There is a passage in Mark 4 where Jesus seemed at first glance to be exercising arbitrary divine sovereignty in his call. He explained that the purpose of his parables was deliberately to enlighten some and blind others. Parables were designed to prevent his message from converting some to whom he was preaching, “otherwise they might.. turn and I would heal them” (Matt. 13:13-15 NIV as all quotes).
Did Jesus hate the religious leaders so much that he didn’t want them to repent and be forgiven? This is surely unlikely in one who taught us to love our enemies. Peter writes of some that “it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command…” (II Peter 2:21). Jesus, who knew what was in man, must have been convinced that many of his hearers were so full of self-righteousness that even if they had accepted the truth and been forgiven, they would have been unwilling to apply its principles consistently throughout their lives. They would have merely used the forgiveness of God as a cloak for their own pride, and therefore it was better that the gospel was kept from them.
We, unlike Jesus, have no powers of divine telepathy, and therefore we have no right to withhold the gospel from anyone simply because we think they do not deserve it.
“Outside the pale”
The 17th century British Calvinist sectarians under Oliver Cromwell decided that the papists had no place in the religious, political or even social life of a Calvinist United Kingdom. In Ireland, Roman Catholics were by far the majority, as today. To protect the saints of God from daily contamination from the agents of the Antichrist, a physical wall or palisade (“the pale”) was built around the Protestant section of Ireland — forerunner of the Berlin Wall and all such walls of hate. We all know of one such wall which had preceded it the “middle wall of partition” which the Jews built — without divine sanction — and which the Gospel of Christ demolished for ever (Eph. 2:14).
The idea that the Pope is the Antichrist is a Calvinist, not a biblical, notion. The New Testament tells that Antichrist was alive and well centuries before there was a pope (I John 2:18). The apostles themselves saw the beginning of its deadly work in their own day. It also must still be active in the final days of the gentiles, for Jesus will destroy it with the breath of his mouth (II Thess. 2:8). The general tenor of scripture is that it is a “spirit that works in the children of disobedience,” a constant threat to the Truth, an apostate church which believes in the full deity, not the full humanity, of Jesus Christ. Ironically, Calvin himself acted the very part of Antichrist when he connived with the Geneva City Council to burn Miguel Serveto to ashes because he believed Bible truth about the Son of God, and denied the dogma of the trinity. Not long ago, a cleric traveled nearly a hundred miles specially to give a glowing tribute at the funeral of our brother Alfred Brown of May Pen ecclesia, who forsook Catholicism and became a Christadelphian. Yet when local Calvinists learned that a Christadelphian had been baptized in a pool they owned, they not only refused further use, but had a special ceremony to scrub the pool clean and re-dedicate it after its defilement by scum who did not believe in the full deity of Christ.
Contagious defilement
The idea that the non-elect — the alien, the gentiles, the strangers, the world, whatever derogatory epithet you wish — somehow can defile the holy saints by their very presence is not only the most sinister principle of the Calvinists, it is the most infectious and the most popular.
As a community, my own experience suggests we are not wholly free from Calvinist thinking in this regard. When I left the Anglican Church for the last time, because the minister was scripturally illiterate, I was thrilled by the teachings of the Bible as expounded by the local Christadelphians. They seemed to make sense. They were consistent. They revealed a whole new dimension to the Gospel. But what was I to make of the fact that when I entered their ecclesial hall, only one short bench at the back, behind a rope, was reserved for “the aliens” of which I was obviously one? I was not offered a hymn book to praise my God, and when I asked why, and took one for myself, I was told to read the preface which told me that I, as one not in covenant, could not offer any praise, prayer or worship that was acceptable to my Maker. Had someone forgotten about Cornelius’ prayers, or that Lydia worshipped God, and that God blessed the Ethiopian because he loved his Bible.
After I had been baptized, I discovered that one elder of the ecclesia passed the bread by every Sunday, because, so he said, it was not baked the way he felt it should be baked, so he wouldn’t take it. One brother was constantly agitating for the words “without reservation” to be added to our ecclesia’s statement. I wonder if such a patent impugning of a brother’s integrity would in fact minimize the defilement of which he was afraid.
My spiritual sanity was saved a little later when I read the life of Bro. Thomas. He visited an ecclesia like mine in the disunited States of the 1860’s: The elders were not really interested in fellowshipping Christ, he complained, but fussed and squabbled all the time about “water, pork, alcohol, salt, leaven, raisins.” One British brother, invited to Buffalo in 1912, lamented that when he got there, he found he had been invited by three warring ecclesias, all claiming to be the right one having fellowship with the Father but refusing it to each other. “0 what is the solution? Man cannot live by controversy alone,” he lamented in his letter home He, and we, all know what the solution is, it just needs a grain of humility and faith to be put into actual practice.
The lesson of Eliphaz
One of the most powerful lessons mall of scripture is one we learn from the Book of Job Job was “blameless and upright,” he “feared God,” and “turned away from evil” (Job 1 and 2) He rejected what is wrong, he did not merely shun it The fact of Job’s genuine righteousness is essential to the lesson of the book The slanderer denied it, Yahweh set out to prove it Job is not considered to be sinless, his first recorded act is to offer sacrifices for sin That is not the point It is possible for sinful men to be genuinely good It requires effort, but Job had made that effort.
But for all that, Job learned to take no pride in it For him, God was so infinitely majestic and awesome in His mercy that his response was simple “Therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 426)
Not so his friend Eliphaz The Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with with you. .because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has” (Job 42 7)
Yet if we read ever so carefully the record of what Eliphaz actually said, and try to find any doctrinal errors, we will look in vain His speeches would make a perfect basis for a very convincing Christadelphian Bible Seminar series (Job 4 8-9,20, 5 7-9,11,17-18, 15 34, 22 12,21-23) Both Proverbs and Hebrews quote Eliphaz and urge us to accept the truths he expounds (Prov 3 11, Heb 12 5) Mary’s Magnificent has some echoes from Eliphaz A superficial assessment of this man Eliphaz, in terms of religious understanding, would be to give him high marks, perhaps a B+ or an A- in final year theological exams
So, right as he was, however could he have been so wrong?
The wrong spirit
Eliphaz talks about God Job talks to and with Him That’s one big difference, A friend, after reading a Christadelphian work which expounds Bible truth brilliantly, commented very perceptively “This author seems to know absolutely all there is to know about God, but I do wonder if he really knows Him”
Eliphaz is absolutely convinced that he is right, that he has the truth, and can infallibly explain it to anyone prepared to listen to his lengthy harangues Job is a hopeless and stubborn ignoramus So Eliphaz asserts that Job’s prayers are therefore worthless, and it is futile for him to call upon God, because he is an unbeliever — unlike himself He calls Job “an alien” and “a stranger” Job’s sins, he finally decides, “are infinite”
Of course, the book itself has already let us into a big secret — which Eliphaz doesn’t have a clue about while ranting on — God thought very highly indeed of Job What a dreadful mistake Eliphaz unknowingly made.
What Eliphaz gave and never gave
Eliphaz was a fine theologian But he was supposed to be a friend There’s the rub The Eliphaz crew in Roman Israel were stunned because the Son of God was a friend — a friend of sinners!
Job was ma deep, deep pit of trial He needed comfort What he received from Eliphaz was an exposition of classical Calvinism, full of reproof, with insensitive and even cruel condemnation for sins that Eliphaz just imagined Job must be guilty of committing In fact, to him, Job’s sins were “perfectly obvious”
What poor Job needed most of all was help He did not get it from Eliphaz Eliphaz would never have helped anyone whom he thought was beneath him, or who didn’t share his particular concepts of religious truth Eliphaz was cold hearted, calculating, clinical, and callous Job was gracious and generous minded (Job 42 8,10) Thankfully, Eliphaz eventually learned (perhaps to his eternal benefit) not the knowledge of the Truth, for he had that in good measure already, but what Job had never ceased to have throughout his terrible trial — what it means to love the Truth.
“Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith, prove your own selves Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates? But I trust that ye shall know that we are not reprobates” (II Cor 13 5-6)
Paul wrote those words to the Corinthian brethren He might have said them to Eliphaz if they could somehow have met Do they mean anything to us?
“Hold fast the form of sound words”
It is meet that we conclude with words from a brother long asleep m Jesus He was a convert of brother John Thomas He was a gracious elder of the Aberdeen Ecclesia m Scotland long ago, and was one of the brothers who interviewed young Robert Roberts for baptism And as long ago as 1867, he wrote a gently worded appeal m one of our magazines — a far cry from the contentious verbiage of some of his fellow converts from Scots Calvinism His name is William Gill The title of the article is A Plea for Unity.
“In writing to Timothy, the apostle Paul exhorts to ‘Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus’ (II Tim 113) It is also defined as ‘the doctrine which is according to godliness’ (I Tim 6 3) Having intelligently laid hold of ‘the form of sound words’ by faith in immersion, we then have to ‘hold them fast in the faith and love which is in Christ Jesus’ It is here where the shortcoming is, and all you who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus I would specially ask your attention to this matter However much knowledge of the details of God’s purposes you may have attained to, it must never be forgotten that this foundation principle is that upon which our unity is based I am sorry to have occasion to record the fact that many brethren in these days seem to forget this, and at every stage of advancement in knowledge that they attain to, or may think that they have attained to, they turn around upon their lagging brethren, and say, ‘If you don’t follow where we lead, and agree with us on every point, we will have no fellowship with you, and will warn others not to do so’ Those of you who are acting so, I would ask seriously to consider if such conduct is according to ‘the faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.’ The foundation of our faith consists of clearly revealed truths. Whoever, therefore, sets up any ‘view’ of truth, or any obscure or disputed point not generally received by the brotherhood, as a test of fellowship, is thereby constituted a sect-maker. This, brethren, is a serious position for anyone to place himself in. Why? Because he lays another foundation of his own making — he thereby divides what ought to be one and so retain its vitality. The Church being the body of Christ, and as such ‘the pillar and support of the truth,’ separation from it can never in any circumstance be a right course in the sight of God. I John 3:14,15 tells us that cutting off from fellowship is an act of murder if it is done contrary to the law of the Lord Jesus. The cultivation of peace is essential to salvation; for we find it written, ‘Follow peace with all, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One