I said I'd get back to this, but I don't think there's any more I can say.
I cannot believe in a God whose whole motive for creating man was to make sure that he sinned and would therefore one day need a Saviour.
God is love and full of Grace. The Gospel is that he gave us freewill about obeying him or not; a choice between life and death. We chose to go our own way without him - to say "thanks for creating us, but we'll do it on our own from now on." We deserved spiritual death, eternal separation from him, because that is what we chose." Some people still think they can do it on their own and get to heaven by their own efforts.
But because the debt for our sin was too great to pay, the sacrifice was too great, and because God loves us soooo much - he paid the price himself. THIS is love, that we could not save or help ourselves but God did.
There is no Scripture which says that God created evil - and especially not that it was a deliberate act because he wanted to be able to send his Son to endure a painful death and rescue us from something which was his doing in the first place. What father would plan and allow for his son to be tortured and killed to overcome something which was his idea? Jesus took the rap for US, not his Father.
__________________ "My Grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."
Why, throughout the entire OT, would God have been angry with people for not keeping his covenant and sinning, if he knew that he had made them to sin? That they had no choice and the existence of sin in the world was all his fault? These people had only done what God made them do - so why would he have sent plagues, wars and allowed some of them to die.
Paul addressed this very statement if you look in His epistles. Why do you find fault when there is none. Only God's Plan running as He planned. We find fault without knowing the why of it. Lean not to your own understanding.
The angels were created as part of the creation just like heaven and hell. Yes God had Glory but we are created to worship him and to praise Him to his glory .
Yes and Adam and Eve praised and worshipped him before they fell. Had they not sinned, their children would have praised and worshipped him, and when we turn to him, accept what Jesus did for us and receive eternal lfe, then we will truly be free to do what we were created to do. What's more, we will have chosen to do it. Love , praise and worship which are freely given are true love, praise and worship, and all the more precious to God.
__________________ "My Grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."
Paul addressed this very statement if you look in His epistles. Why do you find fault when there is none. Only God's Plan running as He planned. We find fault without knowing the why of it. Lean not to your own understanding.
I'm not finding fault, I'm saying that I do not believe that God created man, said, "and now I HAVE to make him sin just so that I can put myself through years of pain but look good when I rescue him." That is not love, and there is nothing in Scripture to support such a view.
Like I said, it's almost like someone who is suffering from Muchaussen's by proxy - it is not love, it is manipulating someone so that you can later get attention by playing the good guy and coming to their aid.
Not the God I worship or who is revealed in the Bible.
__________________ "My Grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."
NLT - Isa 45:7 - I am the one who creates the light and makes the darkness. I am the one who sends good times and bad times. I, the LORD, am the one who does these things.
HNV - Isa 45:7 - I form the light, and create darkness; I make shalom, and create evil. I am the LORD, who does all these things.
Here are many translations and they all say the same thing not in the same exact words but if you look up the definition of evil you will find all the words used to describe it in these translation. So who do you believe, Your own understanding or the word. Evil is the thing of which disasters, calamities, woe, good times and bad are brought forth.
Here are many translations and they all say the same thing not in the same exact words but if you look up the definition of evil you will find all the words used to describe it in these translation. So who do you believe, Your own understanding or the word. Evil is the thing of which disasters, calamities, woe, good times and bad are brought forth.
The Lord does often allow bad things to happen to us - maybe there's a reason or maybe we'll never understand why.
In the OT he sometimes used pagan countries to invade Israel and engage them in battle. The people would have seen these as being evil times; the prophets tell us that God allowed it to chastise his people for breaking the covenant. In the OT, people believed that all good and all evil came from God, and even in the NT they still believed that sickness was a punishment for sin.
All this is different from saying that God created evil and made man sin just so that he could later rescue him and get glory for himself, which is what you said earlier.
The word also says that God is love, faithful, compassionate, merciful, slow to anger - and that if a human father would not give bad things to his children, like a snake instead of a fish, then how could God? So what are you going to believe? Either the Bible contradicts itself or people in the OT's understanding of God was different. God is the same as he always has been. Either we believe that and try to reconcile the two different pictures of God that the Old and New Testaments seem to give; or we don't, and say that there was an OT God and a NT God.
Your choice, but I know what I believe.
__________________ "My Grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."
What is happening is that the religious world is trying to fit God into the religious box.
Because they cannot understand the why of what God has created they say that it can't be of God. But I ask you one definitive question.
If God were to end the creation right now what would there be that would still exist. Would the heavens and hell still be here. Would Good and evil still be here. Good would be, but there would be no evil. In understanding this fact, how do you reconcile your understanding to say that God did not create evil for His purpose.
What is happening is that the religious world is trying to fit God into the religious box.
Because they cannot understand the why of what God has created they say that it can't be of God. But I ask you one definitive question.
If God were to end the creation right now what would there be that would still exist. Would the heavens and hell still be here. Would Good and evil still be here. Good would be, but there would be no evil. In understanding this fact, how do you reconcile your understanding to say that God did not create evil for His purpose?
Because to create something you first have to have the idea of it, and then bring it in to being.
God is love. here's what 1 Cor 13 says about love:
"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."
How could God, who is not self-seeking, create man, MAKE him sin and then rescue him just so that he would look good and get praise from men?
How could God, who does not delight in evil, think up the idea of evil and then create it?
How could God, who always protects, create sin, make men sin and then punish or kill them for doing what he made them do?
God is pure and holy. This means that he cannot tolerate sin - sinners cannot come into his presence without having made some sacrifice or having been cleansed in some way. So how could he have created what he cannot bear?
People say that God can do anything - the one thing he cannot do is go against his own nature. It's impossible. When the Pharisees accused Jesus of driving out demons by the power of Beelzebub (the devil), Jesus said, "how could that be? How can a house that is divided against itself still stand?" Why would the devil have given Jesus power to drive out other fallen angels? Similarly, why would God, who by your reckoning created evil, then send his Son to earth to die an agonising death in order to defeat evil and overcome the sin he had created?
If someone asked you to do something really wicked/outrageous/illegal/hurtful, I'm quite sure you'd respond by saying, "no, that's not in my nature, I'm not like that." If you can conceive of something being against your nature, why can't you conceive of it being against God's?
If the world were to end right now and Jesus return again, then we would be taken to be with him forever and the world eventually destroyed. How does the destruction of the world prove that God created evil for that purpose? It is mankind that sinned and chose evil. God gave us a choice between accepting him or not, living his way or going our own. He didn't have to create evil, both men and angels found it for themselves when they decided to disobey God and go their own way - when they decided they could do a better job of running either the world or their own lives than the One who made both.
But as you so rightly said, God will not share his glory with another, he will not let men have their own way forever and will not let evil go unpunished. He is the judge. He judges people's hearts and punishes people for the evil they do. How could he do this if he created it in the first place?
__________________ "My Grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."
I said that He rescued man before man was created which says that there was a plan going forth before man ever had A THOUGHT.
He provided a Saviour before the sin was even committed, but Adam and Eve did not need to be rescued before they had sinned. They were driven out of paradise after they had disobeyed God - not before.
God appointed a Saviour before the sin had been committed because he knew what we would choose; he knew we would sin and be unable to keep his law and rescue ourselves. Nothing takes him by surprise. When Adam and Eve disobeyed, God didn't go into panic mode and think "oh dear, what's my plan B? How do I solve this?" Even when he sent the flood to wipe out all wickedness, he still knew what would happen.
God saw the whole thing - the creation of the world, sin, salvation and the final destruction of the world, before he began to create any of it.
__________________ "My Grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."
or people in the OT's understanding of God was different. God is the same as he always has been. Either we believe that and try to reconcile the two different pictures of God that the Old and New Testaments seem to give; or we don't, and say that there was an OT God and a NT God. 
It is mankind that sinned and chose evil. God gave us a choice between accepting him or not, living his way or going our own. He didn't have to create evil, both men and angels found it for themselves when they decided to disobey God and go their own way - when they decided they could do a better job of running either the world or their own lives than the One who made both.
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