United States or Bolivia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But if we take 'redeemed' in its highest sense, the Psalmist, arguing from God's past mercy and eternal faithfulness, is saying substantially what the Apostle said in the triumphant words, 'Whom He did foreknow, them He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son ... and whom He did predestinate them He also ... justified, and whom He justified them He also glorified. 'Thou hast redeemed me. 'Thou art the God of Truth; Thou wilt not lift Thy hand away from Thy work until Thou hast made me all that Thou didst bind Thyself to make me in that initial act of redeeming me.
The getting of it on is anguish, and as to the getting of it off, I heard her moan to her nurse the other night, as she wriggled her curly head through the too-small exit, "Oh I only God knows how I hate gettin' peeled out o' this dress!" The spectacle of a small boy whom I meet sometimes in the horse-cars, under the wing of his predestinate idiot of a mother, wrings my very soul.
Many will not believe this, esteeming it impossible, despise and vilifie these Mysteries, which they understand not in the least, they may remain Fools and Idiots till an illumination follows, which cannot be without Gods Will; but remains till the time predestinate.
After indulging in the most loathsome displays of foul brutality, this "Minister of the Word of God" ends with the cheerful prayer, "That they whom Thou hast predestinated to salvation may alwayes have the upper hand and triumph in the certainty of their salvation: but they whom Thou has created unto confusion, and as vessels of Thy just wrath, may tumble and be thrust headlong thither whereto from all eternitie Thou didst predestinate them, even before they had done any good or evil."
He beats her, he binds her, He lays her on a band; And every day he strikes her With a bright silver wand. Like Julian the Roman, He's one that fears no man. It's said there's one predestinate To be his mortal foe; But that man is yet unborn, And long may it be so."
The premises from which this doctrine is deduced are those Scripture texts which have the authority of the Apostle Paul, such as these: "According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world;" "For whom he did foreknow he also did predestinate;" "Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated;" "He hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth;" "Hath not the potter power over his clay?"
But the elect, it is said, "are chosen from the foundations of the world; before they have done either good or evil." Election is indeed, "according to foreknowledge." "Whom God did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son." But God could not foreknow, say some, how a free moral agent would act, unless he had first determined how he should act!
For, 'whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son; whom he did predestinate, them he also called; and whom he called, them he also justified. So full is this of consolation and felicity that the apostle exclaims, 'If God be for us, who can be against us? Thus, salvation by free grace is inseparably connected with good works.
For in every approved romance the third adventurer gets the victory; so that I am, I take it, predestinate to win where Vanringham and Rokesle failed." She did not chop logic with him, but instead retorted in a more primitive fashion by beginning to scream at the top of her voice. I doubt if any man of honor was ever placed under a more great embarrass.
But the human will does not exist in the abstract world of reasoned science, in the world of atoms and vibrations, that rigidly predestinate scheme of things in space and time.
Word Of The Day