Adam-Christ Typology (3)
Besides postmillennialism, some premillennialists use Romans 5:15 to argue that the number of the saved will be greater than that of the lost. Premillennialism holds that there will be a future golden age of 1,000 years (though a few premillennialists are open to a non-literal interpretation of the 1,000 years), in which the majority of people on the planet will be true Christians. Unlike the postmillennialists, the premillennialists envisage the future golden age as coming after the Lord’s second coming.
There are basically two types of premillennialism. According to historic premillennialism, there will be a 1,000-year golden age. Additionally, dispensational premillennialism reckons a literal 7-year tribulation will precede the 1,000-year golden age.
Some premillennialists, like the postmillennialists, claim that during the future golden age so many will be saved that, when added to those converted prior to this period, they will exceed all the lost of all ages. However, even if you take the 1,000 years of Revelation 20 literalistically and project it into the future, it should be noted that the passage states that the wicked will far outnumber the righteous at the end of that period: Satan “shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city” (8-9)!
Moving from the postmillennialists and some premillennialists, we come, third, to (what we could call) the “sentimentalists.” Their view is not based on a false eschatology or doctrine of the last times but a false soteriology or doctrine of salvation. The sentimentalists have a sort of sentimentality towards all children who die in their early years. Here an “age of accountability” is drafted in, such that anyone dying before that age goes straight to heaven, and that age gets increasingly bigger. Thus everyone who dies in infancy or childhood or even in their teenage years goes to be with Christ. According to their thinking, the number of those who are saved (believers plus all who die before the “age of accountability”) is greater than the number of adults who die in unbelief.
There is a medical problem with this view: the (natural) infant mortality rate has rapidly declined precisely at the time when the world’s population is highest. However, this is offset somewhat by soaring (murderous) abortion rates.
More serious, and even fatal to the sentimentalist theory, is the fact that the Bible nowhere teaches it. Are we really to think that all the unbelieving infants, children and teenagers destroyed in the global flood (II Pet. 2:5) or in Sodom and Gomorrah (Jude 7) or at the conquest of Canaan (Deut. 20:16-17) went to heaven? And what does this notion do to the truth of original sin, a massive theme in Romans 5, for every death, even that of infants, is a proof of our sin in Adam (12). Moreover, this view contradicts the absolute sovereignty of God who elects and reprobates according to His will (Rom. 9:6-24), and not according to the age of the deceased, for there is no respect of persons with Him (Acts 10:34; Rom. 2:11; Eph. 6:9; Col. 3:25; I Pet. 1:17). Rev. Stewart
God’s Omniscience and Process Theology
One of our readers has submitted an interesting question that concerns God’s omniscience, His eternal knowledge of all things: “Jeremiah 7:31, 19:5, 32:35 and 44:21 teach that the sins of the people recorded in those texts never came into the mind of the Lord. These were things ‘which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind’ (19:5). Some appeal to these texts to say that God has not predetermined or decreed sin. Others claim they suggest an element of ‘surprise’ in God and, therefore, that, to a certain extent, He didn’t expect these things to happen and so does not know the future. If God knows all things and has sovereignly decreed all things, sin included, how do we explain these passages?”
The first three of the passages listed are similar and suggest to some that God does not know all the things that will happen, that He has not sovereignly foreordained all things and that the events of history, rather than being predetermined by Him, are events to which He must react and change His mind. The fourth passage is different and more easily explained, so we will deal with it first.
Jeremiah 44:21-22 says, “The incense that ye burned in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, ye, and your fathers, your kings, and your princes, and the people of the land, did not the Lord remember them, and came it not into his mind? So that the Lord could no longer bear, because of the evil of your doings, and because of the abominations which ye have committed; therefore is your land a desolation, and an astonishment, and a curse, without an inhabitant, as at this day.”
This passage is not to be taken as saying that God did not know Judah’s sin. Here Jeremiah is saying to the people of Judah that they had acted as though He did not know or remember their wickedness. The verses have this force: “Do you think that God did not remember your past evil doing and that the time would never come when He could no longer bear with your sin? Did you really think that this day of judgment would never come? Did you think that His warnings of taking you away from the land and leaving it desolate were empty threats? Did you think that He did not know what you were wickedly doing?”
Jeremiah’s words in these verses have the force of a rhetorical question, a question that does not raise doubts about God’s sovereignty, immutability and knowledge of all things, but rather affirms them. God does mean what He says. He does remember sin and will judge it. He does mean what He says and does not change His word. Though He does not always punish sin immediately, it is not forgotten or overlooked.
The remaining three verses passages are similar to each other and it is not necessary to quote them all. The last of them, Jeremiah 32:35, will suffice: “And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin.”
There are those, especially today, who advocate what is called Process Theology or New Thought and use such passages as these to deny God’s immutability (His unchangeableness), eternity (that He is above time and not bound by time) and impassibility (that He cannot suffer), as well as His omniscience (that He eternally knows all things and has decreed them). Process Theology is rank unbelief, a total rejection of the true and living God, and of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only Saviour who by His atoning work paid for our sins, and earned for us righteousness and eternal life.
I do not care to repeat here in any detail the blasphemies of Process Theology. Those who are interested can easily find enough information about it to leave them thoroughly disgusted and dismayed that such voices can be heard in that which calls itself church. Perhaps the question of Jeremiah 44:21-22 should be asked of those who promote these errors: “Do you think the Lord does not hear, that He will not remember what you have said of Him and that He will not punish such evil?”
The troubling thing about these errors is that they are also part of the thinking of those who advocate two wills in God (including one that desires the salvation of those whom He has not eternally elected but unchangeably reprobated), a well-meaning offer of salvation in the gospel (i.e., God wants them to receive it but does not give them the gift of faith or bring them to repentance), common grace (i.e., God is gracious in some sense to the reprobate and then, in the end, sends them to hell), universal atonement (i.e., Christ died for everybody head for head but not all are saved), free will (i.e., it is man’s choice, not God’s, that determines a person’s eternal destiny, so that He does not know who or how many will be saved). It is easy to see that such errors are not far removed from the errors of Process Theology. They also promote a God whose knowledge is limited, who reacts to the actions of men, who has not eternally foreordained all things, who is of two minds about things, and who is not unchangeable and eternal.
The Scripture passages cited are not proof of these errors. In fact, they really have nothing to do with these errors. The passages are all speaking of the fact that God did not know the sins of Judah in the sense that He did not command them or ever speak a word that suggested those sins had His approval. His law knew nothing of them and He never approved them even by silence. Only in that sense did God not know of Judah’s sin. That is why Jeremiah 32:35 says that God did not command the evil things that the people of Judah were doing: worshipping Baal and sacrificing their own children to idols. Nor did He ever speak of these things (except to forbid them).
In these verses, there is even an indication of God’s abhorrence of such sins, that He finds them so evil that He did not speak of them in specific terms to His people or suggest that these things should possibly be found among them. He would then be doing Himself what we should not do according to His own Word in Ephesians 5:3: speaking of things that ought not even be named among God’s people.
The key thing here, however, is God’s omniscience. If God is not all-knowing about the affairs of the universe and/or mankind, then there is no other possibility but that His works are merely a reaction to what happens. If any of His actions are only a reaction to what happens, then He has not predestinated all things, including the salvation or damnation of men and angels. If He has not predestinated all things, then He is not sovereign and is really no different from man.
Worst of all, if He is not omniscient, then there is no hope of my salvation and blessedness. Then there may be things, unknown to Him, that can separate me from the love of God (Rom. 8:38-39). If He is not omniscient, then I have no assurance that all things work together for good to those who love God and to me personally (28). After all, the blessed assurance of Romans 8:28 is grounded in God’s sovereign foreknowledge and election of us: “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified” (29-30).
There are so many Scripture passages that speak of God’s omniscience that it would be impossible to quote them all. Here are a few that stand out. In Isaiah 46:9-10, God, proving that He is God, says, “Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.” He is, as Isaiah says, not a god who can be carried around like the gods of the heathen, a god who cannot answer or deliver (1-7). Jehovah is not a lump of wood that a man can use for a fire or to cook his food, before bowing and worshipping what is left of it (44:15-17). He is God!
To all those who worship a god who is not omniscient and to their gods, God says, “Let them bring them forth, and shew us what shall happen: let them shew the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for to come. Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together. Behold, ye are of nothing, and your work of nought: an abomination is he that chooseth you” (41:22-24).
That omniscient God knows me inside and out. He knows all the secrets of my heart and He knows my end from my beginning. Thus I stand before Him naked and exposed, humbled and ashamed. But for me that knowledge is saving for it leaves me with nowhere else to go but the atoning cross of Jesus Christ! Rev. Ron Hanko
