Study Desk

What then are we to infer? That there is injustice in God?

And from this we learn that everything is dependent not on man's will or endeavour, but upon God who has mercy. For the Scripture said to Pharaoh,

"Why then does God still find fault?" you will ask; "for who is resisting His will?"

Nay, but who are you, a mere man, that you should cavil against GOD? Shall the thing moulded say to him who moulded it, "Why have you made me thus?"

And what if God, while choosing to make manifest the terrors of His anger and to show what is possible with Him, has yet borne with long-forbearing patience with the subjects of His anger who stand ready for destruction,

And in the place where it was said to them, `No people of Mine are you,' there shall they be called sons of the everliving God."

Even as Isaiah says in an earlier place, "Were it not that the Lord, the God of Hosts, had left us some few descendants, we should have become like Sodom, and have come to resemble Gomorrah."

Brethren, the longing of my heart, and my prayer to God, on behalf of my countrymen is for their salvation.

For I bear witness that they possess an enthusiasm for God, but it is an unenlightened enthusiasm.

Ignorant of the righteousness which God provides and building their hopes upon a righteousness of their own, they have refused submission to God's righteousness.

that if with your mouth you confess Jesus as Lord and in your heart believe that God brought Him back to life, you shall be saved.

I ask then, Has God cast off His People? No, indeed. Why, I myself am an Israelite, of the posterity of Abraham and of the tribe of Benjamin.

God has not cast off His People whom He knew beforehand. Or are you ignorant of what Scripture says in speaking of Elijah--how he pleaded with God against Israel, saying,

But what did God say to him in reply? "I have reserved for Myself 7,000 men who have never bent the knee to Baal."

In the same way also at the present time there has come to be a remnant whom God in His grace has selected.

And so Scripture says, "God has given them a spirit of drowsiness--eyes to see nothing with and ears to hear nothing with--even until now."

Do not be puffed up with pride. Tremble rather--for if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will He spare you.

Moreover, if they turn from their unbelief, they too will be grafted in. For God is powerful enough to graft them in again;

For God does not repent of His free gifts nor of His call;

For God has locked up all in the prison of unbelief, that upon all alike He may have mercy.