The speaker then said what universalists cannot come to terms with. “He marked us out for Himself; He drew a circle around our names in eternity past and He passed over other names and left them to their just condemnation …That He would have mercy upon those He would have mercy and He would have wrath upon those He would have wrath.”

Pastor Steve Lawson, speaking at the ongoing Resolved Conference in California Sunday, said the notion that God’s election is based on His foreknowledge of who would choose His Son Jesus Christ on their own was flawed.

The idea that “God looked down the proverbial tunnel of time to see who would choose His Son” and then “in a reflexive manner” He chose them, is “grossly ignorant” of two views: the view of God and the view of man, Lawson, pastor of Christ Fellowship Baptist Church, Mobile, Ala., said.

“God’s knowledge is infinite; it is perfect … Whatever God does, He has already foreordained it,” the pastor said. And man, he explained, had a “moral inability to believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ.”

So how could God foresee anyone accepting His Son? Lawson asked the audience at the four-day 2011 Resolved Conference in Palm Springs, which will conclude Monday.
Lawson said when he was at seminary, his professor asked, “What can a dead man do?” And a student replied, he can “stink”…“that’s what a dead man can do … The world is spiritually dead and unable to believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ.” “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins …,” Lawson reminded the audience, quoting Ephesians 2:1.

“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them …,” Lawson now quoted John 6:44, pointing out that the word “can” refers to inability. “God chose by Himself and for Himself.”

Lawson also emphasized that God chose us “not because of us, but in spite of us.” “For reasons known only to God, God chose whom He would set His grace upon. And for reasons known only to God, God did not choose everyone.”

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