George Whitefield on Essentials

Reading through the first half of Arnold Dallimore's biography on Whitefield this past summer has been a treat. I enjoy Dallimore's exhaustiveness on Whitefield's life. I've come to be quite empathetic of Whitefield as I read through; especially after Elizabeth Delamotte's denial of marriage to him - ouch! In around 1740, Whitefield is just about to head back to England from one of his preaching tours from New England to Georgia. While in Philadelphia he writes this God-glorifying, yet tactful comment:

"Whatever men's reasoning may suggest, if the children of God fairly examine their own experiences - if they do God justice, they must acknowledge that they did not choose God, but that God chose them. And if He chose them at all, it must be from eternity, and that too without anything foreseen in them. Unless they acknowledge this, man's salvation must be in part owing to the free-will of man; and if so,... Christ Jesus might have died, and never have seen the travail of His soul in the salvation of one of His creatures. But I would be tender on this point, and leave persons to be taught it of God. I am of the martyr Bradford's mind. Let a man go to the grammar school of faith and repentance, before he goes to the university of election and predestination."

*Arnold Dallimore, "George Whitefield: The Life and Times of the Great Evangelist of the Eighteenth-Century Revival" Vol 1. (Edinburgh, Scotland, Banner of Truth Trust, 1970), 570. 
**Also located in "Whitefield's Journals", p. 490 (Banner of Truth Trust). 

Prayerful and Prayerless: A Conversation*

Prayerless: I understand that you believe in the providence of God. Is that right?

Prayerful: Yes.

Prayerless: Does that mean you believe, like the Heidelberg Catechism says, that nothing comes about by chance but only by God's design and plan?

Prayerful: Yes, I believe that's what the Bible teaches.

Prayerless: Then why do you pray?

Prayerful: I don't see the problem. Why shouldn't we pray?

Prayerless: Well, if God ordains and controls everything, then what he plans from of old will come to pass, right?

Prayerful: Yes.

Prayerless: So it's going to come to pass whether you pray or not, right.

Prayerful: That depends on whether God ordained for it to come to pass in answer to prayer. If God predestined that something happen in answer to prayer, it won't happen without prayer.

Prayerless: Wait a minute, this is confusing. Are you saying that every answer to prayer is predestined or not?

Prayerful: Yes, it is. It's predestined as an answer to prayer.

Prayerless: So if the prayer doesn't happen, the answer doesn't happen?

Prayerful: That's right.

Prayerless: So the event is contingent on our praying for it to happen?

Prayerful: Yes. I take it that by contingent you mean prayer is a real reason that the event happens, and without the prayer the event would not happen.

Prayerless: Yes that's what I mean. But how can an event be contingent on my prayer and still be eternally fixed and predestined by God?

Prayerful: Because your prayer is as fixed as the predestined answer.

Prayerless: Explain.

Prayerful: It's not complicated. God providentially ordains all events. God never ordains an event without a cause. The cause is also an event. Therefore, the cause is also foreordained. So you cannot say that the event will happen if the cause doesn't because God has ordained otherwise. The event will happen if the cause happens.

Prayerless: So what you are saying is that answers to prayer are always ordained as effects of prayer which is one of the causes, and that God predestined the answer only as an effect of the cause.

Prayerful: That's right. And since both the cause and the effect are ordained together you can't say that the effect will happen even if the cause doesn't because God doesn't ordain effects without causes.

Prayerless: Can you give some illustrations?

Prayerful: Sure. If God predestines that I die of a bullet wound, then I will not die if no bullet is fired. If God predestines that I be healed by surgery, then if there is no surgery, I will not be healed. If God predestines heat to fill my home by fire in the furnace, then if there is no fire, there will be no heat. Would you say, "Since God predestines that the sun be bright, it will be bright whether there is fire in the sun or not"?

Prayerless: No.

Prayerful: I agree. Why not?

Prayerless: Because the brightness of the sun comes from the fire.

Prayerful: Right. That's the way I think about the answers to prayer. They are the brightness, and prayer is the fire. God has established the universe so that in larger measure it runs by prayer, the same way he has established brightness so that in larger measure it happens by fire. Doesn't that make sense?

Prayerless: I think it does.

Prayerful: Then let's stop thinking up problems and go with what the Scriptures say. Ask and you will receive. You have not because you ask not.

*Thanks to DesiringGod for posting this on their website about 15 years ago. Really enjoyed it.

February 14, 1996 | by John Piper | Topic: Prayer

Promises - A Selection of Sweet Delights to the Soul: God's Purpose

When your plans for the day change, for the future change,

when you are trying your best, but your plan is just not being accomplished - 

look to this promise of God:

And we know,

that for those who love God

all things work together for good

for those who are called

according to his purpose.

For those whom he foreknew

he also predestined to be conformed

to the image of his Son,

in order that he might be the firstborn

among many brothers. Romans 8:28-29

When my day is going downhill this is a passage that gives perspective. 

What am I doing? Why is this happening to me? What did I do wrong? 

When I am being corrected, 

even because of my own sin, 

the correction is purposed for conformity to Christ: 

to being more like Jesus, and less like the man I use to be. 

God calls sinners to himself,

not for abandonment but for accomplishment - 

and what is to be accomplished?

it is his PLAN to conform me, you, the church of God to Jesus Christ. 

Even in the depths of trials our Almighty God is in control. 

That is wonderful, and that is a promise of God. 

Praise be to you: Father, Son and Holy Ghost.