Predestination :

Warning!I feel like the conversation have become more of a "Calvinistic"topic and is moving away from the op

justified, sanctified, and galvanized.

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So what is the difference between the world and a DVD? Does God just have better technology to put more on his type of DVD? Are we just a movie on His shelf that He likes to watch occasionally? If our technology improves will the characters on our improved DVDs also have consciousness?

If the story is already written, I don’t see any difference at all – just inanimate objects no matter how fancy the technology. The characters have no legitimate reasons to feel responsible for their actions – their story was just written that way. Any feeling of responsibility is less than an illusion – just something the author threw in to make a more interesting story.

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To me it’s a lot like the arguments over prophecy. This is rhetorical, but related enough I felt it could be mentioned concerning free will. World vs. DVD mindset. But essentially it is , “ Is prophecy God forcing someone to do something or is it God proving his power through foretelling what he knows will happen.

Like was Judas forced by God to turn in Jesus or did Jesus know that Judas was going to betray him because his God who knows all things foreseen it and expressed it to his son.

So when it comes to predestination I think there is a big difference between God taking away peoples free will versus God already knowing what will happen. In romans 9 it mentions the Pharaoh. Many leap to that to prove Pharaoh was nothing more than someone created to be a vessel or wrath. But I think it’s equally plausible given the context of the entire Bible, to realize God knew Pharaoh was evil. So God simply helped influenced him to harden his heart more and more. I think the influencing happened much in the same way as with Ahab. His heavenly host.

So in the same way God uses the Holy Spirit to influence people, God also knowing the future will sometimes likewise use evil spirits to influence evil people. But it does not mean he made them evil or that they were not responsible for choosing that path. Hardening a heart of a evil man already hardening his heart is very different from ruining a good heart of a good man.

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Yes. I read the story of the Pharaoh in the same way.

Just because I don’t believe God created us to be robots or characters in a novel, and I don’t think He wants us to be that way, this doesn’t mean that we do not turn ourselves into robots with our own bad habits. And if we are going to wear such buttons on our sleeve making ourselves so easily manipulated then why shouldn’t God push these buttons for the accomplishment of His providence of salvation? Why should they be left only to the demons and evil people to take advantage of.

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Since the Bible teaches election, predestination, about God’s chosen and more, and it teaches the fact that we are responsible for our choices, please consider that God’s relationship to time and to us in time cannot be described by tensed language, which is the only language we have.

 

None of the rigid or ‘forcing’ metaphors people ascribe are applicable.

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thanks for opening a rabbit hole here with that time piece. I wish I had the time to go down it all the way

just trying to remember a book written with a variety of endings determined by your choice. That is how modern virtual reality game work as well and why they suck you in as you determine the outcome.

Remember SETI? Recently listened to an podcast of Unbelievable with Lennox and Davies in search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. Find it funny that they did not figure out that we have received signals from extraterrestrial intelligence for millenia already, only that some people when being given the switch decided to turn of the receiver part of the equipment.

What does this mean?

Our brain is a receiver of signals of outside intelligence - until we flick the switch in puberty and declare it our inside intelligence in order to claim authority, thus to be God like. If you ever received what you perceived to be an “original idea”, have you ever wondered where it came from?

Interesting–but that’s more to do with identity as an individual, isn’t it? Honestly, I am not aware of anything I have done that is original with me, but I think that developmentally, I can see that it’s a construct. However, are you saying that we ignore extraterrestrial information? I don’t understand.

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The best word in the English language.

Does God know if it’s going to rain this afternoon?

One liners are severely frowned upon I know, so, reality is indeterminate. Rainfall is affected by quantum level events. So is conception. So how can God predestine anyone literally? Apart from Himself as Christ of course. Now Paul, may have been being literal minded, a tad Aspby, but I suspect hermeneutic phenomenology would say otherwise. You should know Nick. What does the Greek of a Hebrew thinker say and mean?

Ummm what???

Yeah. You, a Greek thinker, quoted an extremely limited English translation of a Hebrew thinker’s ancient Greek with belief that it is objective truth about God. A mixture of stages I-III in Christian development.

Still cannot understand you.Paul was a Roman firstly and me beign Greek what does it have to do with it?And what the @@ exaclty is “Greek thinker”?Does anyone think according to their nationality?What broscience is this?

Paul was a Jew first. His mother tongue wasn’t Latin. Our language shapes our thinking, our meaning, our culture.

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Nope.That indicates that some people think “better” or some cultures are “better”.Not scietific ay?

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How does it indicate that? Especially back in time? [[How advanced in mathematics will a culture be whose number system is one, two, three, many?] Also, social complexity, as in pluralism, is better. Evolution, including linguistic and social, to the more complex, is better. And which culture would you say gave the greatest contribution to complex language? I know what I’d say.]

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I find that the best way to understand the Bible is to view it in context. The context of this text is Paul and his calling, not Calvin or Arminius. Nick said that Josephus said that the Pharisees believed strongly in divine providence and freewill. Paul was a Pharisee by training and I think he agreed.

Predestination :

We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him , who are called according to his purpose.

Who is called according to His purpose? Everyone!. God so loved the world that He sent His Only Son so that whoever believes in Him would not perish, but have everlasting life. All people are called to love God and be members of God’s Kingdom.

All people are called and everyone has a unique place and role in God’s Kingdom, but not everyone responds to their call. We know the story of Paul’s call on the road to Damascus. Paul received a special call despite being a persecutor of the Church, or maybe it was because he opposed the Church that Jesus saw he needed a special attention to see that the Christians were the new People of God.

Paul saw that he had been wrong and followed Jesus as strongly as he followed Judaism, but without the persecution. (He could have said No to Jesus, but he did not.) Paul became a new creation in Christ and changed his name from Saul. Paul never said that he had to become a Christian. He was a true convert

On the other hand God did not make it easy for him as a Christian. He boldly preached in Damascus until he was threatened with death. Same thing in Jerusalem. He was sent home to Tarsus until Barnabas came looking for him to help out in Antioch. Then Paul became the Apostle to the Gentiles.

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified

When we think about predestination we usually do not think about being predestined to a life of a wandering preacher, rejected by the Jews and the Gentiles, persecuted, beaten up and left for dead, thrown in to jail many times, living on the kindness of strangers, and very much alone in this world, but this is the life that Paul lived.

Was God fair with Paul? Is God fair with us?

We have freedom of choice but within boundaries. God is love, just and righteous and is under no obligation to save anybody. We don’t know who is chosen or not chosen, our job is to share the gospel. Romans 9 is really the tough nut to crack especially the two boys before they did anything God chose one.

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