Does God Call His Elect by means of a false gospel?

[Amazing Grace]

As an offshoot from the OR death thread, perhaps we can discus this question here. Will an elect of God be called or converted under a false prophet such as Oral Roberts? I agree he may be called out, but will he remain under a false persons teachings and still converted? There are way too many warnings in scripture about false prophets and how we should treat them.

What ye think?

 

[Michael Doyle]

I don't know and I don't know how any of us could answer that question absolutely. I of course want to say unequivocally no, but that is hidden knowledge I am not given to know.

With respect to the first part of the question, the answer must be yes, an elect man or woman can be saved under a false teacher.

 

[Andres]

yes, I do think God's elect can be converted under a false teacher. I think there are all types/levels of false teachers out there today. Obviously some are worse than others. In Robert's case I certainly agree he had serious error in his teachings, but I believe he also taught the very basic tenet of Christianity and that is salvation through faith in Christ alone. So even though someone under the ministry of Roberts would learn all sorts of ridiculous, unbiblical teachings, they would also pick up repentance and trust in Christ.

 

[lynnie]

I've met a number of people that came out of the RCC. They were saved while in it, but got out. Wherever the bible is read, people can be saved.

 

[Fly Caster]

Does God Call His Elect by means of a false gospel?

God does sometimes call His elect by a bit of truth contained in an otherwise false gospel. Roberts was not a false teacher in the sense that everything that he said was in error-- his false gospel was a bit of truth mixed with a bit of error. The error is deadly, but the truth gives life. God may work in a saving way by using the life-giving part to bring forth life and nullify the effects of the poison. The other, and far more tragic, part of the equation is that many have imbibed deeply the poison which has had it's natural, unmitigated effect on them.

 

[Amazing Grace]

Can we point to any biblical example of this happening? I am not aware of any. In fact the biblical revelation says the exact opposite. Let us for a second take our 'charity hats' off and hash this out. I am not speaking of being ignorant of truth, I am asking is if a person sits under the teachings of one as OR et al, and gives a hearty Amen to what he says, how can he believe a lie or lies, and still be considered regenerated when Christ said the Spirit will lead them into all truth.

 

[Andres]

I've met a number of people that came out of the RCC. They were saved while in it, but got out. Wherever the bible is read, people can be saved.

Now see this is interesting. RCC is Roman Catholic church correct? I am very leery of salvation through the Roman Catholic church because they do not teach the true gospel at all! As I stated earlier, all that would be needed to be taught would be faith in Christ alone for salvation. Rome does not teach this. I was raised in the Catholic church and i was as lost as I could be. I was saved in a Pentecostal church because even though they taught lots of other error, faith in Christ alone was taught for salvation.
Of course if you say you know people who came to faith in the RCC, then I believe you Lynnie. I would however be interested to hear how they did it.

 

[CharlieJ]

2 questions

As an offshoot from the OR death thread, perhaps we can discus this question here. Will an elect of God be called or converted under a false prophet such as Oral Roberts? I agree he may be called out, but will he remain under a false persons teachings and still converted? There are way too many warnings in scripture about false prophets and how we should treat them.

What ye think?

Your subject line asks one question, and your text another. No, of course no one can be truly converted by means of a false gospel. That's just self-contradictory, since the gospel is God's power for salvation (Rom. 1:16).

Also, no, no one could be saved primarily by means of a false teacher, since the biblical definition of a false teacher is someone who perverts the gospel (read 2 Peter 2). That's an important distinction to keep in mind; not everyone with erroneous theology is a ψευδοδιδασκαλος as described in the NT.

However, someone could be saved while under the ministry of a false teacher by some other means, such as personal Bible reading or the influence of a friend or a preacher on the radio. I trust that the Lord would eventually bring a person out of such an environment into some sort of Bible-believing group.

 

[Fly Caster]

Can we point to any biblical example of this happening? I am not aware of any. In fact the biblical revelation says the exact opposite. Let us for a second take our 'charity hats' off and hash this out. I am not speaking of being ignorant of truth, I am asking is if a person sits under the teachings of one as OR et al, and gives a hearty Amen to what he says, how can he believe a lie or lies, and still be considered regenerated when Christ said the Spirit will lead them into all truth.

Is it too much of a stretch to assume that Judas Iscariot was used to produce true disciples?

 

[Mushroom]

Php 1:15-18 Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife; and some also of good will: (16) The one preach Christ of contention, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my bonds: (17) But the other of love, knowing that I am set for the defence of the gospel. (18) What then? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.

2Ti 2:15-21 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. (16) But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness. (17) And their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus; (18) Who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some. (19) Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. (20) But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honour, and some to dishonour. (21) If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master's use, and prepared unto every good work.

Don't these verses indicate that God will use even false 'vessels' to gather His people to Himself?

I would say that it is the aggregate of experience that God uses in a person's life to call them to Himself, so if a false teacher is a part of that experience, hasn't he been used for that purpose? God used Joseph's brothers' wickedness to bring about good.

 

[lynnie]

Andres.....they got involved with the Catholic Charismatic movement, which I think (I have zero first hand knowlege of it) stressed a personal relationship with God and that you must be born again. Right there is a departure from the teaching that it is enough to be baptized into the RCC. Regeneration is essential. I don't know all the details except that as they began to read the bible and walk with the Lord they realized that they could not stay in the RCC. But they were truly saved while in it. Often rejection of Mary idolatry was a major factor in leaving.

 

[SemperEruditio]

I've met a number of people that came out of the RCC. They were saved while in it, but got out. Wherever the bible is read, people can be saved.

Now see this is interesting. RCC is Roman Catholic church correct? I am very leery of salvation through the Roman Catholic church because they do not teach the true gospel at all! As I stated earlier, all that would be needed to be taught would be faith in Christ alone for salvation. Rome does not teach this. I was raised in the Catholic church and i was as lost as I could be. I was saved in a Pentecostal church because even though they taught lots of other error, faith in Christ alone was taught for salvation.
Of course if you say you know people who came to faith in the RCC, then I believe you Lynnie. I would however be interested to hear how they did it.

Former RC here. My mother read the Bible to us and encouraged us to read it. She did not and does not believe the infallibility of the Pope. I tell her she's a Protestant trapped in a RC body. She believes that our good works are a result of our justification. When I officially became a Protestant I had trouble because justification was based on our works. I almost went back to Rome but then discovered I was a product of my mom's version of RC and not true RC.

 

[TeachingTulip]

As an offshoot from the OR death thread, perhaps we can discus this question here. Will an elect of God be called or converted under a false prophet such as Oral Roberts? I agree he may be called out, but will he remain under a false persons teachings and still converted? There are way too many warnings in scripture about false prophets and how we should treat them.

What ye think?

Well, some thoughts and Scriptures that come to mind . . .

The principle of Sola Scriptura answers your (good) question, and I believe the concept of Sola Scriptura must be defended as we consider the sources and content of the gospel call.

False gospels never save, but saints are saved despite false gospels, through reading/hearing the Holy Scriptures, alone.

"It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit and they are life." John 6:63

So my answer is, "no."

False prophets are not the means of God calling the sons of God to life. False prophets do not speak for God, but only for themselves.

"Because the carnal minded is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God." Romans 8:6-7

Scripture reveals false prophets and false gospels actually seek to work against God saving His own:

. . who make a man an offender by a word, and lay a snare for him who reproves in the gate, and turn aside the just by empty words." Isaiah 29:21

But they do so, to no avail:

"For the terrible one is brought to nothing; the scornful one is consumed and all who watch for iniquity are cut off." Isaiah 29:20

"The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd. . . The hireling flees because he is a hireling and does not care about the sheep. I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own." John 10:10, 11; 13, 14

" . . They will hear My voice . . ." John 10:16

"So then faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of God." Romans 10:17

"Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures." James 1:18

False prophets are everywhere; even in the midst of faithful denominations:

"And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed. By covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words . . ." II Peter 2:2-3a

Dependence and trust in the Holy Scriptures, alone, provide faith unto everlasting life and protect God's children from false teachings.

" . . I stir up your pure minds by way of reminder, that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior." II Peter 3:1-2

"Whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him." I John 2:5

 

[Amazing Grace]

Can we point to any biblical example of this happening? I am not aware of any. In fact the biblical revelation says the exact opposite. Let us for a second take our 'charity hats' off and hash this out. I am not speaking of being ignorant of truth, I am asking is if a person sits under the teachings of one as OR et al, and gives a hearty Amen to what he says, how can he believe a lie or lies, and still be considered regenerated when Christ said the Spirit will lead them into all truth.

Is it too much of a stretch to assume that Judas Iscariot was used to produce true disciples?

Yes. It would be speculative.

-----Added 12/16/2009 at 02:03:58 EST-----

Php 1:15-18 Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife; and some also of good will: (16) The one preach Christ of contention, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my bonds: (17) But the other of love, knowing that I am set for the defence of the gospel. (18) What then? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.

2Ti 2:15-21 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. (16) But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness. (17) And their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus; (18) Who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some. (19) Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. (20) But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honour, and some to dishonour. (21) If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master's use, and prepared unto every good work.

Don't these verses indicate that God will use even false 'vessels' to gather His people to Himself?

I would say that it is the aggregate of experience that God uses in a person's life to call them to Himself, so if a false teacher is a part of that experience, hasn't he been used for that purpose? God used Joseph's brothers' wickedness to bring about good.

I do not believe the verses say that at all. I would also say that God brought about good from the wickedness of Joe's brothers. Yet this seems to be missing my point.

Let me be perfectly clear. I am in no way saying that an elect of God is dependent upon hearing the truth in order to be saved. An elect of God will not be cast away because he sat under the like of Hinn or Roberts. He will most assuredly leave and come out from amongst them.

 

[Webservant]

Not through the message of the false prophet but certainly through the scripture one may be exposed to. I was first exposed to scripture by an old girlfriend in the Assemblies of God church. She gave me a bible and the rest is history.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

I think the idea of Preparatory Grace is very useful for understanding the issue. I'll quote at some length from Kuyper's The Work of the Holy Spirit. On the one hand, we need to realize that God works Providentially in the lives of His own in ways that we cannot understand. Something I appreciate about Augustine's Confessions is how he glorifies God for his whole life - even the times of folly. If we have a thoroughgoing understanding of Providence then we can glorify God for working all things together for our good.

That all said, where the Scriptures speak we should speak and where they stop speaking we should stop. There is no point speculating about whether or not a false Gospel will convert. The Scriptural data that we have is not that false Gospels are somehow "OK, because God will save them somehow anyway." That is not for us to speculate beyond what the Scriptures state. I've never been a fan of the refrain: "Well, I know that God has lots of His elect in X Churches..." where X can mean any number of Churches that so cloud the Scriptures as to imperil souls. I understand the desir for humility but let's be truly humble and let God be God and not pretend to enter His holy counsel concerning hidden things and speak authoritatively convinced that the elect exist somewhere where we are not granted that information.

Let us simply thank God that He works all things together for His good and live by the things revealed and know that God keeps hidden things to Himself and we need to respect that.

Regarding the work of preparatory grace, it was before all things necessary to examine whether the knowledge of God had been retained in its purity, or whether to favor the sinner it had been distorted and twisted. And tested by this, it can not be denied that God's care for His elect does not begin at an arbitrary moment, but is interwoven with their whole existence, including their conception, and even before their conception, with the mysteries of that redeeming love which declares: " I have loved thee with an everlasting love." Hence it is unthinkable that God should have left a sinner to himself for years, to arrest him at a certain moment in the midst of his life.

Nay, if God is to remain God and His omnipresent power unlimited, a sinner's salvation must be an eternal work, embracing his entire existence—a work whose roots are hidden in the unseen foundations of the wondrous mercies which extend far beyond his conception. It can not be denied that a man, converted at twenty-five, was during his godless life the subject of the divine labor, care, and protection; that in his conception and before his birth God's hand held him and brought him forth; yea, that even in the divine counsel the work must be traced which God has wrought for him long before his conversion.

The confession of election and foreordination is essentially the recognition of a grace active long before the hour of conversion. The idea that from eternity God had recorded a mere arbitrary name or figure, to quicken it only after many centuries, is truly un-godly. Nay, God's elect never stood before His eternal vision as mere names or figures; but every soul elect is also foreordained to stand before Him in his complete development, the object in Christ of God's eternal pleasure.

Christ's sacrifice on Calvary, which satisfies for the elect, justifying them by His Resurrection, was not accomplished independently of the elect, but included them all. The resurrection is a work of the divine Omnipotence, in which God brings back from the dead not only Christ without His own, but Christ with His own. Hence every saint with clear spiritual vision confesses that his heavenly Father performs in him an eternal work, not begun only in his conversion, but wrought in the eternal counsel through the periods of old and new covenants; in his person all the days of his life, and which will work in him throughout eternity. Even in this general sense the Church may not neglect to confess preparatory grace.

However, the question is narrowed when, excluding what precedes our birth, we consider only our sinful life before conversion, or the years intervening between the age of discretion and the hour when the scales fell from our eyes.

During those years we departed from God, instead of coming more closely to Him. Sin broke out more violently in one than in another, but there was iniquity in us all. As often as the plummet was let down beside our souls, they appeared out of the perpendicular. And during this sinful period, many hold that preparatory grace is out of the question. They say, " Where sin is, there can be no grace "; hence during those years the Lord leaves the sinner to himself, to return to him when sin's bitter fruit shall be ripe enough to move him to faith and repentance. They deny not God's gracious election and foreordination, neither His care for His elect in their birth; but they do deny His preparatory grace during the years of alienation, and believe that His grace begins to operate only when it breaks forth in their conversion.

Of course there is some truth in this; there is such a thing as the abandoning of the sinner to iniquity, when God lets a man walk in his own ways, giving him up unto vile passions to do things that are unseemly. But instead of interrupting God's labor upon such a soul, the very words of Scripture, " to give them up," " to give them over" (Rom. i. 24, 28), show that this drifting away upon the current of sin is not without God's notice. Men have confessed that, if inward sin had not revealed itself, breaking forth in its fury, they would never have discovered the inward corruption nor have cried to God for mercy. The realization of their guilt and the remembrance of their fearful past have been to many saints powerful incitements to labor with strong hands and pitying hearts for the rescue of those hopelessly lost in the same deadly waters from which they had been saved. The remembrance of the deep corruption from which they are now delivered has been to many the most potent safeguard from fancied self-righteousness, proud bearing, and the conceit of being holier than others. Many depths of reconciliation and grace have been discovered and sounded only by hearts so deeply wounded that, for the covering of their guilt, a mere superficial confession of the atoning blood could not suffice. How deeply did David fall; and who ever shouted from mercy's depths more jubilantly than he? Who impressed the Church's pure confession more profoundly than Augustine, incomparable among the Church fathers, who from the abyss of his own guilt and inward brokenness had learned to gaze upon the firmament of God's eternal mercies. Even from this extreme view of man's sinful way it can not be affirmed that in that way God's grace was suspended. Light and shadow are here necessarily blended.

And this is not all. Even though by sin we have forfeited all, and the sinful ego, however virtuous outwardly, has tinctured every action of life with sin, yet this is not all of life. In the midst of it all, life was shaped and developed.- The sinner of five-and-twenty differs from the child of three, who by his ugly temper plainly showed his sinful nature. During all those years the child has become a man. That which slumbered in him has gradually manifested itself. Influences have wrought upon him. Knowledge has been mastered and increased. Talents have been awakened and developed. Memory and remembrance have accumulated treasures of experience. However sinful the form, the character has become settled and some of its traits have adopted definite lines. The child has become a man—a person, living, existing, and thinking differently from other persons. And in all this, so confesses the Church, was the hand of the Omnipresent and Almighty God. It is He who during all these years of resistance has guided and directed His creature according to His own purpose.

Sooner or later the Sun of Grace will rise upon him, and, since much depends upon the condition in which grace shall find him, it is the Lord God Himself who prepares that condition. He prepares it by graciously restraining his character from adopting traits which would prevent him later on from running his course in the kingdom of God, and, on the other hand, by graciously developing in him such character and such features as will appear after his conversion adapted to the task which God intended for him.
And so it is evident that even during the time of alienation God bestows grace upon His elect. Afterward he will perceive how evidently all things have worked together for good, not because he intended it so, but in spite of his sinful intentions, and only because the protecting grace of God was working in and by and through it all. His course might have been altogether different. That it is as it is, and not much worse, he owes not to himself, but to higher favor. Hence, reviewing his life's dark background, the saint thinks at first that it contains but a night of Satanic darkness; later on, being better instructed, he perceives through that darkness a faint glimmer of divine love.

In fact, in his life there are three distinct periods of thankfulness :

First, immediately after his conversion, when he can think of no other reason of thankfulness than the newly found grace,

Second, when he learns to render thanks also for the grace of his eternal election, extending far behind the first grace.

Lastly, when the darkness between election and conversion being dispelled, he thanks God for the preparatory grace which in the midst of that darkness watched over his soul.