11 And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse;
and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he
doth judge and make war.
12 His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head
were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself.
13 And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood:
and his name is called The Word of God.
14 And the armies which were in heaven followed him
upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.
15 And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with
it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and
he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.
16 And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name
written, King Of Kings, And Lord Of Lords.
– Revelation 19:11-16 (KJV)
O Lord our God, You
alone are the Most Holy King and Ruler of all nations.
We pray to You, Lord, in the great expectation of receiving from You,
O Divine King, mercy, peace, justice and all good things.
Protect, O Lord our King, our families and the land of our birth.
Guard us we pray Most Faithful One.
Protect us from our enemies and from Your Just Judgment
Forgive us, O Sovereign King, our sins against you.
Jesus, You are a King of Mercy.
We have deserved Your Just Judgment
Have mercy on us, Lord, and forgive us.
We trust in Your Great Mercy.
O most awe-inspiring King, we bow before You and pray;
May Your Reign, Your Kingdom, be recognized on earth.
Amen.
What a King you are!
Your power and majesty are above anything this world has to offer.
I want you
to be my King. I submit to your rule and Kingdom.
Teach me to worship and
honor you as you deserve to be.
I want to be ready for
your return. Take all sin out of my life and cleanse me.
I am yours now, and your
responsibility. Make me ready, my King.
Come Lord Jesus, come.
Amen.
[The Jesus Book by
Michael Koulianos]
For unto us a child is
born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder:
and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The
everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. – Isaiah 9 verse 6 (KJV)
Godly sorrow causeth grief for sin, because it is sin. It makes any
man in whom it is to be of this disposition and mind, that if there were no
conscience to accuse, no devil to terrify, no Judge to arraign and condemn, no
hell to torment, yet he would be humbled and brought on his knees for his sins,
because he hath offended a loving, merciful, and longsuffering God.
William
Perkins (1558–1602) was an influential English cleric and Cambridge theologian,
receiving both a B.A. and M.A. from the university in 1581 and 1584
respectively, and also one of the foremost leaders of the Puritan movement in
the Church of England during the Elizabethan era. Although not entirely
accepting of the Church of England's ecclesiastical practices, Perkins
conformed to many of the policies and procedures imposed by the Elizabethan
Settlement. He did remain, however, sympathetic to the non-conformist puritans
and even faced disciplinary action for his support. Perkins was a prolific
author who penned over forty works, many of which were published posthumously.
In addition to writing, he also served as a fellow at Christ's College and as a
lecturer at St Andrew's Church in Cambridge. He was a firm proponent of
Reformed theology, particularly the supralapsarian theology of Theodore Beza and
John Calvin. In addition, he was a staunch defender of Protestant ideals,
specifically the five solae with a particular emphasis on solus Christus and
sola Scriptura.
Election is God’s decree
“whereby on his own free will, he hath ordained certain men to salvation, to
the praise of the glory of his grace.” Reprobation is “that part of
predestination, whereby God, according to the most free and just purpose of his
will, hath determined to reject certain men unto eternal destruction, and
misery, and that to the praise of his justice.”
Picture the
scene. On a tall, wooden scaffold stands a man dressed in rags and with his
hands bound. His dark eyes are full of horror as he flinches before the jeering
crowd, many of whom have brought rotten eggs and fruit to throw at him.
The hangman’s
noose is set round his neck and he is brought to stand over the trap door.
Chilling cries arise from a few among the teaming crowd. ‘Die, thou man of
death!’ ‘Filthy villain!’ ‘To hell with thee!’
But as the
hangman’s hand is raised, and the people hold their breath for the final
execution, a piercing voice of authority ascends over the top the crowd. ‘Halt
forthwith!’
Worse than
death
A stout
Puritan minister, with stiff white collar and Geneva Bible clutched under his
arm, appears at the base of the scaffold. Awkwardly but quickly he climbs the
ladder, one of his hands being malformed, and steps onto the platform in front
of the doomed criminal.
The wretched
convict already appears to be in agony of mind. The Puritan minister demands:
‘What is the matter with thee? Art thou afraid of death?’
The prisoner
denies it, shaking his head, and says he is afraid of something far worse.
‘Sayest thou so?’ asks the minister. ‘Come down again man, and thou shalt see
what God’s grace will do to strengthen thee’.
So, with the
hangman’s consent, the minister takes him back down the ladder and makes him
kneel with him at the foot of the scaffold.
According to
the Puritan biographer Samuel Clarke, ‘that blessed man of God made such an
effectual prayer in confession of his sins … with the horrible and eternal
punishment due to the same by God’s justice, as made the poor prisoner burst
out into abundance of tears’.
Hand of mercy
Clarke
continues: ‘Finding that [the minister] had brought him low enough, even to
hell gates, he proceeded to the second part of his prayer, and therein to show
him the Lord Jesus (the Saviour of all penitent and believing sinners)
stretching forth his blessed hand of mercy and power to save him in that
distressed estate, and to deliver him from all the powers of darkness.
‘Which he did
so sweetly press with such heavenly art and powerful words of grace upon the
soul of the poor prisoner, as cheered him up again to look beyond death, with
the eyes of faith, to see how the black lines of all his sins were crossed and
cancelled with the red lines of his crucified Saviour’s precious blood.
‘So graciously
[did the minister apply the gospel] to his wounded conscience, as made him
break out into new showers of tears for joy of the inward consolation which he
found, and gave such expression of it to the beholders, as made them lift up
their hands, and praise God to see such a blessed change in him;
‘Who (the
prayer being ended) rose from his knees cheerfully, and went up the ladder
again so comforted, and took his death with such patience and alacrity, as if
he actually saw himself delivered from the hell which he feared before, and
heaven opened for the receiving of his soul, to the great rejoicing of the
beholders’ (Clarke, Marrow of Ecclesiastical History, 1654, pp. 852-53).
Crossed swords
This was one
day in the life of Master William Perkins, an outstanding Puritan divine of
late sixteenth-century Cambridge. His preaching every Lord’s Day at the local
jail was blessed to the conversion of many prisoners, Perkins ‘being moved with
pity towards their souls’ (Clarke, p.851).
But surely
such a zealous and evangelistic preacher was an Arminian? Surely his conviction
that the most unlikely sinners could be saved, must have been borne of a belief
in the innate goodness of man and human free will?
At the very
most, Perkins would have been an exceedingly moderate Calvinist, who would say
little about predestination and would quietly withhold such things from the
people? For belief in predestination is incompatible with such a concern for souls
and such an attitude of expectancy — right?
Wrong! Perkins
was a strict Calvinist and a renowned champion of a full-orbed Reformed
orthodoxy. In fact it was Perkins who crossed swords most fiercely with Jacobus
Arminius himself, in a series of rival publications and international debates.
Unambiguous
Perkins
abhorred Arminianism for, in his view, it made Christ only a ‘half redeemer’
(Perkins, Works, 1616-18, II:622). Perkins was consumed with a desire for the
glory of God in salvation, and clearly taught to a Christocentric,
‘double-predestinarian’ scheme.
The latter
term refers to the teaching that God predestines the non-elect to hell as truly
as he predestines the elect to heaven. Perkins argued from Romans 9:21 that
everyone ‘is unto God, as a lump of clay in the potter’s hand: and therefore
God according to his supreme authority doth make vessels of wrath, he doth not
find them made’ (II:610; emphasis added).
For Perkins,
redemption was unambiguously ‘particular’. Concerning the substitutionary death
of Christ, he taught that ‘the price is appointed and limited to the elect
alone by the Father’s decree, and the Son’s intercession and oblation’.
Christ (he
continues) ‘doth not sacrifice for those for whom he doth not pray: because to
make intercession and to sacrifice are conjoined: but he prayeth only for the
elect’ (II:609).
Perkins did
not shy away from stating bluntly of the reprobate that God ‘giveth them no
Saviour. For Christ is only the Redeemer of the Elect, and of no more’ (I:415).
“The heart of all
preaching is to preach One Christ, By Christ to the praise of Christ.” –
William Perkins
Nor did
Perkins feel it necessary to soften his Reformed distinctives in the realm of
preaching the gospel to sinners.
He taught that
‘ministers of the gospel ought indifferently to exhort all and every one to
repent’ (II:608). But he did not resort to the kind of equivocal language which
suggests that God somehow desires to save those whom he had already
foreordained to destruction. Such an approach, Perkins believed, could lead
only to Arminianism.
According to
Perkins, God does not desire to save the reprobate, nor does God suffer
frustration or conflict of will concerning them. Yet this does not render the
gospel call insincere, ‘for by this means’, declares Perkins, ‘he shows unto
them the riches of his grace, and declares that they perish by their own fault’
(II:625).
But if God
would have all men to be saved, he asks, then why are they not all saved? The
answer would have to be that ‘men will not keep the condition [accept God’s
terms] and believe’. But that, he protests, ‘is flat to hang God’s will upon
man’s will; to make every man an emperor, and God his underling’ (I:295).
Rather, he
continues, ‘God sometimes giveth a commandment [to repent and believe] not that
it should be actually done, but that men may be tried, and that they may be
convicted of their natural infidelity before God in the last judgement’
(II:625).
Standard fare
This theology
was not closet Calvinism, confined to the ivory towers of Cambridge colleges.
True enough, Perkins moved in academic circles throughout his working life.
Born in Warwickshire in 1558, Perkins entered Christ’s College, Cambridge, in
1577.
Having been
made Fellow in 1584, he took up the only other position of his career in 1595,
namely, lecturer at St Andrew the Great, Cambridge, a post he held until his
death on 22 October 1602, exactly 400 years ago.
Yet Perkins’
theology was standard and popular fare in Elizabethan England. Between 1590 and
1618 the primary publishing house in Cambridge printed approximately 210 books.
Of these Perkins wrote no fewer than fifty.
These books
comprised not only weighty Latin tomes for the benefit of European scholars,
but also plain English devotional volumes suited to the spiritual needs of the
simplest believer.
Modern
scholars today concur in styling Perkins as the most eminent English Reformed
theologian of the late sixteenth century. But Perkins was also formative in
promoting a deeply experiential and practical Calvinism, which was
characterised as much by a compassion for souls as a zeal for correct doctrine.
At
the four-hundredth anniversary of this great man’s death, we would do well to
reconsider the life and teaching of this father of Puritanism. Let us pray that
God in his mercy would raise up in our day what Perkins was in his —
soul-winning champions of orthodoxy
"He
who would be a faithful minister of the gospel must deny the pride of his
heart, be emptied of ambition, and set himself wholly to seek the glory of God
in his calling." – William Perkins
When the word of God
takes place in our hearts by faith, and brings forth in our lives the fruits of
righteousness and true repentance, then we may truly say, the Kingdom of heaven
is in us.” – William Perkins
Election is God’s decree
“whereby on his own free will, he hath ordained certain men to salvation, to
the praise of the glory of his grace.” Reprobation is “that part of
predestination, whereby God, according to the most free and just purpose of his
will, hath determined to reject certain men unto eternal destruction, and
misery, and that to the praise of his justice.”
Predestination is God's
eternal decree by which He foreordained to glorify Himself in some people as
vessels of mercy and to show His justice in others as vessels of wrath. –
William Perkins
Predestination is not
meant to make Christians cold.
It should make us humble.
If salvation rests ultimately on God’s mercy, then there is no room for boasting.
We were not wiser, stronger, or more deserving than those who remain in
unbelief. We were dead in sin, and God showed mercy.
That truth should not produce arrogance toward the lost.
It should produce compassion.
We do not know whom God will call tomorrow. The bitter skeptic may become a
brother. The hardened sinner may become a worshiper. The person who seems
furthest from Christ may be one sermon, one conversation, or one providence
away from being brought to life.
So we preach Christ freely.
We pray for the unbelieving.
We plead with sinners to repent.
And when anyone comes to faith, we give God the glory.
Election reminds us that mercy is truly mercy.
Justice reminds us that God owes salvation to no one.
And the gospel reminds us that everyone who comes to Christ will be received.
So hold these doctrines with trembling hands, a humble heart, and tears for the
lost.
