still an infant in my own understanding, and I am now grateful that I did not have an answer then. He asked, “If God already chose, what is the point of Him coming?” That question stayed with me.

And I have come to understand that if my best friend is fragile, I might wound him by repeating information without understanding, especially if it merely confirms what he had already heard. We must be accountable for the words we give to others. Today, I take that accountability for myself.

I want to get God up off the defense bench, in the name of Jesus, because He does not belong there. And let me be careful how I say the next part, because I am going to say it about a teaching and not about the people who hold it. If a person hears that God deliberately chose some for salvation and others for damnation, and hears nothing else, that person can end up with a hard picture of God in his mind, and I have watched it happen. And a question comes with it that I could not answer for years. What, then, would have been the purpose of sending Jesus to suffer ridicule, rejection, and the cross, if every final choice was made from eternity?

I found myself anchored there, and restless in its declaration. He loved the world. He gave His Son for it, and then, whosoever believeth. Now I know that the word world has been read more than one way by men who know their Bibles, and I am not going to settle that in an opening page. I will only tell you what I could not get away from. God so loved, and gave, and then whosoever believeth. It is within that pull that this journey begins.

And let me say plainly what this is not. I am not tearing down any person, any denomination or any teacher. Many who hold what I once held are faithful, and dear, and love God as much as I do. I am not writing to prove anyone wrong or right. I am only showing you what the Lord showed me.

So I write for the ones who feel the smallest, the young, the fragile, the ones sure they were left out, because I want them to know this, that God loves them, and God desires for them to come, and that the invitation is real. That they were never excluded before they ever began is what I have come to believe, and the rest of this book is where I try to show you why.

How To Read This, Come With the Spirit and Search Like a Berean

Before you read one word of this, I have to tell you how to read it, because it will not open any other way.

This cannot be read with the natural mind alone, and let me put the right verse under that, because I have heard the wrong one used for it and I nearly used it myself.

Now that verse is about the new birth. Jesus is telling Nicodemus how a man gets into the kingdom at all, and I am not going to make it say how a man reads a book. What it does tell me is that there is a whole kingdom a man cannot see until something happens to him first. And here is the one that says what I actually mean.

Neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. There it is, plain. Paul is talking about the things of the Spirit and about a man trying to take them in without the Spirit, and he says it cannot be done that way.

So do not come to this to win a debate, come to see. As my friend would say, flesh is flesh and spirit is spirit, and the things of the Spirit are known only by the Spirit. So stop, before you read, and ask the Holy Ghost to open it to you, the same way I had to ask, and the same way He opened it to me. But do not only ask, search. Do what the Bereans did.

They received it with readiness, and then they searched daily to see whether those things were so, and Luke calls them noble for it. So prove what I write by the Word itself. Do not take it because I said it, take it because you searched, and found it so. A true word does not fear your searching, it invites it.

And let me be honest with you about myself. I too have struggled with this topic, for a long time. Up to this current study, I held the same view as many others. I once held that position, sincerely, with my whole heart, and it left me with holes I could not fill, and it troubled me for years. I did not arrive here easily, I wrestled, and I believe the Holy Spirit guided me through the wrestling. So I am not handing you a quick, easy answer from someone who never fought with it, I am handing you ground I had to fight for.

And I am showing you what the Lord showed me, so that a trembling heart would not be afraid, and so that whosoever will would know the door is open.

You will not find scholarly words here. You will find it plain enough for a child, and that is on purpose, because that is how I had to receive it. The learned way left me in the dust more than once. I believe the Holy Ghost taught me plain, and the plainness is what I am handing on. The words are mine, low enough to drink.

So come the way I came, not to win an argument, but to see. Ask the Spirit, search the Word, and read.

Chapter 01

Whosoever Will, The Open Door

This is where it all began. Not with the hard words, not with foreknowledge or election or predestination. It began with a door, and the door was open, and over it was written whosoever will.

I only had to deal with those three great words because people throw them against this door, to try to shut it. So before we ever get to them, let me show you the door itself, wide open, the way I found it. Everything after this is only here to prove that this door stays open.

Whosoever will. And when I say that means not whosoever was written in, and not whosoever was chosen ahead of the rest, those two are my reading of it. The verse says whosoever will. Anyone who thirsts may come, and whosoever will may take the water of life freely. That is the door, and it is the last invitation in the whole Bible, and it is flung open to all.

Let me give a name to something. When God, by His Holy Spirit, begins to herald His announcement, I call it the general call. And it is called general on purpose. If the call were narrow, aimed only at named ones, there would be no room for anybody else. But it is general, and the generalness is the openness.

Picture the arc a farmer makes when he casts his seed, the wide sweep of his arm, seed flung across the whole field, not placed in chosen furrows. That is the general call. So wide it lands on every kind of ground, so general it leaves no one out by the terms of the call itself.

Ho, every one, that is the herald crying out, general, wide, to every one that thirsts. Not some, every one.

And this was God’s heart from the very first promise. When He called Abraham, He did not call one man to shut the rest out, He called one man to reach everyone.

All families of the earth. Not one nation only, and not one people set apart with the rest shut away. From the very first promise the reach was worldwide, and the door was wide before the world ever heard the word whosoever.

And here is the plainest proof that the call is real and the door is open. Why do we evangelize at all? Why did Peter stand up? And here is how I reason it, and I will own the reasoning. If God had already written in who comes, and shut out the rest, I cannot see what would be at stake in the preaching. I know the answer that comes back, that God ordains the preaching as well as the ones who come, and I will meet that later in this book. What I hold is that the gospel is preached because the call is genuine and the door is truly open.

Peter preached repent and be converted to a whole crowd, not to a sealed list. And hear what he told them next.

Every one of you, said to the crowd in front of him. That is the general call in a preacher’s mouth. Evangelism is the servant sent out into the highways to carry the open invitation. You do not send a man to preach a door that is already shut.

Now here is the other side, and it must be held with the first, or you will fall off one edge or the other. As open as the door is, no one comes on their own steam. It takes God’s drawing.

No man can come, except the Father draw him. So the coming is not something a person works up out of their own flesh. God draws first. But do not read draw as drag, as if only a select few are pulled in and the rest are barred. Look who the drawing reaches, in the same Gospel.

Let me stop and settle one word before anyone tries to make trouble with it, because I would rather deal with it plainly than have it thrown at me later.

When Jesus said, I will draw all men unto me, the word men has a mark on it in the King James. Look at it in the verse above, set in italics, and that mark means the translators added it, it is not in the original. The original word is simply all, and I will draw all.

Now some will want to make much of that, and say, see, it does not say men, so it could mean anything. I cannot tell you what was in the translators’ minds, and I will not pretend to. What I can tell you is what the added word does. It answers the question a reader is bound to ask, all what. And it points to mankind, not to beasts or things or creation in general.

So I stand on the Scripture, the word is all, and the all is mankind. And when you look at what stirred Jesus to say it, you see it plainer still, for just before this, certain Greeks had come to the door asking to see Him, outsiders, not of the covenant nation. And it was then He said He would draw all. So the all is all kinds, Jew and Gentile, every nation, drawn to the lifted-up Christ, and not the covenant people only. And there is a difference between saying every kind of person is drawn and saying every single person who ever lived is drawn. I am saying the first. The door is not shut against any nation or any kind.

And I will not pretend there is no argument here, because serious men do disagree over the reach of that all. What I hold is this. The word is all, the all is mankind, and the cross draws every kind of person, from every nation, to Himself. And the next verse says what lifted up meant.

Lifted up on the cross, He draws all men. Every kind, every nation, no people group left outside it. No man can come unless drawn, and He is drawing all. Drawn, not dragged, for a man can be drawn and still pull away.

They resisted the Holy Ghost. Now that is my argument and not the verse’s own words, so let me put it plainly. Resist is a word for pushing back against something that is present. A man does not resist what is not there. So when Stephen says they always resist the Holy Ghost, I take it that the Holy Ghost was working on them, and they pushed against Him.

And if that is right, then who heard and who came are two different lists. The drawing was real even on the ones who would not come.

And I will be honest with you at the hardest place, this is where sincere, praying believers have differed for a very long time, how God can know and draw, and a person still truly answer or refuse. I do not stand here as one who has solved what wiser saints could not. I hold what I hold because it lets whosoever will mean what it says, and I ask the Spirit to give you sight, the same way I had to ask Him for mine.

See it at the very beginning, in the garden. When Adam had sinned and hidden, God came looking, and hear what He did. He could have reached in and dragged Adam out of the bushes by force, snatched him, rescued him whether he willed it or not. But that is not what God did. He called.

Where art thou, and God knew where Adam was, He did not ask because He needed telling. Genesis does not tell us why He asked. But He asked, and Adam answered, and that is not the same as being hauled out. And this is what I see in it. He calls, and man must come. I have not found Him dragging anybody yet, and I have looked, and the rest of this book is where I go looking at the hardest places. That is the open door, standing in the garden before it ever stood at the cross.

And where does the drawing happen? At the hearing, and that is my reading and not a verse, so let me say plainly what I am putting together and let you weigh it. God, by His providence, arranges that the word reaches a person’s ear, and the tug that comes with that word, the stirring under it, is the Father drawing. And Paul says where faith comes from.

Faith cometh by hearing. The kingdom is at hand, and repent and believe come in the same breath with it. No man can come except the Father draw him. Those are the pieces, and I am the one joining them. I heard a preacher say it this way once, each time you hear the word of God, it is the kingdom drawing near. That is true, and it rests on what Jesus Himself preached.

The kingdom of God is at hand, near, drawn close, and in the same breath, repent and believe. The nearness and the call come together, and when I say every hearing is the kingdom drawing near, that is my way of putting it and not Mark’s.

See it in a man, Zacchaeus, up the tree, wanting to see Jesus. And Jesus stopped under the tree and called him by name, Zacchaeus, though no one had introduced them. He knew his name. Luke does not tell us how, and Luke does not call it foreknowledge, so I will not make that word do work here. The next chapter takes it up properly. But watch what the knowing did not do.

The knowing did not drag him from the tree. Jesus knew his name, and still said come down, an invitation, and Zacchaeus had to make haste and come down himself, and then, on his own, he stood and gave half his goods to the poor. He was known by name, and he still had to come down. And Luke says nothing here about anybody being written in beforehand, either way, so the knowing is all I am taking from it. And Jesus said why He came at all.

The lost. Not the pre-written. The lost.

And see it at a supper. The feast was ready, and the first-invited guests, the ones with every expectation of a seat, all made their excuses and would not come. The master did not shrink the feast. He widened it.

Out into the highways and hedges, the byways, bring in anybody, whoever is out there, that my house may be filled. And two verses earlier he had already named who was to be brought.

The poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind. The expected guests refused and stayed out, the unexpected answered and filled the house. The seat was never about being written in beforehand, it was about answering the call. Now that word compel troubles people, so let me say how I take it, and it is how I take it and not what Luke stops to explain. I do not hear a man being dragged to a dinner. I hear a servant urging somebody who thinks he does not belong. No, come, there is room, the master wants you. Open arms, and not a pen that writes a man in.

And here is one of the plainest proofs that the door stays open even to those set against it. Ask yourself the question, why would Jesus be in the presence of the scribes and Pharisees at all, why sit with them, eat with them, answer them, reason with them. Think how much time Jesus spent reasoning, pleading, contending with the scribes and the Pharisees, the very ones hardest against Him. If they were shut out already, written off, why spend a single breath on them? But He did, again and again, He reasoned with them, warned them, called them, held the door open to the very ones fighting to slam it.

How often would I have gathered thy children, and ye would not. Read who is who in that sentence, because it is not as simple as it first sounds. He speaks to Jerusalem, the children are the ones He would have gathered, and the ye who would not is named alongside them. So I will not flatten it into one group wanted and the same group refusing. What I hear in the cry is the willing on His side, wide open, how often would I, and the refusing on the other, ye would not. He did not bar them. And still He kept calling, kept reasoning, kept holding the door, because the call goes out even to the resisters, even to the ones who fight it, right up to the end.

And if you have ever sat in a pew and heard the Jews are the chosen, and quietly wondered where that leaves you, because you are no Jew, then hear this, because a new believer needs to know it, and I was not the only one who ever asked it. Revelation 7 shows a sealed number out of the twelve tribes of Israel.

Teachers stop there and make it sound like the door is that narrow. But read the very next thing John sees.

A great multitude that no man could number, out of all nations. Not twelve thousand from twelve tribes, an ocean too vast to count, from every people on earth, standing before the throne. That is where the one who is no Jew belongs. The door was never closed to the nations, it was flung open to all of them, and the crowd coming through is beyond counting. You are not the only one. John sees a multitude no man can number, from all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues.

And when you wonder how the knowing and the coming hold together, look at Paul on the sinking ship. God sent word in the night.

And Paul believed it.

The outcome was settled in heaven and Paul knew it. And yet, when the sailors tried to slip away in the lifeboat, Paul said this.

Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved. God had promised all would live, and still the men had to stay in the ship, still the thing had to be done. The foreknown outcome ran right through real human action. God had said it, and they still had to abide. And when they did their part, the rest was in God’s hands, and every soul reached shore. Now Acts does not call that foreknowledge, and I am not going to make it say so. What I am putting beside it is the shape of the thing, a settled outcome running right through real human action.

And here is the deepest comfort of the open door. The whosoever who comes is not let in and then left to fend. From the moment they come, they are passed from hand to holy hand. The Father gives them to the Son, and the Son keeps them and loses none. I do not need to invent a journey from the Father’s hand to the Son’s hand and back again. The text gives me something better than my picture.

All the Father gives Me will come, and him that comes I will never cast out. And when I say the given and the coming are one crowd seen from two sides, given from heaven and coming from us, that joining is mine. John says all that the Father giveth shall come. He does not stop and tell me why they come. And once they come, they are kept.

And then He says the same of the Father.

And from our side, we commit ourselves into those hands and rest. Now Peter is writing there to people suffering, and telling them to entrust themselves while they keep doing good, so that is his subject and not mine. What I take from it is the committing.

Whosoever believeth, there is the whole circle in one verse, from my side and His together. The call went out, so loved the world, and I answered, whosoever believeth. The Father received me and gave me to the Son, and the Son keeps me. Not a soul of it worked up by me, and not a step of it forced on me. The call went out, I answered, and I am held in two hands that are not mine.

We commit the keeping of our souls to Him, and Peter says who does the keeping.

Kept by the power of God, all the way home. That is the door, and what lies beyond it, an open call to whosoever will, a drawing I believe reaches all who hear, a coming that is truly ours to answer, and hands that never let go of the one who comes.

So now you see why this study had to go on and deal with three hard words. Because people take foreknowledge, and election, and predestination, and throw them against this open door to try to shut it. They say God only knew a chosen few, or chose only some, or destined only a number, so the door is not really open to whosoever. So we have to walk through the three, one at a time, and show that not one of them shuts the door. They were never the door, and they serve it. Come with me, then, as I visit the three brothers, and watch the door stay open. To know is not the same as to cause.

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Chapter 02

Foreknowledge

Foreknowledge does not mean that God decided who would be saved and who would be lost before anyone ever lived. It means that God knows before, not that God forces before.

God’s foreknowledge speaks to His omniscience, not His coercion. And here is how I hold it, and I will name it as mine, because Scripture does not stop and explain how God knows. And He says it of Himself.

Declaring the end from the beginning. And I read that as a knowing that does not remove human response.

The call still goes out to all, and the response still belongs to the individual.

A simple way to understand this is like this. A teacher may know which students will study and which ones will not, but that knowledge does not cancel the exam. The test is still given, the opportunity is still real. The responsibility still belongs to the student.

In the same way, God is never surprised by faith, choice or response.

Foreknowledge comes before relationship, but it does not replace it. God knows who will respond, yet He still calls. He knows who will believe, yet He still invites. He knows who will come, yet He still says, "Whosoever will." This is why foreknowledge must never be confused with salvation.

Salvation happens in time, when a person responds, and the knowing was in God before it. That is my way of setting them apart, and not a sentence Scripture hands me.

And this is how I hold the three of them together. God’s knowing does not save anyone, God’s calling does not force anyone, and God’s love invites everyone. And when someone responds, God already knew they would.

NOW LET US GO TO THE WORD ITSELF

I said in the last chapter that I would take this word up properly, so let me do it.

The Greek behind foreknew is proginosko. Pro means before, ginosko means to know. The word is not common in the New Testament, and it is not always used of God. Paul uses it of men who had known him from the beginning, and Peter uses it of believers knowing a thing beforehand. But here are the places it is used of God’s knowing, and I want them in front of you, because a person should not have to take my word for a doctrine.

AND I MUST DEAL WITH THE HARDEST ONE FIRST

Look again at Romans 8:29. It does not say whom he foreknew about. It says whom he did foreknow. The object is people.

And I am not going to hide from what that costs me, because there are good men who read it and say the knowing is God setting His love on a person, choosing them, and that if the object is a person then the whole thing is settled before we were born.

That is a serious reading and I am not going to pretend it is foolish.

But hold it up against the one place where God names who He foreknew.

Romans 11:2 says God has not cast away His people which He foreknew. So Israel is the foreknown people, named by Paul himself. And what does the same chapter say about them?

Broken off, because of unbelief. Foreknown, and broken off.

Now does that settle the argument? Not by itself, and I will say so. Paul is speaking of Israel as a people, and the branches are the nation, not one man’s soul. Somebody can answer me that a nation being broken off is not the same as a person being lost, and they would be right to say it.

But hear what is standing there all the same. The foreknowing is real, and the answering is real, and Paul puts them in the same chapter about the same people, and then he turns and warns the ones standing in their place to take heed lest they fall. He does not warn people whose standing was settled without them. AND ACTS 2:23 SAYS BOTH IN ONE SENTENCE

Read it again, slowly.

Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.

The cross was foreknown. Peter says so, standing in Jerusalem seven weeks after it happened. And in the very same breath he says ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain. Not God’s hands. Wicked hands.

The same God who foreknew that cross is the God who sends Peter to call those men to repent. Peter could not tell a crowd they were guilty of a thing they had no hand in. But he does, and then he tells them to repent.

About three thousand souls, the same day.

That is the whole of what I am saying, in one verse. God knew. They were still guilty. And the door was still open to them that same day. BEFORE AND AFTER

There is one more thing in the word itself. Pro means before. Before what?

Now read who that is about. It is Christ. It is the Lamb, foreordained before the foundation of the world. Peter is not saying we were foreordained there, he is saying He was.

But do not miss the last three words. Manifest in these last times for you. The plan that was settled before the world was made was carried out for people who were not there to see it settled. SO NOW THE PEOPLE

Think of Jeremiah. Before he was ever formed, God knew him, and set him apart. And I will say what the verse says and not more, because it says knew, and sanctified, and ordained, and it does not tell me God chose him because He saw he would answer.

Knew thee, before the womb. But hear this, even Jeremiah, known and ordained, still had to answer, and at first he drew back, ah Lord God, I cannot speak, I am a child. God knew him, and still Jeremiah had to say yes.

And Job knew this same thing, that God knew him through and through, knew the very way he would take.

He knoweth the way that I take. Now Job does not say God knew every word before he spoke it, and he does not use the word we have been studying, so I will not hang the doctrine on him. What Job says is that God knows the way he is walking while he walks it, and that the trying of it will bring him out as gold. And still the taking is his to walk.

And think again of Zacchaeus, though I said in the last chapter that Luke does not call this foreknowledge, and I hold to that. What Luke tells us is that Jesus knew his name and called him down out of the tree. That is not the word we have been studying, and I am not going to make it be.

But it shows the same shape. Called, drawn, and still Zacchaeus had to come down out of that tree himself and receive Him.

God’s knowing goes ahead of us, His call reaches us, His drawing pulls at us, and not one of those saves a soul until the soul answers.

Foreknowledge is not salvation. And I will not hand you a definition harder than the one I argued for, so let me say it as I hold it. I read it as God seeing, ahead of time, the one who will come. And the door is still open.

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Chapter 03

Election, The Thing We Confuse for Salvation

For a long time I held the position that God chose some for salvation and some for damnation before anyone was ever born. I did not come to it lightly. I held it in earnest. But the more I read, the more holes it left in the Scripture. Verses I could not fit, a God I could not square with the One who so loved the world. So I had to go back and look again, and this study is what I found.

And here is the thing I found first, because it unties every knot. Election is the thing we confuse for salvation, the choosing is not the saving. Once you see that they are two different things, the holes close, one by one. THREE WORDS THAT ARE NOT THE SAME

Foreknowledge is God knowing beforehand, and I read it as His knowing, before anyone comes, who will. Election is God choosing, and He chooses for a purpose. Predestination is the destination, where the chosen ones are headed, what they will be shaped into and where they will arrive.

None of the three is salvation, all three are about the chosen and their purpose. Salvation is the separate thing, the door, whosoever will, the actual saving of a soul that answers. Keep salvation in its own house, and these three stop being frightening. ELECTION COMES IN TWO KINDS, AND NEITHER ONE IS SALVATION

There is national election, and God choosing a people, a line, for a covenant purpose, this is Israel. This is Jacob’s line to carry the promise and bring the Messiah. It is corporate, it is about a group carrying something, and it can happen before birth, because it is about the plan of history, not about one person’s response.

And there is individual election, a single person chosen for an assignment. Paul, a chosen vessel to the Gentiles, the twelve, chosen from among many. But notice, this is election to service, to a task, not election to a saved soul. Judas was individually chosen to the twelve, and he was lost. Jesus said it Himself.

Chosen, and a devil, in the same sentence out of the Lord’s own mouth. Jeremiah too was elected this way. God knew him, and set him apart, and ordained him, and gave him his assignment, a prophet to the nations, before he was born. And the verse says knew, and sanctified, and ordained, and it does not say God knew he would answer, so I am not going to say it either. And all of that, and still Jeremiah had to open his mouth and go. The choosing set the course, and when I say the answering was his to give, that is my reading of it. Jeremiah 1 does not stop and say so either way.

So in the cases I have laid out here, national and individual alike, the election is not automatically salvation. It is election to purpose, to carry something, to do something, and the person or the people still have to answer the call to be saved. And I will tell you now that Paul brings a verse against that later in this book, and when we reach Romans 11 I will put it up myself rather than walk past it. JACOB AND ESAU, THE VERSE THAT FRIGHTENS EVERYONE

People read Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated, and they hear one baby chosen for heaven and one for hell before either drew breath. But look at what God actually said to Rebekah. He was not speaking merely about two individual babies. He explicitly spoke of two nations and two peoples coming from them.

Two nations, Two manner of people, One people stronger than the other. This was national from the very first word. Jacob became Israel, the covenant nation. Esau became Edom, the elder nation served the younger nation, in history, centuries later. It speaks of nations, and peoples, and which one would be stronger.

And the hard line, Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated, is not even from Genesis. Paul is quoting Malachi, written centuries after Jacob and Esau were dead. Read who it is about.

Laid his mountains and his heritage waste, mountains, land, territory. God is speaking of Edom the nation, its ruined land, centuries later, contrasting it with Israel the nation He chose to carry the covenant. And here is how I read loved and hated in that place, and I will own the reading. I take them as words about choosing and not about feeling. To love is to choose, to draw near, to give the inheritance. To hate is to not choose, to pass over. And Jesus uses the word the same way.

Nobody reads that as telling a man to loathe his mother. I read it as love less, put second, and I read Malachi the same way. So Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated means Jacob’s line I chose for the covenant, Esau’s line I did not.

And now let me take up the hardest verse in the whole argument, because somebody is going to bring it to me and I would rather bring it myself.

Not yet born, and neither having done any good or evil. Paul puts the choosing before either child had lived a day, and I am not going to soften that.

But read what Paul says the choosing was for. That the purpose of God according to election might stand. The purpose. Not the saving of one boy and the damning of the other, the purpose. And read the word Paul says was spoken over that womb.

The elder shall serve the younger. That is a word about two peoples and which one carries the covenant.

So yes, it was before birth. It had to be, because a line has to be settled before the men in it are born. That is what makes it election to purpose and not a verdict on a soul. YOU CAN BE CHOSEN AND STILL BE LOST

This is the hinge. You can be fully inside the election and still be lost.

Take the very nation God chose. Israel came out of Egypt, the covenant people, and hear what God said of that generation.

From twenty years old and upward, and only two names kept out of that count. All the rest fell in the wilderness.

They heard, and they provoked, and they could not enter in because of unbelief. The chosen nation heard the word and would not have it. National election did not save the individuals who would not believe. And Paul, the same man who wrote about Jacob and Esau, said it plainly about his own people.

Not all Israel is Israel. There is the outer election, the line, and the inner reality, the believing heart, and they are not the same people. You can be in the outer and miss the inner. And Jesus said it to the most covenant-confident people alive. They leaned on Abraham is our father, and hear what He answered them.

In the line by blood, lost by heart.

And it is not only the covenant crowd. It is the busy, gifted, working crowd too, the ones who look most chosen of all.

Now read carefully who is speaking there, because I nearly got this wrong. It is not Jesus telling us He gave them those works. It is them telling Him what they did. Have we not prophesied, have we not cast out, have we not done. Every claim in that sentence is theirs.

So I am not going to say God elected them to mighty works, because the verse does not say it and I will not put it there.

What the verse does say is enough to stop a person cold. They had the works, or said they had. They had the name, Lord, Lord. They had everything that looks from the outside like a life God is in.

And He says, I never knew you. Not I knew you once. Never.

Lord Lord and miracles are not the same as being known by Him. AND OUTSIDE THE LINE, STILL SAVED

Here is the mercy on the other side. If you can be inside the election and lost, you can also be outside the line entirely and saved, because personal salvation was always open to whosoever will.

Ruth was a Moabite, outside the covenant line completely. And let me say plainly how she came in, because I do not want anybody correcting me on it. She was not grafted in the way Paul speaks of Gentiles in Romans 11. She came in by marriage. She married Boaz, she bore Obed, and Obed was the grandfather of David. But look at what she said before any of that was arranged.

Thy God my God, said by a Moabite woman with nothing to gain by it. She had no covenant standing, no line, no claim. And Matthew names her when he traces the line of Jesus Christ.

Obed of Ruth. Her name, in that list.

She was outside, and she came in. The line was never the door. THE CROWN IS NOT FOR BEING CHOSEN

So where does it all land, not here. The crown is not given because you were saved, salvation is the door you walked through, not the crown. The crown is not given because you were elected, being chosen only set you on the road. And here is how I read it, and the reading is mine, because Paul does not use the words election or predestination in this place. The crown comes at the arrival, when you have run the race all the way, and it delivers you to the destination.

Paul saw his crown because he had run his race. He fought, he finished his course, he kept the faith, and then he says it is laid up for him. And what I take from that is that he says it standing at the end and not at the beginning. Paul does not lay down a rule for everybody else about when a man may know, so I will not lay one down either. THE FULL COUNSEL, WITHOUT SUGARCOATING

And here is the sober truth, held up whole. Many of us will never finish our course or fully arrive at our assignment, and heaven is still our home, because salvation is grace, not achievement. The one who fell short is still saved, still home.

And Paul says the same thing about a man whose work does not stand.

He shall suffer loss, and he himself shall be saved. The work burned, the man home. That is the two things held apart in one verse.

So there are two joys at the end, not one. The joy of being home at all, which grace gives to every believer, weak or strong. And the joy of Well done, and the crown, which is the Father’s commendation over a life that ran the assignment faithfully. The kingdom is not for sugarcoating. It is for holding up the full counsel of God in truth.

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Chapter 04

Predestination

Predestination does not mean that God decided in advance who would be saved and who would be lost.

Now let me be careful with my own words before I go a step further. I have said that predestination speaks to purpose and not permission, and that it comes after the coming. That is how I read it, and I will show you why I read it that way. But Scripture does not hand me a definition in those words, so I am not going to put my sentence in God’s mouth. Let me set the verses in front of you and reason from them. LET US LOOK AT THE WORD

The Greek is proorizo. Pro means before, horizo means to mark out a boundary, to set the limit of a thing. Our word horizon comes from it, the line that says this far and no further. So to predestinate is to mark out beforehand. Mark out what. That is the whole question.

And the word is used of God six times in the New Testament. Here they are, every one of them, because a person should not have to take my word for a doctrine.

NOW ASK ONE QUESTION OF EACH Read them again and ask, what is the thing marked out beforehand.

Acts 4:28, a thing to be done. Romans 8:29, to be conformed to the image of His Son. 1 Corinthians 2:7, a hidden wisdom, unto our glory. Ephesians 1:5, unto the adoption of children. Ephesians 1:11, an inheritance, according to the purpose of Him who works all things.

In these passages predestination is repeatedly tied to something God has determined beforehand, conformity to Christ, adoption, an inheritance, a glory, and what His counsel determined should be done.

Not one of them says predestinated to believe, or predestinated to be forgiven, or predestinated to come.

Sit with that a moment. The word people use to shut the door is never once used of the coming through it.

And I must deal with Romans 8:30. Somebody is going to hold this verse up to me, and they should.

Predestinated, called, justified, glorified. And justified is a salvation word, so the chain reaches from the marking out all the way to the glory, and nobody falls off it on the road.

I am not going to pretend that is easy for me. It is the strongest verse against the way I read this, and I would rather say so than pretend I did not see it.

And I will tell you what the other side does with it, because you will meet it. There are good men who read that whole chain as settled before anybody was born, so that the group is fixed at the foreknowing and everything after it simply follows. I am not going to pretend that reading is careless.

But look at what Paul actually tells us here, and what he does not.

He starts the chain at whom he did foreknow, in the verse before. The foreknowing is at the head of it, not the predestinating.

And he says what the predestinating is for, in the same sentence. To be conformed to the image of his Son.

What Paul does not explain in these two verses is how those persons came to be the foreknown group. He tells us what happens to them. The chain runs from a knowing, through a marking out for conformity to Christ, to a calling, a justifying, a glory. It tells me they arrive. It does not tell me the door was shut behind them.

AND EPHESIANS 1:5 SAYS WHAT WE ARE MARKED OUT FOR Read it slowly, because the answer is inside the verse.

Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself. Unto the adoption of children. Not unto being let in. Unto adoption.

And here is what I make of that word, and the making is mine. I do not read adoption as the door. I read it as the standing given, the name, the inheritance, the thing said over somebody who has been brought home.

That is why I read predestination as the destination and not the door. The verse tells me what I was marked out for. It does not tell me I was the only one invited. WHY WE MUST KEEP THEM APART

Here we must be careful with our words, because election and predestination sit so close they get read as one.

Election is the choosing, being set apart and given the work. Predestination is where that work is headed, the landing of the assignment and not the handing of it. And neither one is acceptance, for acceptance is salvation, the door.

Now let me say something carefully, because I could give you a rule here that the Bible will not hold.

In many places God sets a person apart after they answer Him. Abraham believed God, and then God set him apart for a purpose. Moses responded at the burning bush, and then God sent him. Isaiah said, Here am I, send me, and then the work followed. Paul encountered Christ, surrendered, and then was chosen as a vessel to the Gentiles.

But it is not a rule, and I will not make it one, because Paul says of himself that he was separated from his mother’s womb.

Separated from the womb, and called by grace years later. So the setting apart does not always wait on the answering.

What I am saying is narrower than a rule about timing. Whenever it happens, early or late, the setting apart is for a work, and it is not the same thing as being saved. WATCH ALL THREE WORDS MOVE THROUGH ONE MAN

Take Jeremiah, the same man we have followed through these words, and he is the very case that will not fit a rule about timing. And let me say first that Jeremiah 1:5 does not use the Greek word we have been studying. I am using his life as a picture of the three ideas I have been separating, and not as a seventh occurrence.

In foreknowledge, God knew him before the womb. In election, God sanctified him, set him apart, and that was before he had answered anything. And in predestination, here is where that setting apart was headed, ordained a prophet unto the nations.

That ordaining was a destination. His whole life was carried toward it, to stand and speak to the nations exactly as he was ordained to do.

One man, and I can watch the three ideas move through him. God knew him, God set him apart, and God carried him to the place his assignment was aimed at. And still he had to open his mouth and go.

God did not choose these people instead of others for salvation. He chose them from among others for service. AND THE WORKS WERE PREPARED BEFOREHAND

There is one more verse that says the same thing without using the word, and it may be the plainest of them all.

Before ordained that we should walk in them. The works were prepared ahead of us, and we walk in them afterward.

And read the two verses standing right in front of it. By grace are ye saved through faith, not of works, lest any man should boast. Paul puts the saving first and the prepared works second, in the same breath.

That is the shape of the whole thing. Saved by grace, and then walking in works that were marked out before we ever got here. SO WHERE IT LANDS

A school may accept all students, but not every student is assigned the same role. Some are taught to teach, some are trained to lead, some are prepared to serve quietly. The acceptance is open, and the assignments differ. That is my picture and not a verse.

But the verses say what they say. Predestination is never stated as deciding who may come. The cross remains open, the call remains general, the response remains personal.

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Chapter 05

Ephesians 1, Chosen In Him

Someone will read this far, and agree, and then open Ephesians and grow uneasy. Because Paul does not only use the word predestinated there. He uses a harder one, and he puts it before the world was made.

It is an honest place to pause, and we will not rush past it.

Chosen us, before the foundation of the world. That is the verse people bring to me, and I am not going to pretend it is small.

And I am not going to build on where that phrase sits in the Greek sentence, because I will not lean my whole weight on somebody else’s reading of it.

But read the two words sitting in the middle of the verse, because that is where I want you looking. IN HIM

He hath chosen us in him.

Not chosen us, and then put us in Him. Chosen us in Him.

Now that is either a small phrase or it is a great deal, so look at how often Paul reaches for it, because he does not say it once. Read them one after another, out of that one chapter.

In Christ. In the beloved. In whom, in whom, in whom.

Now I will be straight with you about that list. Not every one of those is about the choosing. Some are about the redemption, some about the inheritance, some about the sealing. I am not going to pile them up and pretend they all say the same thing.

But look at what they do say together. Every blessing Paul names in that chapter, from the choosing to the sealing, he locates in Christ. Not one of them is handed out anywhere else. SO WHERE WAS THE CHOOSING DONE

And here is how I read where the choosing was done. Not over a list of names, but in a Person.

Before the foundation of the world, God settled that there would be a people, holy and without blame before Him, and I read the verse as putting that people in Christ and nowhere else.

What Paul writes is in him, and he writes it about everything he names in that chapter.

And that is why I keep saying the door and the choosing are two different things. And when I say get into Christ and you are in the chosen, because the chosen is what is found in Him, that is my reading of in him and not a sentence Paul stops to write. AND PAUL SAYS WHAT WE WERE CHOSEN FOR

Do not stop reading at chosen. The verse does not stop there. That we should be holy and without blame before him in love.

Chosen unto holiness. That is the purpose stated in the same breath as the choosing, and it is the same shape we found in every other verse. And it fits the same pattern we have been seeing, conformity to His image, adoption, inheritance, and here, holiness and blamelessness. Not one of them says chosen to be allowed in.

AND WHO IS US Read who Paul is writing to.

To the saints at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus. He is writing to people who have already believed, and he is telling them what was true of them before the world was made.

He is not standing in a marketplace announcing who was left out. He is writing to a church, telling believers how far back their blessing goes.

And that is what the passage does when you let it be what it is. It is not a doorkeeper’s list. It is a letter to people already inside, showing them the depth of what they were brought into. NOW HEAR THE OTHER SIDE, BECAUSE IT IS SERIOUS

I am not going to tell you this settles the argument, because it does not settle it for everybody.

There are good men who read chosen in him to mean God chose particular persons and appointed Christ as the means by which those persons would be brought. On that reading, in him tells you how, and not who.

I have to be honest that the verse alone will not force one reading or the other. Paul does not stop to explain it.

But hold it beside the rest of what Paul says in this same letter, and see which way it leans. AND THE SAME LETTER SAYS THIS

Paul gives the order. Ye heard. Ye believed. Ye were sealed.

That is written eight verses after chosen before the foundation of the world, by the same man, to the same people, about the same salvation. And it runs through a hearing and a believing.

Paul saw no contradiction between the two. He wrote them in one breath.

So I will not build a wall between them either. Chosen in Him before the world was made, and sealed after they heard and believed. Both are in Ephesians 1, and I am not going to throw away either one to protect a system. WHAT I WILL NOT DO WITH THIS CHAPTER

I will not tell you Paul answers every question here. He does not.

What I will tell you is what the verse says and what it does not say. It says the choosing was in Christ, and that it was unto holiness, and that the people receiving the letter had heard and believed and been sealed.

And what it never says, no verse in the letter says either. But I will not rest an argument on a silence, so let me give you the thing that is not silent, and I will give you the whole verse and not the half of it.

Now I know what the first half of that verse is to some readers, and I dealt with it in chapter one, so I will not walk the whole road again. All that the Father giveth me shall come, and there are good men who hear the giving as producing the coming.

But hold the second half, because it is a promise with no list attached to it. Him that cometh. That is the promise actually written there.

The cross remains open, for whosoever will.

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Chapter 06

The Twelve

Jesus Christ chose the twelve for purpose. Not because they were already spiritually superior, not because they were fully believing, and not because being chosen settled anything about where they would end.

And I want to walk through them slowly, because the twelve are the clearest picture in the New Testament of the thing this whole book is saying. Chosen, and still having to answer. Chosen for a work, and one of them lost. HE CHOSE THEM OUT OF A LARGER NUMBER

Luke tells us exactly how it happened, and the detail matters.

He called His disciples, and of them He chose twelve.

So there was a wider company already following, and out of that company He picked twelve and gave them a name and a work. Chosen from among, not chosen instead of.

And notice what Luke does not say about the rest. He does not say they were shut out, or sent away, or that anything was settled about them. He says twelve were chosen out of them, and nothing more. THIS IS ELECTION, AND I MUST BE PLAIN ABOUT THE WORD

I have spent three chapters separating these words and I am not going to blur them now.

Choosing twelve men out of a larger company is election. It is the setting apart and the handing of a work.

And as I argued in chapter four, I read predestination as where that work was headed, what those men were being carried toward. Two different things, and I hold to it.

So I read the twelve as an election for assignment, and their answering to Christ still remained real. AND NOW THE HARDEST VERSE ABOUT THEM

Somebody will bring me this one, and they should, so let me bring it myself.

Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you. That is as strong as it sounds, and I am not going to soften it.

But read the whole sentence, because Jesus says what the choosing was for in the same breath. And ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit.

Chosen and ordained to go, and to bear fruit, and that the fruit should remain. That is an assignment. He is speaking to men He has already been walking with for three years, telling them why they were picked out of that company.

He is not standing in front of the world announcing who is permitted to come to Him.

And let me be careful about who was in that room. By John 15, Judas has already gone out into the night, and John says so.

Went immediately out, and it was night. So I am not going to use those words as though they were spoken over him. For Judas I have a different verse, and it is plainer. AND HE SAID IT OVER A MAN WHO WAS LOST

Here is the thing that settles it for me, and it is out of the Lord’s own mouth.

Chosen, and a devil, in the same sentence.

Judas was in the twelve. He was chosen with the rest, he walked with Jesus, he heard the same teaching, he saw the same miracles, and he was sent out with the others and given power.

His twelve, and Judas among them. And his end was what it was.

So being chosen for an assignment cannot be the same thing as being saved. If it were, Judas could not have fallen, and Jesus could not have said that sentence. THEY FOLLOWED FIRST AND WERE FORMED AFTER

And look at the shape of how He called some of them, because Matthew is telling me about four fishermen here and not about all twelve. It was an invitation, not a notification.

Follow me, and I will make you. The following comes first, and the making comes after.

He did not say, you have been chosen, therefore you will come. He said follow, and they left the nets and came.

Peter was called before he understood anything. James and John were called before they were refined. Every one of them was taught, corrected, rebuked and restored along the way, and Peter denied Him outright and was brought back. Their assignment was given at the start. Their forming took years.

HE KNEW WHAT THEY WOULD DO

And He chose them knowing. Now the Greek word I studied in chapter two is not the word used here, so I am not calling this a fresh occurrence of it. What I see is the same shape, a knowing that goes ahead and does not force.

He knew Peter would deny Him, and told him so to his face.

And John says plainly what He knew about the other one.

From the beginning.

And He chose them anyway. And when I say God’s purposes move through people who fail, and that the failing was still theirs, that is what I take from watching these men, and not a sentence Scripture stops to write. SO THE TWELVE DO NOT SHUT THE DOOR

The twelve do not disprove whosoever will. Their choosing does not close the door.

The call was real. Follow me. The response was required, and they gave it, and one of them gave it with his mouth and not his heart.

The assignment was specific, and it was never handed out as a substitute for coming.

Salvation is the door. Foreknowledge is God knowing beforehand, and I read it as knowing who will come to it. Election is the choosing out for a work. Predestination is where that work is headed. So let us go and look.

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Chapter 07

What About Israel?

Now somebody is going to say, what about Israel. Because if God ever chose a people outright, that is the one, and if being chosen ever meant being saved, it should show there.

Israel was not chosen because they were better, stronger, more righteous, or more deserving than anyone else. Scripture is explicit on this point. God Himself removes any misunderstanding.

Israel’s choosing was not based on merit, it was based on purpose and promise.

And there is a verse about Abraham that I want to set beside that, because it is often used to answer the question.

Read carefully what God does and does not say there. He says, for I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him. The knowing is stated, and what Abraham would do is stated.

The word because is mine, not the verse’s, so let me own it. What I see is God speaking of a man He knows, and of a household that would be taught, and of a thing He had spoken that would be brought to pass. And I do not see one word about Abraham being flawless.

That is how I read the knowing joined to purpose here, and not as favoritism.

Israel, then, was chosen corporately, as a people, for a role. And that role was never meant to end with Israel itself. It was global from the very first word God spoke to Abraham.

All families of the earth, said at the beginning, before there was a nation at all. The reach was in the promise from the day it was made.

And when God brought that people out of Egypt and gave them their standing, hear what He called them.

A kingdom of priests. Now the verse does not stop and tell us what a kingdom of priests does, so let me say what I take from it and let you weigh it. A priest is not a man who keeps God to himself. A priest stands between, and he carries one side to the other. And I cannot read a whole nation called priests and think God meant them to face only inward.

And read the line sitting in the middle of it. For all the earth is mine. God says it right there, in the middle of choosing them.

And I do not have to lean on my own picture for the word light, because Isaiah says it.

A light to the Gentiles, unto the end of the earth. So Israel was chosen to be a light, not a wall. And this is how I understand that calling, a channel, not a container, a means, not the end.

Being part of Israel did not guarantee salvation for every individual within it. And I showed you that in the chapter on election, out of Hebrews 3 and Romans 9, with Ruth standing on the other side of it.

And that is the same thing I have been laying out in the chapters before this. God chose Israel as a people for purpose, and each individual was still accountable to respond. Their election did not remove responsibility, and covenant did not cancel faith.

And when Jesus came, here is how I read what happened to that calling. I do not read it as cancelled. I read it as carried through. He came through Israel, not apart from them, And when many rejected Him, the invitation did not end. And let me be careful with the word here, because the plan did not widen. The plan was all families of the earth from the day it was spoken to Abraham. What widened was the preaching of it. Israel’s story does not contradict whosoever will.

And let me say the last thing carefully, because it can be said too big. Israel was separated, and Scripture says so plainly. A peculiar treasure, a holy nation, set apart from the peoples around them. So I am not going to tell you there was no separation in it.

What I will tell you is this. God never chose Israel so that blessing could not reach anybody else. Not exclusion. Illumination.

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Chapter 08

Many Are Called, Few Are Chosen

This is the sentence people hand me when they want to close the door, and they hand it to me without the story it came out of.

So let us put the story back. IT IS THE LAST LINE OF A PARABLE

Jesus is telling about a king who made a marriage for his son. The invitations went out, and the invited would not come.

They made light of it. One to his farm, another to his merchandise. And then hear what the king did.

As many as ye shall find. Whoever is out there on the road, and the servants were given no names to look for. And they went.

Both bad and good. It is sitting right in the middle of a parable people use to prove a narrow door. The servants did not sort them at the roadside. They brought in whoever came, and the hall was filled. That is as wide as an invitation gets.

THEN COMES THE MAN WITHOUT A GARMENT And now the part nobody quotes with the other part.

He was in the hall. He came in with the crowd off the highway. And hear what the king said about him.

So he was put out.

Not for being uninvited. He had the same invitation as the rest of them. The king names one thing and only one, that he had not on a wedding garment.

And I will not tell you why he did not have it, because Matthew does not tell me. I have heard it taught that the host provided the garments and this man refused his, and it may be so, but the verse does not say it and I will not put it in the Lord’s mouth.

What the verse does give me is this. He was there, the garment was expected, he did not have it, and when the king asked him he was speechless. Not one word back. AND NOW THE SENTENCE

That is the last line, and now you can see what it is the last line of.

The calling went into the highways, to as many as they could find, bad and good together. The calling was as wide as the road.

So when Jesus says few are chosen, He is not saying few were invited. He has just finished showing us that the invitation went to everybody the servants could reach. WHAT I SEE IN IT

Jesus does not stop and define chosen for us in verse 14, so I am not going to hand you a definition and call it His.

And there are two failures in that story, not one, and I nearly walked past the first.

The first invited would not come at all. They made light of it and went to the farm and to the merchandise. They never reached the hall.

Then there is the one who did reach it and had no garment.

So the difference among the prospective guests in that parable is not whether an invitation went out to them. The first were invited, and the highway guests were invited. The difference is what each one did with the invitation, and one crowd never came, and one man came unprepared. AND I MUST CORRECT SOMETHING I HAVE SAID

I have written elsewhere that choosing follows response, as though that were a rule.

I took that back in chapter four and I will not put it back here. Paul says he was separated from his mother’s womb. Jeremiah was set apart before he was born. So the choosing does not always wait on the answering, and I am not going to build on a rule the Bible will not hold.

What I will say is narrower. Whatever the choosing is in this parable, it is not identical with the invitation, because the invitation had already gone out before Jesus said, few are chosen. SO THE SENTENCE DOES NOT SHUT THE DOOR

Many are called. That is the highway, and the servants, and as many as ye shall find, and both bad and good.

Few are chosen. And I said I would not define that word for you and I am not going to now, at the end, when I would not do it in the middle.

What I will say is what the story shows. The one man who was put out was not put out for being on the road. The king named the garment, and nothing else. The call stands where it always stood.

The cross remains open, for whosoever will.

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Chapter 09

Romans 9, What Is Paul Actually Saying?

This is the chapter people bring to me last, when everything else has been answered, and they bring it like a closing argument.

And I am not going to walk around it. We are going through it, and I am going to put the hardest verses in front of you myself, because I would rather you hear them from me than find them later and think I hid them.

I dealt with Jacob and Esau in the chapter on election, so I will not walk that ground twice. What I want here is the rest of the chapter, and what Paul does with it. FIRST, WHAT THE CHAPTER IS ABOUT

Now I am not going to tell you salvation is absent from Romans 9, because it is not. Mercy is in it, and glory, and righteousness, and faith. What I will say, and it is how I read the chapter, is that Paul is not sitting down to explain which individuals God let in and which He kept out. He tells us what is grieving him in the first three verses, and it is his own people.

Great heaviness and continual sorrow. He could wish himself accursed for them.

That is a man in pain over Israel. And read what he says they had.

The covenants, the promises, the fathers, and the Messiah came through them. And most of them would not have Him. So here is the question he asks next, and the whole chapter is answering it.

Has the word of God failed. That is the question.

So that is the question the chapter is answering, as I read it. AND NOW THE HARD VERSES, ALL OF THEM

And I said all of them, so here are the two that come next, and they are heavier than the potter.

Vessels of wrath fitted to destruction. Vessels of mercy afore prepared unto glory.

There they are. I have not softened one word of them and I am not going to. WHAT I WILL NOT DO WITH THEM

I will not tell you these verses are easy, because they are not.

I will not tell you Paul is only talking about nations here, because individual persons are plainly inside the argument too. Pharaoh is one of them. But that alone does not settle what kind of choosing or mercy Paul is discussing.

And I will not tell you the potter picture is about something small. It is God’s right over what He has made, and Paul puts it exactly that strong on purpose. WHAT I WILL SAY IS THIS

Read what Paul says the raising up of Pharaoh was for, because he tells us in the verse.

That I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth.

That is the purpose stated out loud in this verse. Paul does not say here, that Pharaoh might be damned. He says, that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. The thing God says He is doing with Pharaoh reaches outward, to all the earth, and that is the same reach we found in Abraham.

And now the potter, and I am not going to make it small, because I said I would not.

Honour and dishonour do carry the sense of what a vessel is for. But I cannot stop there, because Paul does not stop there. His very next breath takes those same vessels into wrath and destruction and mercy and glory. So the picture is heavier than use, and I will not pretend otherwise. But hold two things beside it.

Read how the vessels of wrath are described. Fitted to destruction. Paul does not say God fitted them. He says fitted, and he leaves the hand out of that sentence, and then in the very next line, where the vessels of mercy are, he puts God’s hand in plainly. Which HE had afore prepared unto glory. He says who prepared the one. He does not say who fitted the other. That difference is on the page, but I will not make the grammar tell me who did the fitting when Paul does not name the agent.

And the potter picture did not begin with Paul. It is an old figure and it is used more than once.

Isaiah uses it, and God gave it to Jeremiah too, and there He said what He meant by it in that place.

That is the potter explained by God Himself in Jeremiah, spoken to a nation, and it turns on whether they turn. Now Jeremiah is not Paul, and I am not going to tell you Jeremiah settles what Paul meant. I am telling you the figure has been used that way, by God, and I cannot forget it when I read Romans 9.

That is what I see, and Paul does not stop and explain it to me. AND NOW THE PART ALMOST NOBODY QUOTES

Here is the thing that settles it for me, and it is Paul’s own ending to his own chapter.

He has spent the whole chapter on mercy and hardening and the potter. And then he comes to the end and says plainly what the trouble with Israel actually was.

Wherefore. Paul asks the question himself, and he answers it himself. Because they sought it not by faith.

And that is not the last word either. Let me give you the actual end of the chapter, because it is better than the sentence I was going to stop on.

Whosoever believeth. That is how Romans 9 ends.

The chapter people bring me to shut the door ends on whosoever, and Paul is the one who put it there. They went after righteousness the wrong way, and Paul says so himself.

And the Gentiles who were not even looking for righteousness got it, by faith. SO WHAT ROMANS 9 IS DEFENDING

God’s right to run His own plan. To carry His purpose through whichever line He chooses, to raise up a Pharaoh and make a name known through him, to be the potter over His own clay.

Every bit of that is His, and Paul will not let anybody argue with Him about it. But the chapter ends on faith, and Paul put it there.

The cross remains open, for whosoever will.

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Chapter 10

Romans 10, Paul Clarifies Himself

Paul does not leave Romans 9 standing alone.

And that matters more than anything else I can tell you about this chapter, because people take Romans 9 and stop there. They read the mercy and the hardening and the potter, they close the book, and they walk away with a doctrine.

But Paul kept writing. Same letter, same argument still moving. Turn the page. HE PICKS UP THE SAME SENTENCE HE PUT DOWN

Romans 9 ended on a quotation, and I showed you that ending in the last chapter. Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. Now watch what Paul does with it.

Paul gives that sentence at the end of Romans 9 and quotes it again here.

The same sentence that closed the hard chapter comes back at verse 11 of this one, and I do not believe that was an accident of the pen. He put it at the end of the argument people use to shut the door, and then he picked it straight back up. AND HE SAYS WHAT HE WANTS FOR ISRAEL

Before any of it, read where his heart is, because it is the same grief as chapter 9.

That they might be saved.

And that sits one page after the potter and the vessels. If Paul had just finished teaching that God had settled it all beforehand and there was nothing left to be done about Israel, this is a strange thing to be praying for.

He prays for their salvation. And here is what I make of that. I do not hear a man praying for a thing he believes is already shut. AND HE TAKES THE DIFFERENCE AWAY

No difference. The same Lord over all. Rich unto all that call upon him.

That is the whole of the door in one verse. Rich unto all that call upon him, and Paul puts no other condition on the calling in that sentence.

Whosoever shall call. There it is again, the third time in a few verses, and the same word this whole book is named after. AND THEN HE ASKS THE QUESTION THAT SETTLES IT FOR ME

Paul does not stop at whosoever. He asks how the whosoever hears at all.

And the sending is in the next verse.

Read that chain backwards and it is the whole gospel enterprise. A preacher is sent. They hear. They believe. They call. They are saved.

And I said in the first chapter that the drawing happens at the hearing, and that it was my reading and not a verse. Here is the verse that made me read it that way. Faith cometh by hearing.

Paul’s question is the one on the page. How shall they hear without a preacher.

Mine is a different one and I will keep it separate from his. Why send a preacher at all, if the list is already made?

And I will tell you the answer I get back, because I have heard it. God ordained the preaching as the means, so the sending is how the chosen are brought. That is a real answer and it holds together, and I am not going to pretend it does not.

But Paul puts the hearing in a chain, and I read every link in it as necessary. Sent, heard, believed, called, saved. He did not have to build it that way, and he did. AND NOW THE LAST VERSE OF THE CHAPTER

This is the one I would put on the wall.

Paul has quoted Moses and Isaiah, he has run the whole argument, and then he ends the chapter with God speaking about the people who would not have Him.

All day long I have stretched forth my hands.

Not, I turned away. All day long, hands out, to a disobedient and gainsaying people.

Gainsaying means answering back, contradicting, arguing against. So God is standing there with His hands stretched out to a people who are talking back at Him while He does it.

All day long, and His hands are still out at the end of it.

Now all day long is a day, and a day has an evening. I am not going to tell you the hands stay out for ever, because the verse does not say for ever, it says all day long. But it says all day long about people who were arguing with Him the whole time, and that is enough for me to know what kind of God is doing the stretching. SO WHAT ROMANS 10 DOES TO ROMANS 9

I am not going to tell you Romans 10 cancels anything in Romans 9. Paul wrote both, and I take both.

What I will say is that the same man, in the same letter, on the same subject, wrote the potter and then wrote all day long I have stretched forth my hands. He wrote the vessels and then wrote whosoever shall call. He wrote the hardening and then prayed that they might be saved.

Paul wrote them into one running argument without a break, and I am not going to separate what he did not separate.

So I hold both, and I will not throw away one to keep the other. And I notice which one Paul ended on.

The cross remains open, for whosoever will.

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Chapter 11

Romans 11, God Has Not Rejected Israel

Paul is still on Israel. Three chapters on the same grief, and this is where he lands.

And I have to tell you before we start that this chapter has a verse in it that comes against something I have been saying for ten chapters. I am not going to walk past it. It is coming, and I will meet it. HE ASKS IT HIMSELF, AND ANSWERS IT HIMSELF

God forbid. That is the strongest way Paul has of saying no.

He asks the question a man would ask after reading Romans 9 and 10, and he throws it out with both hands. And I used Romans 11:2 back in the chapter on foreknowledge, so I will not walk that ground again here. AND NOW THE VERSE THAT COMES AGAINST ME

Here it is, and I am putting it up myself.

The election of grace.

Now I have said all the way through this book that every case I can find is election to purpose, to carry something, to do something. And here is Paul joining election to grace. The next verses press it further, because this remnant has obtained what Israel was seeking while the rest were blinded.

So let me not slide past that. This is the place where somebody can stop me and say, there, Sis. Yvonne, election and salvation in the same phrase. And the next verse presses it further.

If by grace, then no more of works. Paul is talking about how a man stands before God, not about an assignment. And Paul does not leave the election sitting back in verse 5.

The election hath obtained it.

So I am not going to reduce this to a remnant that simply stands on grace. Paul calls it the election of grace, and then he says the election hath obtained it. I have to let him say it as strongly as he said it. WHAT I WILL SAY ABOUT IT

I am not going to pretend that verse says what it does not say, and I am not going to pretend it says nothing.

So I will change my own wording rather than argue with Paul. I have said all through this book that every case I can find is election to purpose. I cannot say that anymore. Every case I had looked at was election to purpose. This one is not going into that box, because Paul does not put it there.

And I will let the whole verse stand and not the half of it. There is an election, and there are the rest, and the rest were blinded. That is in verse 7 and I am not going to leave it out because it is uncomfortable.

What Paul does not do is finish with them there. He has twenty five verses left in that chapter, and every one of them matters. THE STUMBLE WAS NOT THE END OF THEM

God forbid, the second time in the chapter.

Now read the question carefully, because I nearly made too much of the English. Paul does not ask whether they stumbled. He asks whether they stumbled that they should fall, and the same verse turns round and says through their fall salvation came to the Gentiles. So the falling is in there.

What Paul throws out with his God forbid is that they stumbled in order that they should fall. And whatever further conclusion I draw from that, I have to keep it beside verse 23, where the broken branches can be grafted in again.

And read what he says the purpose in it was. To provoke them to jealousy. A man is not made jealous of a house he can never enter. BOTH SIDES OF GOD, IN ONE VERSE

And here Paul turns and speaks to the Gentiles who are standing in, and he does not flatter them.

Goodness and severity. Both, in one sentence, about the same God.

And then the word that a great many people would rather not have in the verse. If. If thou continue in his goodness. Otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.

I did not put that if there. Paul did, and he wrote it to people who were already standing by faith. AND THE BROKEN BRANCHES ARE NOT BURNED

If they abide not still in unbelief.

The ones broken off can come back. Paul says so plainly, and he says why. For God is able to graff them in again.

So the breaking off was not the end of them. And Paul had already said why.

Because of unbelief they were broken off, and unbelief is what stands in the way of the road back.

AND NOW THE VERSE I WOULD PUT AT THE END OF THIS WHOLE BOOK

Paul has run three chapters on Israel, the hardening, the potter, the stumbling, the branches. And then he says this.

That he might have mercy upon all.

Read the purpose Paul gives for concluding them all in unbelief. That he might have mercy upon all.

I am not going to tell you every soul is finally saved, because Paul does not say that and the rest of Scripture will not let me. What I will tell you is what the verse says God was after, and the word is mercy, and the word after it is all. WHERE THAT LEAVES IT

Romans 9, the potter and the vessels. Romans 10, all day long I have stretched forth my hands. Romans 11, God forbid, twice, and a stumble that is not a fall, and branches that can be grafted back, and a mercy aimed at all.

That is one argument by one man, and when he finishes it he does not close it off with a rule. He breaks into praise. O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, and the chapter runs on to verse 36 in worship.

And there is a conclusion in that praise, and it is a large one. How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out. That is Paul saying, after eleven chapters, that he has not got to the bottom of God and does not expect to. The cross remains open, for whosoever will.

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Chapter 12

Can Someone Walk Away?

This is the question that troubled me for years, so let me not hand you a quick answer, let me walk you the way the Holy Spirit walked me.

When I was young in the faith and studying salvation, I hit roadblock after roadblock. The saying everywhere was once saved, always saved, people repeated it, yet they could not follow their own thought all the way through. And I looked at my shabby life before, and my struggling life at the time, and it did not add up, and it discouraged me so deeply that I stopped going to school over it.

Then the Holy Spirit came, and I mean He came, and He explained it to me Himself. And here is what He showed me.

Not everyone who says he has taken the Lord as Savior has confessed Him with the heart. And this is how I have come to read it. Some confess with the mouth only, and that mouth only confession is where I believe the complications spread, because the words were said but the heart never came. But some confess with the heart, and on that day the heart itself cut a covenant with God. Paul names the two side by side, so we would not confuse them.

With the heart man believeth, with the mouth confession is made.

Now let me be careful, because I am about to lean on this verse and I want you to see exactly how far it carries me. Paul is not writing there to separate two kinds of people. He is describing one salvation with two parts to it, believing and confessing, and they belong together.

What I take from it is that Paul names believing and confessing separately, and that a man may say the words without the heart being in them, and Paul does not stop and say it.

That is my reading. But I did not get it out of a book. I got it in front of the Lord, out of my own life, looking at people who said the words and at myself who had said them.

And where the heart has truly believed, I believe a covenant was made that day, and that covenant does not let go. Now covenant is my word for it, and Paul does not use it in that verse. I use it because I read a covenant as a thing cut between two, and that is what I believe happens when the heart believes. And I will say now that in the verse I am about to give you, God is the one doing all the acting, so the two-sided part is my picture and not the verse’s.

And I did not take that word out of the air. Hear what God said He would do, and hear it twice, because He says it twice in Jeremiah and He says the same thing both times.

Written in their hearts. And their sin remembered no more. Now read the other one, one chapter over.

An everlasting covenant, and read both sides of it. I will not turn away from them, and I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me. Read who is doing it. I will make. I will not turn away. I will put my fear in their hearts. It is His doing from one end to the other, and the keeping thing He puts is inside them.

Put the two together and you have the whole of it. He writes it in their hearts, He puts His fear in their hearts, He does not turn away, and He remembers the sin no more. The thing that goes in, and the thing that holds, and the forgiving for when they fall.

Now Jeremiah is speaking there to Israel, and somebody will say that is his subject and not mine. So let me not carry it over on my own word. Hear who carries it.

That is the writer of Hebrews quoting Jeremiah, and he is not quoting it as an old promise that has passed. Read what he calls it four verses earlier, a better covenant, and Christ the mediator of it.

So the same language Jeremiah used, God writing in the heart, and a covenant that holds, is picked up by the New Testament and set on Christ. Now Hebrews is quoting the first of those two, chapter 31, and not chapter 32, so I will not pretend it hands me both. What it does show me is that this covenant language was carried forward, and I am not the one who carried it.

And that is where I got the word covenant, and it is why I say the covenant does not let go.

Now hear this carefully, because it is where fear likes to live. A heart that made that covenant can still stumble, and Solomon says so plainly.

A just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again. Read the contrast Solomon draws, because it is not falling against not falling. It is falling and rising against falling into mischief. So falling is not the same as walking away. Now Solomon does not say why the just man rises, and he says nothing about a covenant, so that part is mine and I am bringing it to his verse. The one who confessed with the heart falls, and gets up, falls again, and gets up again, not because he is strong, but because the covenant keeps pulling him home.

Now read what that verse promises and what it does not. It promises that God will forgive and cleanse the man who confesses. It does not promise that a man will confess.

But look who John is writing to. He says we. If we confess our sins. He is a man in the group, writing to people he expects to sin and to come back and say so, and he tells them what is waiting when they do.

And here is a thing I hold out of my own life, and I will say so before I say it, and not after.

Now Peter says that as an if, in a sentence about desiring the milk of the word, and he does not go on and say what I am about to say. So take this next part as a picture out of my own life and not as the verse’s teaching.

Once you have tasted that the Lord is gracious, you cannot go back and be satisfied at a lesser table. You may wander, but the taste ruins every substitute.

That is what it has been for me. It is not a promise Peter made.

Now let me be honest with you, the way a teacher should. Believers who love God, who pray and search the same Scriptures, have not all seen this question the same way, and many who differ are faithful and dear. So what do we do with this?

We look in the right place, this was never about how well you have performed, it was about the heart that came. It is not about your grip on God, it is about His grip on you. It is not about the fruit you can count, it is about the covenant that grows it. Peter tells us to give diligence to make our calling and election sure.

Now I have to be careful with that verse, because it has two halves and I could take the one and leave the other.

If ye do these things. What things? Peter had just said, four verses before.

That is the list. Faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, kindness, charity. Those are the things, and I am not going to put my own things in Peter’s sentence.

So the making sure that Peter is talking about is a growing, and a man is meant to be adding to his faith while he walks.

And now the end of the verse. Ye shall never fall. That sounds hard against a chapter about people who fall and get up, so let me say what I take from it and mark it as mine. I do not think Peter is promising a life with no stumble in it, because he is writing to people he expects to have to work at this. I take the never falling as not going down and staying down.

And do not let the word sure frighten you either. It is not telling you that you are not sure. It is telling you there is something to be getting on with.

So do not go measuring your branches in fear. Add to your faith, the way Peter said, and the tree will leaf.

And I have said He is holding it, so let me put the verse under it rather than leave it as a saying of mine.

Neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. That is His hand and not mine, and I have leaned on that sentence for years. And read the words in front of it. They shall never perish.

Never perish is a word about the end of a thing, and this chapter has been about the end of a thing. That is where I rest, and I want you to see that it is where I rest, because Jesus does not stop in that passage and describe a sheep that wanders off and then say it will certainly come back. I have built on those two sentences.

And now let me tell you why I have spent a whole chapter on this, because it is not a doctrine I picked up. It is a thing I lived without knowing.

In my early days, when I fell, I doubted the forgiveness. Not because I thought God was unwilling. Because I did not know whether there was any getting up, once I had already said I accepted Christ. I thought the fall might have ended the thing, and if it had ended, what was the use of asking.

So I would keep going to church, and I would not be all in. I walked around with the blues. And I waited for the feeling to wear off, because I had nothing else to wait on. Nobody had shown me a covenant, and nobody had shown me Solomon saying a just man falls seven times and rises.

The feeling did wear off. And looking back, I believe something was holding me while I waited, and I did not know what it was.

So can someone walk away? The mouth that only spoke can drift, for it never truly came. And the heart that made the covenant, I believe, comes back.

The fall does not end it for a covenant heart. I am a witness.

That is not a threat to keep you afraid. It is a mercy to keep you close.

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Chapter 13

When Predestined Purpose Is Resisted

We have walked the whole road now, and there is one question left, and it is the one that touches a person in the pew more than any of the others.

What happens when a man does not do the thing he was set apart for. WHAT IS BEING RESISTED, AND WHAT IS NOT

Let me put the pieces back where I have kept them all through this book. Election is the choosing and the setting apart, and in the cases I have walked through it comes with a work, though Romans 11 taught me not to make that rule bigger than Paul made it. Predestination is where that work was headed. Salvation is the door, and it is a separate thing from both.

So what gets resisted here is the destination of a calling already given. It is not the door.

And I am not going to tell you that a man who fails his assignment has lost his soul, because I do not find that in Scripture and I would not put that fear on anybody. What I will show you is that Scripture is full of people who were chosen, and who resisted, and it cost them something real. THE GENERATION THAT CAME OUT AND DID NOT GO IN

Israel is the plainest case in the whole Bible.

Read what that generation had and what they did not get.

They came out of Egypt. They saw the sea open. They ate the bread that fell every morning. Every one of them was brought out, and of everyone numbered from twenty and upward, two men went in. They were rescued, and they did not arrive.

That is the whole of this chapter in one sentence, and I did not have to reach for it. God brought them out and they would not go in, and He did not carry them in over their own refusal. AND THE PROMISE DID NOT DIE WITH THEM

But look what God did not do. He did not cancel the land.

The land was still there. The promise still stood. It went to the children of the ones who fell, and Joshua walked in at the head of them. So the purpose was not lost. It was carried by somebody else.

AND A KING WHO LOST HIS PLACE

Here is the one I would put in front of anybody who thinks failing an assignment means losing everything.

Read it exactly. Rejected thee from being king.

God names the thing that is taken, and it is the office. He does not say rejected thee from mercy, and I am not going to make His silence say it either way.

And I will tell you what does happen next, because it is hard and I am not hiding it.

The Spirit departed from him. So I am not going to hold Saul up and tell you that a man who resists his calling loses nothing but the job. Saul lost more than the crown, and Scripture says so plainly.

What Scripture does not do is tell me where Saul’s soul went, and I will not tell you either.

What it tells me is what was named and taken. The kingship. And read what had already happened one verse before the Spirit departed.

The anointing went to a shepherd boy in Bethlehem while Saul was still sitting on the chair. AND ONE WHO RAN AND WAS SENT AGAIN

And then there is Jonah, who did not fail quietly. He got on a boat going the other way.

The second time.

God did not raise up another prophet and leave Jonah in the sea. He came back to the same man with the same word. Jonah resisted his assignment about as plainly as a man can, and God sent him again.

Saul lost the office. Jonah got it back. The Lord deals with men one at a time and He is not obliged to do it the same way twice. WHAT IT COSTS, AND WHAT IT DOES NOT

Here is what I see across those three, and the first thing I see is that they do not come out the same. Israel resisted and that generation did not go in.

Saul resisted and lost the kingship, and the Spirit departed from him. Jonah resisted and was sent again with the same word.

So I will not hand you a rule. Resisting a calling costs something, and Scripture is plain that it does, but what it costs is not the same in every case and I am not going to pretend it is.

What the promise does is survive. The land was still there and the children went in. The throne was still there and David sat on it. Nineveh still heard, and Jonah is the one who preached to it.

And in all three of those accounts, God carried His purpose forward. Sometimes through the same man, and sometimes through somebody else. AND THIS IS WHERE THE WHOLE BOOK LANDS

I started this study because three words were being thrown at an open door.

Foreknowledge, election, predestination. And I have walked all three, and put the hardest verses up myself, and taken back my own wording twice when Paul would not let it stand. And not one of the three shuts the door.

Foreknowledge is God knowing beforehand, and I read it as knowing who will come. Election is the choosing out for a work, and Romans 11 taught me not to make that rule bigger than Paul made it. Predestination is a marking out beforehand, and I put all six of its uses in front of you back in chapter four. A thing to be done, a conformity to His Son, a hidden wisdom, an adoption, an inheritance, and a glory.

Not one of the six is a marking out of who may come. And not one of the three is the door.

The door is a Man, and He said so Himself.

I am the door. By me if any man enter in. And over that door is written a word that has no list attached to it.

Whosoever will. The cross remains open, for whosoever will.

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The Summary, How Salvation Connects, and Does Not

We have come a long way down this road, so let me gather it now, and put the whole of it in one place, because a thing learned in pieces should be handed back whole.

This is what brought us here in the first place. People take three great words, foreknowledge, election, and predestination, and they read all three as if they meant salvation. And when you make those three mean salvation, whosoever will stops meaning whosoever.

So here is the whole matter, plain. Each of the three touches salvation, and I do not believe any one of them is salvation. Let me show you the connection and the disconnection, one at a time, and then the door they all point to.

And I will tell you before I start that I have taken back my own wording twice in this book, and I am not going to quietly put it back here in the summary. FOREKNOWLEDGE

Connected. God foreknew, and I put the places I could find where the word is used of His knowing in front of you in chapter two, and said there that the word is used of men elsewhere too.

Not the same, and here is where I stand. His knowing did not save you. To know a thing beforehand is not to cause it, and I read the foreknowing as God seeing, ahead of time, the one who will come.

I said in chapter two that there are good men who read it the other way, that the knowing is God setting His love on a person, and I am not going to pretend that reading is foolish. But whichever way a man reads it, Acts 2:23 stands. Peter puts the determinate counsel of God and the foreknowledge of God in one breath with ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain. I am not going to drop the counsel out of it to make my point easier. Both halves are in the verse, and Peter still called that crowd to repent. ELECTION

Connected. Scripture speaks of the elect, and the chosen, and it does so about people who are saved.

And here is where I have to correct my own book. All the way through I said that every case I could find was election to purpose, a setting apart with a work. Romans 11 would not let that rule stand.

The election of grace, and the election hath obtained it. Paul puts the word election right up against grace, and I am not going to bend that into my shape.

So I will say it the way I can hold it. Many of the elections in Scripture are elections to purpose, and I showed you Judas chosen to the twelve and lost, and a chosen nation that fell in the wilderness. And Romans 11 has an election that is not being spoken of that way, and I have let it stand.

What I have not found in the passages I have walked through is an election that shuts the door on the one who comes. PREDESTINATION

Connected. Predestination is a marking out beforehand, and it belongs to the people of God.

Not the same. I gave you all six of its uses in chapter four. A thing to be done, a conformity to His Son, a hidden wisdom, an adoption, an inheritance, a glory.

Not one of the six marks out who may come. The word people reach for to shut the door is never once used of the coming through it. AND SALVATION, THE DOOR THEY ALL POINT TO

Here is the one they were all confused for, and it is the simplest of all. Salvation is the door, and it is the coming. It is the soul that answers the call and walks through Christ into the family of God.

WHY IT MATTERS THAT WE KEPT THEM APART

Keep them apart, and the pressure comes off. God can foreknow, and choose, and predestine, and still say whosoever will and mean it, because none of those three is the door.

Collapse them into one, and here is what I have seen it do. A person is left thinking his eternity was settled without him, and he stops hearing come as anything meant for him.

And let me say the last thing carefully, because this book has been careful about it all the way through. Men who love God and search these same Scriptures have not all come out where I have come out. I have not written to prove anybody wrong. I have written what I see, and I have shown you the verses I see it in, and I have told you where I am reading rather than reciting. His sovereignty runs the knowing, the choosing, and the landing.

The door is Christ, and it remains open, for whosoever will. My Own Night

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My Own Night, the Writer’s Testimony

I have taught you from Abraham, from Jeremiah, from the twelve, from a shipwreck and a supper. Let me finish by telling you the truth about myself, the whole of it, nothing cleaned up, because I am the last witness I have, and God drew me the same way He draws anyone.

I was knee deep in sin, and I went to church every Sunday, and I lived no life for God, none. I want that plain, because I am not going to dress it up. I was in it.

And one night, in the very middle of my sinful act, I heard my name called in my ears. I answered, and there was no one there, and I got up quick.

I understood that as the call, general and wide, come, reaching a woman who was not looking for Him.

Then the Spirit of God came and disrupted my sleep, and He began to talk. It was one in the morning, and He went through things in me. The things I did not mind letting go, I lay still and let Him take them. But the things I was not ready to give up, I turned my head to the other side of the pillow. I kid you not, I turned my head on the pillow away from the sins I wanted to keep.

That is the drawing, and it does not drag. He drew, and I turned my head, and still He would not force me. Drawn, not dragged.

And when I tell you God is faithful, He is faithful, loving, and kind, because He kept on. Still talking at three in the morning, and He would not let me go.

By then I had enough. I got off the bed and I said I am going to the park, to run from Him. It was raining, there was no one there that morning, not a soul, and I ran. I ran with a strength that was not mine, I ran until half past six.

No man can come except the Father draw him, and He was drawing me through the rain, off my own bed, out into an empty park. I was running from Him, and He was drawing me the whole way.

And out there, running, He was not gentle anymore. He got rough with me. He told me He had taken me out of the guk, the mess, and removed me from the drift wood. I did not fully know what He meant, but I knew it was mercy with a firm hand. I said, okay, okay, and the running stopped.

His roughness there put me in mind of Moses, later, when I understood it. Moses stood chosen at the bush and kept making excuses. He said he was slow of speech, of a slow tongue. And then he asked God to send somebody else, and it was after that one that the anger of the LORD was kindled against Moses. Not to cast him off, He gave him Aaron and said go. God got firm with Moses over the very thing He meant to use. He got firm with me too.

Now Exodus says the anger was kindled, and it does not stop and tell me why, so let me say that part as mine. What I see is a man arguing with God about the very thing God had chosen him for, and God being firm with him and sending him anyway. That is what it looked like to me on my own night.

Now here is the part I want you to hear closely. He never said out loud, I want you to preach, and He did not say it. But when the running stopped, I knew, and it came to me without words. I just knew that was the thing He had elected me for.

And I am not going to prove that to you out of a verse, because it did not come to me out of a verse. It came to me in a park in the rain. What I believe is that He had known it all along and I caught it in one wordless moment, and I hold that as my own testimony and not as a doctrine I can hand you.

And do you know what I did with it? Walking to my car, I answered the thing He had not even spoken. I said, but I do not want to preach, because I do not want to lose my voice. And there was no more talking, silence, and He did not answer me one word.

Elected, and refusing in the same breath, the way Moses hid behind his speech. The assignment landed, and my will pushed back, and God went quiet and let me carry it.

When I got home from the park, my husband was scared. There was an expression on my face he could not understand. And on the way home I had found a new problem, a strange one. It was no longer God wrestling me, the talking had stopped, and it was me wrestling myself. Because I did not want to preach, and now I was wondering how in the world I would ever get over that.

That is where the door and the assignment part ways. I had come through the door that night, okay okay, whosoever will, I answered and I was His. But the assignment, the election to preach, that I had not yet taken up, and I knew it, sitting there wondering how I would get past my own no. The saving and the assignment are not the same thing, and I felt the whole of that difference on the drive home.

I have never turned back, and I have fallen since, but I got right back up, every time. And in His time, not that night, but in His time, I accepted the assignment, in Jesus name. I got over the thing I could not see how to get over, because He got me over it.

And here is what settled it for me, and I offer it as mine. I preach, and I teach, and I sing. The very voice I sat in that car trying to protect, I do not want to lose my voice, that voice is His now, and He is the one who kept it. I thought I was guarding it, and He already knew I would hand it to Him. He was right, and I was the last to know it.

Foreknowledge knew my way while I ran from Him. Election set me apart and gave me the assignment I argued against. And the door stood open, whosoever will, and I had already come through it that night. What took His time was the assignment, and in His time I walked all the way into that too, in Jesus name.

So if you are sitting in your own car tonight, drawn and saved and stuck on the one thing you do not want to do, wondering how you will ever get over it, hear me. I sat there too, and He got me over it. He knew my way while I ran, and I believe He knows yours. Even now, even resisting, say okay, okay. And then, in His time, in Jesus name, walk all the way into what He has called you to do. You came through the door already. This is the rest of it.

For the Book Club, Questions to Study Together

This book was written to be studied together, in a group, around an open Bible. Read a part, then talk it through with these questions. Do not rush. Let everyone speak, and always prove what you read against the Word, the way the Bereans did.

These questions are free to copy and share with any group who will use them. For the Reason, Why I Went Through This

1. The writer went looking for answers because of her son’s question, “If God already chose, what is the point of Him coming?” Have you ever carried a question about God that would not let you go? What was it?

2. She says she wrote for the young and the fragile, so they would know they are not excluded. Who in your life needs to hear that the door is open to them? For How To Read This

1. Jesus said, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Why can these truths not be grasped by cleverness alone?

2. The Bereans searched the Scriptures daily to see whether things were so. How can your group prove what you read, rather than just accepting it? Whosoever Will

1. Read Revelation 22:17. Who gives the invitation in the verse? Who is invited to come?

2. What conditions does the verse itself place on the person who may take the water of life freely? Write down only what you can actually see in the verse.

3. The book says “whosoever will” leaves the door open. Does the verse itself say who may come, or does the book have to supply that meaning?

4. Read Isaiah 55:1. Who is called to the waters there? Compare its language with Revelation 22:17. What do the two invitations have in common?

5. Read John 3:16. What does “whosoever believeth” require from the person hearing the gospel?

6. Now challenge the book. Could “whosoever will” describe a genuine invitation while God has already determined who will actually respond? What Scriptures would someone use to argue that?

7. If someone brought John 6:37 and John 6:44 against the book’s reading of “whosoever will,” how would you answer from Scripture rather than simply repeating the book?

8. After reading the passages yourself, do you believe “whosoever will” means the invitation is genuinely open to everyone? What verse carries the most weight for your answer? The General Call

1. What does the book mean when it uses the words “general call”? Is that expression in the biblical text, or is it the writer’s name for something she sees across the Scriptures?

2. Read Matthew 22:14. What is the difference in that verse between being called and being chosen?

3. Read the parable around Matthew 22:14. Was the invitation actually offered to people who refused it?

4. Read John 12:32. What does Jesus say He will do when He is lifted up?

5. Does “draw all men” necessarily mean every individual without exception? What would you need from the context before making that claim?

6. If God’s call can be resisted, find a Scripture where people resist something God genuinely wanted them to receive.

7. Now challenge the book from John 6:44: If no man can come unless the Father draws him, how does the book establish that the drawing is not limited only to those who will finally come?

8. Can you distinguish these three things from Scripture: being called, responding to the call, and being saved? Foreknowledge

1. What does “foreknowledge” mean according to the word study in the book?

2. Find the passages where the book examined God’s foreknowing. What does each passage actually say God foreknew?

3. Does the Greek word itself tell you how God foreknew someone, or does that question require interpretation?

4. Read Romans 8:29 carefully. Does Paul say “what He foreknew” or “whom He foreknew”? Why should that wording be taken seriously?

5. Does Romans 8:29 itself say that God foreknew them because He foresaw that they would believe? If not, where does that part of the book’s argument become interpretation?

6. Now take the opposing reading seriously. Some understand “foreknew” as more than knowing information beforehand. What would they point to in Romans 8:29?

7. Read Acts 2:23. How can something be within God’s foreknowledge and still involve human responsibility?

8. Does knowing something beforehand necessarily cause that thing to happen? Can you establish your answer from the biblical uses rather than from an illustration alone?

9. At the end of the discussion, what can you prove about foreknowledge, and what remains your interpretation of how God’s foreknowledge works? Election

1. Before discussing what election means, find the words “elect,” “election,” or “chosen” in the passages used in the book. Who or what is chosen in each passage?

2. Is everyone Scripture calls “chosen” being chosen for exactly the same thing?

3. Israel was chosen by God. What was Israel chosen for? Does being God’s chosen nation automatically mean every Israelite was eternally saved?

4. Judas was chosen among the twelve. What does his case establish about the fact of being chosen? What does it not establish?

5. Read Romans 9 carefully. What does Paul say concerning Jacob and Esau before they were born?

6. If someone says Romans 9 proves unconditional individual election to salvation, what part of the chapter would you need to examine before answering them?

7. Now read Romans 10. Why does Paul still preach believing, confessing, calling upon the Lord, and hearing the gospel after what he has just written in Romans 9?

8. Then read Romans 11. What happened to some who belonged to elect Israel? What does Paul say about unbelief, being broken off, faith, and being grafted in again?

9. Where did the writer herself have to correct an earlier statement when she reached Romans 11? What does that teach us about allowing Scripture to correct our theology?

10. After Romans 9, 10, and 11 are read together, what can you prove election means, and what would go beyond what those chapters actually state? Predestination

1. Find every New Testament occurrence of “predestinate” or “predestinated” examined in the book. Do not begin with a definition. Begin with the verses. 2. In Romans 8:29, what are those foreknown predestinated to be?

3. Does that verse say they were predestinated “to believe,” or does it name another destination? 4. Read Ephesians 1:5. What does Paul say they were predestinated unto?

5. Read Ephesians 1:11. What does the verse say was predestinated there?

6. Does the word “predestination” by itself tell you who enters salvation, or must you examine what each passage says is being predestinated?

7. Challenge the book here. If someone says Ephesians 1 proves God selected particular individuals for salvation before creation, what language in the chapter supports their argument?

8. What language in the same chapter would the book use in response?

9. Can you separate these two questions: “Who may come to Christ?” and “What has God determined beforehand concerning those who are in Christ?” Why does that distinction matter to the book’s argument? The Three Brothers Together

Now put Foreknowledge, Election, and Predestination on the same table.

1. Are these three different biblical words, or three names for the same act? 2. What does the book say each one does?

3. Can you find a Scripture that requires you to make any one of the three mean “God decided beforehand which individuals He would save and which He would not”?

4. Now reverse the test. Can you find a Scripture that absolutely rules that interpretation out?

That one matters. Do not make the book claim more than its Scriptures can carry.

5. Which of the three words presents the strongest challenge to the book’s position? Why? 6. Which passage gives the strongest support to the book’s position? Why?

7. If you removed the writer’s explanations and kept only the biblical passages, what conclusion would you reach? Salvation

1. According to the passages used throughout the book, what actually saves a person? 2. Is being foreknown called salvation anywhere?

3. Is being elected called salvation everywhere election appears?

4. Is predestination itself ever presented as the act of a sinner believing the gospel and being saved?

5. Read Romans 10:9 to 13. What does Paul put in the mouth, heart, believing, confessing, and calling?

6. Who is included in “whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord”?

7. How does Romans 10 fit between Romans 9 and Romans 11? Why should we resist building our doctrine from Romans 9 while ignoring the chapters surrounding it? The Open Door and the Three Brothers

1. After studying all three brothers, has any one of them actually closed Revelation 22:17? Show your answer from Scripture.

2. If foreknowledge means that God already knows who will come, does His knowing make the invitation unreal? Why or why not?

3. If election concerns God’s choosing, does every biblical choosing concern eternal salvation? Prove your answer.

4. If predestination determines something beforehand, what do the actual predestination passages say is determined?

5. Can “whosoever will” remain completely true while foreknowledge, election, and predestination also remain completely true?

6. If your answer is yes, explain how without weakening any of the four. For The Summary

1. Salvation is connected to all three, yet is none of them. Say back in your own words how salvation connects to foreknowledge, election, and predestination, and how it is not the same as any.

2. The door is Christ, and it stands open. Who do you know who needs to walk through it? For My Own Night, the Writer’s Testimony

1. God drew the writer off her bed and into the rain, and still would not force her. Where have you felt God drawing you, gently or firmly?

2. She knew her assignment without being told, and her first answer was, “I do not want to.” Is there something you sense God asking of you that you have resisted?

3. She sat in the car with a new problem, “How will I get over that?” What is the thing you cannot see how to get over, and what would it mean to say, “In His time, in Jesus name”?

4. The voice she tried to protect became His. Has God ever taken the very thing you wanted to keep, and used it for Himself? For the Berean in the Room

Do not defend the book because you like the writer. Do not reject it because you disagree with her. Open the Bible.

1. What is the strongest biblical argument against the book? 2. What is the strongest biblical argument for it?

3. Find one place where the writer states something directly from Scripture.

4. Find one place where she is explaining what she understands from the Scripture rather than something the verse says directly.

5. Find one place where you think the writer may have said more than the Scripture itself says. If you find one, bring the verse and show why.

6. Read Romans 8:29 to 30, Romans 9, Romans 10, Romans 11, Ephesians 1, John 6, and Revelation 22:17. Does your conclusion still stand when the difficult passages are allowed to sit beside the open invitation? 7. Did you change your mind about anything after searching the Scriptures?

A Closing Word for the Group

End your time in prayer. Thank God that the door is open, that He draws, that He knows the way each of you will go. And ask Him, plainly, to help anyone in the room who is sitting in their own car, drawn and saved and stuck on the one thing they do not want to do, to say okay, okay, and walk all the way through, in Jesus name. A Note for the Book Club

Nobody gets to answer, “Because Sis. Yvonne said so.” If you agree with the writer, show it in the Word.

If you disagree with the writer, show it in the Word.

And learn to notice the difference between what the Bible actually says and what the writer understands from what she has read.

Sometimes the Bible says something plainly. You can point right to the words on the page.

Other times, the writer is telling you what she sees, understands, or concludes from those words. She may not always tell you directly that this is her understanding.

So ask yourself: can I point to the words in the Bible that say this? If you can, hold to what is written.

If you cannot, it may still be a good and reasonable understanding of the passage, but do not say “the Bible says” when the Bible did not actually say it.

And where Scripture corrects something you believed before, let Scripture have the last word. That is not losing an argument. That is studying the Bible.