The Great Missionary Hope in Reaching Out to Roman Catholics, DEPENDS on the Great Missionary Hope of Unconditional Election
Back in the late 2000s, the original Papal Busters blog was written with what's often called the Arminian or semi-Arminian, or free will mindset. However, after going full Calvinism or Reformed, this blog has decided to go on this new mission to Catholics, with the mindset of the Great Missionary Hope based on the teaching of Unconditional Election.
Even when we were dead in our trespasses, [God] made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved. (Ephesians 2:5)
The great missionary hope is that when the gospel is preached in the power of the Holy Spirit, God himself does what man cannot do: he creates the faith that saves. The call of God does what the call of man can’t. It raises the dead. It creates spiritual life. It is like the call of Jesus to Lazarus in the tomb, “Come out!” And the dead man obeyed and came out. The call created the obedience by creating life (John 11:43). That is how anyone is saved.
We can waken someone from sleep with our call, but God’s call can summon into being things that are not (Romans 4:17). God’s call is irresistible in the sense that it can overcome all resistance. It is infallibly effective according to God’s purpose — so much so that Paul can say, “Those whom [God] called he also justified” (Romans 8:30), even though we are only justified by our faith.
In other words, God’s call is so effectual that it infallibly creates the faith through which a person is justified. All the called are justified according to Romans 8:30. But none is justified without faith (Romans 5:1). So the call of God cannot fail in its intended effect. It irresistibly brings into being the faith that justifies.
This is what man cannot do. It is impossible. Only God can take out the heart of stone (Ezekiel 36:26). Only God can draw people to the Son (John 6:44, 65). Only God can open the spiritually dead heart so that it gives heed to the gospel (Acts 16:14). Only the Good Shepherd knows his sheep, and calls them by name with such compelling power that they all follow — and never perish (John 10:3–4, 14).
The sovereign grace of God, doing the humanly impossible, through the gospel of Jesus Christ, is the great missionary hope.
This is the way the new Papal Busters blog views things. Like every other unbeliever, Roman Catholics are spiritually dead. In short, it has become focused on what man can never do. Back then, I was focused on hoping that I could win people to Christ by constantly debating. However, the reality is that the doctrine of salvation makes blurry sense to spiritually dead people! They're unable to understand the things of God! I was told, "Just keep witnessing!" However, the call in Ezekiel is to simply warn others.
In the reality of things, I think of Spurgeon's sermon, "High Doctrine". In fact, this makes me think of how the new Papal Busters ministry is no longer about convincing Roman Catholics, but simply reaching out to them, to find the Elect in them:
The doctrine which leaves salvation to the creature, and tells him that it depends upon himself, is the exaltation of the flesh, and a dishonoring of God. But that which puts in God’s hand man, fallen man, and tells man that though he has destroyed himself, yet his salvation must be of God, that doctrine humbles man in the very dust, and then he is just in the right place to receive the grace and mercy of God. It is a humbling doctrine.
As the Bible says in John 15:19, "You did not choose Me but I chose you." It's all about preaching the Gospel with a great missionary hope, of finding out who are whom God has called out of Mystery Babylon!