Speaker Craig Thurman wrote on predestination not being based on works or faith:
D. N. Jackson wrote a book entitled ‘The Doctrine of Divine Election, Calvinism and Arminianism Examined.’ In this book you will find this statement: ’ God has predestinated that believers shall be saved ...’ Is that a true statement? If we will compare it to the word of God the answer is no, it is not a true statement. Doss Nathan Jackson (July 14, 1895 – November 29, 1968) was a Baptist pastor from the United States who was fundamental in the founding of the North American Baptist Association (now the Baptist Missionary Association of America). To the point, the Bible nowhere says that God predestinates believers. Now this might sound a little strange to the ears at first because we know that believers are predestinated or else they would never have believed. But the statement is confusing and misleading. What folks usually mean when they make a statement like this is that God predestinates some because they have believed, and that is not true. As a matter of fact it’s a lie and here’s why. That statement takes a result or an effect of predestination and turns it into a cause for predestination. Why the very same thing is done by those who say that God foreknew or foresaw who would believe. Well, of course He foreknew them that believed or else they would not be of those that shall believe. Again, what folks usually mean by saying something to this effect is that God foreknew them that believed because God saw they would believe. However, the Bible says nothing concerning faith as the moving cause of God’s act to foreknow someone to salvation. The truth is that the foreknowledge of God is not based on whether one shall have faith in Christ. This kind of reasoning presents the absurd mental image of a tail chasing the dog rather than what we are all familiar with, which is the dog chasing his tail. It is this kind of reasoning that is applied to some very important Bible doctrines. We need to pay close attention to what the Bible teaches or else we could be turned away from its truths and into great errors by what appears to be to us only seemingly small, insignificant details. So, what does the Bible teach about predestination? The Bible says that God predestinated those which he foreknew. Read it for yourselves in Ro 8:29: For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
First, I’d like to point out that the objective case pronoun ‘whom’ refers to someone, not something. God foreknew someone. In other words God cast His special forethought upon a certain person. And, second, notice here that predestination is applied to those that God foreknew. Nothing here says that predestination was because one was a believer or because of faith. Referring once again to the Scriptures which is the only source for deriving the faith of Christ, we find predestination applied to those which God elects. In Eph.1.3-5 it is written: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. Like we read in Romans chapter 8 predestination is applied to those which God chose (elected) before the foundation of the world. To be chosen by God before the foundation of the world means that before there was anything of this present age founded (this refers to the whole universe) God alone chose to save a people for His name’s sake. So what have we gleaned from the word of God so far? We have gleaned that God predestinated those upon whom he set His eternal thought and upon whom He acted with an eternal act ... to save. The foreknowledge of God and His election of grace have nothing to do with any good or evil that the person known or chosen will do. NOTHING. Now, there’s no question that God knew from eternity all the good and evil every person would ever do throughout all of human history. But that knowledge is not foreknowledge. It is omniscience. So the acts of men are excluded from the issue of God’s foreknowledge of some to salvation. We just read in the Ephesian text that God’s election of grace was that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. Therefore election assumes holiness and blamelessness are lacking in those elected unto salvation. Essentially the same idea is stated Ro.9.11: For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth … Election isn’t determined by the elected but by the Elector.
