There are several problems with the Arminian view: 1. The doctrine of prevenient grace, on which the Arminian view of conditional election is based, is not found in Scripture. 2. Note well that there is no reference in [Romans 8:29] to faith or free will as that which God allegedly foresees in men. It is not what He foreknows but whom. 3. [Arminianism] assumes that fallen men are able and willing to believe in Christ apart from the regenerating grace of God, a notion that Paul has denied in Rom. 3:10-18. 4. Would not this view give man something of which he may boast? Those who embrace the gospel would be deserving of some credit for finding within themselves what others do not. 5. This view suspends the work of God on the will of man. It undermines the emphasis in Romans 8:28-38 on the sovereign and free work of God who foreknows, predestines, calls, justifies, and glorifies. It is God who is responsible for salvation, from beginning to end. 6. Even if one grants that God elects based on His foreknowledge of man’s faith, nothing is proven. For God foreknows everything. One must determine from Scripture how man came by the faith that God foreknows. And the witness of Scripture is that saving faith is a gift of God (Eph. 2:8-10; Phil. 1:29; 2 Pet. 1:1; 2 Tim. 2:24-26; Acts 5:31; 11:18).
Sam Storms

Patrick

Patrick

Patrick
389-461
Missionary to Ireland. Patrick was born in Scotland. His father was a Roman centurion and also a deacon in a local New Testament church. Patrick was captured and taken to Ireland as a slave, but he escaped. After his conversion to Christ, he studied on the mainland in Gaul, and then returned to the heathen tribes in Ireland as a missionary.

He began scores of churches and baptized–immersed– thousands of converts. He is largely responsible for the large number of Bible-believing Christians in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and England. Patrick, his father, and also his grandfather, were proud of the fact that they were not controlled by the Roman Church, and that they were responsible only to God. Patrick was later canonized by the Roman Church as a political move to control the Irish churches. He was thereafter known as “St. Patrick.”

ARTIST’S NOTE: The Irish “wearin’ o’ the green” is the predominant color. Patrick’s Latin ancestry is pictured, and also the fire and zeal with which he preached to the heathen tribes in the forests of Ireland.

Ruckman ’66