Matthew Stuckey here from Verity Baptist Church Manila providing another video on the topic of Calvinism, and what I wanted to talk about in this video is the God of this world mentioned in 2 Corinthians 4.
The Bible says, going back to verse 3,
But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost, and whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine onto them.
And so the Bible talks here about the minds of people being blinded by the God of this world, unless they would end up seeing the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ.
Now, almost everybody would agree that when it says the God of this world, it's referring to Satan.
Some reason why people would believe that is because it's a lower case G, it's not capital.
And obviously the writers of the Bible were very aware of the fact that this is referring to the devil.
It's not referring to God.
And you say, well, how do you know that?
Well, throughout the Bible, the word God is often not referring to the literal God that we believe in.
I mean, the book of Corinthians also speaks about God's many and Lord's many.
Obviously there's only one God, but a lot of false religions believe in a multitude of gods and things like that.
And so here in 2 Corinthians 4, verses 3 and 4, when it talks about the God of this world blinding the minds of them which believe not,
you can tell it's not our holy God, our Lord that we believe in.
Because of the fact, he is blinding the minds of people and not allowing them to believe on Jesus Christ.
Now, if you've watched this video series, then you know that we do believe that there's certain people that can cross a line
that they're past the point of salvation where they've chosen to reject God over and over again
and they no longer have that opportunity.
But look, Jesus Christ died for everybody.
He died for the sins of the whole world, the Bible says in 1 John 2.
And so he wants everybody to be saved.
But there is someone who does not want everybody to be saved.
I mean, he says he's not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
And so if he's not willing that any should perish and the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men
and he wants everybody to be saved, then what sense does it make to say,
well, you know, he's intentionally blinding the minds of everyone unless he chooses to allow them to believe.
No, but you know the devil, he is blinding the minds of people.
And you say, well, how is he doing that? In a multitude of ways.
You look at the public school systems and they're blinding the minds of people.
They're lying to them about things like evolution and the LGBT movement and things like that.
You look at the media, they're trying to blind you to the truth.
You look at the world we live in and the world is against the things that God is in.
And they try to deceive you and confuse you and change your mind
and get you not to believe in the Bible and the God that we believe in.
And so in 2 Corinthians 4, 4, when it says the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not,
it's obvious it's referring to the devil. It's not referring to the Lord God.
Because obviously the actions that he's doing are not good actions.
He's preventing people from believing on Jesus Christ,
when throughout the Bible it says that he wants people to believe on Jesus Christ.
He wants everybody to be saved.
And so the only person who's going to come up to that interpretation is someone like James White.
This hardcore Calvinist that does not believe on Jesus Christ,
that doesn't believe in the God that the Bible teaches, that gives us free will to believe on him.
He believes in this God that forces us to do certain things and is actually an evil and wicked God.
That's not what the Bible teaches.
2 Corinthians 4, 4, it's referring to the devil.
It's not referring to our Lord God Almighty.
Thank you and God bless.