sentence ceases to have meaning, as, for example, if we read: "Whom He did foreordain

He also did predestinate."

We therefore understand the passage before us to declare that God, Who is not under

the limitations of time and space as we are, knows all things, past, present and future,

knows them perfectly and completely, and can, therefore, act with complete certainty

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

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 everyone 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 unalterably fixed the number

who should believe, as surely fixed unalterably the number of those who should not

believe, a conclusion so monstrous that it has only to be expressed to be rejected.

Perhaps a simple illustration may help us in appreciating the relation of God's

foreknowledge with the purposes of election. One of the world's master chess players,

the type that can take on several opponents at once and beat them all, if he stood for a

moment and glanced at the chess board of two very average players could say "in two

moves you will be checkmated", and he would in all probability be right.  His

foreknowledge however would in no wise compel these chess players to make any

particular move. This master chess player had such a thorough knowledge of all the

possible moves that he could foreknow, as we have suggested. God knows all possible

combinations of heredity, of environment, of temperament, of time, place and

circumstance, "all things are naked and open" in His eyes. The illustration may be crude,

and bristles with weak points, but it may point the distinction that must be made between

foreknowing a thing, and predestinating a thing, and also may suggest how it can be that

God can infallibly know what a free agent will choose to do without in any sense

influencing the act.

This has been a big digression. We come back to Eph. 1: 4 "according as He hath

chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world" with a solemn sense of the grace

thus made known, and bow in worship and in wonder at the love that could so plan and

so give for the salvation of those who by this very Divine foreknowledge were foreseen

to be utterly unworthy.