Ephesians Chapter 1: Part 2 Kathryn Kuhlman Predestination and Free Will

You ready? All right. Another one of those good heart -to -heart talks and you were expecting it because you got your Bible right there. And that's exactly the thing to do. It makes it more personal. Do like I do. Mark your Bible. Get a little red pencil. Mark it. It makes it so personal, so with sort of... Your Bible. You know, after Mama was gone, I found her Bible. I have it. Just the other day, I went through its pages again. I saw the different portions that she had marked. It just sort of made... The presence of Mama, very real. For in those marked pages, I saw my Mama in a new light. It was as though I could see my Mama's heart. And it's just like that. Well, sir, I left you, you know, on our little heart -to -heart talk regarding... The personal word of God is found in the first chapter of Ephesians. And we've been talking about this thing of predestination. There have been books written on it. There have been thousands of sermons preached on it. Now, let's go back to the word of God. And you're always right. And you never get off in your doctrine. Stay with the Word. All right? I'll just read the third verse and then the fourth, and we'll stop and talk about this glorious relationship between God the Father and His adopted child. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children, by Christ Jesus to himself according to the good pleasure of his will. Say, you talk about a plan. This is the greatest thing that I have ever seen. Talk about something that is vitally important to you and to me, to every human being. To be an heir of God. To be adopted of God the Father. My goodness alive. Have you ever thought what it would be like to have been adopted by one of the richest families in the world today? And probably... In your imagination, you've almost become jealous of their children and think, oh, my goodness, if only I had had Mr. Sonto as my father, if only I had been born in that family, why couldn't I have been an heir to that estate? Don't sit there envious. Don't sit there thinking what it might have been like to have been an heir to a multi -million dollar estate. I have something here in the Word of God that is greater than being an heir to an estate in the natural. Is there... Anything greater? Could there be anything more thrilling? Could anything surpass the fact of being an heir of God? First of all, you have to realize that he's God Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth. All things are in his hand. It is in his hands to give, to withhold, nothing. He's limitless, boundless, perfect in wisdom, perfect in knowledge, perfect in power, perfect in all things. Just pause a minute and think of it. An heir of God. That is exactly what a man or a woman is who has been born again, who is a Christian. who knows Jesus Christ as his Savior, his Redeemer. In God's perfect plan for man, he willed that every human being should be his heir by adoption. Oh, somebody says, Miss Kuhlman, you're way out now. Oh, don't tell me with the condition the world is in today. When I look around and see some of these human beings and the way they act and the way they look and the way they live, don't tell me it was in the will and the plan of God that they should be his heir. I know. My friend, I know sometimes it's hard to believe, but I've got the word. I can back it up with the word. People are living in the condition that they are living in this hour because they will to live in that condition. And it's just like that. are way back there when the three sat at the great conference table. God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Oh, I have visualized that over and over again. Of course, the Bible doesn't say that there was a great conference or that there was a conference table. But I know. that they were in conference because there was a definite time, a definite place, when Jesus Christ, the Son of God, offered himself through the Holy Spirit to God the Father to be given that you and I might have life eternal. The perfect... plan of salvation was all laid out, it was all mapped out before Jesus ever came in the form of a babe to Bethlehem. Before Mary was ever told that her body would encompass that which was of God, that supernatural something. that God himself had ordained. Long before Mary knew it, it was all in God's plan that it should be as it was. And when the three sat down at that great conference table, talking over redemption's plan, not one person, regardless of nationality, race, regardless of color, every human being was included, from the first Adam to the very last person who will be born, was included in this great plan. And God predestinated, God foreordained, even before the foundations of the world, All should be saved. Salvation was for all. When Jesus died on the cross, he didn't die for just a few or a certain percentage or those of a certain nationality. But he died for all. There was no exception. Jew, Gentile. Black, white, yellow, all. For God knows no such thing as race and nationality. Somebody said, well, Ms. Kuhlman, what happened? This is what happened. Man was created with free moral agency. You are free to do anything you want to do. You are absolutely free to live a respectable life. You're absolutely free to be a hippie. You're absolutely free to hate. You're absolutely free to love. You are absolutely free to keep His Word. You are free to leave all morals out of your life. I am perfectly free right now, even though I have been preaching the Word for years. I am perfectly free this very moment to get... up from the chair that I'm sitting in, walk out of this radio studio and say, I've contributed my part to humanity. From here on out, I'm going to take it easy. I can do it. God won't stop me. I'm not forced to do what I'm doing. I have not been forced all these years to work as hard as I have worked, 16, 18 hours a day. No one has forced me. God has not forced me to give my life as a living sacrifice to preach the gospel. I have chosen to do it. I have done it by choice. When it came to giving my heart to the Lord Jesus Christ, in that little Methodist church when I was only 14 years of age. How well I remember that Sunday morning. Not one soul said a word to me. My mother, who stood beside me, knew nothing about salvation. My father, at that service, when I said, Papa, I've given my heart to Jesus. And he just looked at me and said, I'm glad. And I wondered thousands of times if he understood. No one forced me. No one led me. Only the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart. And I chose to accept Christ as my Savior in the forgiveness of my sins. And every person this very hour listening to me, if you've been born again, you were not forced into it. God never forced you. You did it out of choice. In exactly the same way, that man who is unregenerated today, that man who is still living in sin, that man without morals, That man without peace of mind and peace of soul, that man who is living in sin, has made his choice. He chooses to do what he has done and is doing. But it doesn't change the fact one iota that God was not willing and is not willing that any should perish but that all should come into eternal life. In his great plan, before the foundations of the world, he predestined, he planned that all men, all women, should become his heir by adoption through Jesus Christ his Son, making us a... joint heir with His Son. At the same time, when He created man, when He said to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, let us make man in our own image and after our likeness, He created man with free moral agency. We are free to choose. We are free to reject. Every human being is free, absolutely free to go to heaven or to go to hell. You make your choice. No person will ever be able to stand in the presence of Almighty God and shake a finger in God's face and say, you sent me to hell. Because God doesn't send anyone to hell. You choose to go to hell. You have chosen to make your own hell right here on earth. We make these choices ourselves. I'm giving you something to think about. I'm giving you the word of God. The Lord is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come into everlasting life. All should accept his only begotten Son in the forgiveness of his sins. You are living there in defeat? Just stop a minute. For one split second. Just check up, take inventory. Look at your past life. Oh, I know you've blamed everything on everybody else. You either blame it on your husband, or you blame it on the children, or you blame it on the teacher, or you blame it on circumstances. Human beings are made like that. We like to put the blame on everybody else. but we'll never look ourselves directly in the face and say look here old girl you brought this all on yourself every bit of it you brought it on yourself this very moment you are living in defeat It was never God's will that any man or any woman should be defeated. Do you mean to tell me that the conditions of the world is in this very hour? That that is God's perfect will? When I pass some of these folks on the street and sometimes I can't restrain myself, I have to turn around and look at them. You'll never Make me believe that the will of God for them, God's perfect will for them, is to be in the condition that they are this hour. Never. They have made the choice in spite of all that God has done for them. In spite of the spiritual light. In spite of... The tenderness of the Holy Spirit. In spite of the fact that God made it possible that they should be his heir. Think of it. Just pause a moment. Think of it. It was God's will. that all of us in his great plan, and he made provisions for it, that we should literally be a joint heir with his only begotten son. Why? To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. He made full provision that we might have this as our inheritance, that we might be to the glory of his grace, and that we should be something that he could be proud of. It's the same thing within the second chapter of Ephesians, the seventh verse. that in the ages to come, he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Jesus Christ. But there are millions of people who will not permit him to show his grace and to show his kindness and to show his glory and to show his power. Through their lives. Oh, this is so thrilling. This is so wonderful. If only men and women could realize what they could be. In Christ Jesus. They fight him. They work against him. They deny him. They do everything in the world contrary to his laws. No wonder they get themselves in such messes and such predicaments. Until finally, the grand finale to the whole thing. will be that man will destroy himself. God will never destroy man. Never. God will never destroy this generation. Man will destroy himself in spite of everything that he has done. to keep you from that destruction. Even to the place where man will go to hell. Eternal punishment. Not because God sent him there or that God ordained that it should be or predestined that he should be lost. But you and I make the choice.