Proofs of Election

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1 Thessalonians 1:4-6

Knowing, brothers beloved, your election of God.…

The way by which the apostle knew the election of the Thessalonians must be the method by which we are to know ours. We have known some men who pretended to know their election by their impudence. They had got into their head the presumption that they were elected, and though they lived on in sin, and still did as they liked, they imagined they were God's chosen. This is what I call presuming upon election by sheer impudence. We know others who have imagined themselves to be elect, because of the visions that they have seen when they have been asleep or when they have been awake — for men have waking dreams — and they have brought these as evidences of their election. They are of as much value as cobwebs would be for a garment, and they will be of as much service to you at the day of judgment as a thief's convictions would be to him if he were in need of a character to commend him to mercy. You may dream long enough before you dream yourself into heaven, and you may have as many stupid notions in your head as there are romances in your circulating libraries, but because they are in your head they are not therefore in God's book. We want a more sure word of testimony than this, and if we have it not, God forbid that we should indulge our vain conceits with the dainty thought that we are chosen of God. I have heard of one who said in an ale house that he could say more than the rest, namely, that he was one of God's children; meanwhile he drank deeper into intoxication than the rest. Surely he might have said he was one of the devil's children with an emphasis, and he would have been correct. When immoral men, and men who live constantly in sin, prate about being God's children, we discern them at once. Just as we know a crab tree when we see the fruit hanging upon it, so we understand what spirit they are of when we see their walk and conversation. "Without holiness no man shall see the Lord." If we are God's elect, we shall have some substantial evidence to attest it.

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