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ERASERS AND WHITE-OUT

If you could go back in time from where we are right now — 2003 — and spin back thirty years in an H. G. Wells SUV, wouldn’t you appear to be the smartest person around? In terms of presidential politics, you could place bets on Jimmy Carter in 1976, Reagan in ‘80 and ‘84, Bush in ‘88, win money on two successive Clinton victories in ‘92 and ‘96, and really collect big-time on George W.’s incredible Florida finale around the turn of the millennium. You’d know about the Angels beating the Giants in seven games last October, the Lakers’ three successive titles in basketball, and what’s going to happen when the Kings play the Seattle Supersonics tonight.

A science fiction story came out a few years ago where a son, messing around with an old ham radio set, suddenly found himself talking from the year 1999 to the year 1969 . . . to his dad, who had died when he was a kid. Back in ‘69, all of New York was getting ready to watch the amazing New York Mets play in the World Series, and of course, the son, clear down in 1999 already knew the Mets would win: knew each game’s results, the big plays, the great shoe polish moment and all the rest. And we say to ourselves as we watch such silliness on the Sci-Fi Channel, “Ain’t time travel fun? But talk about a lot of ‘holes’ in the script!”

However, when we come around to the equally mind-blowing idea that our Father in heaven totally and effortlessly knows the future, it forces us to very prayerfully think about what the Bible reveals to us. We’ve studied many times the powerful reality that Old Testament prophecies came true to the letter, often hundreds of years later. Details about Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection are uncannily described centuries earlier. People like King Cyrus are revealed by name long decades before even their parents were born. Panoramic visions in the book of Daniel describe the grand sweep of history, as one world empire follows another in perfectly predicted chronology.

But today I want to quietly bring it down to me. And to you. Does God know if we’ll be in His kingdom? If you choose Jesus Christ today, when did God know that you would do that? If you go your entire life and never make that decision, at what point did your Father God begin to grieve about that? As we think about this important question, picture with me a pencil and an empty journal – a Book. On one end, the pencil has lead, of course. On the other end — MAYBE . . . and maybe not — an eraser.

We’ll find the Book explicitly mentioned in Revelation 3:5, which is in a passage addressed to the believers in Sardis:

“He who overcomes will, like them [the faithful IN Sardis] be dressed in white.” Then Jesus promises: “I will never blot out his name from the Book of Life, but will acknowledge his name before My Father and His angels.”

Is this good news . . . or bad news? For those who have an enduring relationship with Jesus, God promises to never erase their names. That sounds fantastic, but wait just a moment. Does the fact that Jesus says, “I will not blot your name out” imply that blotting out IS possible? Could your name be IN the Book, but later taken out of it? On the other hand, is it wise to surmise a possible negative out of a verse that clearly is meant to be positive and to bring hope and confidence?

A pastor named Charles Stanley, who grappled with some of these book-and-pencil Bible passages back in 1990, takes his readers over a few pages in Revelation to chapter 13, where this same Book of Life is mentioned again. Notice verse 8:

“And all who dwell on the earth will worship him [the beast], everyone whose name has not been written FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD in the Book of Life of the Lamb who has been slain.”

The New International Version gives this verse two ways: as I just read it, and also by suggesting that it is the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world. I like that idea: where Jesus was prepared to sacrifice Himself on Calvary even before this world had a single tree created on it yet. In fact, the Greek word here for earth, “the foundation of the earth,” doesn’t really mean this planet at all, but the entire universe. In other words, God had a Calvary plan and also a Book of Life, with the names of followers written in that Book . . . before He even said “Let there be light” in Genesis one, verse three.

Revelation 17:8 gives us this same picture of an extremely old library book:

“The inhabitants of the earth,” John writes, “whose names have NOT been written in the Book of Life FROM THE CREATION [OR FOUNDATION] OF THE WORLD will be astonished when they see the beast.”

If you’ve always believed that God took out His pencil and wrote your name in His Book of Life the day you accepted Jesus Christ, His Son, these Bible verses tell us that the celebration began much earlier! Because of God’s infinite foreknowledge, He didn’t just know the Angels would win the Series last year, He knew before Noah built the ark that you would choose His kingdom. Paul tells us the same thing in Ephesians 1:4:

“[God] chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight.”

“God wrote before we did ANYTHING,” suggests the author of Eternal Security. And if you accept the historic position of the Church regarding God’s infinite knowledge and FORE-knowledge, that God would know a man would betray His Son before the rooster crowed three times much later that evening, then this is wonderful news for the believer.

Let’s look at this from the other side of the coin. Suppose that the Lord God does NOT know who will choose Him, that the bumpy ups and downs of history are unfolding before His curious eyes as well. In that case, He would indeed need to write your name in on the day you choose Jesus. And perhaps it could unfold that He would later take a name out. But if God’s foreknowledge is as complete as the Body of Christ accepts, then it would make no sense that God would ever erase. A name that would need erasing would simply not be there in the first place. And sure enough: that second Revelation passage we read plainly describes rebels against heaven whose names were NOT written “from the foundation of the world.”

The picture of God’s infinite knowledge is further strengthened with this incredible promise expressed by Jesus Himself in John 10:27, 28:

“My sheep listen to My voice,” He joyfully says; “I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they shall NEVER perish; NO ONE can snatch them out of My hand.” In the very next verse He adds: “No one can snatch them out of My FATHER’S hand.”

We have to very carefully and humbly acknowledge that books and erasing and “blotting out” ARE plainly mentioned a number of times, especially in the Old Testament. In his beautiful prayer asking God for forgiveness after the Bathsheba fiasco, King David pleaded with his heavenly Father to “blot out” his great iniquity. In Psalm 86 David writes about a book or “register,” where God writes the names of ALL people and where they were born. And in Psalm 56:8 — a beautiful passage I’ve personally used at funerals and in sympathy cards I’ve sent — King David tenderly writes about a book God keeps where He records our tears and knows our wanderings.

But in chapter 69 this same King David writes in steely anger about his spiritual enemies and pleads with God in verse 28 to “blot out their names FROM THE BOOK OF LIFE.” And we have to wonder if this negates what the New Testament seems to teach about whether God’s sacred Book of Life, written before the foundation of the world with the names of the saved, can indeed have erasures. Scholars disagree on this hard point, but one suggests that this is a different kind of “(quote) book of life,” one that simply records the names of all mankind. First of all, as this very strongly worded passage continues, David the warrior first wants God to blind his enemies. Then pour out wrath on them. Then cause their homes to be deserted. Accuse them of great crimes and deny them salvation. And then finally, here in verse 28, to simply take their names out of God’s book of all living people: in other words, allow them to be destroyed. Not in terms of saved in heaven or lost in hell, but just killed. And it’s also clear as you read this passage that David is writing about flagrantly rebellious people who obviously had never been saved in the first place. They were enemies of God from start to finish. In Exodus 32, where the tragic story is told about Israel rebelling against God, and 3,000 of the worst of them are killed, Moses prays in abject sorrow: “If You can’t forgive them, Lord, then blot my name out too.” And it may well be that in his grief, he was willing to die with the worst of the rebels. But praise God, heaven had this great champion of faith in the eternal Book of Life, where it always had been and always would be.

Well, friend, this is for us to humbly pray about. The Bible scholars often debate, and we must do so graciously. But what good news that, even if heaven’s great pencil has an eraser, those who get with Jesus and STAY with Jesus will never once experience it.