Are there Few that Be Elected ? - Glenn Conjurske
Are there Few that Be Elected?
by Glenn Conjurske
The Bible is clear enough that there are few that are saved. “Then said one unto him, Lord, are there few that be saved?” (Luke 13:23). The Lord does not answer the question directly, but does so by implication, saying, “Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able.” This is as much as to say that there are few that are saved. He says so more explicitly in a similar passage. “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” (Matt. 7:13-14).
But those who believe that the sole cause of our salvation is an eternal and irrevocable decree, by which God elected us to salvation, have commonly been very uneasy with the fact that God has elected so few. This seems to give the lie to the plain Bible statement that “God is love”—-to say nothing of the explicit statement of the Bible that he is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (II Pet. 3:9).
Most Calvinists who have a little of the love of God shed abroad in their hearts are very uneasy with many of the tenets of Calvinism. They present them in such soft terms as practically to deny them, while yet professing to believe them. With nothing are they more uneasy than with the fact that there are few that are saved. While the apostle Paul, constrained by the love of Christ, would spend himself to save as many as he could, the God who could save all as easily as he could save any, has deliberately chosen to save few. So ill a notion does this give to us of the God of love that it is no wonder at all that Calvinists have been uneasy with it. The real wonder is that they can be reconciled to the fact that any are lost. Some Calvinists, indeed, have as much stumbled over the fact that any should be lost, as others have that many should be lost. “The legs of the lame are not equal,” says Solomon (Prov. 26:7), and neither are the legs of lame theology. Those who have strongly asserted the responsibility of man, and as strongly denied his ability, have found themselves in possession of a one-legged man, the result of their own operation. This doctrine is such an outrage to man’s innate sense of justice, and such an intolerable burden to all his sensibilities, that it proves simply unendurable to all who either think or feel. Many Calvinists apparently do little of either, but those who have done so have been so absolutely uneasy with the plight of their one-legged man that they have been driven to make his legs equal again. This some of them have done by cutting off the other leg also—-by denying his responsibility as well as his ability—-and thus returned to consistency by a doctrine doubly false. By means of this second operation those who had formerly held that the all for whom Christ died meant a select few, were now observed to hold that the few who are to be saved must certainly mean all. Among those who have taken this road from Calvinism to Universalism are Count Zinzendorf, Andrew Jukes, and many of the churches of New England.
Most Calvinists would never go so far, but they have yet gone farther than they ought. They have labored to make out that the few who are saved are in fact many after all. Of course they would not ordinarily do this while expounding the text “few there be that find it,” but they do it in other connections, and the fact that they do it at all indicates how really uneasy they are with that system which they hold to be the truth of God.
Augustus Toplady writes, “Why are ‘Calvin’s notions’ represented as ‘gloomy?’ Is it gloomy, to believe, that the far greater part of the human race are made for endless happiness? There can, I think, be no reasonable doubt entertained, concerning the salvation of very young persons. If (as some who have versed themselves in this kind of speculations, affirm) about one half of mankind die in infancy; and if, as indubitable observation proves, a very considerable number of the remaining half, die in early childhood; and if, as there is the strongest reason to think, many millions of those, who live to maturer years, in every successive generation, have their names in the Book of Life: then, what a very small portion, comparatively, of the human species, falls under the decree of preterition and non-redemption! This view of things, I am persuaded, will, to an eye so philosophic as yours, at least open a very cheerful vista through the ‘gloom;’ if not entirely turn the imaginary darkness into sun-shine. For, with respect to the few reprobate, we may, and we ought to resign the disposal of them, implicitly, to the will of that only King who can do no wrong: instead of summoning the Almighty, to take his trial at the tribunal of our own speculations, and of setting up ourselves as the judges of Deity.”
Thus the “few saved” of the Lord Jesus Christ becomes “few reprobate” in the hands of the Calvinist. That infants who die are saved we have no doubt—-though this has been denied by many Calvinists—-but that half the race dies in infancy is only wishful thinking. As to the “many millions…in every successive generation” who have been converted, this is simply closing our eyes to the truth. There are few that find the way to eternal life. Eight souls on the earth were righteous at the time of the flood. Three only were saved out of the destruction of Sodom, and only one of those actually righteous. There were only seven thousand in Israel in Elijah’s day, and perhaps none at all in the heathen world. Generation followed generation for thousands of years in Africa, China, India, Australia, North and South America, and all the islands of the sea, without one ray of gospel light, while only a dim and flickering light burned in some favored regions around the Mediterranean Sea. In the present day, even in America, it is doubtful that one in a hundred are actually converted, and “when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8). There are few that find the way to eternal life in any generation. Even the great awakenings which have occurred from time to time have touched only a very small portion of the surface of the globe, and converted only a small minority of the people there.
Andrew Bonar says, “Christ’s favourite expression, when speaking of His saved ones, is ‘many.’ Our Shorter Catechism should have said, ‘elected many to everlasting life.’ I am not sure but we shall be in the majority yet when we are gathered into the kingdom.” Strange, that we who are always a pitiful and persecuted minority throughout the history of the world should grow into the majority when we are gathered into the kingdom. But no, for the Lord says, “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32). Bonar’s statement reveals the cravings of a good heart, burdened by an evil system. Yet we suppose that a majority elected to salvation could no more satisfy a good heart than a few, if God could as easily have saved all, if he had merely chosen to do so.
A “Brief Analysis of Calvinism,” in The Presbyterian Magazine for 1855, says, “God, who is infinite in knowledge and power, and ‘who hath mercy in (sic) whom he will have mercy,’ having promised that his eternal Son Jesus Christ our Saviour ‘should see the travail of his soul and be satisfied,’ hath, in accordance therewith, eternally purposed, that a large part of mankind should accept the terms of the Gospel.” A large number, no doubt will be saved, but still this is a small part of the human race. To say “a large part” only betrays the uneasiness which Calvinists feel with their own system.
C. H. Spurgeon says, “I believe there will be more in Heaven than in hell. If anyone asks me why I think so, I answer, because Christ, in everything, is to ‘have the pre-eminence,’ and I cannot conceive how He could have the pre-eminence if there are to be more in the dominions of Satan than in Paradise. Moreover, I have never read that there is to be in hell a great multitude, which no man could number. I rejoice to know that the souls of all infants, as soon as they die, speed their way to Paradise. Think what a multitude there is of them! Then there are already in Heaven unnumbered myriads of the spirits of just men made perfect,—-the redeemed of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues up till now; and there are better times coming, when the religion of Christ shall be universal; when
‘He shall reign from pole to pole,
With illimitable sway;’
when whole kingdoms shall bow down before Him, and nations shall be born in a day; and in the thousand years of the great millennial state there will be enough saved to make up all the deficiencies of the thousands of years that have gone before. Christ shall be Master everywhere, and His praise shall be sounded in every land. Christ shall have the pre-eminence at last; His train shall be far larger than that which shall attend the chariot of the grim monarch of hell.”
We really doubt that Christ’s pre-eminence has anything to do with the matter, or that any comparison with the devil is remotely thought of in the passage. Neither is the devil any “monarch” in hell, but a prisoner like the rest. Neither will he have any loyal subjects there, but will no doubt be cordially hated by all, as the prime cause of their own misery. It is certain that Christ has no numerical pre-eminence over the devil today, and if he must gain it in the end by means of the death of infants, this appears to be an empty victory.
As for the millennium, it is certain that the millennial day will be ushered in by the destruction of all the billions of the ungodly who now inhabit the earth, and not by their conversion. There is nothing in the Bible about nations being born in a day. That applies to one nation only, the nation of Israel. As for the godly in the millennium making up “all the deficiencies of the thousands of years that have gone before,” we observe that this grants (against Toplady’s arguments) the real deficiencies of the previous ages, but we see no reason to believe the millennium will make them up. We know that at the end of the millennium, when Satan is loosed for a little season, he will find a ready following, and a very large one also, “the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.” (Rev. 20:8). The fact that these have outwardly submitted to Christ previously, while necessity compelled them—-for he ruled them with a rod of iron—-does not indicate that they were subject to him in heart, and they certainly will not be swept up to heaven when they are devoured by the fire of God.
Neither do we suppose that the growth of the population will be so great in the millennium as to make up the deficiencies of all that have lived for thousands of years before. We know that as a part of the curse which God put upon the woman, he greatly multiplied her conception (Gen. 3:16), and we suppose that when the curse is removed, that facet of it will be removed also. If men (or animals) continued to reproduce during the millennium, with no death to diminish their numbers, at the same rate at which they do today, the earth in a few years would be unable to support the number of rodents and insects, if not of men.
Spurgeon’s arguments, then, are not convincing. They indicate no more than the uneasiness which he naturally felt with the system which he supposed to be the truth. We suppose that these men did right well to feel the uneasiness which they evidently felt with their Calvinism, but they went about the wrong way to remedy it. They ought to have given up their Calvinism, instead of modifying the plain truth of God. There are few that are elected. “Many are called, but few are chosen.” This election, however, stands upon what they are, and not upon the “mere sovereign pleasure” of God. It is “according to foreknowledge.” Their destiny is determined by their own acts, and it is therefore that few are saved. This is no reflection upon God, “who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.” (I Tim. 2:4).
Glenn Conjurske