Spiritual Israel?
Hello, Friends! I hope someday you’ll deal with the Adventist untruth of “Replacement Theology”!
—NAPA, CA
Response: Thank you for your letter. I will share here a couple of links to some articles we have run during the past few months. The comments following the articles are also worth reading:
How Sovereign Is Sovereign?
I have some of your books and do appreciate what you do. I am a Christian. I am confused over God’s Sovereignty and our free will. My question is, does God predetermine or appoint (fix/set) a day (time) when we will die, or does our free will and choices play a part so that it’s flexible? Can you recommend any material on this topic or something that one of your writers has covered? Anything to help. Thank you.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: The Bible teaches a certain tension, or what some call “parallel truths”, that we cannot fully explain or resolve. From God’s perspective, I believe these parallel truths are not in conflict; from our perspective, though, the resolution is not visible to us. We are limited to three dimensions and time, and we cannot see what God sees.
We have to take the words of Scripture seriously and submit to them, even when we cannot explain them fully. For example, God’s sovereignty over all things is clearly spelled out in both testaments. Concurrently, man’s responsibility to act with integrity and belief is expected. Our choices have eternal consequences; they are real choices.
When we see or hear the command of Scripture to believe God, our proper response is to obey that command. When we see the evidence of God’s power and sovereignty, grace mercy, wrath and justice—we are expected to believe those things and to act with obedience and trust.
Abraham is our example: Genesis 15:6: Abraham BELIEVED GOD, and it was credited to him as righteousness. Abraham couldn’t see and didn’t experience the fulfillment of all of God’s promises to him, but he BELIEVED God and acted in obedience when God told him to act. This faith and obedience serves as a model for all who believe.
God IS sovereign; He does know our days and times. At the same time, we are expected to make decisions based on believing God and obeying His commands to us. These decisions are real and have consequences. I cannot explain how both are true concurrently, yet they are. They are “parallel truths”, but to God they are not in conflict.
We trust God and do what He places in front of us to do! I suggest that you get a notebook and take the time to copy the book of Romans, a few verses at a time, into the notebook. Romans is an amazing revelation of the concurrence of these two realities: God is sovereign, and we are not. At the same time, our decisions are real, and our obedience in response to faith is real. Romans was very helpful to me in coming to trust God’s word and to live with the tension of not being able to resolve what I cannot fully see. Yet I “see” God and His word, and I can trust Him!
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