{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Christ Covenant Church","title":"Our God The Great Shepherd - Part 2","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3868,"description":"One would be hard pressed to find in the history of the Church – or the pages of Scripture, any notion that God – as the rightful Creator and Owner of all that exists, does not exercise sovereignty (rule/governance/control) over His Creation as the means to seeing that His plans, promises and prophecies are accomplished. How exactly God does that – or what level of success He is able to achieve in regard to His plans, promises and prophecies, does not (however) enjoy the same consensus. Within the Evangelical Church there exists two opposing views. Because they are so popular, it behooves us to not only understand them, but also reject them, as neither represents the view presented in Scripture (the view I call, “God the Great Shepherd”).\nTheistic Determinism\nAll things – including the decisions, actions and paths of humans and angels, are predetermined to the degree that free-will cannot exist. Our lives are instead fixed in eternity past versus being the result of our free choices in the present. As such, our future fates – or eternal states, are also fixed or predetermined (e.g. Calvinistic election: those going to heaven or hell were decided before we were created). The reasoning behind such thinking is that by allowing any level of free-will you are inviting the possibility of God failing to accomplish His will in all things. He must therefore preprogram all things in His Creation to secure His intended outcome[1].\n1.1. Who is crazy enough to believe this heresy?\nAnyone claiming to be Reformed or Calvinistic since this was the view of many of the Protestant Reformers (e.g. John Calvin, Martin Luther[2]). This is also the view of John MacArthur, John Piper, Al Mohler, the late R.C. Sproul, the Gospel Coalition and Ligonier Ministries, denominations such as the PCA, OPC, CREC, and ARBCA or seminaries such as The Master’s Seminary, Westminster Seminaries, Reformed Theological Seminaries and The Southern Baptist Seminary.\n1.2. Why you should view it as crazy and...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/UXGjftzm8Yw--IISwUKe6A6-CX1YtARptisfLmFJFoI/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS81Zjc4/MmNmNTMxZjNmOTgw/YjA1NWRhYmMxMTNl/YmE1Zi5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}