The Song of God
A Fresh Appraisal of the Christian Doctrine of the Ultimate Destiny of Humankind:
IMCF Lectures on God's Universal Salvation
by
Les Aron Gosling, Messianic Rebbe
Copyright © BRI, 1996
Lecture Format © 2016
All Rights Reserved Worldwide
Originally Produced as a BRI Study Manual
LECTURE THREE
INITIAL THOUGHTS ON SALVATION
Scan the pages of the Ante-Nicene Fathers of the Faith and the Calvinist doctrine of double election is noticeable by its absence. So also is the Arminian concept of man's free choice in the matter of salvation. And so, indeed, are many other popular beliefs held in a cherished manner by the modern twentieth and twenty-first century technocratic Church. Indeed, as a prime example of the confusion that presently exists, consider Rav Shaul's statement (which is plain enough) in his epistle to the Romans.
"For what one earns from sin is death; but eternal life is what one receives as a free gift from God, in union with the Messiah Yeshua, Our Lord" (
Romans 6.23).
Ask any "born-again" believer preaching on a street corner, or warming his pew on a Sunday morning, if he or she can earn salvation and they will promptly, and I believe correctly, answer with a loud resounding "No!" They will also, no doubt, add that they believe salvation is a gift from the Lord. After all, the Christian Scriptures make the matter absolutely crystal clear. The issue is one of dogmatism. There can be no other way of obtaining salvation than by God bestowing eternal life upon the recipient as a gift. No strings attached. A gift is
gratis. It is free. It is not merely offered. It is a gift bestowed, without any works to earn it.
Having recognised this, it will be insisted by this lecturer that the faithful of all Christian traditions also urge the point that condemned sinners -- who have failed to accept Jesus as their own Saviour -- or who have with a volition of freewill rejected him, will ultimately be given eternal life as well (which paradoxically they consider death) in what they call an ever-burning "hell fire."
To be entirely honest with Christian belief systems, however, it needs to be clarified that some reject this idea and prefer a condition or station of "outer darkness" to actual "never-ending fire." Still, to make the matter even more confusing some adherents of the "Faith" believe both. The righteous Christians, of course, will be given eternal life (even though they already possess eternal life in the form of an immortal soul).
This "eternal life" is really a state of unending bliss in "heaven." That an unending bliss would soon become frightfully monotonous, without a contrast, seems to escape the grasp of logic in their desire to exit the present stress and drudgery of our life in the flesh. That Our Lord Yeshua (call him "Jesus" if you must) never actually promised the Messianic Community an existence in "heaven," at least not in the Christian Scriptures I have read, does not seem to perturb them at all. That his radical gospel was primarily concerned with the establishment of the political kingdom of God on this earth under his direct authority, control and Lordship is little understood. In fact many of his plain exhortations and assertions, if not the vast bulk of his teachings, have suffered from the peculiar Christian disease of being "spiritualised away." Even Rav Shaul did not tell his assemblies anything with clarity about jettisoning planet Earth and going to heaven at the Second Advent, nevertheless this is what multitudes claim that he taught.
Truly it is an easy matter to read relatively current concepts into the fragmentary records of the first century Jewish-Roman world. But, whether we are Coptic, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic or Protestant (Reformed or otherwise) we are all in one accord in acknowledging that theologically death can mean "separation from the presence of the Lord." Some, lacking good sources of scholarship, would even go so far as to use the expression "everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord."
Now of course there are essentially two schools of thought on what actually constitutes this "everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord."
The first school of thought teaches that all who have not come to a "saving knowledge" of "Jesus Christ" will be tormented eternally in the fires of damnation. Still others of this same line of thought have these wretched souls wandering about alone in the blackness of darkness, eternally separated from any contact with other living creatures (damned or otherwise), perhaps locked into warped "black holes" from which there can be no escape.
That there can be nothing outside God, again escapes them. Satisfied with their anguish and torment, God simply but effectively forgets about them. They are
absolutely,
irrevocably and
finally lost.
The second school of thought offered by some of the sects of Christendom, and accepted by some few of the great thinking theologians, is that of eternal annihilation. That is to say, the lost after being judged and duly condemned are cast alive into a lake of fire to be burned up
completely,
thoroughly,
conclusively and
permanently, only after suffering at least some measure of mental torture, so that they are left only as so many ashes blowing in the wind. They will never be resurrected again to conscious existence. It is in my own personal view that of the two theories this latter concept is to be considered the most humane. I almost slipped and wrote "Godly."
The average hapless churchgoer fails to realise that both these theories lead us into a morass of theological headaches and into the worst of biblical nightmares. Arguments of exegetical inconsistency automatically begin to surface, and from these spiritual slipstreams we can be extricated only by God's Grace.
When it comes to the ultimate destiny of humankind the nature of eternal and unconditional Love is at once the issue.Now as a Messianic lecturer, reading the Messianic Scriptures of the Yeshua School from a Jewish standpoint and appreciating the Bible's Jewish roots and first century Jewish thoughtforms makes me acutely aware that theological bias, based on Greek philosophical frameworks, can enslave those of us who possess a Christian mindset to an altogether woeful, intellectually restricted, doctrinal structure.
Well intended as such may seem to be, it is still with regret established not so much on any principle of
Sola Scriptura, but upon the shifting sands of pious and traditional religious opinion. Doctrinal foundations based upon the great creeds of the Church rather than on the healthy investigation of the Sacred Word seen against the cultural, religious and linguistic backdrop which presented the Holy Volume to us, is a premise that is somewhat shaky indeed. Rather than even a disturbing reluctance to peruse the evidence that might possibly suggest the existence of a sovereign God possessing a dominant Gracious Salvific will in his subjection of a material universe (or perhaps multiverse) to the present condition of hostility, corruption, antagonism and flagrant disobedience, the Church invariably does quite the opposite. It in fact
burns its heretics. It
excommunicates its faithful. It
shoots its wounded. It so
despises God.
"Which of the prophets," asked the Lord Yeshua, "have you not murdered?" Of course, he was directing the probing question to the sanctimonious religious leaders of his day within the structures and strictures of the existing Judaisms of the Second Temple Period -- the most corrupt period ever known in Jewish history.
The Gentile Christian community ought to welcome and accommodate further stimulating theological contributions and creatively sophisticated thoughtforms, if those same contributions and thoughtforms work to the purpose of penetrating more completely into the light of the sovereign Gracious will and Salvific character of "That Other" which we metaphorically and inadequately call "God."
I have been blessed with many friends in a number of Christian denominations and churches. And I think they would agree when I say that too many of us are complacent in our study pursuits, when it comes to the Sacred Scriptures. We often hear the cry of cultism -- "What we have is enough!" -- bellowing from the hallowed halls of orthodoxy. It would appear, if we believe that the
Apocalypse is prophetically for our own day and age, that many of today's believers are suffering from a fatal spiritual disease called "Laodecianism" (
Revelation 3.14-22).
For, people who cannot praise, people who cannot properly worship, people who are indifferent to programs of intensive Bible study, people who cling tenaciously to time-worn traditions, people who are starving, naked, sick, anxiety-filled and who have no idea of either their symptoms or pitiful condition, and who are equally ignorant of what Yeshua the Messiah did for them (and the entire world) on the torture tree at Golgoleth, and at the same time call themselves "followers of Christ" -- disciples of Christ, students of Christ, Christians -- are nothing more than hypocrites. Not just hypocrites, but religious hobbyists who pew-sit Sunday after Sunday proudly wearing their stupidity as intellectual arrogance. They think God hears their lazy, mumbling, unintelligent and unintelligible prayers. These are the blind, and the self-opinionated, who dwell in the nether regions of spiritual hallucination. This sort were vocally detested by the prophets of ancient Israel -- and equally detested by Yeshua the Messiah (
Revelation 3.16). Would he be any different today?
But there is a third alternative concerning the matter at hand which we should all at least consider. Dressed in a slightly different garb of presentation than it has previously enjoyed, this alternative suggestion would do justice to the Sacred Scripture, to the creative speculations of theology, and fundamentally satisfy intelligent Christian reason. The rejection by the church of Jewish thoughtforms, and its tendency to treat Messianic believers (who appreciate their Jewish roots) with more than a little suspicion, has given rise to what Carl Henry has called "theological vagrancy" (Carl F.H. Henry,
Quest for Reality: Christianity and the Counter Culture, 1973, 156,158).
The pews of the modern Temples of Non-Think are filled to overflowing capacity with so many somatised victims of a biblically bankrupt Churchianity. As theological vagrants we ought to admit, in a spirit of deep humility, that as a Sacred Community we have inherited a paganised Christianity at one with the world, a shallow shell that has radically and tragically diluted its rich biblical heritage. As a Sacred Community we ought to be praying for a renewed spirit of repentance and for the faith, courage and enterprise to launch a veritable New Reformation.
Certainly the two views of the final destiny of the "wicked" (which we have already discussed -- i.e., one view which leaves human beings burning in terrible agony forever, and the other concept which burns the "wicked" up "root and branch" until absolutely nothing is left) leave Yeshua as a Lord only of a minority, and that with a tarnished, if not greatly diminished, sovereignty. There is an immense difficulty which remains to be answered by clergy in regard these horrific destinies of the people who have rejected the Saviour. For,
If Yeshua paid the penalty for sin, then he would of necessity have to undergo and experience the severe penalty under which the rejected individual was sentenced. If this is the case, and modern dogma asserts that it is, then Yeshua is today screaming wildly and insanely in the blackness of darkness and -- make no mistake -- he is there forever, or is in fact burning with associated extreme tortures in a never-ending fire.Certainly, no longer fit to wear the splendid crown of the Subjector of All, God's will has been thwarted by some wispy and fickle free decision-making capacity of man, and to add insult to injury Our Lord has had his position denigrated to his being nothing more than a mere
provider of salvation for a lost humankind. In no way can he be exalted as a "Satisfied Saviour." No, not by any means. He seems capable of saving some -- and they are those who cooperate with him in the exercise of their apparent free will -- but most assuredly he cannot, or will not, save the vast overwhelming majority for whom he died.
After all is said and done, Christians form only a tiny number of the teeming billions alive on this planet at this present time. Since the dawn of creation this earth has been witness to the footsteps of somewhere between 70 and 140 billion people who have ever lived. And we are talking about
homo sapiens sapiens [sic]: Intelligent thinking Man. That's a lot of flesh to burn up, and a lot of mistakes to eradicate (or to torment eternally) at the Last Day of God's Great White Throne Judgment. The immense overwhelming majority have never ever heard of "Jesus Christ" as the "one name under heaven given among men" whereby we can be saved. This unpalatable notion makes the Lord Yeshua out to be, not a
Personal Saviour who saves
personally, but an outright collectivist failure.
As believers in Mashiach (Christ) we are taught more than anything else that there is one name under heaven, and one name only, by which -- and through which -- salvation can be attained and that name is "Jesus the Christ" or Yeshua the Messiah. One name: Yeshua. The case is Scriptural. It is written plainly enough in the Lukan account of
Acts:
"Neither is there salvation [found] in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved" (
Acts 4.12).
This biblical axiom seems clear enough. Apodictically, the very name Jesus is supposed to be an English equivalent of the Greek form (Iesous) of the Hebrew Yeshu or Yehoshua. Joshua, a hero of ancient Israel, had his first name Hoshea (= "salvation") changed to Jehoshua (= "salvation of Yehovah" or better, "health of Yehovah"). In fact, the western church until 300 odd years ago spoke of the Messiah by the name Yesu or Jesu which is a much more acceptable version of the more corrupt Jesus ("Hail Zeus"). The title "Christ" is a mere Anglicising of the Greek Christos (= "anointed") which again in turn is equivalent to the Hebrew Mashiach (= "Messiah") -- but it is a word markedly different in character and nature to the popular Gentile concept of Saviour. "Messiah" and "Saviour" both held a wide scope in meaning.
When Our Lord Yeshua and the apostles walked Judaea even the Emperor Augustus was called "Saviour of the world," his birthday celebrated widely as "the day of the Gospel." In the Jewish mindscape, the Messiah was expected to be a conquering warrior-king, raised up in power by the Spirit of El-Shaddai (= "Almighty God") himself, in Hebrew religious and societal ideology. "Saviour" is entirely a pagan Latin word which did not find its way into any English version or translation prior to the days of Tyndale when he unceremoniously replaced the accepted "For heelthe [health] is of Jewis [Jews]" (Wycliffe) with the now familiar "For salvacion commeth of the Jewes" in
John 4.22.
Andrew's view, upon meeting his Lord Yeshu was not that he had discovered someone who would take away his sins, but that he had found the Messiah.
We must insist Yeshua was of Galilean extraction and therefore his name "Yeshua" was pronounced without the "a" at the end of his name being emphasised: despite the hints in the Talmud and in Jewish fables concerning the "real" meaning of "Yeshu" the Messiah's name was, is, and today stands as, YESHU.Kefa (Peter) likewise saw no immediate significance in a Saviour from sin but acknowledged him as haMashiach. Similarly, Yaakov (James) and his brother Yochanan (John) the sons of Zavdai (Zebedee) declare themselves suitable to occupy powerful positions of rulership in Messiah's eschatological kingdom. That his intimate
talmidim saw Yeshu as the Davidic claimant to political Messiahship cannot be questioned except for the dull of mind. For of his disciples it is written, "We hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel by liberation" and again it is written that they enquired of the risen Yeshu, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore self-rule to Israel?" The theological view of Yeshua as Saviour came later with the advent of Rav Shaul (Paul) the emissary to the Gentiles (nations).
In today's current understanding however, while both terms can be appreciated, accommodated, integrated and reconciled in the person of Yeshua his role as Messiah ought to be granted its full majestic recognition.So Luke, Shaul's disciple, physician and friend, reflects the position of the primitive Pauline Messianic assemblies in his
Acts of Paul (known today as the
Acts of the Apostles) that only through the authoritative name of Yeshua can humankind (the nations) find salvation. That there is only one person who is able to save (in a spiritual sense) is at once of primary importance.
As Christians we tend to gravitate almost unconsciously to the position that while we are saved entirely by Grace through the merits of Yeshua (or "Jesus" if you insist), who earned salvation on our behalf through his perfect obedience to God, the unsaved world can face the possibility of spiritual salvation, and by an extension of logical argument, economic and political salvation, in their experiential knowledge of a philosophical system. That is, an applied system of merits, of works, and of growth in excellence that deserves honour.
The Messiah need not be a part of such an arrangement. This dramatically applies in our present technocratic age where gross materialism abounds on the one hand and the rapidly shrinking fundamental rights of the individual human being abounds on the other. The salvation-by-merits argument by extension sequences to include the Day of God's Judgment when lost humankind will stand before an awesome Great White Throne. That such a view can be read into John's astonishing vision of the general resurrection in the
aeon of the Great White Throne, in the twentieth chapter of the
Apocalypse, shows readily enough how flagrantly flippant many of our scholars are when it comes to a proper evaluation of the nature of the Hebrew Lord who claims he shows no degree of respect when it comes to human personages.
The question must therefore be put: Does God have two ways to salvation? One way for Christians in this age, through the Christ, and yet another during the general resurrection of the dead at the Great White Throne, according to their works and individual merits? This is what we have been led by the proverbial nose to believe!
Suffice to say at this stage, when it comes to a meditative appreciation of the revelation of balanced doctrine, especially when the doctrine centres squarely in the playful creativity of an all-pervading Higher Intelligence and Unconditional Love that is admittedly (and rather embarrassingly) higher than our own, some of us deliberately and wilfully hide our ignorant nakedness from the intense gaze of the Father of Lights -- our stimulating and provocative God. We are not easy prey when it comes to surrendering our facades. We hesitate to face up to our spiritual poverty. We do not want to gracefully accept the richness of the pulsating vibrational Word of a Holy God. Especially is this the case when the emphasis is only on the role of Yeshua as our spiritual Saviour without reference to his holy Messianic redemption of
Eretz Yisrael. We grip harshly to our precious Replacement Theology at all costs, even at the cost of the truth. We so eagerly shade our eyes to the patently obvious and hotly pursue like a rabbit in heat religiously conventional fetishes.
It remains however, for us believers, that anything less than our "Yes" and "Amen" in the Jewish Messiah, and all for which he stood while in the flesh, and all for which he continues to stand in the Spirit, is a tragically detrimental course that will continue to curb the emancipation of his Spirit of freedom and liberty within us. For, anything that detracts from the Grace of the cross, even the redemption of
Eretz Yisrael, ought to be vehemently, radically, morally and practically opposed. The Grace of the cross is God's total affirmation even of a world, and not just a "church" (albeit God's "church") already justified (
Romans 5.18), the future outworking of this legal state into an active full salvation-condition notwithstanding.
We 21st-century Christians are indeed a funny bunch. We smugly peer down our righteous noses at those who have faith that in world federalism humanity can experience a salvation for a planet in its death throes. Or, we frown condescendingly on those unenlightened who continue to have faith in the gospel of Karl Marx -- a gospel of economic utopia for the dispossessed and neglected outcasts of society, those ever-needy and always-hungry masses. While we act in this way we are often theologically guilty of the very same thing, at least in principle. For we preach, teach and otherwise promulgate
that the exercise of faith in Christ will actually save us. Faith. Our faith: that which originates in our "pure" and "unadulterated," "clean" and "wholesome" intention and will. The Person of Christ is thus insidiously and in a subtle measure replaced with faith, indeed a philosophy of faith. Listen! A heresy is a truth that is emphasised out of proper balance with the entire truth. But this idea concerning faith is
beyond heresy. Hundreds of millions of believers adhere to it. They would even go to war to defend it. This view that one is saved by "saving faith in Jesus" is a downright fabrication, a diabolical fable, an attractive yarn. While it sounds right on the surface it ensnares the gullible (and God knows just how gullible the average believer happens to be) to think less of God's Grace.
This fact is certainly comprehended by Christian author Charles Horne who notes that genuine faith (which comes from God by Grace) in contrast to some "saving faith" must "grasp special revelation in its twofold aspect:
(1) the written word and
(2) the personal word. The former has to do with the knowledge content of faith, the latter with the communion content; the former with doctrine, the latter with experience. The former is objective, the latter is subjective." He adds, "The former without the latter leads to a cold, empty intellectualism; the latter without the former leads to a confused and meaningless mysticism. Both together lead to a normal Christian experience..." Horne continues his corrective broadside with remarkable and astute perception. "Strictly speaking it is not even faith in Christ that saves, but Christ who saves through faith" (Charles M. Horne,
Salvation, 1971,55).
Many of us have been exposed to the traditional altar-calls of the hot-gospelers who, with strained vocal chords and heart-rending appeals, literally beg those in attendance at revival meetings to "Give your hearts to the Lord in 'saving faith,' surrender your lives to God, and tithe to us." Of course this is putting it crudely but this approach has been all too apparent to anyone who, by God's mercy and very little exposure to televangelists, still possesses a brain capable of thinking for itself. This is not to denigrate authentic opportunities, perhaps during church services, to seek the outpouring of the Sovereign Spirit with a view toward individual or corporate repentance, and to further stimulate faith in hearers of the proclaimed Word (
kerygma). Those who serve God's people with God's Word, or rather, those who serve God's Word to God's people, need to always emphasise the nature of the Self-sacrificial Spirit who, out of nothing more than divine Love, entered his own creation to suffer and die for each and every one of us. Instead of such a gentle, awesome, Gracious, Salvific Father-Mother God we are all too often presented with a Successful Heavenly Businessman in modern American dress.
Have we not warped the Gospel beyond recognition? Are we not guilty of subversion, distortion, fabrication? In my humble opinion nothing short of a New Reformation or the sudden and unexpected return of Our Lord could possibly salvage, let alone restore, the true Gospel of Yeshua and the original
kerygma of the primitive
ekklesia. Instead of the pure, unadulterated Gospel, the "glad tidings" (or better, "great tidings"), many of us have been subjected to an uliginous and oleaginous onslaught of an Arminian version of God's Grace. We are told that we must accept "Jesus Christ" as our personal Saviour "right now, this instant" as we may never have another opportunity to do so again.
Arminians fail to realise that the Messiah in God's Mind was slain from eternity. He was "Saviour" of the world from eternity. Our western mindset has refused to allow us to see that Mashiach's nature as a Self-sacrificial deity is to forever seek creative opportunities, in fact to create such opportunities, in the exercise of his own free will to incessantly incarnate in that which he creates. Sacrifice involves the traumatic "conception" of death. Yeshua noted, "Unless [a seed] falls to the ground and dies it has no life." Nature speaks aloud of the nature of God. Perhaps we have all failed to some extent to properly grasp this fundamental reality about the Awesome Lord -- the Wild God -- we profess to worship. It is not just the Arminians who are at fault in this matter. Yeshua came to reveal the Father, but at some time in the past two thousand years we lost him. God the Father-Mother is today, as much as he was in Rav Shaul's day and age, the "unknown God" (
Acts 17.22-28). The Father, "out of whom are all things and for whom are all things" (Romans 11.36), is about to ring the curtain down on the rebellious activities of wayward planet Earth. Already the planet is starting to groan in apprehensive but joyous anticipation of the coming of the Cosmic Christ. The manifested Jewish Mashiach is about to declare his Godhead in a visible way in the dreaded
apocalypsis of his majestic Advent (
Matthew 24; Mark 13; Luke 21; Isaiah 13; 1 John 3. 1-3; Revelation 11.18).
Again, for clarity's sake, did any of us who lay claim to "the name of Christ" exercise some "saving faith" necessary (we are told) for our salvation? Was such "saving faith" a necessity in order to "accept him" as an important, nay, vital prerequisite to that active salvation-experience? True, salvation has been worked out for us in the perfect life, death and resurrection of Yeshua. But the teaching of Paul the emissary to the nations is clear. If our conversion was genuine then we were saved (past tense) in reality before any of us -- be we Reformed, Arminianist or Messianic -- could exercise any personal works for our salvation. We were, in effect, saved long prior to the initiation of the ages in the plan and purpose of God. In a nutshell this is encapsulated in the following statement of Paul: "...the power of God who saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and Grace, which was given us in the Messiah Yeshua before the world began [better, "before times age-abiding"]" (
2 Timothy 1.8,9).
This teaching of a salvation given to us prior to creation voids an exercise of our so-called free human will or volition in making "a decision for Christ." This is not an expression of some hyper-Calvinism. It was the express teaching of Paul the apostle and the beloved John, the intimate disciple of Our Lord (
John 1.13).
The wonderful truth is that if any of us really belong to God we had no say in the matter of "accepting Jesus" or even "rejecting Jesus." In actuality we were conscripted by the irresistible sovereign will of Almighty God (
John 15.16). The Christian Church threw the concept of a Subjector God out in the fourth century when the Emperor Constantine came to power. But the primitive Messianic Community believed that we were purchased, redeemed and saved, at the unqualified and absolute cost of Another. This to us ought to be a sweet song of love for any who have spiritual ears to hear. We once belonged to an age of darkness and were part and parcel of a devilish world system of philosophical, religious, political, medical and economic deception.
It is God and God alone who elects and selects. It is God alone who chooses us from eternity in Grace. We do not elect ourselves to salvation. In fact, the very word "redeemed" in
Romans 3.24 is a slave-market word denoting that we Christians were purchased with no say at all in the matter. Slaves make no decision as to who buys them. Salvation is wholly Grace operative (
Romans 11.15; 1 Peter 5.13; 1 Thessalonians 1.4; John 13.18; 15.16,19). Salvation is all of God and nothing of us. In the words of the humble and powerful Spurgeon, "If there be but one stitch in the celestial garment of our righteousness which we ourselves are to put in, we are lost."
Not of
Grace? Then
not of God!
So, having said this, is there ever a time prior to conversion that we might sincerely voice a positive need for salvation, for Christ, when we might "call on the name of the Lord" in a genuine heartfelt manner? Of course! I did! I responded to Mashiach as a result of a Billy Graham "crusade." We ought not forget that while our God is a free-willed Wild God, the "Source of Everything" is Absolute undeviating constant unconditional Love and that same Creator possesses an awesome creative will. He is, above all things, the Subjector of All. This Hebraic view has the approbation of "New" Testament witness as well as "Old." But even such an emotional or intellectual "decision" to so seek the Lord, prior to our conversion, is a direct and automatic response to God's already freely initiated, loving act of Grace and a current or present outworking (operation) of God's spiritual, subjecting will within our hearts. Such salvation came originally from the Lord, not of us. We had nothing whatever to do with it. We were dead in our sins. Christ saved us while we were yet sinners. I have opened a corpse. I have held a threatening scalpel within millimetres of its eyeball, and it has not flinched. I have tickled the soles of its greyish-yellow feet with the same scalpel, and it has not moved, or laughed, or cried out for me to stop. We were like that corpse before conversion. We were dead. We had NO life at all. That's what Paul stated (
2 Corinthians 5.14 etc). Frankly, for such salvation, we ought to continually praise and worship the Subjector God. Such would be a natural outcome if our conversion be genuine (
1 Corinthians 12.3;
Philippians 2.13). Remember, the very emissaries of the Messiah Yeshua were of the opinion that they had "decided" to follow him, but Our Lord did not hesitate to correct their views on this matter (
John 15.16).
There has been far too much emphasis in the Protestant church on the need of carnal, unconverted man (dead in sins and transgressions) to surrender to God and to accept the "Lord Jesus Christ" as personal Saviour. Rather, Yeshua states categorically that he has chosen us, and the apostles lay great stress on this marvellous realisation right throughout their respective ministries. For almost fifteen hundred years the authentic Community of God has waited patiently for the emergence of convicted disciples in the
Corpus Christi, the very mystical Body of Christ, possessing the dogged determination, dauntless Herculean courage, and outrageous intestinal fortitude willing to preach this gospel of God's Grace as it was originally understood, apprehended and fearlessly proclaimed by the early Messianic Community of the Jewish Messiah Yeshu.
Genuine spiritual faith is emphatically not human faith, for it comes as God's free gift (
Ephesians 2.8). If it is our own, then we have somewhat to boast. The gospel of God's Grace can have it no other way. It is high time we who profess to be Mashiach's own possession begin to reject outright the fallacious tampering of the Jewish Scriptures by so-called "Coverings" and "shepherds" and place our allegiance where it should have been all along and that is centred squarely on the Gospel rather than on man's feeble misunderstanding of it. Only then can we honestly claim to be "free in Christ" (
Galatians 5.1).
QUESTIONS & ANALYSIS OF LECTURE THREE
The Messianic Rebbe wrote: "Scan the pages of the Ante-Nicene Fathers of the Faith and the Calvinist doctrine of double election is noticeable by its absence. So also is the Arminian concept of man's free choice in salvation."
There are two basic polarisation's existing in the Protestant community, that which is called Calvinism (after Calvin, whose immediate ancestry was Jewish -- a convert to the Protestant rebellion who authored the concept of "double predestination") and the other which is known as Arminianism (after Jacob Arminius, the Latinised name of Dutch theologian Jakob Harmenszoon who propounded an atonement "sufficient" for all humanity but "efficacious" only to the believers).
In brief, Calvinism supports a belief that Christ died only for the "Elect" (hence predestination) whereas Arminius believed that Christ died for "the world" (limited universalism).
Protestants reject unrestricted "universal" salvation as robbing incentive and directing energy away from missionary zeal. In point of fact, missionary zeal is a myth of grotesque proportions. Christians have had 2000 years to convert the world and to change the world, and have in nothing completed either task satisfactorily.
I have often challenged (and embarrassed) those who say they "believe" in eternal punishment by asking why they are not continually knocking on doors and enquiring with evangelistic fervour as to the beliefs of the "unchurched" (generally known in church circles as "the wicked") regarding "the one name under heaven given among men to be saved" because in reality Christians show by their works (or their complete lack of them) that they do not care one iota if 3000 unsaved people enter a dreaded eternity each hour. Yet if an actual, literal fire broke out in the house next door they would be taking as good neighbours what necessary action they could to save any of the folks involved. To think that 3000 "unsaved" men, women and little children enter eternity each and every hour "without a saving knowledge of Christ" and yet those same Christians will not lift a single finger to intervene for them -- to save them from the horrors of the unrelenting torture fires of God -- is an indication that their belief is nothing more than a counterfeit sham. Indeed its more than this. Its the biggest "con" of all time, and their complete lack of evangelism or humane interest on the behalf of the lost proves once and for all that their own heart is devoid of anything that could be remotely described as "love."
The Messianic Rebbe wrote: "We often hear the cry of cultism -- "What we have is enough!" -- bellowing from the hallowed halls of orthodoxy. It would appear, if we believe that John's
Apocalypse is prophetically for our own day and age, that many of today's believers are suffering from a fatal spiritual disease called "Laodecianism" (
Revelation 3.14-22)."
Having said this, there is the ever-present danger among those of us who accept the doctrine of an ultimate universal salvation (and God's personal invitation for the "elect" to become "firstfruits") to throw off any and all personal "obligations" to evangelise, to have outreach to others, leaving it all up to God because they realise they are not to usurp the role of the Messiah as Saviour. This response is born of and arrogant smug contentment and has nothing of the Spirit of God in its nature. Understanding the doctrine of the Messiah's universal salvation in no way curbs our responsibility when it comes to evangelism.
While it is God who initiates, activates and completes all the factors relating to the salvation-drama, we Messianic believers (Christians) play a dramatic part -- see
Luke 1.16; James 5.19f; Acts 26.17ff; 1 Corinthians 7.16; 1 Corinthians 9.19ff; 1 Peter 3.1; Luke 5.10; Matthew 4.19 cf 13.47; 1 Corinthians 9.22 RV; Romans 11.14; 2 Corinthians 5.19f; Romans 1.13. Read these texts carefully and then argue against the proposition of evangelism and outreach. We ought to be men and women of faith. If we are thus considered, we ought not arrogantly glory in our election to salvation. Rather, our acknowledgement of God's Grace simply makes us aware of our calling and election in Mashiach -- to be in Christ -- to live out fully the life of truth as opposed to a life of falsehood. In essence the Christian is called to service in response to the gift of God's Grace.
Evangelism (and that to all nations) should not be rejected but rather encouraged
as to reach the foreordained and chosen "elect" of God -- the "Firstfruits" of a coming General Harvest no matter where they are to be found. The act of evangelising includes the endeavour to elicit a positive response to the truth of the Gospel. It is communication with a view to conversion. It is a matter, not merely of informing, but of inviting. It is an attempt to GAIN, to WIN, to CATCH our fellowman for Mashiach. Our Lord Yeshua depicts it as a "fisherman's" work.
The Messianic Rebbe wrote: "The Grace of the cross is God's total affirmation even of a world, and not just a 'church' (albeit God's 'church') already justified (
Romans 5.18), the future outworking of this legal state into an active full salvation-condition notwithstanding.... Have we not warped the Gospel beyond recognition?"
The Gospel is the "Good News" or "Great News" of the GRACE of God in the Jewish Mashiach and the LORD of all humankind. Armed with the truth of God, as it is now proclaimed by the Messianic BRI/IMCF, we need to seek advantageous opportunities to spread THIS GOSPEL TO ALL WE MEET for we all, possessed of the bubbling vitality inherent in our SPIRITUAL SALVATION have enormous potential to share this Gospel with the lost and unsaved world. Our literature speaks of the Creative God, who creatively elects people to repentance in order to bring them into his Kingdom (hence the Gospel is often spoken of as the "Gospel of the Kingdom of God") -- a God who through all the centuries has shown himself kind and Gracious and merciful, a God who loves and seeks sinners to be his friends, a God who offers humanity the ULTIMATE -- Himself as MAN, in order to redeem them. Yeshua, who is the IMAGED REFLECTION of the God of Israel, is the self-authenticating WORD of God, searching out the hearts of men. He has brought a message of salvation, different from all offers of "holy" words found in religions today.
So we at the Messianic BRI/IMCF are possessed of a message which combines the Grace of God and the (Living) Torah of God "as a way of Grace for the people of Grace," witnessed in trust and obedience, and which Gospel exalts the son of God's love in an appreciable way as the
Salvific Heart of God. As such man cannot place limits on the loving-kindness of God as revealed in Our Lord Yeshua the Messiah. For, God has declared himself for MAN, for all MEN. What distinction, if any, can be made between Christians in the here and now and (presently) non-believers, if Yeshua is at once (in the MIND of God the Father) ELECT for all?
With Karl Barth, this lecturer sees that any difference is not that the Christian is saved, and the non-believer is damned. Rather, the Christian and the non-believer stand together in their joint need. It is GOD the Father who stoops down to deliver both.
THUS CONCLUDES LECTURE THREE
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