Presupposition Two: God’s Purpose for the Salvation of Sinners Needs a Major Overhaul. If He Doesn’t Get Some Much Needed Marketing Help from Us, Sinners Who Would Have Been Saved with These New Methods, Will Be Lost.
It would seem any person with even the most superficial understanding of biblical truth about God’s purpose in salvation would immediately reject such a God-dishonoring suggestion. It may be that even those most heavily engaged in this movement would be uncomfortable with such an unvarnished statement of their beliefs. Still, everything they practice indicates this is one of their foundational tenets.
The questions for which we should seek biblical answers are whether God’s purpose for the salvation of sinners is in trouble and if He needs human assistance to accomplish His work. Please understand I am not asking whether God uses means to accomplish his purpose and whether he intends to accomplish that purpose apart the use of means. For example, if no one ever proclaims the gospel, will anyone ever be converted? The answer is a resounding, NO! But, there is another question we need to consider. Who is it that sends preachers and kindles a fire in their hearts that cannot be extinguished? Will God ever leave himself without a witness or will he not insure the execution of his purpose by raising up messengers to accomplish it?
The question is whether God needs means and methods other than those he has prescribed in Scripture to execute his sovereign purpose? Is there any possibility God’s propose will fail to be accomplished? Apparently, those who adhere to this movement believe these questions should be answered affirmatively. Does the Scripture say anything about whether God’s purpose is settled and certain to come to pass? Is God in danger of failing to get the job done if we don’t find some new methods of evangelism and church growth?
To answer these questions we need only appeal to one Old Testament passage. The LORD, speaking through the prophet Isaiah, said, Remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, 'My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure,' Calling a bird of prey from the east, the man who executes My counsel, from a far country. Indeed I have spoken it; I will also bring it to pass. I have purposed it; I will also do it (Isa. 46:9-11).
This Scripture, among a host of others, makes it clear that all God has purposed will certainly come to pass. He has not even left the execution of his plan to us but calls the man who executes His counsel from a far country. He who has ordained the end of all things has also ordained the means by which that end will be accomplished. It is clear many who have engaged in the work of ministry either have never been introduced to or have dismissed out of hand the biblical truth that God is governing all his creatures and all their actions in strict accordance with his eternal plan and purpose. For them, the whole idea that the success or even the survival of his work depends on him, not us, is a bizarre concept.
On the other hand, those in this movement who have professed to embrace this truth of God’s sovereignty must have yielded to the idea that God is unable to accomplish His purpose by those God-ordained and time-honored means through which in former days He has shown himself so powerful. Such an outlook can only spring from a heart of unbelief.
Stephen Charnock, describing Israel’s unwillingness to trust God’s provision for them in the desert and His promise to give them their inheritance, writes,
How did they contract the almightiness of God into the littleness of a little man, as if he must needs sink under the sword of a Cananite!This distrust must arise either from a flat atheism, a denial of the being of God or his government of the world, or unworthy conceits of a weakness in him, that he had made creatures to hard for himself, that he were not strong enough to grapple with those mighty Anakims, and give them the possession of Canaan against so great a force. Distrust of him implies, either that he was alway destitute of power, or that his power is exhausted by his former works, or that it is limited and near a period; it is to deny him to be the creator that moulded heaven and earth. Why should we by distrust put a slight upon that power which he hath so often expressed, and which in the minutest works of his hands surmounts the force of the sharpest of understanding? At this point, we simply need to remind ourselves of the prophet Isaiah’s words concerning God’s power to save. He wrote, "Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened that it cannot save; nor is his ear heavy that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden his face from you" (Isa. 59:1-2).
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