Letter 11 — But the Bible Says . . .
Letters To A Mormon Elder
by James R. White
Monday, July 16
Dear Steve,
Yes, I have been accused of being a frustrated author. More than once my correspondence with an individual has grown to what might be called “monumental proportions.” And yes, you are right, my last letter allowed a good bit of “me” and my excitement about the awesome God of the Bible to show through. I’m not ashamed to admit that I love talking about God and thinking about His tremendous majesty. Some folks are just very emotional about God but don’t go beyond that personally, I am most emotional in the sense of worship/adoration when I ponder the magnificent truths of Scripture about who God is and what He has done. I think that is what the Psalmist was saying when he wrote,
O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth, who has set thy glory above the heavens! . . . When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? (Psalm 8:1,3-4)
It will always amaze me that such a great and magnificent God would love and care for a sinner like me. All of eternity does not contain enough time for me to thank Him for His grace toward me. But, I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Your note contained some questions that I feel I need to get to before we move on to other topics.
Basically, given all I said in the previous letter, you had three questions:
(1) If God can actually stop someone from sinning, why doesn’t He?
(2) If God is really “sovereign” and everything that takes place does so because of His decrees, because of His command, then doesn’t this make Him responsible for evil?
(3) Doesn’t the Bible present God as “repenting” of an action, hence showing that He changes His direction according to what happens — especially in response to men’s actions?
The first two questions are connected in my thinking, and I will address them together before getting to the third.
I’d like to start by laying down a general principle and going from there to a principle that is demonstrated most clearly in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The actual act of nailing the sinless Lord Jesus Christ upon the wooden cross was, we would both agree, a horribly sinful one. The men who were responsible — not just the soldiers, but Herod, Pilate, and the Jewish leaders who falsely accused Jesus were guilty of a tremendous crime, a heinous evil. They sinned in what they did.
Yet, we also know that no single action in all of history has resulted in such tremendous glory being given to God. I know that many LDS have been taught to view the cross as little more than an instrument of death, yet Paul could write, “but God forbid that I should glory, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Galatians 6:14). God’s plan of redemption included the cross, and as such it is an action that is holy and right and perfect and just. On the cross sin and death were defeated once and for all, and the way of salvation for God’s people was secured.
So we see in the cross an incident in which men’s sinful actions resulted in God’s glory. God used those sinful men (who certainly did not have pure motives for what they did) to accomplish His will. In fact, the early Church once gathered and prayed and said,
The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against his Christ. For of a truth against thy holy child, Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, for to do whatever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done. (Acts 4:26-28)
Did you catch that last phrase? What Herod, and Pilate, and the Jewish leaders did was exactly what God had determined beforehand would be done. How else could it be? Jesus is described in Revelation 13:8 as “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” If it was not eternally God’s plan that the Son was to die as the sacrifice for the sins of God’s people, how could He be described as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world? So here we see what seems to me to be the classic example of a single action in time — the crucifixion of Christ and the role of both man and God in it. The men who acted did so voluntarily. God did not have to “force them” to do what was evil. Their intentions, from the start, were evil. But God’s intentions in the same act were pure and holy. While God eternally predestined this action which involved human guilt and sin, He did so for the holiest and purest reasons. The ultimate goal was the salvation of God’s people, which brings glory to God’s name.
How does this help me to answer your first two questions? Well, in answer to the first question, it points out that while God could indeed stop all men from sinning (just as He could have stopped Pilate from sentencing Christ to death, or could have frozen the soldier’s hand in midair so that the nails could not be driven into the Lord’s hands), He does not do so because He has a purpose in all that takes place in this world, including those actions that are sinful! We normally do not know the specific reason in each and every instance, but we can be confident that God is working out His eternal plan and, in the end, justice and righteousness will be established. I am reminded of King Nebuchadnezzar in the book of Daniel. He did something that was quite sinful. He lifted up his heart in pride and engaged in idolatry. As a result, God struck him with insanity so that he went about like an animal in the forest. But, when his sanity returned to him, he saw the foolishness of his ways. His sin was used by God to teach him a lesson, which he expressed in the following words:
And I blessed the Most High, and I praised and honored him that liveth forever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation: And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou? (Daniel 4:34-35)
Your second question is closely related to this one. Yes, if God had so chosen, He could have kept evil from ever existing. Yet, He did not. Why not? He had a purpose to accomplish, and, in His infinite wisdom, He saw that the existence of evil was proper to His accomplishing His own desire. In the final analysis, greater good and glory will exist because of the existence of evil than if it had never existed at all. I can’t tell you much more than that, for God has not revealed anything more than that. Yes, I know that “latter-day revelation” addresses the issue of why things are the way they are, yet we have already seen that the LDS concept of God is so far removed from the biblical one that the two cannot possibly have their origin in the same Being, the Holy Spirit of God.
Your third question is a little more difficult to answer — not because the Bible is not clear on the subject, for it is, but because the answer lies in a realm that neither you nor I can possibly fully understand eternity itself.
God is not a man, that he should lie, neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? Or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good? (Numbers 23:19)
Yet, as you pointed out, we find the Bible saying that God “repented of the evil” He planned to execute (e.g., Jonah 3:10). In fact, a supposed “classical contradiction” is to be found in 1 Samuel the fifteenth chapter, verses 29 and 35:
And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent; for he is not a man, that he should repent.
And Samuel came no more to see Saul until the day of his death; nevertheless, Samuel mourned for Saul. And the Lord repented that he had made Saul king over Israel.
The same Hebrew term, nacham, is used (though in different forms) in both verses so how are we to understand this? We are to do what we learned before and allow the context to speak for itself. When Samuel is speaking to Saul in verse 29 he is speaking of the differences between God and man. One of those differences is that men change their minds and vacillate back and forth, even to the point of lying (note that Numbers 23:19 uses the same language). God will not lie nor repent in this sense. Yet, God is not a robot, and even though all that takes place does so at His command, He is still grieved and pained by the sinfulness of men. In 1 Samuel 15:35, the statement about God’s repentance is preceded by a statement that Samuel, though he never saw Saul again until his death, mourned for him. So, too, God felt anguish and “sighed deeply” (the literal meaning of the term) with reference to Saul’s wickedness as well. Saul was a tragic character indeed for both God and Samuel to experience mourning and sadness over him.
But all of that aside, do we not see God “changing His mind” in the Bible, even at the encouragement of men? How shall we understand this? Many are willing to just simply say, “Well, it is obvious that God has changed His mind and gone a different path,” but few have thought through what this would mean. If I personally am forced to change my mind about a certain action, I have to admit that I did not have the proper foresight to avoid the situation in the first place. While that is perfectly understandable for me, can we possibly charge God with a lack of foresight? Is God so slow-witted as to make a rash promise and then have to go back and, upon calmer reflection, change His mind? Certainly, this is not true of the God of the Bible that we examined in my previous letter, Steve! So how are we to understand this?
I said above that the answer to this question lies in a realm that you and I cannot comprehend — the realm of eternity. The problem is not with God, nor with His Word, but with you and me. We see things only as they occur in time, one thing after another, cause and effect, on and on down through history. But, as I’ve pointed out, God isn’t like that. What happens in time is the result of His creation of time and all else. When we see Him acting, we are seeing Him only “from one side,” so to speak — the side of time. So, we are only going to get a very distorted view. It would be like watching a play in only one dimension only seeing a “sliver” of the whole stage and trying to figure out what was going on. In the same way, when we see God at work, we must be careful not to violate His Word and make wrong inferences that result in contradictions.
At the same time, we also need to realize that God’s speaking to us is like my speaking to my infant daughter — frequently I say some rather silly things simply because right now her understanding is limited (though expanding at an alarming rate!). While it may bruise our egos a good bit, we are far less than infants when compared with the great Jehovah and for Him to even deem it proper to communicate with us in such a way that we can understand Him is pretty amazing. So, in some instances (especially where we are prone to make mistakes because we cannot comprehend eternity nor the nature of His dwelling in that realm), God speaks to us “with a lisp” as John Calvin put it, as we would talk with a child. let me give you an example.
Last week I fell down and broke my left arm. Now, when I had the arm in a sling, my children wanted to know what had happened. How wise would I be to say, “Well, kids, I have a non-displaced fracture of the head of the radius”? They probably would have said, “But what did you do to your arm?” I didn’t tell them about non-displaced fractures and didn’t even try to describe the difference between the radius and the ulna or anything else about anatomy or physiology. I told them, “Daddy fell down and broke the bone in his arm.” Not very technical, not very specific, but it communicated the basic message.
When God brought the message of destruction to the city of Ninevah by the means of His not-so-happy prophet Jonah, He did so for a purpose. It was His purpose that the city repent, and it did. God had planned and decreed what happened all along — He didn’t change. But, from our perspective, it looked like He had said He was going to do one thing but ended up doing another. See, it is our perspective that causes the problem, not God’s actions. He speaks to us simply and basically, so that we can understand. We couldn’t understand a full dissertation on the relationship of time and eternity so He doesn’t give us one. But, at the same time, we would be very, very foolish to say that God changes or that His Word is contradictory simply because we cannot fully understand God’s working in the world. We may stand up in our pride and charge God with error, but such would simply be yet another manifestation of our inherent sin and rebellion.
You did mention one other thing that I wanted to respond to. You mentioned that in your talking with people who claim to be Christians you have not heard such an emphasis upon the sovereignty of God before. In fact, you have heard people speak much more about the “free will of man” than you have about the free will of God! Such is, sadly, a very accurate observation, Steve. It is uncommon to hear men speaking about the sovereignty of God. We are much more likely to emphasize our own “freedom” at the expense of God’s, and that is simply part and parcel of what sin does to the heart of man. But I hope you recognize that truth is not determined by “majority vote.” Even if there was almost no one who believed that God is absolutely sovereign over all things it would remain true simply because the Bible says that it is true. There are many truths in the Word that men are not terribly fond of, but those truths remain vital all the same. You will see the vast difference a belief in the sovereignty of God makes when we get to the topic of the grace of God and salvation.
I hope these thoughts have been of assistance to you, Steve. I, too, am looking forward to discussing the Lord Jesus Christ with you. Leave me a message on my recorder if it would be okay to go ahead and move right into that issue.
In Christ Jesus,
James
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