However charitable, the churches do not pay close attention to what the Bible is saying. They often speak and behave as though they believe the words of Bill Wiese were scripture: You gotta correctly use your free will so you can stay out of Hell. They are never tempted to think that maybe, just maybe, since the Bible teaches the Predestination of souls, salvation is not a matter of human free will; it is therefore the unelected people who are slated for damnation. If damnation exists.
Dear me, the churches say. What’s all this Predestination stuff?
It’s Biblical doctrine, that’s what. But since the churches fail to give heed to Psalm 22:27 or Romans 11:32, they would naturally distrust the following words of Jacques Ellul: “There is indeed a predestination, but it can be only the one predestination to salvation. In and through Jesus Christ all people are predestined to be saved.” Hence the unelected do not go to Hell. True, they are chastised (or judged), but so are Christians. Why, however, should there be damnation for a humanity about whom the Bible affirms, in Romans 9, that “it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy”?
