Another grave error of the system under review is that God had decreed beforehand that Adam should take of the forbidden fruit and so sin. Take the following quotation from Mr. Pink: “Before He formed him [Adam] out of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, God knew exactly how the appointed test would terminate. . . . But we must go further: Not only had God a perfect knowledge of the outcome of Adam’s trial, not only did His omniscient eye see Adam eating of the forbidden fruit, but He decreed beforehand that he should do so. . . . If God had foreordained before the foundation of the world that Christ should, in due time, be offered as a sacrifice for sin, then it is unmistakably evident that God had foreordained sin should enter the world, and if so, that Adam should transgress and fall” (pp. 305-306). Here we see the same human reasoning that departs from what God has said, simply in devotion to a predetermined scheme. Why is it “unmistakably evident” that God decreed that sin should enter the world? It is not evident at all. God placed Adam and Eve here in perfect innocence only, and, in order that His creatures should be intelligent, He gave them specific instructions and warned them of the consequences of disobedience. To leave man as an intelligent and responsible being, God had to leave the entrance of sin a distinct possibility. We admit that God foreknew how it would be resolved, but we affirm with decision that this does not involve God’s eternal decree that man had to sin. Away with such a thought! For hedge about his teaching as Mr. Pink will, it cannot but reduce if not remove man’s responsibility.
Let us notice some more of his rash boldness: “To affirm that God decreed the entrance of sin into His universe and that He foreordained all its fruits and activities is to say that which at first may shock the reader [and well it may], but reflection should show that it is far more shocking to insist that sin has invaded His dominions against His will and that its exercise is outside His jurisdiction, for in such a case where would be His omnipotency? No; to recognize that God has foreordained all the activities of evil is to see that He is the Governor of sin” (p. 308). His conclusions are wrong, and the attempt to speak for God thus is revolting. God does restrain “the remainder of wrath” and sets limits beyond which He will not allow rebellious man to go, but to make God the designer and governor of sin is preposterous. He endures with much long-suffering men who boldly sin, and that against His grace. When God saw the wickedness in the antediluvian earth, “it grieved Him at His heart” (Gen. 6:66And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. (Genesis 6:6)). We may well ask, Did God design and order the sin, and then be grieved about it? The thought is the boldest presumption and is rashly irreverent. In the days of Israel’s great breakdown, it is said that God “had compassion on His people” and sent messenger after messenger to have them turn from their evil ways. Mr. Pink would, in substance, have us believe that this was not so, for He had marked out their sin beforehand so that they could not depart from it. (See 2 Chronicles 36.) Did the Lord Jesus weep over Jerusalem’s sinful activities in their rejection of Him, and yet dictate their course so that they could not do otherwise? To make such an affirmation can only be evil. Time and time again throughout the Holy Word of God, it can be seen that God bore in patience with that which grieved Him. What is so blind as dedication to a theory, especially in theology!
Mr. Pink takes such a verse as this: “Woe unto the world because of offenses! For it must needs be that offenses come,” and then adds, “because God has foreordained them” (p. 309). Is not this blind obsession with his own scheme? Who gave him or any other the right to interpolate those words into the text or context?
Mr. Pink rejects the verse that says that God “will have all men to be saved,” because Calvinism has already settled it that God has no desire that all men be saved, for according to it He has settled the issue by an eternal decree that they be damned. Mr. Pink recognizes no difference between God’s will of desire that is in keeping with His nature, love, and His will of command, which orders and it comes to pass (p. 127).