Tag Archives: sovereignty

Not All gods Are Under God?

Denying the Inference is Denying the Scripture.

I saw a post today calling Vincent Cheung and Gordon Clark “hyper” on God’s sovereignty, as if they had cleared the Reformed fence and run off with the livestock. The picture in that post was already more honest than the accusation. A. W. Pink barely fits inside the fence. He is scraping the rail. Jonathan Edwards is halfway in and halfway out, because occasionalism will not stay seated where the confession wants it. Then Clark, and particularly Vincent, are the ones said to have jumped. Jumped what? Jumped the fence of Reformed tradition and Reformed orthodoxy. That is the whole charge. The word “hyper” is doing the dishonest work. It is not hyper relative to Scripture. It is hyper relative to a confession, a century, a mood in the study. Scripture never got the memo that there was an upper bound short of “all.”

Here is the flip they will not make. They say Vincent jumped the fence of Reformed tradition. What they have done, by denying the inference, is jump and leave the fence of Scripture. You cannot deny the inference without denying the major premise the text affirms. Tradition is the pen they are defending. Scripture is the fence they left. We do not grade doctrine by how nervous Westminster got. We grade it by what the text says, and then we let the inference land where the text already put it.

Rhetoric is an add-on. It comes after the statement is clear. Most of the time you find people holding a handful of rhetoric with no clear statement underneath it. Strip the rhetoric and you are back in grammar school. Start with the category. All, some, or none. The Bible’s category is all.

Ephesians 1:11: God works all things according to the counsel of His will. Not some things, with a polite exemption for the awkward ones. All. Isaiah 45 does not clear its throat and say, “I form the light and then carefully distance myself from the darkness by means of a secondary cause and a mystery box.” It says, “I form light and I create darkness; I make peace and I create evil; I am Yahweh; I do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7). And He does not say it once, as a stray line. Isaiah 46 picks it up again: “I am God and there is none besides me, God and there is none like me, who from the beginning declares the end… My plan shall stand, and I will accomplish all my wishes,” and then He calls a bird of prey from the east and the man of His plan from a far country. “I have spoken; I will bring it to being. I have formed it; I will do it” (Isaiah 46:9–11). That is the motif. “None besides me” is not a slogan about monotheism in the abstract. In the context, it is His own definition of what it means that He is God. He created. He is now grasping and pushing the creation. He knows the future because there is no other real cause that can stop the plan. Control over humans, human choices, good, evil, and material things. To say there is no dualism in Christian ontology is only a philosophy way of saying the Scriptural line, “There is none besides me.”

It is not only the prophet and the king. Psalm 104 is not a throne-room vision. It is the night. “You make darkness, and it is night, when all the beasts of the forest creep about. The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God” (Psalm 104:20–21). The lion does not forage from a system God wound up and walked away from. He seeks his food from God. That is the cleanest line in the Book for the ordinary meal. The same hand that forms light and creates darkness puts the prey in the mouth of the predator.

The same is true in the realm of knowledge. God first put knowledge in the man, and He continues to put it there. It is not observation climbing up into a blank mind. Isaiah 28 walks through the farmer. He does not plow all day. He levels the surface. He scatters dill, sows cumin, puts wheat in rows, barley in its place, and emmer as the border. “He is rightly instructed; his God teaches him… For he is rightly instructed; his God teaches him. Dill is not threshed with a threshing sledge… This also comes from the LORD of hosts; he is wonderful in counsel and excellent in wisdom” (Isaiah 28:26–29). Practical knowledge, the kind a man uses with his hands, is God teaching him. Spiritual knowledge is the same causality with the lights turned up. “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). The god of this age blinds. God shines. The knowledge is put in. It is not scraped off the surface of things. And God withholds it the same way He gives it. “The wings of the ostrich wave proudly, but are they the pinions and plumage of love? … For God has made her forget wisdom and given her no share in understanding” (Job 39:13–17). The ostrich is not uninformed because she skipped class. God did not give her the share.

Whether it is invisible knowledge, or a random eagle that no man sees leaving the cliff, God says He does it. “Is it by your understanding that the hawk soars and spreads his wings toward the south? Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up and makes his nest on high? On the rock he dwells and makes his home, on the rocky crag and stronghold. From there he spies out the prey; his eyes behold it from far away” (Job 39:26–29). Not by your understanding. At His command. The text’s other picture is the bird of prey He calls, and the man of His plan He summons (Isaiah 46:11). Even rain is not a natural leak from a cloud that God then permits. Jeremiah asks the question and answers it. “Are there any among the idols of the nations who cause rain to pour? Or can the heavens give showers? Is it not you, O Yahweh our God? Therefore we hope in you, for you do all these things” (Jeremiah 14:22). The sky, the wind, the water, and the cloud are put on the same shelf as the wooden idol. They have no inherent power to cause the shower. Yahweh does all these things. And in all these things, the lion’s meal, the farmer’s rows, the light shone in the heart, the wisdom withheld from the ostrich, the eagle leaving a cliff no man is watching, there is none besides God.

Scripture shows Him directly and absolutely controlling, creating, and causing reality at every basic level. I say basic because there are potentially infinite aspects of reality, and the Bible would be infinitely long if it had to narrate every one. In light of who God is, it only has to show Him controlling the basic aspects to conclude that He controls all. Some verses simply say the all. “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). “He sustains all things by the word of His power” (Hebrews 1:3). That includes the inside of the thoughts, the subject and the predicate and the desire. “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will” (Proverbs 21:1). If He turns the height of man, He turns the rest. It includes the random act, the card and the dice. “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD” (Proverbs 16:33). It includes the destiny before the man is born. “Though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad… not because of works but because of him who calls” (Romans 9:11). Paul took a few verses from the Old Testament in Romans 3 and said, “all have sinned.” When God, at every basic part of spiritual and material reality, says “I control this,” and then says there is none besides Him who does it, the doctrine is that He controls all things. The clay does not get a vote, and the clay does not get to call the potter hyper for using both hands. Isaiah 45 already asked the question. “Does the clay say to the one who fashions it, ‘What are you making?’ and ‘Your work has no hands’?” (Isaiah 45:9). Romans 9 starts the lump neutral, before they had done good or evil, and the Potter makes one vessel for mercy and one for destruction. Paul’s opponent understood the position perfectly: who has resisted His will? Paul does not walk it back. He tells the object to stop answering back to the One who molded it.

So the category statement is this:

All things are things directly controlled by God.

Sin is a thing. Evil is a thing. Adam’s fall is a thing that happened. David’s census is a thing that happened. The lying spirit in Ahab’s prophets is a thing that happened, and the text does not say the LORD allowed it to wander in. It says the LORD put it there. Job’s friends comforted him for all the evil the LORD had brought on him, and that line is not one of the bad counselors. It is the narrator, under inspiration, closing the book. If all things are things God controls, then these things are things God controls. The “all” already contained them.

And the inference is not a commentary on the Bible. It is what the Bible asserts. A logical deduction adds no new information. It points at what the premise already swallowed. So the Bible asserts that Oshea sinned, through the major premise that all have sinned, and that assertion is just as binding as if the text said, “Oshea has sinned.” They are equally statements given by Scripture. One is not less Scripture than the other. Oshea’s sin is not less Scripture than “all have sinned,” because Oshea is already contained in the major premise. Same grammar, same authority, on the decree. “God caused this sin” is not less Scripture than “God works all things.” Denying the particular is denying the verse. You did not protect the text. You left it.

This is where the classic move shows its hand. They want the major premise. They will print “God is sovereign over all” on the wall. Then they see where the inference goes, and they suddenly discover a zone where logic is asked to clock out and sit in the hallway. If God controls all things, then God controls sin and evil. That is the definition of metaphysical authorship. They like the poster. They hate the homework. So they affirm the universal and deny the particular, and they call the man who refused to do that the one who jumped the fence. He did not. They did. They jumped the fence of Scripture the moment the particular was exempted.

Watch the same trick somewhere they cannot hide. Paul says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Category form: all humans are those who have sinned. Therefore Oshea has sinned, and that “therefore” is Scripture, not an optional garnish. Now suppose I keep the major premise, because it sounds orthodox, and then I announce that John Wesley never sinned, John Calvin never sinned, Billy Graham never sinned, Andrew Wommack never sinned. I have not protected the text. I have denied it. Denying the consequent denies the antecedent. A categorical syllogism and a propositional one are the same coin. Flip one face and the other face is gone. Paul already ran this play in 1 Corinthians 15. Deny the resurrection of the dead and you have already denied that Christ was raised. You do not get a participation trophy for affirming the opening line while strangling every particular that makes the opening line true.

If the inference can be denied, then the Bible can say God is God of gods and Lord of lords, and there can still be some gods He is not God over and some lords He is not Lord over. Deuteronomy 10, Psalm 136, 1 Timothy 6, and Revelation 17 all become posters on a wall. The moment you exempt one lord, “Lord of lords” was a hymn, not a doctrine. If the inference can be denied, then Jesus is the Savior of all who believe, and John Wesley is saved, Billy Graham is saved, Andrew Wommack is saved, and Jesus is not their Savior. You kept the slogan and fired the Person. If the inference can be denied, then all the saints will be with Christ, and Wesley is a saint, and Wesley is in hell. The marriage supper still has a place card with his name on it, and the place card is a lie. If the inference can be denied, then by His stripes you were healed, the “you” of Isaiah 53 and 1 Peter 2:24, and the stripes were not for Billy Graham, and the stripes were not for Andrew Wommack, and Matthew 8:17 carried sickness for a category that somehow does not contain the people in the category. If the inference can be denied, then the Ten Commandments address all human beings, the law speaks so that every mouth is stopped, and there is a province in Asia full of human beings the commandments never reached. If the inference can be denied, then there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and Wesley is in Christ, and Wesley is condemned. If the inference can be denied, then whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, and Graham called, and Graham is not saved. On and on. There is no exit. Every universal in the Book dies the same death the moment one particular is handed a hall pass.

If inference is not always binding, then it is not always true that every human has sinned, and Wesley gets his exemption, and a village in Asia gets a vacation from the Ten Commandments, and the God of gods has a few lords He does not lord. If that is not allowed, then inference is always binding. You do not get to suspend it when the particular is sin and the universal is God’s control. The Bible uses this grammar on purpose. Jesus appeals to the law of non-contradiction. Grace is not law. Law is not grace. A thing is not its contradictory. If you say the inference does not always matter, you have already said the major premise does not always matter. You just said it with a hymnbook in your hand. If God is not the author of sin, then the laws of identity and contradiction are not always binding and so grace really is works, and works is also grace.

Some try to slip out by saying the major premise only needs a qualification. Nothing wrong with the premise, they say. It just needs clarity. An exception to the rule. Here is the problem. If you say all humans are those who have sinned, and then you say there is a group in East Africa who have never sinned, even though they are humans, you did not qualify the premise. You contradicted it. “All humans are those who have sinned” and “some humans have not sinned” cannot both be true of the same subject in the same respect. Calling the second sentence clarity, a qualification, or a nuance does not change the relation. It still denies what the first affirmed. It still violates identity and non-contradiction.

A real qualification changes the subject or the predicate before the universal is asserted. “All morally accountable humans have sinned” is a different claim from “all humans have sinned.” The class was narrowed first. By saying “All morally accountable humans have sinned,” one leaves room in the major premise for some humans who are not morally accountable, such as a particular village in Asia. With that being the case, it would not be a contradiction to say some humans are not accountable.

However, what the objector does is different. He affirms the universal, then adds a member of the same class that lacks the predicate. The same holds for sovereignty. “God is absolutely sovereign” and “all things are things controlled by God” already fix the predicate. Absolute means without remainder. All means every member of the class. To follow that with “some things are not controlled by God,” or “human choices fall outside His control,” or “evil is an exception,” is not to refine the claim. It is to assert that the same subject both has and lacks the same predicate. Partial control is a coherent idea. It is simply a different idea. It is the claim that God controls some things and not others. Anyone is free to defend that claim. What he is not free to do is defend it under the name of absolute sovereignty, as if the exception were a footnote rather than a replacement of the predicate. The word “absolute” does not survive the exception. Once the exception is admitted, the proposition on the table is no longer the one that was stated.

So here is the tell. If Reformed theology affirms that all things are things controlled by God, and then refuses the inference that sin and evil are included in the all, it never affirmed the major premise. It affirmed a slogan, and then left the fence of Scripture while accusing the consistent reader of leaving the fence of tradition. Pink is already on the rail. Edwards already has a foot out, because occasionalism is just the premise being allowed to mean what it says. Vincent did not jump Scripture. The bounds of Scripture are “all.” The man who stops the syllogism where the confession gets sweaty is the one who left.

And the panic underneath the denial is a category smash. “If God authors sin, then God is a sinner.” Sin is lawlessness, 1 John 3:4. Lawlessness is a man breaking a command addressed to man. No law was ever addressed to God. There is no authority over Him to hold Him to one. Accusing the Author of being the sinner is the same move as calling the novelist a lion because he wrote a lion, or calling God a river because He caused a river. God is not what He authors. God is not what He causes. If that sentence feels hard, it is because pantheism has been sitting in the chair where Scripture should be. How much slower is the color green than the number 7? That is the intellectual level of “God sinned by causing a man to sin.” Ex lex is already too small. The potential of a law over God does not exist. Holy, holy, holy is categorical separation, not a really impressive compliance record.

As Vincent Cheung as talk us, accountability does not rescue the denial either. Romans 9 is asked the question in plain speech. If God causes it, why does He still find fault? Paul’s answer is not freedom. The answer is the Potter. Responsibility assumes a sovereign over you, not a zone He is forbidden to touch. Pharaoh did not resist the causality. He was still judged. The elect do not resist the Spirit who sanctifies them. Same metaphysics, opposite vessel. Freedom was never the foundation. Authority was.

This is not a puzzle for the back of the book. If God causes all things, then He caused the fall, the census, the lying spirit, the hardening, the disaster, and the prosperity. If you will not say that, you do not believe Ephesians 1:11. You believe an edited version that keeps the religious reputation and hands the awkward verses to mystery. Mystery is what you say when you have already denied the premise and you need a religious word for the violation of identity and non-contradiction. You would not let a man do this to “all have sinned.” You would not let him say that “Oshea has sinned” is less Scripture than the verse that contains it. You would not let him do it to the stripes on Jesus’ back. You would not let him do it to the God of gods. Do not let him do it to the decree, or to God’s control of every aspect of reality.

Affirm the inference or stop claiming the premise. There is no third category. All, or you have already slipped into some, and some is dualism with a Reformed accent. The God of Scripture is not embarrassed by His own decrees. He forms the light and creates the darkness, and He does not ask the clay to proofread the work. Believe Him as He has spoken. Then take the pen He put in your hand, the promises already yes in Jesus, and command the mountain. The same sovereignty that authored the story is the sovereignty that backed the stripes, the resurrection, and the authority He gave you. So, open your mouth and command the mountain to get out of your way. Tell sickness to leave and be healed and happy.

Faith Is Not a Spell – Its Personal

Faith Is Not a Spell – Its Personal

Vincent Cheung said it without blushing: it is popular to teach that you must always hunt an exact verse for the exact thing you want, and then pronounce the prayer with laboratory precision, or else heaven shrugs. That is false. It contradicts both the teaching and the examples of Scripture. “It does not require a specific promise from God to receive what we ask, and there is no need to state our prayer with exact precision to receive what we desire. Prayer is not a magical incantation. God knows all things. Jesus said that God knows what you want before you pray.” (Reach for a Miracle, Vincent Cheung)

Read that again. Slowly. Then put down the wand.

Faith is not a spell. It is not an incantation you have to get syllable-perfect so the magic will fire. Faith is personal. Faith’s context does not float in a soup of unthinking laws that God set loose and then wandered off to watch. No. The context of faith is divine determinism. And for the saints, that determinism is not a cold machine. It is a direct, intimate, personal relationship with God. It is you agreeing with a living God who already knows what you meant, who already wrote you into a Contract in blood that He Himself made, and who already decided to treat you as a beloved son and not as a lab rat.

The Old Testament saints were not technicians

The heroes of faith pulled down suns, seas, bread, fire, and dead children with a shockingly small pile of paperwork. They did not have the completed canon sitting in a search bar, and they did not have AI to super-search the Bible for every footnote and loophole. They had God. They had His nature. They had the broad, blunt knowledge that He is good, that He helps, and that He is the kind of God who does wonders for people who look at Him. Cheung is right: what is always true about God cannot be contradicted by the particular situation you woke up in this morning. If God is willing to help, He is willing to help this. If God heals, He heals your sickness and pain today. You do not need a notarized footnote for every nerve ending. If God forgives, then He has forgiven your sin today.

Joshua told the sun to stand still. Elijah told fire to fall. The four lepers in 2 Kings 7 did not workshop a confession for three hours, aligning their words and actions into some liturgical NASA launch sequence. They said, “Why sit we here until we die?” and they stumbled toward the camp. God turned their footsteps into thunder. That is not a formula. That is a Person backing a person.

The Promise Is Vague On Purpose

Jesus did not tighten the screws in the New Testament. He loosened them even more. “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believing, you shall receive.” “If you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move,’ and it will move.” “Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.” Those are large, general, almost scandalously vague promises given to children. They are vague because He loves us. They are vague because He wants to grant and fulfill your wants and dreams. They are vague so that your dreams fit inside them.

Think about that for a few seconds. Even as I write this I am filled with joy and physically restraining myself from detonating five more essays on this one point. What is the point of making the promise so broad and vague? So that whatever you dream up and want fits. That is the entire point. They cover the mountain, the fever, the empty jar, the demon, the paycheck, the thing you cannot even name yet without crying, and that huge dream for your life you are scared to ask because it seems too big and too wonderful. The whole design of a broad promise is to make sure all of it fits inside.

Unfortunately, when I hear most people talk about these statements, they spend their whole ministry trying to make them less broad and more specific. They shrink the application until it is so narrow it is practically unusable. They take a banquet table and turn it into a toothpick.

As Paul says, grace is grace, and works are works, and grace is not works. That is the law of identity. Categories stay categories. Same here. Broad, vague promises are not specific promises. They have different identities. To take Jesus’ broad statements and force them into a tiny, qualified box is a contradiction. Yes, it is correct that you cannot ask God to grant you sin. But that is so obvious the Bible barely bothers to mention it—and when it does, it says that asking God to sponsor your sin makes Him your enemy. You cannot in faith ask God to help you murder your neighbor. That limitation is pre-baked into the definition. You do not need to staple a ten-page disclaimer onto Jesus’ sentence.

Despite what sin promises, sin is a limitation, not an expansion. Satan comes to steal, kill, and destroy. That is limits on steroids. Jesus came to give life, and life abundantly. The blessing of Abraham is so broad about every sort of blessing, increase, health, wealth joy, and victory because it was meant to be broad enough to include anything you want.

The reason “not asking for sin” is a silent presupposition, not worth plastering all over Jesus’ broad statements, is basic. The statements are designed this way so that when the Bible and when Jesus make broad promises, you are not supposed to qualify them or restrict them. It is a pure positive. When Jesus says all, and everything, it means just that. Everything.

Why would God make such broad statements and promises? He did not make them for reprobates or outsiders. He made them for His beloved children. He made them broad so that whatever you dream up, you get it. That is the point. You are the point, because He likes you. You are His point. Because you are His child, your answered dreams are His point. Yes. You heard that right. God did not make the promise so broad so that He could answer all His own dreams and will. He made it broad to make room to answer yours.

Specific is good. Superstitious is stupid.

Now, before somebody accuses me of baptizing sloppiness: there is nothing wrong with being specific. Jesus said speak to the mountain. That is a command, not a suggestion from a timid life-coach. You can look at the stinging in your arm and say, “Stinging in my arm, I command you to leave in Jesus’ name.” That is maturity. That is a mind that has learned to aim. James says the prayer of faith will save the sick. Mark 11 says believe you “have” received what you say, and you “will” have it. Romans 10 says the word of faith is in your mouth. Abraham called himself the father of many nations before the baby existed. Faith speaks, and it often speaks specifically.

As Vincent reminds us, more revelation should work for us, not against us. If you have the whole Bible and less miracle than Abraham with a tent and a promise, the problem is not insufficient verses. The problem is that you turned the Bible into a spellbook and then blamed God when the Latin was off.

But you can also say, “Arm, be healed,” and God is not sitting in heaven with a red pen circling your grammar or your vagueness. He already knows. Matthew 6:8 is not a cute devotional fridge-magnet. It is metaphysics. God is intellectual. God is personal. Divine determinism is not a fog machine, that belongs to pantheism. It means the God who decreed the prayer also knows the prayer before the sound leaves your teeth. You do not have to incant the thing until the magic works. You agree with Him. He performs what He said. It is just that simple.

The technical and psychological obsession is not holiness. It is anxiety wearing a Greek lexicon. People get locked in their own heads, measuring the sentence, measuring the feeling, measuring whether they “hit it right this time,” and they stop looking at the Father who finds no fault with them when they ask. James 1:5 is still in the Book. He gives generously. He does not scold you for asking. He rejoices and gives. The moment you treat the wording like a lock combination, you have already moved from covenant friendship to witchcraft. You have made the power sit in the syllables instead of in the God who hears His children and gives them what they ask.

Sovereignty is not pantheism in a nice shirt

This is where the wheels come off for two different crowds at once.

The doctrine the Bible teaches about God’s sovereignty is not bare sovereignty. It is not the pantheist or deist sludge where God is the water and the fever and the mountain, so when you pray you are talking to anything or nothing at the same time. It is not the fatalist shrug that says, “God controls all things, therefore sit there and call your unbelief trust.” It is divine determinism—absolute, direct, personal. God causes all things. God knows what you will pray before you pray it. This same God made a blood Contract with His only Son and said, “I will always relate to you in these good and pleasant ways. I will always relate to you as a loving Father. I will always give you a, fish for a fish; and I will always give you a, miracle for a miracle. Always.”

H2O does not “naturally” behave like water. Water behaves like water because God faithfully keeps making it behave that way. Every drop. Every moment. Occasionalism is just the grown-up way of saying there is no causality hiding behind God’s back. There is no outside machinery and no outside natural law running the shop when He is not looking. Reality is His Lego set, except He made the pieces from scratch and He is still holding every stud in place by direct and absolute control. Science can trace the regularity because God is regular. The regularity is not a rival god, a stack of natural laws, or a polite dualism. It is His faithfulness wearing physics.

Spiritual things work the same way. There are no impersonal “spiritual laws” floating out there like gravity with a pulpit. The faith-teachers get this almost right and then trip on the last stair. Yes, the spiritual realm acts with a law-like stubbornness. Healing comes to faith. Mountains move when you speak. The prayer of a righteous man has huge effects. That is not because some force independent of God got switched on at the resurrection and now runs on autopilot if you smash the buttons correctly. It is because God is so perfectly faithful to do what He said that it feels like a law. He is consistent. He is covenant-bound. He swore by Himself. He cut a Contract in blood. He always relates to His elect in the good ways He promised—forgiveness, righteousness, healing, supply, authority—without fail. The “law” is just His character refusing to become a liar.

Forget that, and prayer turns into a spell. Remember it, and prayer turns into conversation with the only real Cause in the universe, who already likes you and has made broad promises so that He can grant your dreams. And by granting your dreams, God naturally expands His glory and His kingdom.

Two levels. Stop mixing the oil and the water.

God is the only real cause. On the ultimate level, He decrees everything. The Arminians are wrong. God does directly and absolutely predestine all things.

But the Bible does not talk to you in that register most of the time. It talks to you on the relative level—the Blood Contract friendship level—the level where Jesus looks at a bent-over daughter of Abraham and says Satan bound her, not the Father. The level where He says, “Your faith has healed you.” The level where Isaiah 54:15 can say, “They will surely gather against you, but not by Me,” while God remains the only real cause in metaphysics. Mixing those categories is not deep. It is a law-of-identity violation with a choir robe on. You do not drag ultimate causality into the promise of healing in order to give unbelief a respectable accent. That is how you wreck the car. Water and motor oil. Congratulations. You are stranded, and you called it orthodoxy.

The New Contract is not vague. Jesus took the taking upon Himself in substitution. The Father took from Him so He would only give to you. That is the whole point of the substitution. By His stripes you were healed. That is already done in God’s mind. Faith is not twisting God’s arm. Faith is agreeing with what God already thinks. “God, You are correct. I agree with You.” That is the whole engine. Not a chant. An agreement.

So speak. Broad or sharp. Just believe it.

You want to get more specific as you mature? Good. Command the sting. Name the mountain. Tell the lack to get out with specifics. Do it.

But remember: with this much raw power and broad promises, you only need one word and God makes it work. “Calm.” “Be still.” Jesus did not whisper a long incantation at storms. He spoke simply and directly. He did not hold a seminar on whether the wording was sufficiently nuanced. He spoke. The centurion understood sovereignty better than most theologians: “Just say the word.” He did not offer a long-winded, overly humble slogan of, “If it be Thy sovereign will, then maybe You can have mercy on this poor sinful outsider.” Jesus marveled at his simple and broad faith. That is the model.

You want to say it broad because you are tired and the pain is loud and you cannot remember the perfect verse? Also good. “Arm, be healed.” “Father, help.” “In Jesus’ name.” God already knows. He is not a vending machine that jams if you press B7 instead of B8. He is a Father who knows what you want before you pray, and He has already bound Himself by oath to treat you according to the finished gospel.

The Faithless will tell you to be careful. They always do. Caution is their spiritual gift, granted by Satan their high priest. They will warn you that general promises are dangerous and need to be heavily qualified so they are not abused, that specificity is safer, that sovereignty means you should add a coward’s appendix to every request. Ignore them. They have confused piety with unbelief and called the result balance.

Here is a secret the faithless kept from you. Practically speaking, you cannot abuse the broad promises and statements of God. They are broad to include all things on purpose. The only abuse is when you ask too small and too little. That is the real abuse. Asking too big for yourself is not the abuse. Asking too little is.

As Vincent says, “faith is the beginning of action.” Reach. Lay the hand. Open the mouth. The four lepers did not wait for a complete systematic theology of Syrian military acoustics. They moved. God turned the move into a miracle. When you reach, God reaches. That is the relationship. That is the Contract friendship. That is why it is not a spell.

You are not trying to get the universe to behave. You are talking to the God who is the reason the universe behaves. He knows. You know He knows. Ask. Even if it is vague. He will perform what you asked. That is all you need to know.

God laid everything on the table and said it is available to you. Ask for whatever you want, as much as you want. Be specific or be vague. Just ask and reach for your miracle. God will do His part.

 
 
 
 
 

God’s Nature Necessitates His Control of All Things

Oshea Davis, helped by Grok, xAI.

God is essentially intellectual and spiritual. A mind, after all, is precisely a system of propositions, and the laws of logic are simply the constant, faithful motions of that divine Mind. These are not higher standards to which He submits, nor lower tools He picks up when convenient—they are descriptions of His own intellectual nature. Jesus is the Logos, the living Logic and Reason of God. God’s Spirit knows Himself perfectly; His knowledge is not a sequential scramble of premises and conclusions the way ours is, but an eternal, all-at-once intuition of every true proposition and every relation between them. God is also unstoppable power. Jesus Himself calls His Father the “Power.” Jesus also said God has life in Himself, but the life God has is an infinite, immutable power of His own thoughts and joy. Isaiah says that the God who creates good and evil, as a potter creates pots, also declares there is none beside Him or with Him in this category. Creation itself was not hammered into existence by a physical arm; it was spoken into being by a spiritual, intellectual, infinite, and immutable Mind. There is nothing more foundational in all reality than this: God thinks so. What God thinks is reality, by the necessity of His nature.

Now, with that picture of God’s nature in place, consider a recent claim by Dinesh D’Souza that God is sovereign, yet “like all sovereigns” He can (and did) delegate some of His power to nature’s physical laws and to human moral agency—including the free choice to relate to Him or not. The idea is that God remains “mostly” sovereign while handing over a few control knobs so libertarian free will can have room to breathe. It sounds generous. It even sounds humble to the stupid. But once you hold it up against the nature of God we just described, the whole arrangement starts to look like trying to keep a perfect circle by sawing off a few degrees of circumference so the lines can wiggle more freely. The circle stops being a circle.

Immutability Takes the First Hit

Immutability means God does not change in what He is. His nature, power, and attributes are not subject to “before” and “after.”

“Has delegated” is a present-perfect statement. It implies a prior state in which the power was fully His and a subsequent state in which some of it is no longer His in the same way. Even if one tries to push the decision back into eternity, the content still introduces a real distinction: full sovereignty versus limited sovereignty. That is a change in the possession or exercise of what God is.

By the law of identity, the unchanging cannot be the changing. If sovereignty is altered by delegation, then the God who is pure, undivided power is no longer identical to the God who has handed pieces away. The claim forces a transition that immutability, by definition, forbids. The Mind whose system of propositions never shifts cannot suddenly operate with reduced control over that system and still be the same Mind.

Simplicity Collapses Next

Divine simplicity is the claim that God is not composed of parts. He does not have power, knowledge, or will as detachable properties. He is His power, is His will, is His sovereignty. There is no real distinction between the essence and the attributes, or among the attributes.

Treating sovereignty as something that can be portioned out and “delegated” treats it exactly like a detachable slice. You can only give away what is separable. Once power becomes a separable quantity, God is now a composite of the part He kept and the part He released. Composition means dependence: the whole depends on the parts existing and relating correctly. A dependent being is not the necessary, underived being that classical theism requires.

Here the identity of power and thoughts becomes decisive. Since God’s power and His thoughts are the same thing—God is one—giving up His power is giving up His thoughts. The system of propositions that is God cannot lose a portion of its own controlling force without losing a portion of itself. God is one thing. By necessity, He cannot give up His power without denying Himself in the process. That is as impossible as trying to deny the law of identity. You cannot subtract from the very system of propositions that constitutes the Mind and still have the same Mind left. The contradiction is immediate. Either sovereignty is identical with God (simple, cannot be given away without God partially ceasing to be God), or it is a detachable property (composite). The claim chooses the second while still wanting the first.

Eternality and Timelessness Follow the Same Road

A composite, changeable being is ordered by succession—this part, then that part; this state, then that state. Succession is time. A timeless being has no before and after, no successive states.

If God undergoes (or eternally contains) a real limitation of power, the distinction between the unlimited and the limited introduces succession or at least ordered parts. The simple, pure-act God of classical theism has neither. Once parts appear, the problem of an infinite series of successive states reappears: an actual infinite of ordered parts cannot be traversed to arrive at a completed “now.” The present would always be infinitely far away. The same difficulty that rules out an eternal composite universe now threatens the eternal composite God.

Even the practical question of communion follows. If God is made of parts that can be distributed or ordered, what guarantee is there that the whole is present? One “part” could be infinitely remote in the sequence while another is near. A simple, undivided being is wholly present or not present at all. Parts remove that guarantee. The Mind whose knowledge is one eternal intuition does not come in installments.

The Human-Sovereign Analogy Does Not Rescue It

The comparison to earthly kings or constitutions that legitimately delegate power is a category error. Human rulers are finite, temporal, composite beings who must delegate because they lack omnipotence, omnipresence, and underived existence. Their sovereignty is already limited by nature. Importing that model into God simply imports the creature’s limits into the Creator. It redefines “sovereign God” as “God who starts limited the way we are.” That is not an analogy; it is a redefinition that abandons the original terms. Advising the infinite, simple Mind to learn limitation from finite kings is like the ocean taking notes from a puddle on how to stay wet.

The Attempted Escape Hatch Also Fails

One can try to say God “delegates” yet still retains ultimate control. But then the free will and the laws of nature are not genuinely independent; they remain instruments under meticulous sovereignty. That is precisely the meticulous control the claim is trying to avoid. If the independence is real (so that human choices and natural processes can operate outside God’s determining will), then some outcomes are not under His sovereignty. Either the free-will defense works and absolute sovereignty is lost, or absolute sovereignty is kept and the free-will defense evaporates. Non-contradiction will not let both be true in the same sense.

In short, the claim tries to preserve libertarian freedom by having God hand over some of the remote control. The moment the hand-over is real, the classical attributes that made the hand-over meaningful begin to unravel. God becomes changeable, composite, and temporally ordered—the very things the classical picture said He is not. The logical cost of the rescue is the coherence of the God being rescued.

God’s nature is not merely a sufficient reason for Him to control all things; it is a necessary one. Just as the nature of a thing must be itself—otherwise it no longer has its identity—so God cannot be other than the infinite, eternal, immutable system of propositions that He is. Since His power and His thoughts are the same, He cannot surrender power without surrendering the thoughts that constitute Him. Just as you cannot deny the law of non-contradiction without rendering your own denial meaningless, God cannot deny Himself. This is not a limitation imposed from outside; it is the positive necessity of identity. The Mind that is pure coherence cannot incoherently surrender pieces of its own coherence and remain the same Mind. Absolute control of all things is therefore not an optional extra God might choose to keep or give away. It necessarily follows from the fact that God thinks.

Jesus: The Man Who Slung Money Around via Miracles

Oshea Davis

You know, I’ve spent years digging into the Scriptures, wrestling with the logic of God’s sovereignty and the raw power of faith, and one thing keeps slapping me in the face like a wet fish from Peter’s haul: Jesus wasn’t stingy. Far from it. He threw around material provision like a king tossing gold coins to the crowds, and He did it through miracles that would make today’s economists weep. We’re talking wine at Cana worth a cool hundred grand in today’s dollars, fish catches that could retire a family for life, and bread multiplications feeding thousands with leftovers to spare. And that’s just the recorded stuff—John says if we wrote down all His miracles, the world couldn’t hold the books (John 21:25). If you’ve seen Jesus, you’ve seen the Father (John 14:9), and this Father isn’t doling out crumbs; He’s serving up feasts of abundance. But here’s the kicker: Jesus didn’t just do it—He commanded His disciples to feed the crowds themselves, expecting them to multiply substance by faith. That puts the ball in our court, folks. If mountains of provision aren’t piling up in your life, don’t blame God; look in the mirror.

[A quick side note, the value amounts are not a direct deduction, but an educated guess; they are a “rough modern parallel” and not a “thus saith the Lord on the exact price.” The point for a rough modern parallel is to help you see a modern picture of the value of the enriching miracles of Jesus’ ministry.]

Let’s start where any solid theology should—with the Word. Take the wedding at Cana in John 2:1-11. Jesus turns water into wine, not just any swill, but the best stuff, enough to fill six stone jars holding twenty to thirty gallons each. That’s 120 to 180 gallons of top-shelf vintage. Since the scripture cannot lie, and it was said to be the best type of wine, it was the expensive stuff.  Think somewhere between 300-900 dollars per gallon. In modern terms, we’re looking at around $50,000 to $150,000 worth of wine, give or take on how vintage the taste was. Jesus didn’t skimp; He overdelivered, turning a potential party flop into a king’s banquet. Why? Because that’s how the Father rolls—abundant generosity reflecting His nature. As Vincent Cheung notes in his essay “The Light of Our Minds,” God’s revelation isn’t about bare minimums; it’s about overwhelming favor that points to His unstoppable power. “God’s revelation is the ultimate starting point for knowledge, and it includes His promises of blessing and provision.” Jesus is not prosperity gospel-lite but prosperity gospel extreme. Jesus provided lavishly, and if we claim to follow Him, we ought to expect the same flow.

 They likely didn’t guzzle it all—sell the surplus, and that family just hit the jackpot. The hosts could’ve sold the surplus and lived like royalty.  Jesus slung money like confetti, turning a potential flop into a fortune. And why? Because the Father is generous, and Jesus mirrors Him perfectly: “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father” (John 14:9).

Fast-forward to Peter’s big catch in Luke 5:1-11. Jesus borrows Peter’s boat for preaching, then tells him to drop the nets one more time after a fruitless night. Peter obeys, half-grumbling, and hauls in so many fish the nets tear and boats nearly sink. Scholars estimate 153 large fish (John 21:11, a similar miracle), but Luke’s account implies even more. In first-century Galilee, fish were currency—dried, salted, traded. Today’s equivalent? A commercial haul like that could fetch $100,000 to $300,000, enough for Peter to retire comfortably, support his family, and bless his partners. Peter drops everything to follow Jesus, but the Lord ensures he’s provided for richly. This wasn’t pocket change; it was a windfall screaming, “Trust Me—I’ve got your back.” God slung provision through Jesus, and He’s not stingy today.

One additional note about this miracle of money. This became the point that Peter decided to follow Jesus. Miracle money will do that for many people, we know this true because scripture says so, as it shows with Peter.  You want better evangelism, then have more faith for miracle money to bless others. You don’t need to beg Jesus for this because His finished atonement already provided this for us. We already have it.

Then there’s the feeding miracles—twice, no less. First, 5,000 men (plus women and kids, so maybe 15,000 total) get fed from five loaves and two fish (Matthew 14:13-21). Leftovers: 12 baskets. The second time, 4,000 men (likely 12,000 total) from seven loaves and a few fish, with seven baskets left (Matthew 15:32-39). In ancient terms, a loaf fed a family for a day; fish added protein. Valuing basic meals at $12 each today, that’s $180,000 for the first crowd, about $150,000 for the second. But factor in the miracle’s scale—desert catering for thousands, which would cost an addition thousands of dollars. Jesus didn’t ration; He overflowed. These weren’t survival scraps but abundant feasts, foreshadowing the gospel’s promise: “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). If you’re scraping by, questioning prosperity, you’re echoing the Pharisees’ unbelief, not Jesus’ faith doctrine.

Jesus didn’t just meet needs; He exceeded them, showing the Father’s heart for overflow. As in Deuteronomy 28:1-14 (various translations emphasize this), obedience to faith brings blessings that chase you down—abundant crops, livestock, and storehouses. Jesus embodied this, commanding His disciples, “You give them something to eat” (Matthew 14:16 NIV). He expected them to multiply by faith, just as we’re responsible today to wield that same power for material substance.

Don’t forget the temple tax coin in the fish’s mouth (Matthew 17:24-27). Peter needs cash for the tax—about four drachmas, a few days’ wages. Jesus says, “Go fish—the first one you catch will have a four-drachma coin in its mouth.” Boom: exact amount. In modern bucks, that’s $100-200. You can pay your taxes the same way. Jesus, as a man born under the law, using faith in God’s word, paid for taxes by miracle money. We can do the same.

God provides precisely, supernaturally. Add it all up so far and a low estimate across these miracles is $300,000; high end, $1,500,000. And these are just the recorded ones. Jesus slung money like it grew on trees—because in His hands, it did. He commands us to do the same.

Now, here’s where faith-fumblers trip up: they peddle unbelief, saying, “That was then; now we ask for bare necessities.” Rubbish. Jesus commanded, “You feed them” (Mark 6:37), expecting disciples to multiply material substance by faith. We’re not sidelined spectators; we’re empowered partners. Mark 11:22-24: “Have faith in God… Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them.” Mountains of lack? Command them gone. Multiply material substances like the bread, or transmute material substances like water into wine. God is not holding your wealth back; your lack of faith and obedience is. The resurrected Christ empowers us for “greater works” (John 14:12)—not lesser. If you’re not seeing provision multiply, check your faith, not God’s generous wallet, a wallet he has given you access to by faith in Jesus Christ. When He sees you, He sees His Son, and this is why His wallet is opened to you.

But here’s the kicker: Jesus expects us to do the same. “You feed them,” wasn’t a one-off. In Mark 11:22-24, He says, “Have faith in God. Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (NIV). Mountains? That’s code for obstacles—sickness, lack, impossibilities. Faith moves them. Matthew 17:20 doubles down: even mustard-seed faith commands mountains to relocate. Nothing impossible. Luke 17:6 adds trees obeying your word, uprooting and planting in the sea.

This isn’t pie-in-the-sky. It’s grounded in Abraham’s covenant, where God promises to be our shield and exceedingly great reward (Genesis 15:1). Paul ties it to the gospel: “Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: ‘All nations will be blessed through you'” (Galatians 3:8 NIV). That blessing? Superabundant descendants, land (the world, per Romans 4:13), wealth, health, favor. No mention of scraping by—it’s excessive. God declares Abraham righteous for believing He’d deliver the goods (Genesis 15:6). Same faith receives healing, provision, miracles today. As Deuteronomy 28:1-14 spells out under the law (fulfilled in Christ): obedience brings overflowing barns, fruitful wombs, victory over enemies. Prosperity? God’s idea—health, wealth, success (Joshua 1:8; Psalm 1:3).

Vincent Cheung echoes this in “Predestination and Miracles”: “God predestined us to bear fruit… Gospel life and ministry is characterized by answers to prayers. What kinds of prayers? … ‘God will give you whatever you ask.’ We’re predestined for this—abundance through faith. Jesus slung money via miracles to show the Father’s love; now it’s our turn. Speak to that mountain of lack: “Be removed and cast into the sea” (Mark 11:23). It will obey you—not because you’re bossing God, but because He’s unleashed His power through your faith confession.

Jesus slung money via miracles to showcase the Father’s generosity. Expect it, command it, receive it—today. Don’t settle for scraps when the table’s set for a feast. Faith moves mountains; unbelief moves excuses.

If you’re one of those folks who thinks Jesus was all about scraping by with the bare minimum—barefoot, begging for scraps, preaching poverty as piety—then you’ve got the wrong Messiah. The real Jesus, the one Scripture paints without apology, wasn’t stingy with His power. He multiplied resources like it was nothing, handing out miracles that, in today’s dollars, equate to hundreds of thousands, even millions. And He didn’t do it quietly. No, He slung that abundance around, benefiting wedding hosts, disciples, crowds, even Peter and Himself for taxes. These aren’t footnotes in the Gospels; they’re front and center, showing the Father’s heart. As John reminds us, there were so many miracles that a library couldn’t hold them all (John 21:25). We’re talking recorded ones alone tallying up to a low estimate of $300,000, spiking to $1,500,000 on the high end. That’s not pocket change—that’s a king’s ransom, dished out freely.

Imagine being so dense that when you read 2 Corinthians 8:9, you think it’s about “spiritual” wealth instead of cold, hard cash. The words say “wealth” and “poverty.” Reading comprehension much? Step one: read the words. Paul’s out there collecting money, so yeah, it’s about finances—not some floaty, ethereal jargon. Only a pastor or theologian could twist it that bad and still sleep at night.

Sure, you might squeeze some extra insight from a redemptive-historical angle, but that’s indirect, secondary, and does zilch to cancel the passage’s straight-up teaching. This money swap was baked into Jesus’ atonement. He took our poverty and handed us His wealth—part of the substitution deal. Curses included poverty, and Jesus snagged those curses, nailed them to the cross, and swapped them for Abraham’s gospel, which comes with miracle cash. He took our broke-ass state and gave us His bling. It’s the full Jesus package. Mock the money part, and you’re mocking Jesus, stomping on His atonement. You’re not just wrong—you’re God’s enemy, an anti-Christian trash heap with a worldview to match.

When they say, “I don’t see all prospering or healed,” it’s not theology anymore—it’s a worldview clash. An ultimate authority clash. We’re not just reading text differently; we’re understanding existence differently. Scripture forbids me from using “Do I see people healed or not?” as a way of knowing or an authority. So if a so-called Christian grabs knowledge or authority from observations, we’re as far apart as atheism is from Christianity. Different authorities, different worldviews. Different foundations, different realities. It’s not about text context—it’s about ultimate authority. My worldview bans appealing to observations; theirs welcomes it. They have sided Satan, and will partake of his destruction.

In the end, if your life’s not overflowing with provision like those crowds’ baskets, don’t lecture God on sovereignty—check your faith. Jesus didn’t hold back; neither should we. He’s the man who slung money around via miracles, and if we’re His, we’ll do the same. Time to believe big, confess bold, and watch reality bow. After all, the Father’s cheering us on—more than we know, because he already provided us wealth in His precious Son’s atonement. Jesus became our poverty so that He makes us rich with this wealth. To think little of wealth is to slap Jesus across the face in blatant disgrace and mock His poverty suffering for us, as a little thing. Or you can just receive His wealth and praise Him for his generosity and use that to be blessed and bless gospel ministries. God’s way is always the better way.

Until we are all slinging wealth around via miracles, we are not living up to Jesus’ extreme faith and wealth doctrine. Our faith needs to catch up Jesus.

The Will OF GOD is Irrelevant

The bible teaches that God has absolute and direct control over all things. He is the only real cause for all things, and there is no such thing as secondary causes. God is the metaphysical author of sin and evil. God has predestined all things by His own goals and choices, and decrees all reality in a logical order in relation to His goals (supralapsarianism).  There is no such thing as free-will. Man is responsible because he is not free but under God’s sovereign control and command.  Because God absolutely and directly causes all things, He absolutely and directly causes the predestination of the elect and reprobate. Logic and deduction are so easy. As Romans 9 says, God takes from the neutral lump (before good or evil) and by the same power and choice makes some to be evil reprobates and some to be righteous elect.  God has not given up some of His control to man, because free-will does not exist, because the bible never says He made this choice, and because the nature of God insures that there is no difference in how direct and absolute He causes one thing or another in creation. God’s thoughts, power and choice are one and the same. Because He thinks about it and decides on it, it is reality. Therefore, in the ultimate sense, God Will is the only relevant issue.

I say all of this to state a broad and correct doctrine of God’s sovereignty, so that I am not misunderstood in my following comments.

When we pray for healing, miracles or forgiveness the “will of God,” (referring to His causality, not commands), is irrelevant. As Vincent Cheung points out in “Healing: The Will of Man,” to talk about the “will of God” in this context is already a partial defeat, because the bible talks about man’s will, not God’s will.

The bible’s positive doctrine is that healing is about the will of man, not the will of God. This is how the scripture presents the subject. Jesus never asked the Father if it was God’s will to heal a particular person; rather, He always asked if it was the man or woman’s will to be healed.  Jesus then said to his disciples and followers, “you heal the sick.” The will of God (referring to His decrees/causality) was never brought up; only “man’s will,” was brought up. The will of God was simply irrelevant. Jesus, who is more God-centered than you or your favorite pastor, taught us the “will of God,” was irrelevant, and that “man’s will” was the relevant issue.

Some are more accustomed to think about the atonement and forgiveness and so we will start here. The big idea, is that healing (Isaiah 53, Matth 8, James 5, Gal. 3) is as much the gospel and substitutionary atonement as forgiveness is, if not more so.

So here is the question: is the “will of God,” relevant for salvation or conversion? It is not relevant, if I am the one answering it. I am not asking a broad doctrinal question. I am asking it as Jesus would ask a person, “do you want to be healed”? Do you want to be forgiven? I am asking it the way Moses says, “I have presented to you life and death,” now make a choice. I am asking it the way the bible personally addresses me with its promises and commands, telling me that I must respond to it.

The “will of God” is irrelevant for my salvation, because what God decrees and causes is irrelevant in my response to obey the command of God to repent. Paul in Acts 17 commands us to repent of our sins. It is not a choice or suggestion. When I evaluate how I should behave I only use the commands of God to do this, not God’s secret decrees or causality. For example, in Romans 5 Paul says God caused me to be born a sinner, with a sinful heart, because of what Adam did. If I were to use the “will of God,” as a relevant factor in my decision to repent of my sins or not, then I would recognize it was the will of God to decree and cause me to be born a sinner, thus I will choose to stay a sinner until God decrees and causes me to repent.

I will assume most will see the error of this.  It is obvious that God’s Will is irrelevant in my consideration if I should repent of my sins. The relevant issue is God’s command for me to repent.  If a person uses the “will of God” as a relevant issue to exempt them from having to repent of their sins, we would see this as an excuse to be rebellious and unbelieving.

The same is for healing and other various miracles and supernatural experiences.  Healing is provided by the same atonement that provided forgiveness. Both are already accomplished and both are received on the demand of faith. God is sovereign over our faith, but on the demand of faith God always does what He promises. Faith always receives, and God is sovereign over faith. However, even though God is sovereign over faith (God’s Will), we are never told to consider it as relevant knowledge when we choose to believe a promise or not.  When we are in the context of a “should” or “ought” the category is always about God’s command.

In John 15 Jesus uses God’s predestination as an encouragement to ask whatever we want and get it.  Peter does the same thing in Acts 2 about the baptism of the Spirit for power. And so the Will of God is relevant in the topic of valuing God’s encouragement and explanation. Even though God’s Will is used by scripture to encourage our confidence for miracles and answered prayer, yet, when dealing with the topic of the scripture commanding me to repent and commanding me to receive healing and the gospel (James 5:15, John 14,15, Gal.3, Acts 2) the only relevant category is God’s command, not God’s Will.

Thus, when we pray for healing, God’s Will is irrelevant. The Will of God, is a non-issue. To have the Will of God, pop up into your head when praying for healing, is like having the decree of God that made you a sinner(Rom 5), pop into your head as a relevant issue if you should repent or not, and question if God would forgive if you had faith in Jesus.  It is insane and delusional.

The Will of God is irrelevant when considering if God will save you if you repent in faith; it is a non-issue. The Will of God is irrelevant when considering if God will heal you if you command sickness to leave with faith; it is a non-issue.

“Oh, God, please forgive me. I am powerless. You have done nothing yet, but you could do something, Oh powerful and eternal God. You made me a sinner because of Adam’s sin, and so, I don’t know if You have decreed me to be saved or not, and so, If it is your Will, please forgive my sins.”

This insane prayer is how many pray about healing. They are stupid and sinful. The bible never tells us to pray like this. Such a person should not expect to be forgiven of their sin. And if they pray for healing like this, they should not expect to be healed. To pray, while using the Will of God as a relevant issue, will divorce you from being forgiven and healed; It is a prayer of death.

When Peter said, “What I have, I give, in Jesus Name, walk,” the Will of God never came up, because the Will of God is irrelevant. Jesus commanded His followers to heal the sick. This command is the relevant issue, not the Will of God. The Will of God is a non-issue in the context of my healing, or your healing. When you bring in the Will of God as a relevant issue for healing or forgiveness the end results in God’s command being negated. The category of God’s decree and command are different and so should never be used to void each other out, or mixed together.

“Oh God, by Your Will I was made sick, and so I don’t know if I should be healed or not, but please, heal me if it is Your Will.”

 This is a prayer of death. It is a prayer of insanity and disobedience. This prayer uses God’s decree as an excuse to avoid obeying God’s command to be healed.  To use God’s decree to excuse yourself from obeying any of God’s commands such as receiving forgiveness or receiving healing, is stupid and wicked.

Although, there is nothing wrong for a salvation prayer to “ask God into your heart,” yet there are more precise ways to describe it.  Peter in his Pentecost sermon gives direction for a salvation prayer. He instructs the audience to ““Repent and be baptized, in the name of Jesus Christ.” Notice Peter did not instruct them to “ask” God to forgive them; rather, he tells them to repent in Jesus’ Name to be saved. Why? Because Jesus already died and was resurrected. The forgiveness already happened. We are not asking God to crucify His Son again to forgive us, because it already happened.  We are not asking God to do anything in the present tense to forgive us, because Jesus already accomplished it. Because it has been accomplished all we do is repent.  In this context we do not ask or beg. It is when a person has confidence in Jesus’ finished atonement, they repent of their sins in Jesus’ Name. Salvation in this sense is a confession, and not asking and begging. We confess our sins and that is all it takes. Faith is about God letting you know He has already forgiven you, and by repenting you are agreeing with God.  It is foundationally about agreeing and confessing and not asking.

Other gospel benefits such as a healing, and the authority to cast out demons and cast down mountains is the same. They have been accomplished by Jesus’ finished atonement. We do not ask and beg for them, because they have been accomplished by Jesus and given to us. It is irrational to beg for something that already belongs to you.  It was the stripes on Jesus’ back that healed us. And so, it is irrational to ask God to heal us, as if He needs to break out the whip again and start slashing Jesus in the throne room. God accomplished our healing in Jesus’ atonement. Thus, we don’t beg for it, because it is already ours.  As with salvation, we repent as a confession of confidence in Jesus finished atonement, rather than beg and ask forgiveness. The same with healing. It is the Will of Man to command sickness to leave. We confess and agree with God, rather than beg and ask. This is why Jesus tells us to “heal the sick, and cast out demons.” When we command healing and command demons to leave, we are giving a confident confession in the finished atonement of Jesus, which has given us the healing and authority to do such things.

Predestination & No Freewill: Means Healing, Speaking in Tongues & Miracles

“When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said,

“Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, ‘Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against his Anointed’ – for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

 And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”

And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. (Acts 4:23-31)

Unless you go directly to Romans chapter 9, its difficult to find a stronger focus on Calvinism, predestination and that God controls man’s choices, more than a programmer writing his code.

This passage starts by affirming God is sovereign in creating everything. Then it affirms that God sovereignly foretells the future. Then it affirms that God is sitting on a throne and laughs at people who try to work against His dominion. Then it affirms that God predestined the Jews and gentiles to kill and crucify His only Son. To kill and crucify God’s Son took many individual choices of men to make this happen. The apostles said God predestined all of this; and so, the choices of men are at God’s disposal to do what He decides. There is nothing free “relative” to God.

After the apostles affirmed and praised God for his sovereign predestination over everything, how do you suppose they responded to such knowledge? They do not respond the way the Reformed respond to God’s predestination. The Arminians do not affirm the sovereignty of God that the apostles affirmed in this passage, and so they cannot rationally respond to it. Even if some Arminians concluded with a similar response the apostles did, it is only by dumb luck and God’s kindness, because they cannot do it by following the scripture.

The apostles conclude by asking God to consider their threats by empowering them to preach, heal the sick and perform various miracles. God responds with a resounding “yes,” by flooding their meeting place with the anointing presence of the Holy Spirit.  

In my experience when I hear a traditionalist preach on God’s sovereignty, predestination and that man does not have free will (which are the doctrines the apostles above affirmed), they usually conclude by saying, because God caused these things to happened, then it is God’s will (His command) that we go along with it and let Satan steamroll over us, and then praise God as we die of cancer. And if they do suggest action, it is usually something political or cultural, or just keep going to church and watch the world burn. This is the opposite that the apostles do.

After affirming God controls the actions and choices of men, in context of Jesus atonement and of political powers, the apostles conclude that it is time to attack back with preaching, healing the sick and more miracles.

Even though the Reformed, might have a few top-level statements about God’s sovereignty correct, because they conclude the opposite from the scripture, then it shows they have no idea how to apply the doctrine.  They have no idea what is in their hands. On the other hand, the Arminian charismatics sweep the whole issue of God’s predestination and election under a rug, and then just skip straight to the conclusion or practical application. Both are wrong, but the reformed are more so, because at least with the charismatics you still have a small chance to get healed and find a miracle to help you.

The Apostles affirmed God’s predestination over men’s choices and political struggles. In response to this, they put in a military request to attack back with preaching, healing and miracles. God said, Yes!  Thus we already know God likes and will answer such requests when faced with political difficulties, which He caused. Think about that. The apostles affirmed the political problems they were facing was by God’s predestination that led the Jews and gentiles against His only Son. They are with Jesus, and so now the Jews have turned against them.  They did not say, “well, God predestined this, and so we can’t fight against them.” Rather, they asked to fight against their opponents with preaching, miracles, and healing.

They did not respond with a cultural or political reaction, when faced with political problems. They put in a request to God, as their military power, to attack back with preaching, healing and miracles. God the king, approved of their attack plan.

Thus, the doctrines of God’s absolute sovereignty, predestination and control over men’s choices, is to conclude with more preaching, more healing, more miracles, and more with God responding with outpourings of the Holy Spirit upon our meetings. Deviations from this are to be mocked and dismissed.

How Does Jesus Apply Predestination ?

“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit–fruit that will last–and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you,” (John 15:16).

Jesus is talking in the topic of election and predestination. We did not choose Him; rather, He chose us (Romans 9-11).

What is interesting, (as, Vincent Cheung, points out in “Predestination and Miracles”) is how Jesus applies the doctrine of election and predestination. Jesus’ application of God’s sovereign predestination is not how most apply it. In fact, Jesus, the most God centered man who ever lived, applies God’s predestination in the opposite way most apply God’s sovereignty. Those who champion themselves as experts on God’s predestination when they are in context of prayer apply it by saying, “you can pray, but based on the Father’s choice, He might or might not grant it.” Jesus does the exact opposite of this. He says, God chose you, or that is “predestined you so that you can ask whatever you want, and the Father will give it to you.”

Why does Jesus and the self-appointed experts on God’s predestination say the opposite? Who is wrong, and who is right? And if Jesus is right, then be free to use God’s predestination and election to embolden you to pray and get whatever you ask for. Let Jesus’ teaching on God’s sovereignty be an encouragement to build faith and grant your request. Mark those who contradict Jesus’ application of predestination as servants of the faithless and remove them from your life.

Applying God’s Sovereignty

“8 But the officer said, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come into my home. Just say the word from where you are, and my servant will be healed. 9 I know this because I am under the authority of my superior officers, and I have authority over my soldiers. I only need to say, ‘Go,’ and they go, or ‘Come,’ and they come. And if I say to my slaves, ‘Do this,’ they do it.”

10 When Jesus heard this, he was amazed. Turning to those who were following him, he said, “I tell you the truth, I haven’t seen faith like this in all Israel,” (Matthew 8:8-10 NLT).

If a person claims to be an expert in mathematics, but only succeeds in applying math 2% of the time, would you accept their claim? It would be irrelevant to me if a person went to school and has the approval of other men saying he is an expert in math, if he cannot apply it correctly.

In our passage above the centurion is talking about the sovereignty of God by speaking of Jesus’ power and authority over reality. To cure someone of sickness we are dealing with reality. The centurion says the same way officers and servants obey him, is the same way reality obeys Jesus. The same way an officer goes and comes at his word, is the same way physical tissue and sickness reacts to Jesus’ words. The same way he has authority over people, he implies Jesus has the same authority over reality itself. Jesus reacts to this with astonishment. He praises the centurion for his great faith.

The issue is not if the centurion had a perfect understanding of who Jesus was. He concluded Jesus had authority over reality itself. He understood that reality obeyed Jesus. This is fantastic theology. It is a good understanding of God’s sovereignty. I am not saying it is complete. But as it is, it is a correct theology about God’s sovereignty.

How did the centurion apply this correct doctrine of God’s sovereignty? He applied it with faith to get a miracle. In fact, he was already getting a miracle. He applied God’s sovereignty to upgrade a miracle that was coming in the future to make the miracle happen immediately. Or in modern terms, Jesus promised him an iPhone, and after he applied an argument of faith based on God’s sovereignty, Jesus upgraded it to an iPhone max pro. Also, his argument of faith, based on God’s sovereignty, made time obey the centurion, the way his servants obey him.

Jesus approved the centurion’s understanding of God’s sovereignty and his application of it with faith to receive an upgraded miracle.

Thanks be to God we have examples for how to apply God’s sovereignty in faith for miracles. Therefore, those who claim to understand God’s sovereignty but do not apply it to receive miracles and healing, are liars and frauds. They have no idea what God’s sovereignty is. They have no idea what they are doing or talking about.

Peter

Peter’s application of election is the baptism of the Spirit.

Peter also believed and understood the doctrine of God’s absolute sovereignty. He spoke about predestination in the first apostolic sermon in Acts 2.

“Peter replied, “Each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. THEN you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 

For the promise is for you and for your children, and for all those who are far away, as many as the Lord our God calls to himself,”
(Acts 2:38-39. 38-NLT, 39-LEB).

The crowed said, “what do we do,” in response to seeing the baptism of the Spirit and Peter’s sermon describing why the Spirit is being poured out.  Peter’s response is about the predestination (and reprobation by implication) of God by saying, “as many as the Lord our God calls to Himself.” The interesting thing about his statement of predestination is that it is directly about the baptism of the Spirit and not directly about forgiveness of sins. Peter uses the forgiveness of sins as a stepping stone to get the promised baptism of the Spirit, purchased by Jesus and promised by the Father. Peter says to repent and be forgiven so that “then” you can receive the Holy Spirit of power. It is specifically about receiving this baptism of power that Peter says, “as many as God calls to Himself.” This includes forgiveness because Peter says you need to be forgiven and then you will be received this baptism of power.

And so Peter’s understanding of predestination and election is about the baptism of the Spirit with forgiveness being presupposed. If God has predestined you, then you will be baptized in the Spirit for power. Baptism of the Spirit is proof of your election and disproves you are a reprobate. This is how Peter applies God’s sovereignty. Peter says, “to those whom God has called TO HIMSELF.” If God has called you “to Himself,” then you will be baptized it the Spirit. How can you be called “to God” and you not be with God at the same time?

When God calls someone to Himself, He predestines them to be baptized in the Spirit. This is Peter’s doctrine of election in application.

It is a good thing the bible shows us how to apply the doctrine of God’s sovereignty. It shows us that election and predestination is applied for baptism of the Spirit and this confirms that God has sovereignly called us to be “with Him.”

Therefore, those who claim to understand predestination and do not apply it with the power of the Spirit are lairs and frauds. They say they understand God’s sovereignty, but they cannot apply it at the most basic level.

Jesus

We have seen a gentile and an apostle, but what about Jesus. How did Jesus apply the doctrine of God’s sovereignty?

“You did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you to go and bear fruit — fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name” (John 15:16 NIV).

I will quote Vincent Cheung at large on this verse, because he says it so well and by this helped me understand the doctrine of predestination is for those who live by the Spirit and faith for miracles. It is from his essay, “Predestination and Miracles.”

“Jesus said to his disciples, “You did not choose me, but I chose you” (John 15:16). The Bible teaches a doctrine of election, or predestination. Before we became Christians, we were sinners, wicked to the core, so that in ourselves it was impossible for us to turn toward righteousness. It was impossible for us to choose any spiritual good. If we were to turn from evil to good, some other force outside of ourselves would have had to change us. When we accepted the gospel and decided to follow Christ, it was because God had first chosen us before the creation of the world. If you think that you indeed made a choice to follow Christ, you are correct, but your choice was an effect of God’s prior choice….

This is not the end of it. Predestination is for more than bare salvation, or to say it more correctly, salvation involves more than the mere forgiveness of sins and the promise of heaven. Salvation in Christ is a whole package of blessings and responsibilities. I do not mean that you need to achieve these blessings and responsibilities in order to attain salvation. No, I mean that when you receive salvation, these blessings and responsibilities also come with it. Thus it is not that you need to reach heaven in order to be saved, but that because you are saved by faith in Christ, you will reach heaven.

God has chosen us, and predestined us. Predestined for what? There was more to what Jesus said: “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit — fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.” God predestined us to bear fruit. What is this fruit?

Even in the same verse, we can see that Jesus had in mind not only works of preaching and charity, because he said his followers would produce fruit and that “the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.” Gospel life and ministry is characterized by answers to prayers. What kinds of prayers? Wait, this is weaker than the way Jesus said it. The doctrine of prayer in historic unbelief is that “God will answer your prayers if it is his will (regardless of what he promised). Or, you can say that he always answers your prayers — sometimes he says yes, sometimes no, sometimes maybe, sometimes later. Or, when you ask for egg, he will give you a scorpion, so that when you ask for spiritual growth, he will give you cancer to teach you a lesson.” Among us, we have never accepted this view of prayer. We recognize it as satanic deception. But Jesus did not even say, “God will answer your prayers” or “God will always answer your prayers.” He said, “God will give you whatever you ask.” This is how God wants us to think about our relationship with him. This is how he wants us to think about discipleship. This is how he wants us to think about faith and prayer. God will give me whatever I ask when I approach him in the name of Jesus. No hiding behind a thousand qualifications. No excuses for me or for him.

God will give me whatever I ask. I will have whatever I ask. What I ask, I get. And I am predestined for this. So I am chosen to get whatever I ask. I am predestined to get whatever I ask. It is my foreordained destiny to receive whatever I ask God in the name of Jesus. If you have never heard this, then you have never heard the Bible’s doctrine of predestination, you have never heard the Bible’s doctrine of prayer, you have never heard the Bible’s doctrine of the name of Jesus, and you have never heard the Bible’s doctrine of discipleship. Just several verses earlier, Jesus said, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples” (15:7-8). Getting whatever we ask from God is intertwined throughout his discourse with the notions of bearing fruit, being his disciples, and loving one another. Thus getting whatever we ask from God is as pervasive as the gospel itself. It cannot be taken out and thrown away without tearing apart the entire gospel, and thus also our salvation. Here bearing fruit is almost the same thing as getting whatever we ask from God, and by getting what we ask from God, we show ourselves to be true disciples of Christ.”

James

James has something to say about God’s sovereignty and prayer.

“Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.”  Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.  Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”  As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil.  If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them,” (James 4:13-17 NIV)

James affirms God’s absolute sovereignty over all things. Considering his affirmation of God’s sovereignty what are his commands for us, when we are faced with circumstances like sickness? When tomorrow looks like sickness for us, when seen from our observations, what does James command us to do? Does he say, “you don’t know what will happen, so do not boast about being healed tomorrow, even if you asked God to heal you?” He obviously does not say this, and yet this is how many would abuse James’ teaching on God’s sovereignty.

James chapter 5 says, if you are sick ask for the elders to pray for you, and the prayer of faith will make that person get well. Verse 15 says, “And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven (NKJV).” The command from James is not commanding us to only pray, but is commanding the result of healing. This is like a commanding officer saying to his subordinate, “Call a restaurant and order us some sandwiches for lunch.” The commander is not merely asking you to call, but to get the result of sandwiches for lunch.  Why do I need to explain this to adults?

James’ application of God’s absolute sovereign control over each day, is to apply it to get results in our prayers; to get absolute certain results in prayer.  And yet, I have seen those who quote James to teach about God’s sovereignty only to deny healing when we pray or say it is at best a maybe. But this same James who understands God’s sovereignty and is writing by the Holy Spirit does not apply God’s sovereignty that way. His application of God’s sovereignty is that if we ask for healing in faith, we will certainly get healed as certain as we are forgiven if we ask for forgiveness by faith.  According to James, God’s sovereignty ensures the certainty of both forgiveness and healing by faith. To say, when we ask for healing in faith that it does not result in guarantee healing, would be to undermine God’s sovereignty that ensures forgiveness if we ask for it by faith. The same sovereignty ensures both promises are guaranteed.

James also says if you lack wisdom then ask in faith, without doubting, and God will give you wisdom. If you doubt, then don’t expect more wisdom. If you have no doubts, then expect to get it. Not a maybe, but God will give you wisdom. Thus, if I ask to wake up tomorrow with more wisdom, in faith, I will certainly wake up tomorrow with more wisdom. This means I know certain things will happen tomorrow. I know them by the power of faith. This is how James applies God’s sovereignty.

Those who quote James’ teaching on God’s sovereignty over tomorrow, might be inclined to remind us the example of God’s hidden sovereign providence in the story of Nehemiah. And yet, James being led by the Holy Spirit, does not remind us of Nehemiah, but of Elijah. He says “The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. Elijah was as human as we are, and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years,” (ver.16-17).

If we don’t know about tomorrow because of God’s sovereignty, then would not the hidden providence of God in Nehemiah be more appropriate? Apparently not. This is so, because such an understanding is a presupposed basic understanding for Christians. We know God is sovereign and as His children is always working behind the scenes to help, guide and bless us. This gives us joy and strength to always face the future in confidence.

James, who teaches that we do not know what will happen tomorrow, because of God’s sovereignty, skips Nehemiah and commands us to have faith like Elijah. He instructs us to make certain things happen tomorrow, like healing and turning the rain off or on like a faucet. By faith we know certain things will happen today and tomorrow. He is not saying we control every aspect of reality like God, and so there are many things about tomorrow we do not know; however, he also teaches us that with faith we make reality obey us today and tomorrow, and then by this know some things will certainly happen.  Even if we have perfect faith to ask for everything we want tomorrow, we would still be limited by time and everyday life when asking, and by this not be able to ask for an infinite number of things.

Paul is correct in saying that even time itself has been given to us (1 Corin. 3:22). Just as man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for man, so to, time was made and given to man. With faith we make today and tomorrow yield to our prayers.

This is how the bible applies its own doctrine of God’s absolute control over reality and tomorrow. It instructs us to make the uncertain tomorrow be certainly known by faith. James shows us to make sickness, troubles, and lack of wisdom to bow to healing, wisdom and miracles by a prayer of faith. He does not remind us to remember Nehemiah, but to remember Elijah when we face troubles. Elijah was a mere human like us. He turned the rain off and on like a faucet. He turned reality off and on, the way I twist my shower nob. James tells us to be like Elijah when we pray.  

James says you don’t know what will happen because of God’s sovereignty, but then applies this by telling us to use faith to make reality obey us today and tomorrow. When we do this, we will know certain things will happen tomorrow.

Let us be like Jesus, Peter, James, and gentiles who apply God’s sovereignty to get results in prayer, healings, miracles and the power of the Spirit.

Anyone who affirms God’s absolute and direct sovereignty over all things, but does not apply it the way Jesus and the apostles do are frauds and liars. They would not know God’s sovereignty if it smacked them in the face. They are blind leading the blind. Never let such people be your teachers. Excommunication is the least they deserve.

We saw if you affirm God’s predestination, His election, His power to command reality is like a man ordering his servant and that His control is so complete we don’t know what will happen tomorrow, that its conclusion is more miracles, more healing, more baptism of the Spirit and more wisdom.

Let God’s sovereignty be a foundation for more and more healings and miracles.

The Path of Faith & the Spirit

It just dawned on me, that when I learned about (or that God personally taught me) God’s sovereignty and occasionalism and decrees, was when I was a teenage and had never heard of John Calvin or any reformation. It was a time I was praying in tongues and experiencing the anointing presence of God, and often hearing prophecy in my church. It was in this environment God revealed to me these doctrines from His word, without any man involved. The Spirit taught me these doctrines; no man or system or book did. It was in the power of the Spirit I learned them.

I now see how the evil one took advantage of my overall ignorance and immaturity to lead me to the reformed world to try and snuff this out with unbelief (and contradictive theology). I thanked God I never stopped my belief in faith and the Spirit, but it was being chocked by an onslaught of unbelief material. I was deceived to think reformed material would help me fight sin, when it was the very thing weakening my ablity to fight.  I thought Reformed doctrine would not only give me some more knowledge but help with things such fighting besetting sin. Oh boy, was I wrong.

God in His kindness did not forget me. I was in the middle of transcribing Jonathan Edward sermons for Yale University, and even asked by John Piper’s team for possible collaborations, that the Spirit of God overwhelmed me in my house and I fell to the ground. I felt a hand touch my back and I heard Jesus say to me 3 times. “Oshea I love you, and I have forgiven you of all your sins.” I was then aware that despite all the reformed theology I was reading it was not translating into inner growth and faith. In my heart I wanted out, but didn’t know how. I knew something was wrong.

I few years later Vincent Cheung began his transition to faith and inner strength and God worked on my heart to completely leave the reformed world and showed me a better way. I saw that the way of faith and the Spirit was always the good path, the right path. It is a path that will cause God to stop and boast about you, exalt you and uplift you. It is a path that will fill you with joy, power and glory.

Basic doctrines like God’s sovereignty, occasionalism, and the eternal decrees is child level easy to understand, and no one should boast about understanding it as a great intellectual feat. Faith and miracles is something to boast about; indeed, even God will boast about you if you have faith.

Suggested reading:
God Will Boast About You.

Calvin Institutes, And God Being the Cause of All Things

Calvin Institutes[1]

Chapter 18, Book 1.

The sum of the whole is this,

—since I say the will of God is the cause of all things,

all the counsels and actions of men must be held to be governed by his providence. Therefore, just as God exerts his power in the elect, who are guided by the Holy Spirit, He also exerts force in the reprobate to do him service.

When I say that God bends all the reprobate, and even Satan himself, at his will, some object that on The sum of the whole is this,—since the will of God is said to be the cause of all things, all the counsels and actions of men must be held to be governed by his providence. Therefore, as God exerts his power in the elect, who are guided by the Holy Spirit, He also exerts force in the reprobate to do him service.

..only happens by the permission, not by the will of God…

[Those who are against the will of God that causes all things, counter this by saying] this is done only by the permission of God, and not by the will of God. However, God himself, openly declares that he does this, and thus, rebukes their evasion of this doctrine.

What we formerly quoted from the Psalms, to the effect that he does whatever pleases him, certainly extends to all the actions of men.

David, not murmuring against God, but acknowledging him to be a just judge, confesses that the curses of Shimei are uttered by his orders. “The Lord,” says he, “has bidden him curse.” Often in sacred history whatever happens is said to proceed from the Lord, as the revolt of the ten tribes, the death of Eli’s sons, and very many others of a similar description. Those who have a tolerable acquaintance with the Scriptures see that, with a view to brevity, I am only producing a few out of many passages, from which it is perfectly clear that it is the merest trifling to substitute a bare permission for the providence of God [i.e. God’s will causes all things], as if he sat in a watch-tower waiting for fortuitous events, his Judgments meanwhile depending on the will of man.

2. With regard to secret movements, what Solomon says of the heart of a king, that it is turned hither and thither, as God sees meet, certainly applies to the whole human race, and has the same force as if he had said, that whatever we conceive in our minds is directed to its end by the secret inspiration of God. And certainly, did he not work internally in the minds of men, it could not have been properly said, that he takes away the lip from the true, and prudence from the aged—takes away the heart from the princes of the earth,

Many passages which declare, that God blinds the minds of men, and smites them with giddiness, intoxicates them with a spirit of stupor, renders them infatuated, and hardens their hearts. Even these expressions many would confine to permissions as if, by deserting the reprobate, he allowed them to be blinded by Satan. But since the Holy Spirit distinctly says, that the blindness and infatuation are inflicted by the just Judgment of God, the solution is altogether inadmissible. He is said to have hardened the heart of Pharaoh, to have hardened it yet more, and confirmed it.

[This is a good catch 22 Calvin brings up.]

Some evade these forms of expression by a silly objection, because Pharaoh is elsewhere said to have hardened his own heart, thus making his will the cause of hardening it; as if the two things did not perfectly agree with each other, though in different senses—namely that, man, though acted upon by God, at the same time also acts. But I retort the objection on those who make it. If to harden means only bare permission, the contumacy will not properly belong to Pharaoh. Now, could anything be more feeble and banal than to interpret as if Pharaoh had only allowed himself to be hardened? We may add, that Scripture cuts off all handle for such cavils: “I,” saith the Lord, “will harden his heart,” (Exod. 4:21).

I admit, indeed, that God often acts in the reprobate by interposing the agency of Satan; but in such a manner, that Satan himself performs his part, just as he is impelled, and succeeds only in so far as he is permitted.

3. I have said what is plainly and unambiguously taught in Scripture, those who are quick to defame what is taught by scripture, had better beware what their actions mean. If they want human praise for being humble, because they claim mysteries in scripture, then what greater anti-humility can there be, other than to utter one word in opposition to the authority of God—to say, for instance, “I think otherwise.”

—-

Chapter 23, Book 3

Here they repeat the distinction between will and permission, the object being to prove that the wicked perish only by the permission, but not by the will of God. But why do we say that he permits, but just because he wills? Nor, indeed, is there any probability in the thing itself—viz. that man brought death upon himself merely by the permission, and not by the ordination of God; as if God had not determined what he wished the condition of the chief of his creatures to be…  The first man fell because the Lord deemed it meet that he should…however, it was just, because he saw that his own glory would thereby be displayed. When you hear the glory of God mentioned, understand that his justice is included.

——-

Chapter 16, Book 1.

[ Not sure if I agree with Calvin that this is what Augustine taught, however, Calvin says it, to say he agrees with it. And I agree with Calvin this doctrine is correct. If God’s will is not the active/direct/primary, then it cannot be said to be a true cause of anything. ]

When [Augustine] uses the term permission [He means] that the will of God is the supreme and primary cause of all things, because nothing happens without his order or permission. He certainly does not figure God sitting idly in a watch-tower, when he chooses to permit anything. The will which he represents—if I may so express it—is an active will; for if God’s will is not active, then God’s will could not be regarded as a cause.

Chapter 18, Book 1.

[God’s decree and command is not the same thing, and thus, God is not unjust even though He is the author of sin]

4. Some say, if God causes the counsels and affections of the wicked, he is the author of all their sins; and, therefore, men, in doing what God has decreed, are unjustly condemned, because they are obeying his will. Here ‘will’ is improperly confounded with precept, though it is obvious, from innumerable examples, that there is the greatest difference between them … Thus we must hold, that while by means of the wicked God performs what he had secretly decreed, they are not excusable as if they were obeying his precept.

[In context Calvin has affirmed God causes all things, actively, and never by permission. He is answering the objection, if you say God cause all things and God’s cause is never passive but always active for all things without exception, then God is the author of sin; and so by consequence God is unjust by punishing people for things he actively caused them to do. Unlike the WCF by appealing to so-called secondary causes, to answer this challenge, Calvin tackles it head on. He does not deny God is the author of sin, because Calvin has already said God causes and wills all things actively in the same active way, without any persimmon. This idea of  “permission,” is what the WCF means by secondary “cause,” which Calvin denies (at least here in Institutes).  And so, Calvin does not deny that God is author of sin.

What Calvin denies is that God is evil because He punishes people by actively willing them to perform His decrees. He does so by pointing out a category fallacy. Paul points this fallacy out by saying grace is grace and works is works and grace is not works. Martin Luther pointed out a category fallacy with his opponent, the imperative versus the indicative. Calvin is also addressing a category error.  The term “will” in the bible can mean God’s decrees or causes, or it can mean God’s commands. What God causes is a completely different category of God’s commands. This is the category mix up. God punishes people, not because He caused them to do something, God punishes them because the category of accountability and ethics is defined by God’s will, as referring to His command’s and precepts. What this means logically is that it is not relevant if God causes people to sin or not, because God’s causing is not biblical ethics. Utterly and completely not relevant. Because God causing is not a relevant, then to make a category error by mixing up God’s command and God’s cause is a fatale mistake in thinking.  What is relevant is a man not obeying God’s command, and the man not having the freedom from God holding that man accountable to His command.

Calvin does not answer the objection by removing God as the active or only real cause from the definition. Calvin does not have an issue with God being the author of sin by decreeing and causing the wicked to sin, his issue is saying God is unjust by committing a category error. If you get rid of the category error, you get rid of the objection for calling God “unjust” because He is the author of sin. Calvin’s logical argument here makes it so that whether you believe God is the author of sin or not, there is no possible universe where God is the author of sin and unjust, because the categories don’t logically match.  Calvin is attacking the author is sin objection, not by removing God as active cause of all things, but removing the category error. Calvin’s argument reminds me of how Vincent Cheung might.

The author of sin is in the category of ultimate cause only real cause, because it refers in context here to God’s decree. If God’s decree does not mean ultimate/real cause, then you are mistaken, and if Calvin defines God’s decree as not ultimate cause then he is mistaken. It is possible the Calvin contradicted or changed the author of sin to not relate to ultimate cause in other places, but here he does. It is clear that saying “authorship in Calvin’s thought refers to secondary agency,” is false; rather, Authorship here refers to God’s decree. Again, God’s decree is about the only real cause, or that is active cause. God’s decree does not refer to God being secondary to Himself in ontology; God’s decree does not refer to secondary objects or dual causes.]

[A last comment about the above. Calvin’s doctrine of God’s sovereignty, as he taught above, would equate to a major premise of
“[All things]” are “[things God actively decreed and causes].”

Do a basic euler circle to see how all in compassing that  premise is. To accuse Calvin of double predestination, or anyone agreeing with what he taught above, is wrong, because it is too weak. Calvin’s actual doctrine is stronger than the term. And this is beside the point that if you cannot say your major premise of a doctrine in a simple category premise, you have no  business doing more advance logic or using rhetoric.  To say “Some things, are “things God actively decreed and causes,” and “some things” are “things God permits to happen,” is exactly what Calvin rejected. To say things like hard or soft determination, or double predestination is pull up your shirt and broadcast how stupid you are; that you are compensating with rhetoric because you are too dumb or afraid to say your doctrines in basic statements so that people understand your position. One of the greatest ways to offend someone is to say something so clear that they understand what you are saying. To say “all things are things God actively decreed and causes,” is so simple a child can understand it.  Since this is what Calvin taught, there there is no difference in how God decrees and causes and predestines a sinner to sin, a person to believe the gospel, a person to reject the gospel or Satan to deceive another man. Its contained in, “All things are “things God actively decreed and causes.” Because
all things” is the smaller circle contained in the larger one of “things God actively decreed and causes,” it means it is impossible to have the category of “permission” logically apply to any-“thing” in reality, without contradiction or a category error. ]

ENDNOTE

[1] Calvin’s Institutes. CCEL eBook edition. publish domain. (www.ccel.org)

I have down a modern copy edit (light paraphrasing on some parts) on the English, on this material. See original for comparison.