Divine Encounter
Jesus knocks. (Rev. 3:20) Initiative.
Jesus seeks. (Luke 19:10) Initiative.
Jesus draws. (John 12:32) Initiative.
The Holy Spirit convicts. (John 16:8) Initiative.
The Holy Spirit goads. (Acts 16:14) Initiative.
Faith comes from hearing God’s living Word. (John 6:63; Rom. 10:17)
Calvinists say: “None of that matters! Man is too far gone even for God to be able to reach him, except through Irresistible Grace.”
(1) That implies that God is the One with “Total Inability,” that is, a total inability to reach fallen man except by means of “Irresistible Grace.”
(2) Based upon Isaiah 5:1-7, God has never even heard of Irresistible Grace.
(3) The Bible never offers “Irresistible Grace” as the solution to anything.
(4) Saying that God needs “Irresistible Grace” for anyone to be willing to turn to Him is a tacit insult to Him.
One Calvinist states: “Scripture is filled with exhortations to turn to God. That does not mean nor even imply that people are capable of turning to God for redemption.”
However, that’s also unrepentant Israel’s argument to God at Jeremiah 18:12, when God called them at v.11 and rebuked unrepentant Israel’s Calvinist theology at v.13.
Isaiah 55:6-9: “Seek the LORD while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the LORD, and He will have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. ‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ declares the LORD. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.’”
Acts 17:26-29: “He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’ Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man.”
When Scripture says that “He is near” and “not far from each one of us,” that’s because God has placed Himself within reach, by whom we “move and exist.” God expresses expectation to turn back to Him, and holds people without “excuse” (Romans 1:20) precisely because He has given them the capacity to respond when He calls and invites. We see the same expectation reflected in the Parable of the Wedding Feast. (Matthew 22:2)
Acts 17:31-32: “Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”
Why would God call “all people everywhere” to “repent” if most are allegedly NON-ELECT and have no Savior who died for them?
To what would this Divine Encounter be calling them to receive?
Are they being called to receive a NON-Savior, who:
(1) doesn’t love them,
(2) never died for them and
(3) never created them with the intention or purpose of seeing them in Heaven?
Question: What is the “Divine Encounter”?
Answer: It’s a concept derived from Scripture for when God takes the initiative to reach out to fallen man.
