The following excerpt comes from a well-known Southern Baptist pastor:

“In the forty-sixth chapter of Isaiah and beginning at the ninth verse, listen to the Word of the Lord:

For I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me,
Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure. Calling unto the ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth my counsel from a far country: yea, I have spoken it, I will bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it.

That’s our God. Now that’s what you call foreordination. That’s what you call predestination. That’s Calvinism. And I am a Calvinist. That’s good old Bible doctrine. And I believe the Bible. These things are in God’s hands. And ultimately, and finally, He purposed it and executeth all of it.”

Dr. W. A. Criswell, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, made this comment in a sermon he preached 50 years ago on November 20, 1955. The sermon is called
“The Doctrine of Predestination.”