Post
by PapaJ » Sun Sep 02, 2012 4:19 pm
My moto is ‘Always Reforming’ but I don’t claim to be a Calvinist, being that it has too much baggage to drag around, I don’t even like calling myself Reformed for the same reason. Being a dispensationalist for over 20 years and then being taught by a Dr. Morey for almost 7 years I have found myself ‘Always Reforming’ as I would go through the Scriptures. I have also found these subjects easy to deal with once you get a clear perspective. For 20-yrs I tried to understand Election through ‘Dispensational’ lenses and it just did not work, then I put on a pair of ‘Reformed’ lenses for a few years to get all my questions asked, hearing Dr. Morey give his answers over and over. And for the last 4-years I’ve been very content with my new ‘Progressive Revelation’ lenses, as I study various subjects through the foundation of the Old Testiment.
First of all if you can see through your Calvinism to see Jesus then you are doing pretty good, some people are so into Calvinism that they can’t see past Paul to see Jesus any longer; and since you said you titled this post ‘A reforming Calvinist’ I would say your in a good position to hear this, since all I do is argue and argue with my hard core Dr. Morey clone peers. I love them and I’m sure God has a place for them, but I’m glad not to be one of them. The answer to their problem is corporate election, since the Reformers developed their system of thought around individual election instead of making the OT Scriptures their foundation. It is very important for us to understand that the NT is not competing with the OT; the Apostles recognized the difference and it is the reason they are always quoting from the Prophets more so than the Writings.
Starting with 2 John 1:1 since this is where most of the discussion has been; first of all I don’t believe the term ‘elect’ as anything to do with the Calvinist concept of election. As Steve has brought up over and over the word election or to elect or to be chosen are interchangeable. So we are dealing with a very special chosen or selected lady who had children. My first thought that this would have been a reference to Mary the mother of Jesus and the believers who gathered at her home. This matches up with “whom I love in the truth; and not I only, but also all they that have known the truth” a reference to the truth being our Lord Jesus. Then John says, “I rejoiced greatly that I found your children walking in truth,” verse 4. Now this idea has problems since those children would be as old as John himself, possibly around 70 – 90, so I doubt that Mary was still alive; besides if it was Mary he would have called her Mother. Therefore if she was an actual person the children in verse 4, the point that she had nieces and nephews seen in verse 13 would seem to confirm this was a real person. Also in 3 John 1:1 we find John writing to his “beloved Gaius, whom” John “loved in the truth,” an individual not a church, but in verse 9 John did write to the church Gaius was a part of, since John’s letter was not received by Diotrephes. Therefore John was sending his reply to Demetrius, back through to his spiritual son Gaius, verse 4.
It is also the thought of many that this is a metaphoric reference to a church in this area and the children being its members remember Christians and Churches in this area, at this time, were not in favor with the Roman Empire. John himself had not been arrested yet, so it was wise of him to make this type of cryptic reference in case the letter was intercepted by officials in the Empire. So when I consider all the above and other issues coming in from letters written and the OT passages quoted by Paul, Peter and James it is my conclusion that this “elect lady and her children, whom I love in the truth;” including “and not I only, but also all they that have known the truth” that this “elect lady” could be a reference to Jewish believers. My thought coming from a reference to John’s other recently written Revelation 12:1-6; with the women being Israel who produced the man child, a reference to Christ who would rule the nations and had been taken up to His throne, making it necessary to flee into the wilderness, possible a reference to her children being scattered away from their home. Then with Johns other reference in 2 John 1:13; her sister would be the Gentiles, John knew Paul had written his letters to; remember John is not the apostle to the Gentiles.
The point is very clear in the OT with passages within Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Ezekiel and the writings of Moses that Israel and Judah would be separated, scattered: Israel first around 760 BC into all the nations and Judah second before AD 70 when the Romans laid siege on the Zealots left in Jerusalem. Very few Bible teachers ever make reference to the fact that the New Covenant is a means of restoring the divided people of Israel. Jeremiah said, “Behold, the days come, says the LORD, that I will make a New Covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah,” Jeremiah 31:31. And it was said in Hosea 1:10; that “Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together.”
Another theme that Bible students never seem to pick up on would help are those the Prophets say “were not My people” actually become Gentiles in the eyes of men to be restored at the beginning of the New Covenant, and in every generation after that their descendants continue to fulfill these passages. In Hosea 2:23 it says, “I will sow (the house of Israel) unto Me (throughout) the earth; and I will have mercy upon her (house of Israel) that had not obtained mercy; and I will say to them which were not My people, you are my people; and they shall say, Thou art my God.” All of chapter 2 is about the house of Israel, not the house of Judah and is preceded by Hosea 1:6-10 when Hosea said, “for I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel; but I will utterly take them away, but I will have mercy upon the house of Judah” … for the house of Israel, they “are not My people, and I will not be your God. Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, you (house of Israel) are not My people, there it shall be said unto them, you are the sons of the living God,” which was fulfilled with the coming of the New Covenant. Testified by Paul in Romans 9:25, 26 saying, “it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, you (house of Israel) are not My people; there shall they be called the children of the living God.” And Peter when he said, “in time past were not a people, (house of Israel) but are now the people of God: (the house of Israel) which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy,” as Gentiles being grafted back in, 1 Peter 2:10. All the above was prophesized by Moses in Deuteronomy 32:19-43, referring to those He would restore, “I will move them to jealousy (the house of Judah with the house of Israel in every generation after the established New Covenant) with those which are not a people.” It is also said in Isaiah 7:8, “shall Ephraim be broken, that it be not a people?” This was a shocker to all of Israel since the tribe of Ephraim was the holder of the birthright, to be blessed with the most blessing over all the other tribes of Israel, yet the LORD did it all the same knowing what the end result would yield. Ephraim’s position is also noted in Ezekiel 37: 15-20.
The point to all this is the Calvinist are all wrong when they theorize as with the ‘golden chain’ that God foreknew a group of people before the foundation of the earth to be saved, when it says, “For whom He did foreknow, (the believing remnant out of the house of Israel, Gentiles and the house of Judah, Jews) He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He (Jesus) might be the firstborn among many brethren (the remnant of Jacob). Moreover whom He did predestinate, (those being transformed by His Spirit) them He also called: and whom He called, them He also justified: and whom He justified, them He also glorified,” Romans 8:29, 30. And who do you think the Romans are? The ones being saved are descendants of “were not a people” (the house of Israel) who were scattered into every nation. This is why, with the house of Israel and Judah going into captivity before the Jews return to Jerusalem; Daniel receives visions of nations (the house of Israel already being scattered into the nations) that make up the Empires where the “not a people” would be scattered. Those returning to Jerusalem with Zerubbabel, Ezra and Nehemiah if you check their genealogies are those of Benjamin, Judah and Levi, the almost 700 other people who did not know their genealogies, could have been the companions seen in Ezekiel 37:16 “For Judah, the children of Israel his companions,” but in comparison to 49,000 from the house of Judah, those the Bible calls Jews, some 700 did not know if they were Israelites or Gibeonites. Sorry Steve and others, it is not a biblical position to say Israel and Judah had already come together before the time of the New Covenant. Not only that the view that Israel and Judah came back together in the days of Ezra is in contradiction to the prophecy of Jeremiah 31:31; which indicates the two groups were still divided and would be restored after the wall that separated Jews and Gentiles (nations) was removed so the Gospel could be preached in every nation so that God could save those He foreknew, the remnant of the descendants of Jacob, those God made these promises to.
I better stop here, this is already long enough to answer the question that the people of Judah, Jewish believers who were scattered before AD 70, could have been the children of a metaphoric ‘elect lady’ in 2 John 1:1. They could have been those who followed Jesus warning to drop everything and flee Jerusalem when they saw the horde of Roman soldiers coming toward Jerusalem around AD 67 since they had not blended in with their Gentile cousins seen in verse 13 or the “elect lady” was just a believer and her children.
I’ll try to give a shorter answer for Romans 16:13, Papa J.
