
	The Destination! - Historic Calvinism

Historic Calvinism by Charlie Allen

The Chosen

Jeremiah 1:5 Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee.

Ephesians 1:4 According as He hath chosen us in Him before the

foundation of the world.

Many struggle with the thought, when pondering Calvinism, how can

God choose some to be saved and some not to be saved. Our usual answer is that God is sovereign and since He is the Creator of man, He has the authority to make that choice! We think of 'election' as a process whereby God chooses out of the mass of humanity some to be saved while leaving alone the others.

My theory is as follows:

God does not choose 'out of the world' his elect; He 'introduces'

to the world His elect. Jeremiah 1:5 and Ephesians 1:4 support this

theory.

Before creating the world and us, God decided that through the ages

He would introduce to each generation people that He chose to

represent Him to these generations. These people were His choice before the foundations of the world came into existence. He was not choosing out of the world He was introducing to the world His chosen people who had a mission. The mission was to demonstrate to the lost and dying world a person who could, for the most part, rise above the sins of each generation, confess the sins that they did commit, repent and continue to worship Jehovah and be His spokesman. In other words these chosen ones were to demonstrate the holiness of God as He is holy. Each generation would have someone who God, before creation, knew, empowered, gifted and purposely birthed into each generation so that they would not be

without a visible, audible representation of Almighty God.

Lets look at those in the world who are under the sentence of death

physically and spiritually who were not of the chosen ones. Is there

a chance that they might become saved. The answer is yes and that is

where the 'Good News' comes in. The Gospel message of Christ dying for the sins of mankind is for the chosen as well as those in the world who will come to God through Christ's atonement by confession of sin,

receiving Christ as Lord and Saviour and repentance. Baptism would follow at the appropriate time and they would live a life of holiness as best as they could having the chosen ones as an example of how to do this.

Now comes the question of knowing if one of these who come to God

through the Gospel message is really saved? Matthew 13:1-9 teaches an

important lesson. Four people respond to the Gospel message but only

one is really saved. So let's say that on the average, only one fourth of all confessions of Christ is real. One would say, why? And the answer is found in the Matthew account.

I would say that the key to the reality of real salvation for those

who are not the 'chosen' but have come through the Gospel presentation

and have confessed Christ, the key is repentance and lifestyle. The

'chosen ones' have no problem with repentance because it is part of the makeup of those chosen and their lifestyle has already been determined by God and planted in those who are chosen to represent God. The determining factor of whether or not a person is really saved or not is found out by whether or not they will repent of the sins that God in His Word says is sin and then alter their lifestyle as a result of the repentance.