Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible

Guest (Male): The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals presents the timeless teaching of Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse.

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: There is a chorus that is sometimes sung to the tune of blessed assurance, which says, wonderful savior, wonderful friend, wonderful life that never shall end, wonderful place he has gone to prepare, wonder of wonders, I shall be there. And that is indeed the greatest wonder of all to those who truly know the Lord Jesus Christ, for therein lies all the mystery of divine sovereign grace toward lost sinners.

Guest (Male): Over a half a century ago, the late Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse, then pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, saw the need to spread God's word beyond the hearing of his local congregation. He started the radio outreach which has become known as Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible. The application of God's word as taught by Dr. Barnhouse is as relevant today as when he first taught over the radio airwaves decades ago. The message we will be featuring on today's edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is entitled Eternal Choice. Would you prefer waffles or pancakes for breakfast?

Every day you make choices like this which are trivial and have no bearing on the rest of your life. Other choices such as your vocation or your spouse have great impact on your life, but everyone is faced with one choice that has eternal consequences, to submit to God's word and receive the gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ or reject him and live in sin and disobedience. The scripture text for this edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is Romans chapter two and verse 12. Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with a message entitled Eternal Choice.

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto thee our father and our God and in the Holy Spirit. We pray thee to search the hearts of men with thy truth so that the cancerous growths of false thinking may be cut away and that we may comprehend the demands of thine holiness and flee to Christ that they may be satisfied. Destroy, we pray thee, the theological illusions that grip so many people and let them see themselves in this hour in the blinding and healing light of thy truth. We ask it through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

One of the questions that a Bible teacher hears most often concerns the ultimate destiny of those who have never heard the gospel. We preach that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin and that only through Christ can men be saved. And then some man who is fleeing from the grace of God refusing to accept Christ as his savior cries out in assumed anguish, oh, but your system is unjust towards those who have never heard. What about the poor Chinese who have never had a chance to hear your gospel? Now I must admit that I've become very skeptical about the religious arguments of all who have not humbly bowed before God in Christ and accepted the divine revelation of truth which he has given us in his word.

David said in his haste that all men are liars, but I have found that charge most true when unbelievers seek to defend themselves against the probing of the Holy Spirit. They are frequently ready to bring up any argument however foolish and to assume any pose however hypocritical in order to stave off the necessity of coming to the definite conclusion that their life is out of harmony with the will of God because they have not been willing to surrender their wills to him at the cross of Christ. Whenever the question is brought to me, and I would judge that I hear it several times each year in the course of my dealings with men, I answer in two ways depending upon the attitude of the questioner.

My first answer goes something like this. If I say to them, if if if if if if if if if 10 ifs in all, if when we get to heaven we should find there some of the Indians who lived in America before Columbus and who had never heard the gospel, if we should find there some of the Chinese for whom you have suddenly conceived such a strange concern, I shall only marvel at the grace of God and shall say, how wonderful is that grace and how wonderful is the divine wisdom that could combine to find the plan where such sinners could reach this holy place without desecrating it.

There's only one greater wonder and that is the fact that I find myself here in heaven, for I know that if God had dealt with me on the basis of justice alone, I could never have been in these holy precincts. We sing this mystery. I marvel that he should descend from his throne divine to rescue a soul so rebellious and proud as mine, that he should extend his great love unto such as I, sufficient to own, to redeem and to justify. Oh, it is wonderful that he should care for me enough to die for me.

Oh, it is wonderful, wonderful to me. But I am forced to continue my answer and say if, on the other hand, if if if if if if if if if 10 ifs in all, if when we get to heaven we should find that the Indians before Columbus and the Chinese which you profess to be so concerned about are not there, I shall be forced to say, is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance? God forbid. For how then would God judge the world? That is the way I would answer an unbeliever. But if I am talking to a true Christian who has accepted Christ as his personal savior and has made up his mind to follow the revelation of truth in the Bible, no matter where it leads him, I give an answer that is not only more sure, but that is the great impulsion for the missionary cause and the driving force that has taken many a man and woman from a life of pleasant ease at home to a life of solitude in the African bush, in a Chinese village or in some other remote spot of the earth.

To the Christian, I bring the answer of our text in the second chapter of Romans where we read in verse 11 and 12, for there is no respect of persons with God. For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law. If we are forced to make a definite choice and not operate on the basis of the 10 repeated ifs, then we must come to this text and say flatly that there is no hope for any man outside of Christ, whether that man has lived beyond the bounds of the gospel call or within its bounds.

Only those covered by the grace of God manifested at the cross will be able to enter God's heaven. This would mean that the company of the saved includes the Old Testament believers and the New Testament believers. This company began with the salvation of righteous Abel who believed God's word about the blood and continued through the glorious multitude of that vast number of the children of Israel who were saved because God looked upon their faith when the high priest offered the sacrifice on the day of atonement as being faith in the Lord Jesus. Then since Calvary shifting to New Testament times and to the other glorious multitude, God has saved those who are within the bounds of the true church, which is of course not an organization, but the organism of true believers of whatever denomination, the true invisible body of Christ.

We are quite sure that this doctrine is unpalatable to the unregenerate and that some professing Christians, even leaders, have argued against it. A few years ago in one of the most important churches in New York City under the pastorate of a man who is now dead, there appeared a paragraph from his writings which included the statement that the people of today were forever through with that what he called the hellish doctrine which believed that God would damn souls who had never heard of Christ, unquote. Now our text indicates that God must condemn some souls who never heard of Christ, not because they never heard of Christ, but because they have adopted for themselves the definite life choice of sin.

I take the word life choice from Newell's commentary, but believe that it demands a little more explanation. Our text says that as many as have sinned without law shall perish without law and that as many as have sinned with law shall be judged by the law. At first glance, one might think that the text meant that anyone who had committed one act of sin would perish apart from any law. There is something more here than the mere fact that all have sinned. That will be brought out fully in the third chapter. What is in view here is something more definite.

The tense used in the Greek is the arrest which takes its name from denoting a simple past occurrence with none of the limitations of the other past tenses. The explanation given is that the word sinned must refer to the general choice of sin as against righteousness and holiness. Therefore the idea of a life choice of sin is the valid one because the whole life is here looked at as a unit and that life was a choice of sin, whether by Gentiles without the mosaic law or by Jews under it. Now the delusion in much human thinking arises from the fact that men compare divine law to their own human law and think that God is going to judge on the same basis that underlies our human courts.

Human law proceeds on the assumption that a man is not a thief until he has stolen. He is not an arsonist until he has actually set fire to a building. He is not a murderer until he has actually killed. God's verdict is that the man steals because he is a thief at heart. He destroys because he is a destroyer at heart and he kills because he is a murderer at heart. Furthermore, the human heart because of the deceitfulness of sin has adopted the delusion that those not chiefly guilty shall somehow wholly escape. It is only because men persist in following the errors of human thought that anyone could think for a moment that God could make a human standard for entrance into his heaven.

Human standards vary, but none of them can meet the demands of God. I recently heard the story of a boy who transferred to a different school and asked what the passing mark was in that school. And then before there was time for any of his companions to answer, he said, stop, don't tell me. Whatever it is, it'll be too high for me to pass Latin. Now we may apply this to God's standards and be sure that no man will ever be able to meet the demands of perfect holiness. Yet mankind persists in thinking that it is possible for those who do a little better than some others might conceivably stand a better chance than those who have done a little worse.

Like little Johnny, the story goes, who complained to his teacher that she had given him a zero on a certain question in arithmetic and that she had also given zero to Billy and that he thought the marking unjust. The teacher asked what the question had been. Johnny answered that it was to find the answer to eight times seven and continued. Billy said that eight times seven were 46 and I said that it was 54. He was 10 wrong and I was only two wrong and I think that I should get a better mark. Now that's the error of human thinking.

There are a million whole numbers from one to a million, but they're all wrong for the question of eight times seven except the one true answer, 56. So it is with the judgment of God. There may be a million and more opinions about standards of righteousness, but the only way of keeping heaven clean from the filth of human sin is to provide a way whereby God can deal with the sin of man and give to him by virtue of the grace of God in the death of Christ the righteousness of God put to the sinner's account because of the love of God.

If that work is not done on behalf of the sinner, he stands before God condemned. Now the company of sinners is divided by our text into two categories. There are those who have made their eternal choice apart from any knowledge of the law of God and others who have made their eternal choice with the knowledge of the law of God. We shall see in further studies that the choice has always been for sin. When mankind fell in Adam, the will remained intact towards sin, but was hopelessly crushed so far as any choice of divine righteousness was concerned.

Man may choose a high type of human righteousness, but it is not a choice that can bring him to a life that can satisfy the divine standards. It is by the Lord Jesus Christ that the satisfying righteousness may be put to our account. The result of the judgment of those outside the pale of the law of God who have made their life choice of sin is that they shall perish without the law. At this point the preacher is faced with a choice. He may be dishonest with the word of God or he may be honest.

If he is dishonest with the word, he may try to gloss over the meaning of the word perish. He may try to teach from it some sort of doctrine of annihilation, whether it be the doctrine of those who deny the immortality of the soul and say that death will bring to its normal end the souls of those who have not believed or whether it be the doctrine that teaches that God will snuff out the existence of the soul after some sort of judgment or whether it be that the soul will exist away from God, but in an in an unconscious state.

But if the teacher is honest with the word of God, whether it be with the English translation or the Greek original, he is forced to teach at this point the doctrine of eternal conscious punishment for the lost souls who refuse to bow in humble submission before the creator. If we read all of the passages in the Bible which apply to the doctrine of the eternal state of the lost, we find that their punishment is spoken of as death and as destruction and that they are said to perish. Dr. R. A. Torrey has a remarkable passage in his book What the Bible Teaches on the meaning of these three words.

I sat under him as he taught this lesson and it was graven on my mind from my earliest student days. The word death is applied to sinners while still existing, but existing in a wrong way while they have life in the sense of existence, but not true life, real life in the sense of right existence. The scripture say in 1 Timothy 5:6, she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth. And of the believer it is said, and you hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins. The second death is described in the Bible in Revelation 21:8 as a portion in the place of torment.

Life eternal is described on the contrary as right existence, knowing the true God, possessing the life that is manifested in Jesus Christ. Spiritual death then is not mere non-existence, but wrong, wretched, debased, devilish existence. The verb perish in the Greek and its noun usually translated destruction or perdition do not signify annihilation or unconscious existence. When anything is said to perish or be destroyed, it is not meant that it ceases to be, but that it is so ruined that it no longer subsumes the purpose for which it was designed. Thus the Lord Jesus uses the word to describe what happens when men put new wine in old skins and the skins are said to perish.

And the noun is used by the disciples when they saw the woman anointing the feet of Jesus with precious ointment and said, to what intent is this waste? Perdition, waste, destruction, perishing, it is always the same Greek word. Cannot mean cessation of existence then, but we are not left in doubt. We turn to the book of Revelation and we find the word used in a way that localizes and defines it. In speaking of the doom of the Antichrist who shall someday emerge in our civilization for the final desperate lunge of warfare against God, we read, the beast that thou sawest was and is not and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit and go into perdition.

Revelation 17:8. And a verse or two farther along the word is repeated as though for emphasis, the beast goeth into perdition. Now this word perdition is translated destruction many times and I repeat comes from the verb which is in our text and which says that the ungodly shall perish. If we can find what the beast goeth into when it is said that he goes into perdition, then we shall know what it is to perish. In a later chapter of the same book it is said that he was cast alive into the lake of fire burning with brimstone.

And he is still seen there as conscious a thousand years later. Now the verse that is considered by many Christians to be the greatest verse in the Bible is John 3:16. In it our Lord says that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish. Get the word, it's the one that is in our text, should not perish, but have everlasting life. Men need not perish if they will come to Christ, but if they do, they must perish if they remain away. They must go into destruction and this is clearly defined in the New Testament as the condition of being in a place of conscious and unending torment.

You may not believe in this doctrine, but I'm asking you to admit that this is what the Bible teaches. The honesty of my ministry is at stake. I am here to do one thing, reflect the word of God as simply and as accurately as I possibly can. If you say that you do not believe the doctrine and then say that you do not believe the Bible, but admit that the Bible teaches it, well I shall stand on that, for I stand on the word of God and believe that I shall be called to account for my witness in its behalf.

At the risk of shocking some of my friends, I will now say that if I am asked if this lake of fire be literal fire, I must say again in honesty to what knowledge I have of the word of God that the place of eternal torment need not necessarily be a place of literal fire. But let no man breathe a sigh of relief at that statement. I am aware that there are figures of speech in the Bible. If if then this be a figure of speech, it must be treated as all figures of speech and clearly recognized to be the expression of something so terrible that there was no expression in human language to describe it.

And the almighty God, giver of the word, used the phrase lake of fire to get as near to it as possible. So it is either fire or something so much worse that there's no word for it in man's language. And I would like to add a postscript on this phase of the subject before leaving it. This doctrine is a part of the tremendous impulsion that is upon us to preach the gospel to every creature. The primary impulsion is of course love for the savior and obedience to his command. The secondary impulsion is an awareness of what awaits those who know not God and who obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Our text in Romans now concludes with the announcement of a similar judgment for those who have been aware of the law of God. Those beyond the law perish without the law. Those within the law are condemned by the law. I believe that this indicates a much severer judgment than that which those on the outside shall undergo. The Greek word allows no hope of a favorable judgment when it says they shall be judged. The word should be condemnation. It is this that is in view. Now when this was written 1900 years ago, the vast majority of those who lived within the knowledge of the law of God and who rejected it was composed of Jews.

Today the vast majority is composed of members of the Christian churches or of people who have grown up within the shadow of the churches and who are aware in a general way at least of the holy impossible demands of God and of the provision that he has made in grace to meet those demands by the full and gracious offer of free salvation through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Finally, I wish to answer one possible objection. Perhaps some college professor in his New England home or some respectable person in one of the finest homes in Pasadena or anyone else in any condition whatsoever across this continent has followed me to this point through some curiosity and cries out against me with a touch of hostility.

What are you trying to do, frighten us with hell and an angry God? And boldly I reply, yes, I am. For the Lord my God bids me preach the preaching that he has set forth in the word. You may reply, well I will assure you that I am not anyone to be frightened. My answer to you is this. In a previous study we saw that there is a great difference between fright and fear and the true fear is a loving thing. But in the doctrines which God has given there are both fear and fright. Let me illustrate.

Suppose that a band of gangsters have kidnapped your child. They are holding the child for ransom in a hideout that they think cannot be discovered, but you learn of its whereabouts and with a cordon of police about the place you go to the door and fling it open, entering the room with drawn guns. There sit your child on one side and there sit the gangsters around the table. What is the attitude of these people toward you and toward the police that crowd in? The attitude of the child is love and delight and joy. The attitude of the gangsters is fright and a knowledge of doom.

If I announced to you the certainty of impending doom for those who reject the Lord Jesus Christ, I trust that it will sound like a knell of fear in your heart and force you to your senses while the loving hand of God still offers to you the amnesty of grace. The Lord Jesus Christ is coming again and his coming I know that I shall rise from my daily pursuits if he returns during my lifetime or that my body shall come forth from the grave to receive my eternal spirit and that I shall turn to him with a shout of joy and triumph like a child released from the bondage of captivity and death.

But surely if you will not obey his command to repent and turn to him, you shall meet him in all the flaming fury of outraged righteousness and you shall be struck down with the force of his power and brought to the doom that you so richly deserve. It is a doom that I deserve, but the Lord Jesus Christ took it for me, so I am free. Yes, I am free, free forever, forever free. And you can yet be saved, for today is still the day of his grace. And our God and father, we pray thee that thou shalt accompany this message with the might of the working of the Holy Spirit.

If there be those who have not yet been born again, may they turn from their radios with great restlessness and know no peace until they rest secure beneath the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. But in the hearts of all thy blood-washed ones, may thy grace, thy mercy and thy peace abide and a new zeal to get the message to the lost while it is yet day. And to thee, father, son and Holy Spirit, one God in three persons, be all the glory, majesty, dominion and power now until Jesus comes and forever. Amen.

Guest (Male): Every day we are to make the choice to submit to God's word, pick up our cross and follow Christ, knowing that he is always with us leads to joyful obedient discipleship. We hope you've benefited from today's message by Dr. Barnhouse entitled Eternal Choice. You can listen to additional Bible teaching by the late Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse anytime, anywhere around the globe via the internet by visiting the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals website at alliancenet.org. An audio copy of today's teaching is available by calling us toll-free at 1-800-488-1888. Today's message again is entitled Eternal Choice or simply request message number R2-7.

We would also like to make available to you a free copy of Dr. Barnhouse's booklet entitled Promises to Live By. We have all been disappointed by people who have let us down or have not kept their word to us, but God is always faithful to his word and to his promises. In this free booklet, Dr. Barnhouse shares glorious and unshakable promises from the word of God that will give you strength in any situation in life. Living by the shaky principles of the world will lead to confusion and despair. If you want to build your life on the strong, sure foundation of the promises of God, ask for your free copy of Promises to Live By when you call or write.

Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is a radio ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals exist to promote a biblical understanding and worldview. Drawing upon the insight and wisdom of Reformation theologians from decades and even centuries gone by, we seek to provide contemporary Christian teaching materials which will equip believers to understand and meet the challenges and opportunities of our time and place. Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible comes to you through the generous gifts of our listeners. If you have benefited from this broadcast and would like it to continue, please prayerfully consider a donation to help us keep this ministry on the air.

For more information or to make a contribution to support and further our work, contact us by writing Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, Box 2000, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103. Call toll-free 1-800-488-1888 or visit us online at www.alliancenet.org. Be sure and ask for a free updated resource catalog featuring books, audio teachings, commentaries, booklets, daily devotionals, videos and a wealth of other materials from outstanding reformed teachers and theologians including Donald Grey Barnhouse, James Montgomery Boice, Michael Horton and Martin Lloyd-Jones. Then be sure and join us again next time for more classic teaching on Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible.