The truth is, we Christians of America are so filled with humanism we will not permit God to be God. He has to work by our ideas of fairness or we won't cooperate. Yet we are dust, and God does as He will with the dust, even though His actions are not democratic. Salvation is of the Lord. It is God who works in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure. Can we accept this, or will we seek to somehow mix the sovereignty of God with human goodness?

I understand and teach, more than most Christian ministers, that there are things God must do and then actions we must take if the plan of salvation is to operate. However, it is as I have stated: we are dust, and in the final, ultimate sense, God does as He will with the dust. It all is of God even though our decisions and actions are critical.

One may exclaim, "I do not understand how you can say that God does as He will with people on the earth, appointing some to honor and some to dishonor, and yet maintain that our decisions and actions are genuinely critical." Even though we may not at first be able to reconcile this seeming contradiction, it remains true that both aspects are perfectly, totally, true. Perhaps we are going to have to permit God to be God until we come to a more mature understanding of His Word.

One of the major problems of theological thinking is the affinity we have for deductive reasoning. We take a pleasing verse, use it as an axiom, and deduce truth from it. Even though it renders numerous passages invalid, we proudly announce that we subscribe to the plenary verbal inspiration of the Scriptures.

Truth can be gleaned from the Scriptures only by inductive reasoning. We are to take every passage and shout "Amen!" We let God be God. Then we can truly claim to subscribe to the plenary verbal inspiration of the Holy Scriptures.

God is God and He does as He will with the peoples of the earth. He gave the whole nation of Egypt in order that He might show His glory through Israel.

When God has brought the full number of members of Christ's Body to sufficient maturity, then, and only then, will Christ return. He will return with His Body and establish justice on the earth.

We first must come to the unity of the faith. This does not mean to the unity of doctrine but to the oneness that exists among people when each person is looking only to the Lord Jesus for life and behavior. The reason Christians are in such conflict today is that they are living and acting according to their own will. As long as this is true they cannot possibly be one in Christ in God.

To be continued.