Over the years, having read various Charismatic authors and listened to a wide variety of Charismatic as well as evangelical preachers and teachers, the wide-spread use of the phrase “Divine intervention” always had a “noisy gong, clanging cymbal” (I Corinthians 13:1) sound to me. The reason it did I believe is made evident by Paul’s inspired description of the worthlessness of giftedness, knowledge, and unselfish generosity when motivated by anything other than Godly love. The necessity of true Christ-like love sheds revealing light on the subtle, but profoundly skewed, twisted, deceptively evil implication of this ever so popular, pseudo, righteous sounding expression. In many cases there, no doubt, is not a conscious, deliberate intent to distort truth and thereby deliberately lead people away from the truth. However, in some cases there is indeed a most willful, deliberate, greed and power motivated, intent to capitalize on the blindness of the lost and the Biblical ignorance of immature believers. There is much warning in the New Testament concerning the presence of such false teachers who are intent on leading their unbelieving followers into darkness and ultimate damnation so as to accomplish their own selfish agenda — Matthew 7:15-20; Acts 20:28-31; Romans 16:17-18; II Thessalonians 2:8-12; II Timothy 4:3-4; II Peter 2-3; II John 7-11; Jude 3-4,10-16. Many well intentioned believers in the church today will likely view my evaluation of this much used, “revered” acknowledgement of God’s involvement in the affairs of men as intolerant, harsh, critical, excessive, or even malicious — none of which is my intent nor the spirit wherein I am writing. My intent is to be faithful to the word of God concerning the Holy person of God that any true believer who reads this evaluation might indeed be, as Paul expressed in Colossians 1:28, presented “…complete in Christ.”
That being said, why describe the phrase “Divine intervention” as “a quasi Deistic, Arminian distortion of the God of Holy Scripture”? First, Deism is that anti-Christian philosophy that, at its height in the 18th century, supplanted special revelation with general or natural revelation, teaching that truth was to be discovered by way of human reason, not divine revelation. In fact, Deists, then and now, believe that God created the universe and having completed that task, He then withdrew from the processes of man’s daily living, thus becoming totally irrelevant in the affairs of men. Therefore, if in no other way but by implication, this phrase is Deistic in that it implies that God, having been off somewhere outside this universe, for reasons unknown to anyone but Himself, chooses to periodically reengage with His creation by means of “Divine intervention”. Such belief, whether intentional, or unintentional, stands in abject opposition to the Biblical revelation of God as the Holy, uncreated, always existent God of all creation, who rules Sovereignly over His perfectly predestined, perfectly foreordained, perfectly created universe for the immutable fulfillment of His promise to His Son to give Him a Holy bride — namely the church, a graciously, lovingly, kindly redeemed humanity that is that Holy bride — Titus 1:1-2; II Timothy 1:9; Ephesians 1:3-14; Colossians 2:9-15; 1:22; Isaiah 44:6; 55:6-7, 8, 9-13; 46:8-10.
Secondly, this phrase, again, be it intentional or not, embraces something of that Arminian, unbiblical error that emphasizes a belief in the “freedom of the human will”, thus making man an active, cooperative, agreeing participant with God in His redemptive plan that ultimately makes man sovereign and God wringing His hands hoping man will “choose Jesus”. Founded by Jacobus Arminius, a Dutch theologian and contemporary of John Calvin, Arminianism holds to 15 major tenets. Contained within these 15 tenets are teachings that are quite compatible with and complimentary to the Deistic belief that all truth is discoverable through proper application of human reason. I offer the following 6 examples of the 15 major tenets of Arminianism as the basis for describing “Divine intervention” as “a quasi Deistic, Arminian distortion of the God of Holy Scripture”: 1) Human beings are free agents, 2) God’s decrees are conditional, not absolute, 3) Sin consists in acts of the will, 4) Man’s depravity is not total, and his will is inclined toward God and good (this tenet is fertile ground for the growth of Deists belief in truth being discovered in natural reasoning as opposed to special revelation), 5) Regeneration is determined by human will, not Divine decree, and finally 6) There is no distinction between common grace and special grace (this tenet provides further commonality with Deistic rationalism and stands in abject reject of the truth of Psalm 19; Matthew 5:45).
Far more than representing a Biblically correct expression of faith and trust in a perfectly faithful, perfectly righteous, perfectly Holy God, who is Sovereignly, providentially accomplishing His Holy will in His created progression of the days of human history (Genesis 1-2; Psalm 104; Acts 17:24-28), this phrase, “Divine intervention” is actually nothing more than a human, man-centered (thus the tie to Arminianism) explanation of why a certain thing did or did not take place or come to pass. This, in actuality, reveals a completely unbiblical understanding of the person and position of God in His transcendently Sovereign predestined order of and relation to the providential affairs of man (Proverbs 16:1,4,9; 21:1-1,30-31; Jeremiah 29:11-13; Acts 17:26) and his living of life day by day on this beautiful earth, created by God to bless all men — Psalm 118:24; I Timothy 4:4-5; 6:17. To state it again — the God of Holy scripture, as identified in scripture (Isaiah 44:6), is indeed, and gloriously so, not only the one and only true God of all creation, but He is equally and inherently so, the present, uncreated, always existent providentially superintending sustainer of all life and creation — every second of it and every molecule of it, from beginning to end – Romans 11:33-36; Isaiah 46:8-10; Revelation 22:12-13.