I agree, but that does not stop us from voting as we are to occupy until He comes. To occupy would mean doing everyday things like working and voting.kingskid, election is a foundational concept in the Scriptures. In actuality, God elects or chooses people before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4, Gal. 1:15, Jer. 1:5). That God elects is simply God choosing. Do we make choices? We are not greater than God, are we? God is able also to make choices and carry them out.
God's ability to declare His purpose in advance and carry it out is prophecy fulfilled.
“"I have not spoken in secret,
In some dark land;
I did not say to the offspring of Jacob, 'Seek Me in a waste place';
I, the LORD, speak righteousness, Declaring things that are upright. "Gather yourselves and come;
Draw near together, you fugitives of the nations;
They have no knowledge,
Who carry about their wooden idol
And pray to a god who cannot save. "Declare and set forth your case; Indeed, let them consult together.
Who has announced this from of old? Who has long since declared it?
Is it not I, the LORD?
And there is no other God besides Me,
A righteous God and a Savior;
There is none except Me.”
Isaiah 45:19-21 NASB
“"They lift it upon the shoulder and carry it;
They set it in its place and it stands there.
It does not move from its place.
Though one may cry to it, it cannot answer;
It cannot deliver him from his distress. "Remember this, and be assured;
Recall it to mind, you transgressors. "Remember the former things long past, For I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is no one like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things which have not been done,
Saying, 'My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all
My good pleasure';”
Isaiah 46:7-10
Notice chiefly that God's foretelling is the way that He differentiates Himself from vain idols. And why not? We all have made plans and carried them out. But the God of the Bible has put them in His book for all to see.
From another angle, as it pertains to people, election is directly related to grace. It is God acting freely to choose one person or nation for His reasons, completely without regard to human merit. If you are truly a Christian, you know in your heart your unrighteousness and it is the most humbling thing to you that God would choose you. But that is His prerogative entirely.
This is where the fur hits the fan. God's election, or grace, is hated by the natural man because it rules out any activity by which a person can be justified before God. Also, it abrades our egalitarian sensibilities concerning justice; we would have chosen this honourable person over that bum, wouldn't we?
Without prolonging this answer, individual salvation is one example of election/grace, but the clearest example in Scripture is the call of Abraham and his descendants. This election of Israel is the linchpin of all the turmoil in the Middle East today. Without this covenant context, that conflicted crucible is a hopeless enigma that defies geopolitical, sociological, ethnic or religious explanations.
The principalities and powers froth and foam because they know what Zion means - the locus of the Kingdom of God on earth, and going forward, their animus for God and His election is furiously directed at the destruction of the Jewish people, a trend that anyone can see is increasing worldwide.
“Why are the nations in an uproar
And the peoples devising a vain thing? The kings of the earth take their stand And the rulers take counsel together Against the LORD and against His Anointed, saying, "Let us tear their fetters apart
And cast away their cords from us!"
He who sits in the heavens laughs,
The Lord scoffs at them.
Then He will speak to them in His anger And terrify them in His fury, saying, "But as for Me, I have installed My King
Upon Zion, My holy mountain."”
Psalms 2:1-6 NASB
If you take the Old Testament as authoritative in its own right, Zion only means one place. To assert, as many do, that Zion is now the church is to sever the meaning of Zion from its natural context and usage throughout the older scriptures, and to gloss over vast amounts of prophetic detail concerning not only the judgment but also the restoration of this city that represents Israel. To dispense with the Divinely foretold destiny of the physical Zion is to decisively move in a gnostic and docetic (denying the reality of Jesus' physical body) direction.
Here is a statement by a Scottish divine from the 19th Century that chokes me up every time I read it because of his attitude toward the Scriptures, and in particular, regarding the worth of prophecy. I dare say his attitude of reverence would make for far less disagreement about future things if we shared it.
An Excerpt from "The Call to Prophetic Study"
In Horatius Bonar's classic, Prophetical Landmarks
"Man's thoughts about the future and the unseen are of little worth. They are at best but dreams; no more than the blind guesses of fancy. They approach no nearer to the truth than do a child's conjectures regarding the history of some distant star, or as to the peopling of space beyond the outskirts of the visible creation.
But the thoughts of God respecting the future are precious above measure. They are truth and certainty, whether they touch upon the far-off or the near, the likely or the unlikely. They are disfigured with no miscalculation, for they are the thoughts of the great Designer regarding His own handiwork. They are the thoughts of an infinite mind; and they are the thoughts of that mind upon a subject utterly inaccessible to us, but entirely familiar to Him who sees the end from the beginning, and whose wisdom has prearranged the whole.
These thoughts of God about the future are what we call prophecy, and in studying prophecy we are studying the thoughts of God, the purposes of His heart. Of these His secrets, He is not unwilling that we should be partakers; nay, He has spread them out before us, He has recorded them for our use, and deep must be the guilt, as well as incalculable the loss, of those who turn aside from such a study; who will listen with some interest, perhaps, to man's ideas of what is coming to pass on the earth, but never think of inquiring what is the mind of God."
What you say is true...from the foundation of the world...I love the sound of it.
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