Sovereign Grace Believers had the great awakenings, religious liberty, the freest country on earth, educated and uneducated ministers working together, the great missionary movement, worked with deists, arminians, liberals(?), modernists, postmodernists, etc. Shall we let one who said, “I have just begun to fight,” outdo us in perseverance? Pshaw! as Dr. Ernest R. Campbell use to say. Why should we pull out when sovereign grace people created the SBC, etc? Why pull out, when the Bible says in Zeph. that God will starve all the gods of the earth? Why give up when the Bible says, “Where sin abounded, Grace super-abounds?” Why be so weak and knock-kneed that we can’t stand against opposition or hold out when all alone? Why, that is when Jesus gets the glory?

A mother once said to one of her children, a daughter, who said, “you must love ___, ____, & ____ more than me, because there so much smarter than me!” The mother replied, “I don’t know but what I love you more, cause you try so hard.” A couple took an abused child and carried and loved him until he grew up, that is how God’s love works and we must seek to imitate our Lord out of gratitude for the privilege of trying. Many try right now. I do not want to make any one a five point Calvinist? I want to make him a lover of the Lord Jesus Christ who loved sinners and gave Himself for them. Now I happen to believe the teachings of Sovereign Grace show Jesus in His most winsome light. I once said to a relative of Spurgeon (who did not at that time believe as Charles did) that grace is irresistible. He went out and won a woman who told him after she had received Christ why she had responded so readily: “Oh, it was so wonderful that I could not resist it.” He said that when she said that, what I had said about grace being irresistible popped into his mind. Forty years later he himself came to believe it, too.

Johnny, Jerry, and John’s ideas are not a problem; they are a challenge for us to prove such views wrong…How? By kind, loving, faithful, gracious, courteous, longsuffering love like the love the Lord Jesus had for us, when we were in sin’s degradation. One day His love proved to be overwhelming in winning us to freely turn from sin to the Savior. An open hand of invitation by God’s grace proves in the long-run to be more irresistible than a clenched fist. The message of the cross is ABSOLUTE PROOF OF THAT FACT. I HAVE A SON WHO IS A PREACHER. WHAT WON HIM TO THE LORD’S SERVICE WAS A SERMON ON “GRATITUDE” BASED ON AN EXPOSITION OF 1 THESS. 5:18. Yes, just the thought of how much thanks he owed to God for His great goodness melted his heart into tears. I am so thankful for the privilege of having a part in that response by preaching just a run-of-the-mill Sunday morning sermon where the results were of God.

I would like to see Johnny, Jerry, and John come to the persuasion of Sovereign Grace by being actually persuaded by Him in all His loving kindness in its most irresistible form: Its winsomeness. I think it was John Wesley wo said to John Newton that he would never despair of any one’s salvation, if God should save a certain person. Newton’s response, “I have never despaired of any being saved, since He saved me.” Whether that story is true or not, I am unable to say, BUT I CAN SAY THAT AMAZING GRACE IS THE SWEET SOUND THAT SAVED A WRETCH LIKE ME, AND WHY SHOULD I DESPAIR OF ANY INCLUDING THEE? AND WHY SHOULD I GIVE UP JUST BECAUSE SOME WIZARD OF ID (sic) SEEMS TO THREATEN LIKE THE ONE OF OZ? Gentlemen, for shame, shall we give up so easily or shall we be brave and say, I have just begun to believe? Nothing is harder to resit than an open hand? Gentlemen, be sweet, be loving, be extra kind? God will win in the end, and your worst enemies might well become your best friends. AND THE GLORY SHALL BE TO THE ONE YOU ARE SUPPOSE TO ADORE, THE LORD JESUS CHRIST

The recent election of Johnny Hunt shows this.

AS TO TO THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE, INCLUDING EACH POINT OF THE TULIP ACROSTIC OUTLINE, INCLUDING ALSO THE DOCTRINE OF REPROBATION, THEY ARE ALL INVITATIONS TO BE SAVED TO TRUST THE LORD JESUS CHRIST. I will give one example to prove the point, no, two instances. Jesus said to the woman of Canaan, Mt.15:24, “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” The woman was not a Jew, not an Israelite. Jesus preached a limited atonement, particular redemption. The woman’s response: “Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.” (Mt.15:25). Then he preached reprobation to her, “It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs” (Mt.15:27). Her response, “Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.”(Mt.15:27). Read the rest of that pericope for what Jesus had to say about her response, about her.

Now as to the matter of Jerry. We trust that he means well, even if he got it wrong from some who have misrepresented sovereign grace by words or actions. Arminians can be truly saved even if they are all mixed up in their theology. And some who believe, supposedly, in sovereign grace and even preach it might well perish. The true liberal is a believer in Sovereign Grace. Fuss’in is better than war any day of the week. What might be happening is that we are getting ready for a THIRD GREAT AWAKENING, ONE IN WHICH THE WHOLE EARTH SHALL BE FILLED WITH HIS GLORY & GRACE AS THE WATERS THAT COVER THE SEA.

By His grace,
Jim Willingham