Does god predestine people to hell? (moved)

Albion

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I always thought god made everyone special? Like I've heard it a lot like god made before you were born or you were made special and stuff idk etc. Unless that's wrong o.o

I'm just speaking off the cuff with this, but we understand from the Bible that God foreknows each of us, but whether he designs each of us....I'm not sure. A lot of that kind of thinking is just what people like to believe, it seems. He clearly gave Adam and Eve the role of reproducing children according to natural laws that he, God, set in motion.
 
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oi_antz

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Well even if so it'd still be kinda useless to make someone to be destroyed and that's the whole purpose. Not only that but from what I read you think hell isn't real and I'm here like whoa lol. But yeah I always thought hell was like what all Christians believed and now I guess I'm wrong o_O
Look into it. There's a few major beliefs that majority of Christians haven't independently questioned, and when you scratch the surface, you can actually see for real that God is love and the gospel is beautiful. The other major one is Penal Substitutionary Atonement which leads also into "saved by faith" - the idea that you only need to believe you are saved to be saved. But actually the gospel of Jesus Christ is much fairer than that. Those who know the truth must live repentantly and obediently, and nobody is saved because of their beliefs but because of the way they treat others: Genesis 3:22 and Revelation 2:7, and Matthew 25:31-46.

No, the purpose of permitting people who sin and refuse to repent is actually really important. Do you remember that Adam and Eve did original sin before they knew the effects of sin? Do you think that maybe if they knew Cain would kill Abel, they wouldn't have done it? What about if they knew all the horrors since that time? What if they knew that Jesus would be mocked, beaten and blasphemed because of it? I reckon, the experience of sin is such that those who do repent and obey God will forever know how important it is. Those that are deemed unable to live forever demonstrate to those who remain, the extent that sin kills and destroys, and the severity of the trap it is.
 
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BobRyan

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I don't know but like I was sleepy and then this came to mind and it kinda made me courious. Well anyways we all know that god is omniscient right? So doesn't that mean our story plays out or something? It kinda be like me writing book or something and I knew the whole story before it even started. Also wouldn't this affect free will as well. This is just a curious question so yeah :p

God knows everything - which means He knew everything Jesus would say and do BEFORE Jesus said and did it!

Oh but wait - ! --- Jesus IS God! Jesus was sinless, was God AND had free will.

But no wait! God already knew what Jesus was going to do ... so... err?? um?? Jesus did NOT have free will???

God does not have free will???

You see the problem?? "It is tough to BE God"!!!

Trying to sit in His chair and figure out how it is that He can know the future AND He can still have free will - or in fact ANYbody at all could possibly ever have free will ... is an exercise beyond the pay grade of mortals.

Just accept the fact that God does have free will.

God DOES know the future -

And if both of those are true - then the fact that God knows your future as well ALSO does not stop you from having free will.

IF I go see a Movie -- called "A".

Then I invite you to the the movie and I tell you everything that is going to happen before it happens - is it then correct to conclude that I made them make the movie that way? It is not.

Not a perfect illustration - but it helps to explain the infinitely unexplainable topic.
 
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DavidPL

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God knows who is going to heaven and who is going to hell. The Bible says that many are called, but few are chosen. It does seem that this would be sort of cruel seeing as how most people are not going to heaven and if I were God I would probably just want to throw out the whole thing, but God does not see things like we see things. Many people fail to realize that heaven is only for Gods children and we become a child of God when we accept Christ as our savior, I don't think it would be fair to let people into heaven who did not accept Christ into heaven and thus, they go to hell. I don't believe in literal hellfire, but a metaphorical hell where people are not literally burning but more of an eternal refinement. It is difficult for me to accept hell as being an eternal place, however. I don't believe that God knowing your decisions will affect free will because, while we may choose to do whatever we desire, God knows the desires of our hearts better than we do.
 
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Hawkins

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I don't know but like I was sleepy and then this came to mind and it kinda made me courious. Well anyways we all know that god is omniscient right? So doesn't that mean our story plays out or something? It kinda be like me writing book or something and I knew the whole story before it even started. Also wouldn't this affect free will as well. This is just a curious question so yeah :p

Freewill is a very early concept developed among the Jews. The Essenes believe in complete predestination and thus no freewill. The Sadducees believe the opposite, that is, complete freewill with no predestination. While the Pharisees are in between, they believe that predestination is co-operated with freewill.

That being said, IMO predestination basically means God provides the chances for the saved to show themselves up as the saved in front of the angles (and other witnesses), such that the saved will be legitimately brought to Heaven under open witnessing. That is, the Pharisaic concept is more or less correct.

Alternatively speaking, our time on planet earth is short and limited. God knows who is who from the very beginning before the creation, but not the angels. God thus designed through predestination that the saved will be separated from the unsaved during their life time on earth, openly witnessed by the angels and the chosen saints as witnesses.

Freewill goes rather independent of God's knowledge. When people are put in a complete separation from God, God has the capability of not to know them at all. They will still be able to exercise their freewill in the absence of God's knowledge.

God's omniscience is not an out of control attribute or else He's not omnipotent. That is, He has the ability to refuse to know what He doesn't want to know. That reflects His omnipotence.
 
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madera23

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I'm assuming you are referring to what is known as "double predestination"? God knows all the possibilities that we have in our lives and the consequences of our actions and decisions. God knows what path we are on and where that path itself leads. So it is understandable why some may interpret this as God creating someone to be sent straight to hell without any choice in the matter. Despite the eagerness of the false teachings out there, we ourselves choose our path. And that path is to either accept Christ and his way or not.

From gotquestions I came upon this explanation, maybe it will help:



From this an example would be how Israel was/is chosen among all other nations to be used by God to reveal the truth. People usually ask that why above all other nations, did God choose Israel. But it has nothing to do with Israelite being "originally saved" than other nations. I think this would be known as "single predestination".

But shorty--God does not predestine someone straight to hell.
I don't know but like I was sleepy and then this came to mind and it kinda made me courious. Well anyways we all know that god is omniscient right? So doesn't that mean our story plays out or something? It kinda be like me writing book or something and I knew the whole story before it even started. Also wouldn't this affect free will as well. This is just a curious question so yeah :p
 
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madera23

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I don't know but like I was sleepy and then this came to mind and it kinda made me courious. Well anyways we all know that god is omniscient right? So doesn't that mean our story plays out or something? It kinda be like me writing book or something and I knew the whole story before it even started. Also wouldn't this affect free will as well. This is just a curious question so yeah :p
To answer the question, Only if your god was a demon.
 
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bling

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The problem is with your understanding of the relationship between time and God.

God knows all that is knowable of our past present and future.

How does God know our future free will choices?

We talk about God being outside of time so the God in the far distant future is the same God at the beginning of time and that God of our far distant future can see our future as just history to Him and communicate that history back to Himself at the beginning of time.

History cannot be changed since it already happened, so the history for God in the far distant future cannot change, but who created that history? Certainly God created most of that history, but God seems to have allowed humans to create some of the history (their limited free will choices to choose to accept or reject God’s Love).

There are things that are just not knowable: one of those things is “what a free will being will choose of their own free will if they are never to exist”.

So when you say: “Why did God create them?” If God is never ever going to create a being than God does not know what free will choices that being will definitely make. God would know the possible choices, but if the being really has free will, God cannot know for sure the choices made by that imaginary free will being.

As soon as a person is going to be made he becomes part of the God of the distant futures history knowledge, which is also immediately known by God at the beginning of time. So God does know everything past, present and future, since humans that will never exist are not part of the past, present or future.
 
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Dr.J0sh

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The problem is with your understanding of the relationship between time and God.

God knows all that is knowable of our past present and future.

How does God know our future free will choices?

We talk about God being outside of time so the God in the far distant future is the same God at the beginning of time and that God of our far distant future can see our future as just history to Him and communicate that history back to Himself at the beginning of time.

History cannot be changed since it already happened, so the history for God in the far distant future cannot change, but who created that history? Certainly God created most of that history, but God seems to have allowed humans to create some of the history (their limited free will choices to choose to accept or reject God’s Love).

There are things that are just not knowable: one of those things is “what a free will being will choose of their own free will if they are never to exist”.

So when you say: “Why did God create them?” If God is never ever going to create a being than God does not know what free will choices that being will definitely make. God would know the possible choices, but if the being really has free will, God cannot know for sure the choices made by that imaginary free will being.

As soon as a person is going to be made he becomes part of the God of the distant futures history knowledge, which is also immediately known by God at the beginning of time. So God does know everything past, present and future, since humans that will never exist are not part of the past, present or future.

Wait does god not know our choices or future or does he? If he doesn't does that not make him completely omniscient?
 
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elopez

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Freewill goes rather independent of God's knowledge. When people are put in a complete separation from God, God has the capability of not to know them at all. They will still be able to exercise their freewill in the absence of God's knowledge.
Is this to say you believe there is a lack of divine knowledge?
 
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AHH who-stole-my-name

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I would suggest that God knows humanity, since he created it and has a plan for all people. I'm beginning to think though that God knows where our decisions will lead us and has a way of placing marker in front of our eyes as a guide that we might not realize are there if we don't look for him to guide us. The problem with this idea of God knows everything is that people can use God's knowledge of all things to blame him for their troubles, when It is our decisions that have caused us the most grief.

Irresponsible people have made it their first line of defense to blame others and I really don't want to give them more ammo to shoot at those who are trying to understand the needs of humanity.
 
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Hawkins

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Is this to say you believe there is a lack of divine knowledge?

No. God knows by no means says that He will intervene. You can also know that whether tomorrow will rain. It by no means says that you need to do anything about raining.
 
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bling

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Wait does god not know our choices or future or does he? If he doesn't does that not make him completely omniscient?

God knows everything that will happen: Everything in our future is like history to God (like it has already happened), because it did happen in our future which is God’s present.

God knows all that can be known. What is not knowable are the exact future actions of a nonexistent free will agent. God can know all the possible actions of every possible free will agent, but it is only when God decides to make a free will agent that He knows all the decisions of that free will agent made, since that agent now exists in God’s present time and human’s future time.
 
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oi_antz

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We talk about God being outside of time so the God in the far distant future is the same God at the beginning of time and that God of our far distant future can see our future as just history to Him and communicate that history back to Himself at the beginning of time.
Is this described in scripture? It is hard to picture.
 
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oi_antz

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Wait does god not know our choices or future or does he? If he doesn't does that not make him completely omniscient?
Omniscient means to know all there is to know. But if the future hasn't happened yet then it can't be known, only expected.
 
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bling

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Is this described in scripture? It is hard to picture.

Like most of God’s miracles we have the result but not the explanation of how “scientifically” it was done.

For the last 100 years science experiments have shown time to be relative and no experiment has gone against the theory of time being relative. The relativeness of time is in relationship to mass/speed in what is described as the space/time continuum, but God needing to operate at greater than the speed of light and God may be energy without mass or maybe He is infinite mass???
 
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lutherangerman

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The bible does not expound on damnation but on salvation. And in none of the Epistles you find a clearly defined theology of damnation. Jesus stands for giving (not just offering) mankind a way of grace, forgiveness, divine peace and love. Look at the cross - Jesus' sacrifice on that cross counts for the whole world, not just for the "christian club". Everyone gets drawn to Christ, either to his real person or to something good that is in Christ's will and might mean more to him than his own person because Jesus Christ is a truly humble son of God.

I think this is the clear message of the Gospel, only when the early christians were persecuted so heavily, and when later on the christian people faced crimes and war, they were forced to consider questions of sin and guilt differently. They turned up ideas of damnation to threaten those people who did evil, because much evil had been happening and religion needed a way to counter the evil. We were not mature enough yet to combat evil with the good, to counter hatred with love.

I think we should not contribute more to this struggle. Let us instead be like Christ who knew how to do good to those who hated him, and who forgave his own murderers even though they showed no repentance. This may feel like submitting to evil, but in reality the good is given a chance. Christians in the Middle East know this story and forgive muslims for attacking them, knowing how to counter evil with good in order to heap burning coals on the heads of sinners. A human is of great worth in God's eyes, and that also when he has sinned.
 
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BobRyan

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God knows all the future with absolute certainty - as He knows the past - they are "alike to God"

He demonstrates this for Peter with the rooster crowing and Peter denying Him -

The test case interconnects the time of day, the nearness of the rooster to be within hearing range, the fact that Peter will stop to notice and count, the number of times the rooster will crow and the exact number of times Peter will fail. This goes far beyond "guessing" that Peter "might make a poor choice".
 
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oi_antz

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Like most of God’s miracles we have the result but not the explanation of how “scientifically” it was done.

For the last 100 years science experiments have shown time to be relative and no experiment has gone against the theory of time being relative. The relativeness of time is in relationship to mass/speed in what is described as the space/time continuum, but God needing to operate at greater than the speed of light and God may be energy without mass or maybe He is infinite mass???
Are you saying then that you do not have a scriptural basis for assuming that future history has already happened?
 
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