biplane – We Love God!

Now do not think that the belief of others in history establishes any doctrine… But it does help to say that we are not alone in our interpretation of Scripture, the Scripture being of “no private interpretation.” This is not a new doctrine – forgotten, yes – but not new. So I will start the list with Christ and Paul, Peter, John, and the others, and continue with these: Wycliffe, Tyndale, Coverdale, Ussher, Lightfoot, virtually all the King James Version translators, Beza, Brainard, Edwards, Whitefield, Carey, Fuller, Livingstone, Hudson Taylor, Adoniram Judson, Luther Rice, and China Inland Mission missionaries. Matthew Henry, Martin Luther, John Brown, Joseph Caryl, Thomas Chalmers, Alexander Maclaren, John Gill, Bishop Hall, Charles Hodge, Bishop Leighton, Thomas Manton, Thomas Goodwin, John Owen, G. Campbell Morgan, Matthew Poole, Bishop Reynolds, William Gurnall, J.C. Ryle, John Trapp, Robert Haldane, C.H. Spurgeon and Thomas Scott. We could add a host many others, including George Mueller, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and several prominent authors and preachers of today, such as R. C. Sproul, John MacArthur, J. I. Packer, John Piper, Joni Eareckson Tada, etc. All of this listing is again just to say that a person who genuinely interprets Scripture as giving God supreme sovereignty over who is and who is not saved does not mean that he or she is in a freakish minority of irrelevant theologs.

Jim Elliff