The Jason DeMars Podcast
The Jason DeMars Podcast
Mysteries Revealed - ETMH Section 39 - Election and Predestination
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Support the show & get subscriber-only content.The profound mystery of election and predestination stands at the heart of God's redemptive plan, yet remains widely misunderstood even among devoted believers. What if our salvation never depended on our choice at all?
Scripture paints a stark picture of humanity's natural condition – "There is none that seeketh after God." We're born with a nature that runs from God, not toward Him. Our salvation doesn't originate from human will or effort but from divine mercy. As Jesus himself declared, "No man can come to me except the Father draw him" – with the original Greek word helkouo literally meaning "to drag." Without this divine intervention, we would remain forever lost.
This doesn't diminish human free will, but rather places it in proper perspective. We make genuine choices to accept or reject Christ, but our natural inclination would always be rejection without God's intervening grace. God ordains our choices without forcing them upon us, working through our nature, genetics, and life circumstances to accomplish His sovereign purposes. As Brother Branham taught, "You weren't saved on any day; you were always saved. Jesus just came to redeem that."
When we grasp the magnificent truth that God chose us before the foundation of the world, writing our names in the Lamb's Book of Life before time began, it transforms our understanding of salvation. This isn't about our seeking God—it's about God seeking us. "You haven't chosen me," Jesus said, "but I chose you." This divine election stands as the ultimate expression of God's sovereign grace and unfathomable love.
Mysteries Revealed. End Time Message Handbook, section 39, election and Predestination. This is a subject that is often misunderstood in the denominational world. Sadly, there are many message believers that miss out on the full reality of this truth. They hear Brother Branham state that election is based upon God's foreknowledge and they come to an Arminian conclusion that God merely foreknows our personal choices. This distorts the sovereignty of God and the depths of our fallen nature. The Bible clearly shows us that we are of a depraved nature that loves and rejoices in sin. This is a long section, but I want you to read it all, and then we will bring out some major points that apply to this study Romans 3, 9 through 20.
Speaker 1:What then, are we better than they? No, in no wise, for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles that they are all under sin. As it is written, there is none righteous no, not one. There is none that understandeth. There is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way they are. Together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good? No, not one. Their throat is an open sepulcher. With their tongues, they have used deceit. The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace have they not known? There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that, what things soever the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law that every mouth, no one righteous, there is none that understands there, no one that seeks after God. This is important because this demonstrates our lack of ability when, in our natural state, from birth, to seek after God. We are sold under sin and incapable of seeking after God. This specifically deals with our will and clearly demonstrates that our free will does not cause us to seek after or, in fact, choose God.
Speaker 1:Notice what the Apostle Paul states in Romans 9, verse 16. So, then, it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. Our salvation is not our own choice or our own personal will, but it is from God that shows mercy. It is not based on our works or our will. In verse 11 of the same chapter, the apostle writes, regarding Jacob and Esau, for the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him. That calleth Paul is showing. The highest purpose is not freedom of the human will, but rather the purpose of God according to election. Let's go even further and say that the human will is repulsed by God.
Speaker 1:Due to our fallen nature, we neither seek after good or after God. We do not fear God, but rather we loathe and despise Him. We run from God by nature. Jesus Christ states no man can come to me except the Father, which has sent me draw him. Our Lord Jesus starts his premise with this statement no man can come to me, or, as Paul said, it is not of him that willeth. Then the Lord gives us the exception to this rule, and that is if the Father draws him. That is, the Father draws him and reveals to him who Jesus Christ is.
Speaker 1:I want to emphasize the meaning of the word reveals to him who Jesus Christ is. I want to emphasize the meaning of the word draw from the Greek. It is the word helkouo and it means to drag. This is our human condition. We are born in sin and shaped in iniquity. Our fallen flesh causes us to hide our faces from Christ, as in Isaiah 53, verse 3. That shows that we regarded Christ Jesus as so loathsome a creature that when we looked at him we turned our faces away in disgust. But those who are chosen of God are literally dragged to Christ by his grace.
Speaker 1:One of the several objections to this truth is from John, chapter 3, verse 16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. So God loves the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. So God loves the world and therefore gave his only begotten Son for salvation, and whoever believes will receive eternal life. Thus the free will advocate will say that salvation is offered to all the world. But the question is who believes? Does the whole world believe? We know the answer to this question is no. So notice what we read in the book of Acts, acts 13, verse 48,. And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord, and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed. So the whosoever believes are those who are ordained to eternal life.
Speaker 1:Does this mean that we disregard and state that there is no such thing as free will? No, no. But we can clearly see that our free will doesn't save us, but rather the grace of God working faith within us to accept the blood of Jesus Christ. Brother Branham tells us this you're on free moral agency. You can act the way you wish to. We clearly have freedom of the will, but it is not the basis of our salvation. Revelation 22, verse 17, tells us that whosoever will let him come, and John 5, 40 tells us that you will not come to me, that you might have life. Both of them show that we make a choice and a decision to either accept or reject Christ. We've already established the foundation to that In our will we would reject Christ, but, based upon the grace of God, we are dragged to Christ.
Speaker 1:I also want to emphasize this point in order to reconcile free will and the sovereignty of God. There is not with God, as there is with man, a past he is bound by. Everything is now with God. The past is never past and the future is ever present. The unchangeableness of God's sovereign plan is not in conflict with our free will and God's ability to answer our prayers. Looking at it from another direction, our personal choices are not forced upon us. We choose what we desire. However, god can ordain our choices without forcing them upon us. By dealing with the nature within us that we receive, based upon our genetics, our life experiences and the family we are born into. They impact our personal choices. All of these things are ordained by God to direct our circumstances.
Speaker 1:Let's look more closely at election according to the scriptures Romans 8, verse 28,. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. In this verse it seems as though God is saying that things work together for good for us, but I want to show that it isn't saying that things just happen to work together for good in the way we think about it. We think that good things are having a peaceful life, enjoying cabin life, not facing bad circumstances, etc. This is not at all what Paul is telling us.
Speaker 1:Notice in verse 35 of Romans, chapter 8, that we are promised that tribulation, distress, nakedness, danger, sword, peril, death, nor life will separate us from the love of God. Clearly, these are not good things. God is not promising to spare us from difficult tribulations and persecution. Rather, he is promising to cause all things, things like persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword, death, etc. To work for our good. So then, what is this good that God is working all these things into? God is promising to work this for our spiritual and eternal good. In 2 Corinthians 4.17, paul writes for our light affliction, which is but fora moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. I believe this is the clear promise of God that in all things he works for us, both a spiritual good in this life and an Romans 8, verse 29, whereby he is able to predict and state precisely what will happen in future events. Rather, this is the specific knowledge of those whom he has chosen to eternal life through Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1:God does not merely foreknow our choices. Ephesians 1.11 shows that we are predestinated according to the purpose of him, who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will. In Romans 8.29, we are predestinated by the foreknowledge of God. This cannot merely be a foreseeing of our choices, but rather it is God ordaining us to eternal life and working according to his plan, as the scripture tells us that he worketh all things after the counsel of his own will. This is not based upon our personal choice, but upon God's personal choice. Jesus stated that you have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.
Speaker 1:Predestinate means that God ordains our destiny beforehand. Our destiny is to be conformed to the image of his son. Before the foundation of the world, he chose us and ordained us to be in the likeness of his son. This is not merely speaking of possessing a glorified body, but that God's purpose for us in this life is that his elect will act and talk like Jesus Christ. Romans 10. 8, verse 30,. Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also called, and whom he called them he also justified. And whom he justified, them he also glorified. I love that the Word of God in these verses speaks in a past tense, as though all of these things are completed and finished in the mind of God. Notice called, justified and glorified. Our calling is how God draws us to Christ. Justification speaks of God declaring us righteous through Christ, and glorified is us receiving our new immortal body at the rapture. In the eyes of God, these are finished works.
Speaker 1:To finish this chapter, I will include a grouping of quotes from Brother Branham upon these subjects. First, we reckon ourselves sinners and worthy of condemnation, and we are all born in sin and shaped in iniquity. There's not a sound parcel of us. Our minds are bad, our soul is corruptible, our constant thinking is evil, every imaginary thought of a man's mind is evil, a sinner, and also that our body is weak, our spirit is no good and we're just full of corruption. And how could one corruptible thing bring another good thing out of a corruptible? Let me say this that in Job, 14th chapter, he said seeing that a man is born of a woman is full of sorrow and trouble. Yet he cometh forth like a flower. He fadeth away and on, as the prophet goes on speaking, he said who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one. You stick your bucket down into the well and pull out a bucket of water and it's stagnant, it stinks. You look in it and it's muddy and little worms is in that water. There's no way at all to put your bucket back and get a clean bucket. The whole well is contaminated and the whole soul, mind and body of man is contaminated with sin and born in sin, physically shaped in iniquity, and come to the world speaking lies so that his own soul is contaminated. Nothing good One cannot redeem the other because it's all wrong and you can't take a bucket full of water here that's contaminated and another bucket full that's contaminated and mix them together. You've got more contamination. There's no purification to it.
Speaker 1:They probably he was a farmer, lived in the valley of the Shinar there and lived an ordinary life. He probably went out in the daytime and got his meat from the bush and picked berries and lived that sort of a life, just an ordinary man. There was nothing special about him. But one day God called him. That's what made the difference when God made the call. And that's the way it is to any life. It takes God. It isn't what you do, it's what God does.
Speaker 1:See, you say I sought God, I sought God. You're mistaken. No man seeks God, god seeks the man. See, it's not you seeking God, it's God seeking you. Jesus said you haven't chosen me, but I chose. You. See, so you're chose before the foundation of the world, or you wasn't chose at all. He just come to redeem that name. And all whose names are not on the Lamb's book of life before the foundation of the world is the only ones going to be there anyway. See, you were chosen him before the foundation of the world, when the lamb was chosen. Then you were chosen with him before the foundation, and you are, as I said last night, an attribute of God's thinking. See, that's the only way you can be eternal, an only form of eternal life. There is only one form of eternal life, and that's God. So that's all. He is the one that's eternal. That's what he come for, to clean out them, kind that the Father had give him before the foundation of the world. Amen. I feel religious when I know that to be the truth.
Speaker 1:Not he that willeth or he that runneth, it's God, amen. Not how much you done or how much you didn't do. No man sought God. God sought you, the potter, as Romans 8 tells us. Who can tell the potter? Can the clay say make me thus, see, no, god has to display all of his attributes, and so he has to make one vessel of dishonor and the other one to honor, to show that one up, of course, now.
Speaker 1:But he is sovereign. You see, nobody can tell him what to do. And remember you, your eyes, your stature, whatever you was, you were in his thinking at the beginning and the only thing that you are is the expression word. After he thought it, he spoke it, and here you are. If it wasn't, if you wasn't in his thinking, there was no way at all for you ever to be there, for he is the one that gives eternal life. You remember how he read the scripture? Not him that willeth or him that runneth, but God, and that his predestination might stand true. He could choose before any time who God is sovereign and is choosing. Did you know that God is sovereign? Who was back there to tell him a better way to make the world? Who would dare to tell him he was running his business wrong? Even the very word itself very sovereign, even the revelation is sovereign.
Speaker 1:A guy told me I don't believe, I don't care what you'd say, if you could raise the dead or anything and heal the sick and prove it anyway, I still don't believe it. I said certainly not. You're an unbeliever Doesn't mean a thing to you. It wasn't even sent to you, sent to those who will believe. The message is to the believer, to them that perish it's foolishness, but to them that are in Christ and are, are part of that seed, it's life.
Speaker 1:It's got to come, according to the word, if it comes from God, because it's to vindicate or to prove God's presence, and he foreknew all these things being by his foreknowledge. He ordained, foreordained it's called in the Bible predestinated every age to its place and every man to its place and every messenger to its place. He is God. The devil ain't pulling nothing over on him and he's God and he has ordained everything to take place and falls just exactly in line with his word. It's into the kingdom of God with eternal life, with the predestinated. That never did start, never started on any day. He wasn't saved on any day, he was always saved. Amen, jesus, just come to redeem that. But you were saved from the beginning because you had eternal life to begin with. A trout fish can never be a gar or a tadpole. He might be in the same water with him, but he was from the beginning a trout that had only caught him, see, but he was that from the beginning.
Speaker 1:Now, that's a big word, predestinate, but we all know that it's the truth. We absolutely know that the infinite God predestinated all things by foreknowledge. Before the foundation of the world, even the Lamb was slain and every name that would ever be on the book was put on the book before the book was ever written. Now, how many knows that to be true? And Jesus, come to redeem those that were in the book, in the Bible. The Lamb came from behind the curtain and taken the book and opened the seals that it was sealed with, for he came to claim all he had redeemed. He's the intercessor now, an intercessor making intercessions for those who he has redeemed. All whose names was written on the Lamb's book of life is redeemed.
Speaker 1:He wasn't willing that you should be perished. You would perish, but him being infinite, he had to know the end from the beginning, or he isn't God. So Jesus never come to earth just to say well, see, if somebody be mercy, if I act and die in a hard way, they'll probably think well, it'll persuade their hearts and they'll. God don't run his business like that. Jesus came for one specific purpose, that's to save those who God, before the foundation of the world, knew would be saved. He said so, that's right, so you're. It's not him that willeth or him that runneth, it's God that showeth mercy. Paul said that, same man here.