Predestination by Uriah Smith

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 24, 1874

Predestination.

By Uriah Smith

A CORRESPONDENT requests an explanation of Eph. 1: 4, 5, 11; Rev. 17: 8; 1 Peter 1: 1, 2; Ex. 9: 12–16. These texts speak of predestination and election; and he wishes us to harmonize these declarations with our view that man is a free agent.

If a person believes in the Lord, while he believes in him, he is elected; but he can believe or not as he chooses, and he can cease to believe whenever he is so disposed. He is not elected till he believes, and when he ceases to believe, his election ends. Let us look at the passages and see if this is not so.

Eph. 1: 4, 5, 6, : “According as he hath chosen us in him [Christ] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love; having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.”

The apostle continues in the same strain, setting forth Christ as the great center of the plan of redemption, through the entire chapter. In verses 11 and 12 he says:—

“In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will; that we should be to the praise of his glory who first trusted in Christ.”

It will be seen that everything is suspended on the condition of our trusting in Christ. “Chosen in him,” “predestinated by Jesus Christ,” “in whom being predestinated,” &c. Such is the predestination brought to view in the Bible. We nowhere read, It is decreed of you, Paul, Peter, Clement, and Apollos, that you shall believe in Christ, and be saved whether you will or not; and it is decreed of you, Alexander the coppersmith, and Demas, and Hymenæus and Philetus, that in spite of yourselves you shall disbelieve and be lost. But it is decreed that whosoever believeth and is baptized, that class, not any specified individuals, shall be saved; and those that believe not, shall be lost.

Rev. 17: 8, speaks of those whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world. Putting upon this passage its most rigid interpretation, it brings to view no decree or election, but simply indicates God’s foreknowledge; but God’s foreknowledge in nowise interferes with man’s free agency. And though a person’s name may once be written in the book of life, that does not make it certain that it will always remain there; for Rev. 3: 5 and 22: 19, bring to view the fact that some may at last have their names blotted from that book, and lose the blessings which a part therein would secure.

1 Peter 1: 1, 2, speaks of strangers scattered throughout Pontus, &c., elect according to the foreknowledge of God. In the Greek Testament the order of the address is quite different from that given in the common version. It reads, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to the elect, sojourners by a dispersion through Pontus, Galatia, &c., according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit. The word rendered elect, is defined by Greenfield to mean also, chosen, select, beloved, dear, approved, choice, distinguished, excellent. Peter addresses a class; and we imagine that class might have changed completely as to the individuals of which it was composed, and the address would still have been to the elect, but would then have pertained to different individuals.

Ex. 9: 12–16, speaks of Pharaoh, his heart being hardened, and he raised up for the very purpose that God might show forth in him his power. It does not read that God gave him existence, and compelled him to develop the disposition he finally manifested, that he might deal with him as he did.

The antecedents of Pharaoh, before he was brought to the test of letting Israel go, are not recorded. But he had evidently proved himself a hard-hearted, stiffnecked, and incorrigible person; and this character he had developed in himself by his own free will.

God, foreseeing that such a person was coming to the throne precisely when the time would come for the promise of Israel’s deliverance to be fulfilled, might years before have cut him off, and so brought around events that a generous-hearted, reasonable person, who would have yielded to the claims of right and justice, should occupy the throne at that time. But then their deliverance would not have been so manifestly by the power of God.

Satan, who ever tries to hinder the accomplishment of God’s purposes, undoubtedly was pleased to have just such a person as that Pharaoh then take the throne of Egypt. In no way could the fulfillment of the promise be rendered more improbable than to have the very highest authority in the nation unmovably set against it. And God was willing that it should be so, that there might be an occasion for the display of his power before all the nations. So he raised him up, margin, caused him to stand, or in other words, permitted him, incorrigible though he knew him to be, to come to the throne of Egypt.

Paul, Rom. 9: 22, speaks of God’s enduring with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction. That is, God bears long with those who are in rebellion against him. He gives them space and every opportunity to repent. But when they prove themselves irrevocably committed to rebellion, is it anything out of the way for God to overrule their course of action to his own glory? The psalmist says, “The wrath of man shall praise thee.” It is eminently proper that God should cause it so to do. And this is what he did and all he did in the case of Pharaoh.

U. S.