Hello iswasandwillbe!

I was originally directed to your site by a man I met a few months ago and was able to talk through some of the spiritual matters with him.  I can’t tell you how relieved I was after finding out I wasn’t crazy! Then reading all the content on your website just gets me more excited every day.  So thank you very much for providing a resource for all of us, and thanks for all the time you spend answering emails.

I have a quick question too!

I’ve recently been reading over Mike’s free-will paper (terrific), “After the Counsel of His Own Will”, and had a question that you may have already answered previously.  I promise I tried to search for it, but to no avail.

A philosophical christian “teaching” that I have commonly heard in defense of man’s free will seems to be quite convincing to fresh ears.

They say, “In order for love to exist, free will must exist.  If we cannot choose of our own free will to serve God, then any action taken is completely void of love.  We would basically be loveless robots following God.”

Now, I think this is a great hullabaloo statement to convince people that they have free will.  But my question is, where is the biblical evidence for this statement.  I’ve never heard or seen proof of this, yet I’ve heard it so many times I almost thought for a second that Jesus said it.  Where on earth do they come up with this hullabaloo?

I’d really appreciate any insight as to where they might get this idea. I also recently sent an email to my old church pastor to find out where he gets this concept.  I figured it would be interesting to compare the responses.

Thanks again,
D____

Hi D____,

Thank you for all of your kind words and for your question. If we ever have the opportunity to meet, you will see just how common a man I am. But Christ is awesome, and I am a friend and a brother of His, and He tells me some awesome things, which I am just fool enough to believe.

You ask where the doctrine of man’s free will originates? As you apparently realize, it certainly does not originate in scripture, which deals with this concept very clearly:

2Ch 20:6  And said, O LORD God of our fathers, art not thou God in heaven? and rulest [not] thou over all the kingdoms of the heathen? and in thine hand is there not power and might, so that none is able to withstand thee?

Does man have a free will that can “withstand God?” Does the New Testament agree with the Old?  What does the New Testament teach concerning man’s will as it concerns man’s destiny? Here is what the New Testament teaches conclusively and consistently:

Rom 9:16  So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.
Rom 9:17  For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth.
Rom 9:18  Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.

God cannot make it any clearer. “It is not of him that wills or runs, but it is of God that shows mercy or hardens.” Here is another very clear verse of scripture:

Jer 18:4  And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.
Jer 18:5  Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying,
Jer 18:6  O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the LORD. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel.
Jer 18:7  At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it;

“As clay is in the potter’s hand?” Does clay freely choose whether it will become a bowl or a plate or a cup?

If you have read After The Counsel of His Own Will, you know all of this already. So where does such a doctrine originate? Most people who attend church regularly, when confronted with the scriptures which I have just given you, don’t even attempt to deal with those verses. What they all invariably do is to point to Joshua telling Israel to “choose you this day whom you will serve.”

Jos 24:15  And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that [were] on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.

Then they go throughout scripture pointing to all the obvious decisions men have made to disobey God and act as if all those decisions were made completely independent of the influence of a sovereign God.

The obvious implication is that Eve chose of her own free will to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Joseph’s brothers freely chose to sell Joseph into Egypt as a slave, King David chose of his own free will to commit adultery with the wife of Uriah the Hittite, and to kill Uriah to cover up his sin. All of this is used as proof that man has free will. As I pointed out in After The Counsel of His Own Will, this is the scholarly equivalent of pointing to the fact that God asked Adam, “Where are you” after Adam had eaten of the tree and was hiding from God.

Gen 3:9  And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?

Where in that verse does it say that God did not have a clue where Adam was? Of course it isn’t there, and furthermore we are later told that God knows the very thoughts of men, making His ability to lose anyone impossible:

Psa 94:8  Understand, ye brutish among the people: and ye fools, when will ye be wise?
Psa 94:9  He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? he that formed the eye, shall he not see?
Psa 94:10  He that chastiseth the heathen, shall not he correct? he that teacheth man knowledge, [shall not he know]?
Psa 94:11  The LORD knoweth the thoughts of man, that they are vanity.

If God “planted Adam’s ear…and…formed Adam’s eyes” then He surely saw Adam while he and Eve sewed together the fig leaves, and He even watched them choose which tree or rock to hide behind. “The Lord know the thoughts of man.”

My first year Bible teacher, at Ambassador College, the late Dr. Charles V. Dorothy, whom I dearly loved and respected, told us that God could indeed have known what Adam was going to do before Adam ever ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and that God could know what each of us will do tomorrow, but that God has chosen not to know the future of each individual simply because God has given us free will. Dr. Dorothy went so far as to acknowledge that God knew Adam before he formed Adam. Then he pointed out to his class that the scriptures also inform us that God also knew Jeremiah and Jacob and Esau before they were even born:

Jer 1:5  Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

Rom 9:11  (For [the children] being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;)
Rom 9:12  It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger.
Rom 9:13  As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.

Dr. Dorothy simply had not been given eyes that could see that all of our days are ordained for us all, and not just for Jeremiah and Jacob and Esau.

Psa 139:16  Thine eyes did see mine unformed substance; And in thy book they were all written, Even the days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was none of them. (ASV)

Dr. Dorothy is typical of us all. None of us naturally wants to accept that God is sovereign over all things. We all want to have a say in whether we are saved. That is the root of the unscriptural, unbiblical doctrine of free will. Each of us is a beast (Ecc 3:18). It is that beast which is sitting on God’s throne in God’s temple, “which temple ye are.”

1Co 3:17  If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.

It is the fact that the beast cannot relinquish his throne that makes mankind cling to the doctrine of free will. Look at where our power and our throne and our great authority all have their source:

Rev 13:2  And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat [Greek: tronos, throne], and great authority.

Hollywood and TBN have teamed up to further this false doctrine. Whether it is Paul Crouch’s Megiddo or Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, man’s free will is touted as the source and means to his salvation.
Another false doctrine that supports the false doctrine of free will is the doctrine of the trinity. I cannot go in to that doctrine in this e-mail, but if you want to look into how these two false doctrine work together to keep mankind from coming to know his heavenly Father, then please read the letter entitled  How the Trinity Supports All Other False Doctrines

I hope this helps you to see the origins of this insidious doctrine which allows the beast to give God’s sovereignty lip service while placing man’s salvation in the incapable hands of man’s own fabled free will.

As far as the argument that ‘If man does not have free will then man cannot love God,’ that is just another way of saying that man contributes something to God which God cannot have without man. This argument assumes that God needs the love of mankind. It simply props up the idea of the false doctrine of man’s free will. If man does not have a free will, if mankind’s will is really wrapped up in God’s will, then any love that mankind displays, either to God or to his fellow man is really of God also, and not of or from anything having to do with the dust that we are.

Once again we need to ignore the words of men with many degrees, well known ministers, men we honor and respect, men who we know to be good men with many good works, and instead we need to ask what do the scriptures teach. That is how we “try the spirits to see whether they are of God.”

1Jn 4:1  Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.

False doctrines are taught by false prophets. False doctrines are called false spirits, which we are told to “believe not.” So what do the scriptures teach concerning our love for God and our fellow man? Do they teach that we love God because we choose to love God completely free from any outside influence? If that is what the scriptures teach, then we ought to be able to demonstrate that teaching with scriptures which say, “Mankind loves God because he freely chooses to do so with no outside influence from anyone including his Heavenly Father.” Is that what we find demonstrated in scripture? Do the scriptures emphasize mankind’s love for God is the result of mankind’s free will? No, of course the scriptures do no such thing. The exact opposite is true:

Joh 15:5  I am the vine, ye [are] the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.

If there were any truth to this lie, then we would be told that ‘The fruit of man’s free will is love for God and fellow man.’ But look at what the scriptures really say:

Gal 5:22  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,

“Without me you can do nothing… Love is the fruit of the spirit.” Where is mankind’s fabled free will in those verses? Where is man’s free desire to love God or his fellow man in those verses?

What do the scriptures really teach about what man’s will does produce by nature? What does man always do when left to his own will? Here is what the scriptures really teach from Genesis to Revelation:

Eph 2:2  Wherein in time past ye [all of mankind] walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:
Eph 2:3  Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.

That is what the scriptures teach concerning “We all.” We all are “by nature children of God’s wrath, simply because we were all created “in the hand of the Potter” as “children of disobedience… by nature the children of wrath.”

Fortunately this God we claim as our Father is not the monster that those who preach a fabled free will tell us He is. Our God is a loving Father “who will have all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the Truth.”

However, as you will find if you continue to read your Bible and compare what you read on iswasandwillbe with what you see in your Bible, God is choosing very “few” at this time. Those “chosen few” enjoy their election at the expense of the “many called” who teach such false doctrines as man’s free will and the trinity and its related false doctrines of the immortal soul and eternal hell fire. It is through these chosen few we are told all the rest of unbelieving mankind will be brought to their heavenly Father.

Mat 22:14  For many are called, but few are chosen.

Rom 11:30  For as ye in times past have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief:
Rom 11:31  Even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy.
Rom 11:32  For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.

So it is with mankind’s love, either for God or His fellow man. Everything we do is the result of what God is doing in and through us. It is not vice versa:

1Jn 4:19  We love him, because he first loved us.

Never make the mistake of denying that man makes many choices every day. Mankind does have a will, but it is not free from outside influences. Every choice any man has or ever will make is a caused choice. Everything that causes those choices originates from Him “of whom are all things.”

2Co 5:18  And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;

I hope you can now see why man makes the many choices he makes every day.  I hope you can now see what is the real reason that some “few” really do love God. The greatest litmus test of whether we truly love God is whether we listen to and obey Him:

1Sa 15:22  And Samuel said, Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken [listen to God rather than man] than the fat of rams.

Your brother in Christ,
Mike