Originally posted by JohnB:
James,
I do not see where that quote indicates an Arminian or a Calvinist bias. Do Arminans deny a wrathful or just God?
I have no doubt that Morgan wrote it, and I have no doubt he was Arminian.
Here is a quote from a bio sketch of his successor, Martyn Lloyd-Jones: "Campbell Morgan personified the evangelical tradition after Spurgeon. He was an Arminian and his Bible exposition, though famous, did not deal in the great doctrines of the Reformation. Martyn Lloyd-Jones was in the tradition of Spurgeon, Whitefield, the Puritans and the Reformers. Yet the two men respected each other's positions and talents and their brief partnership, until Campbell Morgan died at the end of the war, was entirely happy."
http://www.graceonlinelibrary.org/articles/full.asp?id=38%7C%7C579
Also, he made this statement regarding Ephesians 1: "May God deliver us from taking so great, so stupendous and sublime and far-reaching a vision of the wisdom which transcends our finite theory, in order to formulate a doctrine that God has chosen a few people to be saved and left the rest to be damned. That is an unwarranted deduction."
Doesn't sound Calvinistic to me.
GCM believed in election, as do all Arminians, but he believed it was based on foreknowledge, not foreordination.
You also might want to check his comments on Hebrews 6. He did not hold to perseverance or eternal security but, like Wesley, believed Christians could apostasize and fall away.
Hello JohnB,
I'm not going to fight over what camp Morgan was in. If you want to take him off the list..fine with me. But still let it be known Calvinist do like him and read Him and call him one of theirs. You disagree...No big deal.
I'm not trying to mislead you...below is a clip to show this..
http://www.propadeutic.com/faith/authors/recentref.html
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Also, if you have time read this below..wrote by morgan. I think this will anwser somethings for you. You asked me to read his book on Hebrews. I do not have it. I have only 2 books by him. I'm sure you know more then me about him.
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On a message about the Cross….
Now, the Apostle says, "Who is against us?" "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" "Who is he that shall condemn?" "Who shall separate us?" Notice the questions again, and notice them as they are set against the great declaration.
First, "If God is for us, who is against us?" How, do I know God is for me? He gave His Son. There is no other demonstration. If you doubt the Cross you have no proof that God is for us. If you lose the sight of the Cross, and do not hear its message of the Divine good will and favor' there is nothing in Nature to show you God is for you. Nature is red in tooth and claw. We are told sometimes that it is kind, and so it is if we are kind to it; but offend it, break its laws, and it will crush you with merciless severity.
And this also is a merciful provision, for the crushing of anything effete is good for the things that remain. God by salvation has not come to save effete things as effete things. He has come to save things from effeteness and make them new. Nature will laugh in sunshine on the face of your dead child; there is no message in Nature that tells you that the God behind it cares for you.
But this man, weak and frail, suffering the loss of all things, the pity of all worldly-minded souls, says God is for him. How does he know? "He spared not His own Son." That is the infinite proof. The Cross is the revelation of the Divine interest. If I have that Cross, there God has given, in the mystery of that dying, His own Son, and I am prepared to challenge all the universe. "Who can be against me?"
As I learn the lesson and repeat the challenge there will come into it, not merely a tone of challenge, but the tone of contempt for everything that is against me. Circumstances are against me; let them be! God is against the circumstances! Another man says, My parentage is against me. God becoming your Father cancels the evil inheritance with which you entered into life.
But these are things of to-day. What lies beyond? I do not know. What infinite forces will be born in the new ages, the ages that will come fresh as the morning from the wisdom of God? What forces may be born with new principalities and new powers? Perchance some of them will be against me. It does not matter, they will be born of God, and God is for me, and the man who stands by the Cross of Jesus and knows that that, is God's gift for his redemption knows that nothing can emerge out of the endless ages, or gather from infinite spaces, that can harm, because by that Cross he knows God is for him. Who can be against us?
As to accusation, "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth." We must interpret this word of the Apostle by his previous use of the word in the same argument. How does God justify? "Being, therefore, justified by faith . . . we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom also we have had our access by faith into this grace wherein we stand; and . . . rejoice in hope of the glory of God." Who shall lay anything to my charge? It is God that justifies me. How? By that Cross of Jesus. You may lay to my charge what you will. You may see in me the imperfection that contradicts your sense of law. I am talking in imagination to the principalities and powers which may be created fifty millenniums hence. God has justified me by the Cross, which does not mean for one single moment that He has covered and excused my sin, but by the infinite mystery of the pain borne in that Cross, He has made my sin not to be, canceled it, put it away, and in this justification God acts, not out of pity, but on the basis of eternal justice and righteousness.
I challenge all the accusers. Who are you? Lay your accusation. Yes, it is true, perchance even in the holy service of to-day, perchance even in the service of the ages to come, there will be the falling short somewhere. I do not mean wilful sin. Do you not know that God charges the angels with folly? When I measure my service, even in the infinite hereafter, by the compulsion and propulsion and constraint of the Infinite love, I think that we shall always have to cast our crowns at His feet and say, "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name give glory." If someone shall lay a charge against me that the thing is not as high as it ought to have been, then in the infinite ages the Cross of the Christ abides, God's eternal provision, so that none can lay anything to the charge of such as He shall justify.
Or again, "Who is he that shall condemn?" "It is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather"—hear the music of it, if death were all, the condemnation would abide—"yea, rather, that was raised from the dead," and in the mystery, and miracle, and marvel of that resurrection there is the demonstration of the truth that the dying was efficacious, that in the dying He accomplished the purpose of His heart, in the dying He put guilt away and bore sin so that I need bear it no more. "Who shall condemn?" The soul, afraid of possible condemnation, hides again in the cleft of the rock, and points to the Cross and the empty grave, and says for evermore, By virtue of that Cross and that empty tomb, there can be no condemnation to the trusting soul.
Once again, "Who shall separate us?" Paul always seems to me, at this stage, as though he had climbed to some great height and was looking out on all the dimensions. "Death," he puts that first, because that is what men are so often afraid of as a separating force. "Life," which is far more likely to separate us than death, even though men do not fear it. "Angels, principalities," the whole world and universe of created intelligences. "Things present-things to come," in simple sentences he sweeps through all the ages. "Powers, height, depth."
Notice carefully this final phrase-"nor any other creation, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Did you notice the Apostle's outlook on all these things? "Death?" That is a creation. "Life?" That is a creation. "Angels" and "principalities?" Creations. "Things present?" Creations. "Things to come?" Creations. "Powers?" Creations. "Height?" Creation. "Depth?" Creation. All had issued from God. How can created things separate me, says the Apostle, from the Origin of the created things, seeing I am bound to Him through the work of Jesus, His own Son? I cannot be separated by things created by the Creator, for the Creator has bound me to Him by giving His Son, and brings me back with His Son into eternal union with Himself. "Who shall separate me?"
Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness?My beauty are, my glorious dress;?'Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,?With joy shall I lift up my head.
Bold shall I stand in Thy great day;?For who aught to my charge shall lay??Fully absolved through these I am?From sin and fear, from guilt and shame.
When from the dust of earth I rise,?To claim my mansion in the skies,?Ev'n then, this shall be all my plea,?Jesus hath lived, hath died for me.
Jesus, be endless praise to Thee?Whose boundless mercy hath for me-?For me, a full atonement made,?An everlasting ransome paid.
0 let the dead now hear Thy voice;?Now bid Thy banished ones rejoice;?Their beauty this, their glorious dress,?Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness.
The Cross of Jesus, the rough Roman gibbet, brutal Cross so far as man had anything to do with it; the Cross of nineteen hundred years ago, which was the manifestation of the great mystery and passion by which God redeems men, that Cross flames with a glory far greater than is needed to illumine the little while, and the here and the now. Its light fills all the universe; its glory rests on all the coming ages. At its birth every new-born age will be baptized in the infinite light that streams from the Cross of Christ. I do not know what they will have in them. One of the joys of the contemplation of the hereafter is that God is infinite in wisdom and power, and my own consciousness of eternal existence becomes bearable as I remember that there can be no monotony with God, always new ages, always new creations, always new manifestations of the one Eternal, incomprehensible Being Whom I call God.
And I do not know what, or how, how long, how brief, how great, how simple. But this I know, that by the Cross I have been brought into the love of God even though I was a sinner; and this I know that nothing He creates can ever separate me from Him Who does create. I know it by the Cross. "No man hath seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." When? By the way of the Cross. Men may know the exceeding power and wisdom of God if they study Nature, but they never find His heart.
There is only one way in which men find that—by the way of the Cross. But when a man comes that way, he comes at last to the point where he can write such a chapter as the eighth of Romans, and looking out from the midst of conscious weakness, out into the infinite spaces, as the questions throb through the mind, "Who? . . . who? . . . who?" He can answer them all with a quiet, calm assurance.
A man at the Cross challenges all attack, all accusation, all condemnation, all separation, and ends in the glorious declaration that none can be against, none can dare accuse, that none can condemn, that none can separate.
In conclusion, let me ask, what is the law of appropriation? There is no specific law of appropriation here; this aspect of promise leans back on God and the work accomplished in Jesus. Yet there is a law of appropriation; it is that of the realization of all that we have spoken of before. If I have never been to the Cross for its pardon, if I know nothing of the purity of consciousness that comes by it, if I am not now at peace with God, and within myself, therefore, if I know nothing of the power of the Cross in this life of probation, then the Cross brings me no promise, but condemnation.
The Cross of Jesus brings me all light, or banishes me to all darkness. Our fathers used to preach about the sin of rejecting Jesus. We do not hear very much about that to-day. And yet, believe me, it is the sin of all sins, it is the sin against the Holy Ghost. There is no sin so deep, so heinous, so awful as that. If I will not have its pardon, or its purity, or its peace, or its power, I cannot have its promise. Then if I ask this question, Who is against me? a myriad forces of evil charge on me to destroy me. If I ask, Who is he that lays anything to my charge? the great accuser stands before me and before God. If I ask, Who is he that shall condemn? the very God of love that would redeem, condemns. If I ask, Who shall separate me? I am separated by my own choice; and the question now becomes, Who can unite me? There is none can unite me if I reject the Cross of His dear Son.
Then let us rather come to the Cross, and in submission yield to its claim, and so receive its blessings.
Beneath the Cross of Jesus?I fain would take my stand—?The shadow of a mighty Rock,?Within a weary land;?A home within the wilderness,?A rest upon the way,?From the burning of the noontide heat,?And the burden of the day.
O safe and happy shelter,?O refuge tried and sweet,?O trysting place where heaven's love?And heaven's justice meet!?As to the holy patriarch?That wondrous dream was given,?So seems my Saviour's Cross to me,?A ladder up to heaven.
There hes beneath its shadow,?But on the farther side,?The darkness of an awful grave?That gapes both deep and wide;?And there between us stands the Cross,?Two arms outstretched to save,?Like a watchman set to guard the way?From that eternal grave.
Upon that Cross of Jesus?Mine eye at times can see?The very dying form of One?Who suffered there for me;?And from my smitten heart, with tears,?Two wonders I confess,-?The wonder of His glorious love,?And my unworthiness.
I take, O Cross, thy shadow?For my abiding place;?I ask no other sunshine than?The sunshine of His face:?Content to let the world go by,?To know nor gain nor loss—?My sinful self my only shame,?My glory all the Cross.
The Cross is God's giving, and the proof of His giving. His giving, "He spared not His Son." The proof of His giving, "Shall He not freely give us all things?"
The Cross is the place of my receiving. I look back, and the Cross brings me pardon. I look within, and the Cross brings me purity. I look up, and the Cross brings me peace. I look around, and the Cross is the Word of power. I look on and out at the infinite and unknown possibilities of eternity, and the Cross is the message of promise. Here and now, as I know my own life, as I know my own heart, I have no hope for to-day or to-morrow, for life or death, for time or eternity, but in the Cross of my Saviour. I have that hope, for
In the Cross of Christ I glory,?Towering o'er the wrecks of time,?All the light of sacred story?Gathers round its head sublime.
When the woes of life o'ertake me,?Hopes deceive and fears annoy,?Never shall the Cross forsake me:?Lo! It glows with peace and joy.
When the sun of bliss is beaming?Light and love upon my way:?From the Cross the radiance streaming?Adds more luster to the day.
Bane and blessing, pain and pleasure,?By the Cross are sanctified;?Peace is there that knows no measure,?Joys that through all time abide.?***************
In Christ...James