The question can be simply stated....does man have free will to either believe in Jesus Christ or not to believe....or does God elect....and then regenerate....and then effectually call? Finding the answer to this changed the direction of my life back in the early 1990s....but that question in itself is not the focus of this post. Lord willing I'll give an addendum at the end here with some resources to go to. Isn't it odd that I felt it necessary to add....Lord willing....on something that is only a few hours away at most? But that also is part of this life change....in that God is sovereign in absolutely everything! I cannot even say that I will do this or that in a few hours time without at least acknowledging in my mind that God controls His entire creation!
The focus in this post is once again on God's continuous warnings to us His church in this age of darkness. I tend to always emphasize our pulpits....and their failure to warn the sheep....not only of the judgment that is ahead....but our culpability in that judgment....but that is only half of the story.Isaiah and Jeremiah each warned the people over at least four decades....Isaiah in the days of Uzziah and Jotham and Ahaz and Hezekiah....and Jeremiah in the days of Josiah and Jehoiakim to the end of the days of Zedekiah. Can you imagine that....warning for forty years and more....without ever being listened to? In a way it reminds me of Billy Graham. His ministry was over seventy years but it was over the last four decades or so that he began to warn in earnest of the judgement that was coming.
As an interesting anecdote....William Randolph Hearst was very hands-on with the many news outlets that he owned. Billy Graham was relatively unknown....this in 1949....and preaching his now famous Los Angeles Crusade. Hearst sent out a two word directive to all of his news outlets....Puff Graham....in other words....make this guy look good. The rest was history....or as we like to say at times concerning God and history....His Story!
No....neither did the prophets speak for God....nor did the shepherds warn....just as today the shepherds do not warn....but the people....would not hear even if they did warn. Jeremiah was even told....chapter seven verse twenty-seven...."So you....(Jeremiah)....shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you."
This is something that is becoming more evident to me all the time....something has happened in this time period....the last twenty years or so....even to the people of God....we will not hear! The warnings go in one ear and out the other. They may find it interesting....and they may even share the concern....but they will not act! The restlessness lasts only about as long as the noxious odor of a skunk in the neighborhood. Unless it actually sticks to us....it goes away.
I'm referring here also to mature Christians! So there are still some pastors out there who are faithful in warning.....John Piper would be one....MacArthur another....and a number associated with R. C. Sproul's Ligonier ministries....and actually many pastors in smaller churches dotting the entire landscape of America....but until God in effect....through His Holy Spirit....gives the decry.....Puff Piper or Puff MacArthur....or Puff All Those My Faithful Shepherds....we will continue to be more interested in a hundred things that occur in our daily lives....than that which may very soon happen to all of us....pertaining to both our temporal and our eternal destinies!
Addendum: As for those resources....I'll be concise here in recommending two sources. The gift God gave to R. C. Sproul was in teaching the holiness and sovereignty of God. There really was no one on his level. You can easily access many of these teachings through a simple Google search.....or go directly to ligonier.org....and navigate from there. If right now you would rather just have one book.....I would recommend the book that most affected me.....Michael Horton's....Putting The Amazing Back Into Grace!
