Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Can you know for sure that God has chosen youto be saved? Many sincere Christians believe that He has chosen some to be saved and left others to be lost. What does He say to us in the Bible?
On its very last page, He makes it clear that no one has been left out of God's gift of eternal life, so He says once more as His parting word, just to be doubly sure: "The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come!' And let him who hears say, 'Come!' And let him who thirsts come. And whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely" (Rev. 22:17). And then immediately the Holy Spirit warns us not to "add" to what He has just said, nor lessen in any degree that "whoever desires" invitation (vss. 18, 19).
If we have even an ounce of common sense, we must get the message: "God [is] our Savior, who desires all men to be saved" (1 Tim. 2:3, 4). The only ones therefore who can possibly be lost will be those who "desire" not to be saved; they have chosen not to "thirst"; they have resisted everyone who has ever said to them, "Come," maybe thousands of times.
Each new morning that the sun arose gave them a new opportunity to say "Yes," and "come." They have made a deliberate choice to reject that invitation written on the last page of God's Book, and furthermore, because the Holy Spirit is so persistent in pressing the invitation upon us each new sunrise, they have reiterated that fateful choice, all the way from childhood to the last bitter days of life. They have chosen "darkness rather than light" so often that at last they have grown to "love" it (John 3:19).
Jesus explains the entire phenomenon with one simple, single word: unbelief, which is disbelief, a perverse refusal to appreciate the truth of God's love (agape) (vs. 18). Does God tell them at last, "I don't like you; I don't want you in heaven; I'm locking the gate against you"? A wise writer has said, "It is no arbitrary decree on the part of God that excludes the wicked from heaven; they are shut out by their own unfitness for its companionship." They'd be miserable there, so God in love gives them what they have always wanted--darkness forever.
Because "let him who hears say, 'Come!'" Dial Daily Bread is a tiny voice that says, "Believe." Please "hear," and tell someone else to "come."
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: October 27, 1999.
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