experience would be reversed.  But God, as it were, sees all at a glance; He

knows the end from the beginning.  With us, the future is hid from our eyes

because of our human limitations.

We shall be wise, therefore, to leave the word foreknowledge to mean

just what it says and no more.  The infinite knowledge of God makes it

impossible that He shall not know who will preach and who will teach; where

they will go, and when they will go; who shall hear, who reject, who accept,

and who be left without a word of the gospel.  The one great demand upon all

who hear

the gospel is that they believe the testimony of God concerning His Son.

Whoever so believes passes into all the blessings purchased by the blood of

Christ.  Whoever does not believe makes God a liar (1 John 5:10).  If there

were any idea of preordination in this, refusal to believe would be as much a

part of God's predeterminate decrees as is election to glory, and it would

not be possible to make God a liar by so refusing His testimony.  Further, in

the passage before us, foreknowledge is differentiated from predestination,

for we read, `whom He did foreknow He also did predestinate'.  If we alter

the word `foreknow' to any word bearing the sense of predetermining or pre-

destining, the sentence ceases to have meaning, as, for example, if we read,

`whom He did foreordain He also did predestinate'.

We, therefore, understand the passages before us to declare that God,

Who is not under the limitation of time and space as we are, and needs no

external evidence to attain unto knowledge, knows all things, past, present

and future; knows them perfectly and completely, and can therefore act with

absolute certainty where, to us, all would appear in a contingent light.

Those who were foreknown of God were also predestined to conformity to

the image of His Son.  Here is another term that demands care in application.

The word `predestinate' as we have already observed is a translation of

the Greek prohorizo.  The word horos, from which horizo is formed, does not

occur in the New Testament, but it has the well -established meaning of

boundary or limit, as in the word horizon.  This word, in turn, is from

horao, to see, boundaries generally being marked to make them visible and

conspicuous.  Those whom God foreknew He also marked out beforehand for a

glorious end -- conformity to the image of His Son.

There are three related words which should be considered together, and

each of these three commences with the prefix pro, in the original.

Purpose (prothesis).  Something set or placed before the mind, a

Foreknowledge (proginosko).  To know beforehand, and

Predestinate (prohorizo).  To mark off beforehand.

The whole testimony of the Scriptures is to the effect that God has a

purpose before Him, according to which He works and, in accord with that

purpose of peopling heaven and earth with the redeemed, He foreknew every one

who would respond to the call of grace, and accordingly marked them off

beforehand for the various spheres of glory that His purpose demanded.  If we

believe that God fixed unchangeably from all eternity, whosoever should in

time believe, then however much we may hedge and cover the fact, there is but

one logical conclusion, a conclusion that, in days gone by, has driven many

to the edge of despair.  That conclusion is, that He Who absolutely and