When God created the universe He did not use magic. He planned in advance the rules that would govern energy, atomic cohesion, biology, entropy, matter, physics, and quantum physics. Then Christ, who lived in the realm of spirit, created a corporeal reality--from the absoluteness of the infinite void that lacked energy, time, space, and matter. He willed into existence the energy and the particles of matter that now comprise the massive cosmos that surrounds our little planet. Then, applying the laws of physics and biology He manipulated the very molecules of His cosmos and He created life itself.

God did not use magic. He created physical laws, and the energy and matter that obey those laws. He manipulates this physical realm by ordering the energy and matter particles that He brought into existence.

When God performs miracles, He commands the very atomic and molecular elements to reorder themselves so that the result is compatible with His physical laws even though there were no physical means or abilities to have achieved that result. For example, water is hydrogen and oxygen. When Jesus changed water to wine, He had the knowledge and power to reorder every molecule to be reassembled into wine, the resulting substance of which obeys and is compatible with the physical laws of this universe even though there was no physical means to have instantly reordered the molecular structure of the water. That is a miracle.

Magic is an imitation of the miraculous. By magic I am not referring to the slight-of-hand misdirection-trickery of illusions by David Copperfield. I am referring to actions and results that cannot be accomplished by ordinary persons. Nor am I referring to the use of science and machinery by which one can convert coal to electricity. I am referring to only the use of will and knowledge. No human has the knowledge or the power to reorder matter or energy by mere use of their will.

Yet, the Bible speaks of Egyptian magicians having performed acts that mimicked genuine miracles. Today we hear about impossible things that happen when children play with Ouija boards. How can such things be if humans do not have the power of will or the knowledge to reorder molecules and energy?

Satan is the prince of the power of the air. This is a limited authority he has for a limited time to be sure. Yet, at his disposal are legions of angels (one third that followed him from heaven) called demons. Scripture is replete with comments about the angels of God and the demons of Satan being able to do what man cannot: reorder matter and energy.

When a human "magician" (not an illusionist doing slight-of-hand) appears to perform acts of true power, or a Ouija board answers a question on its own, the power is that of a demon taking action. Humans can do no such thing. There is no magic, only the operations of demons.

Some will argue that controlling or commanding a demon to get things done is magic. After all, what are spells and incantations except verbal petitions to demons to make something happen? Such persons who offer supplications to demons do not understand that men cannot control or command demons. The demons are controlling and manipulating them. Satan is the prince of the power of the air, not the other way around. Demons appear to "obey" the human so as to deceive them and bring them more and more under demonic influence and more and more into the chaotic thinking of evil. This leads the human to becoming open to being possessed, the slave of the demon, not its master.

No, there is no magic, only demons. Satan is prince (not king) of the power of the air of this planet. And Christ is the King over all He created. Pray to the Creator, the King of Kings, for a new heart, a living spirit, and for the forgiveness of sins, and He will save you, sending His Holy Spirit to live inside you as a guarantee of ultimate salvation and a protection against the powers of this world. Who needs magic when God offers you a personal miracle like that?

C.S. Lewis once famously stated in his book, The Problem of Pain, that it was "nonsense" to assume that God chose who would be the elected saints and also those who would reject Him while He simultaneously held guilty those who turned away from Him. To Lewis God was incapable of choosing whom He would love and call to salvation while at the same time condemning to Hell those whom He chose not to give the gift of saving faith.

D.A. Carson more correctly noted that God can do all the choosing (He chooses both those who go to Heaven and those who go to Hell) while holding responsible those humans whom He did not choose to come to belief in Christ. Carson, in his book How Long O Lord?, does not find this concept to be nonsense but concurrent biblical truths.

The Apostle Paul, of course, presents the doctrine of predestination / election ("a choosing in advance") in the terms understood by Carson. Paul notes that God chooses those humans He will honor with salvation and those who are destined for destruction in Hell (Romans 9:8-22). He did all this choosing "before the foundation of the world" was spoken into existence (Ephesians 1:4). Merely because Lewis could not personally do what God can do is not warrant to accuse God of being nonsensical.

But let us explore this idea of logic and apparent contradiction. Arminians are celebrated for following Lewis in accusing God of uttering nonsense in Romans 9. They say if God chooses those who will believe and those who will not believe then it is illogical to hold the unbelievers responsible for their unbelief for no one can resist the choosing of God; it is not the human’s fault so the person does not deserve Hell. Paul debunks this very accusation in Romans 9:13-21.

It seems to escape the Arminian’s notice that their position has an extraordinary and overwhelming illogical presupposition underlying their own framework. They argue that before creation God desired all the world to become saved and therefore He chose no one to be saved or unsaved, but relied upon the freewill of each person to decide their own fate. Then, before the world was yet created, He looked into the future and saw which person would accept Him and which would reject Him, then He only "elected" those who would use their freewill to accept Him.

Such a scenario is impossibly illogical. Before the world was created, IF God could see into the future to know what persons would choose to believe in Him and what persons would not, and IF God desired everyone in the world to be saved, then WHY did He allow the unsaved to be created or even born?

Was God not powerful enough to change the future before it happened and demand that His desires be implemented? Was God not powerful enough to decree, "Johnny is not going to choose Christ, but since I want all people to be saved I will simply not have Johnny be born"? Was Johnny more powerful than God so as to thwart His good intentions?

Or maybe God is not all knowing and cannot really see into the future? Perhaps God did His best to foreknow what each person would do, but since the future is always in motion it is blurry and hard to read, so He most often got it wrong since most people go to Hell?

The notion that God is either lacking in power or lacking in knowledge (or foreknowledge) is heresy, illogical, and nonsense. Yet, this is the underlying assumption that must be made by all Arminians when they promote freewill. Lewis boasted that he believed God defers the use of His power to allow humanity to exercise his freewill. That comment is self-contradictory when Lewis also claims that God desires all people to be saved. If God desired all men to be saved, He would not have intentionally limited His power and thus condemned untold multitudes to Hell. Remember, there is no good reason why God allowed Hell-bound unbelievers to ever be born when He could easily have stopped each one from coming into existence while still allowing to be born all those who would choose to believe in Him.

Arminianism is logically flawed. Worse, it is biblically flawed. It makes God to be less than God in both knowledge and power. Given the choice between accepting the mystery of biblical election / predestination and the logical contradictions and heresies introduced by Arminianism, I must side with the Apostle Paul.