Short Timer said in post 3952:
Why would this God who "Foreknows" everything that is going to happen continue with a plan of salvation whereby he foreknew many would perish and then turn around and lie by saying it's not his will that any should perish???
2 Peter 3:9b means that God isn't willing that any of the elect perish, but that all the elect repent. For the "any" and the "all" refer back to the "us" (or "you"), which refers back to the elect (2 Peter 1:10). God is willing that the nonelect perish, for he purposely created them to perish (Romans 9:21-22). The ability to repent comes only as a miraculous gift from God (2 Timothy 2:25, Acts 11:18), and he gives it only to the elect. For he isn't willing that the nonelect repent.
God doesn't love everyone; he hates the nonelect (Romans 9:11-22). During their lifetime, God hardens the nonelect in their sinfulness instead of showing them his mercy (Romans 9:18), because he created them to be vessels of his wrath (Romans 9:20-22, Proverbs 16:4). They were of old ordained to condemnation (Jude 1:4). They were appointed to disobedience (1 Peter 2:8, Acts 2:23). But God never forces them or anyone else to commit sin. He never even tempts anyone to commit sin (James 1:13-15). All people will be justly held accountable for their deeds (Romans 2:6-8), for neither election nor nonelection takes away the free will of people.
God created nonelect people to be vessels of his wrath instead of vessels of his mercy so he might eternally make known his wrath and power (Romans 9:21-22, Proverbs 16:4, Revelation 14:10-11). And God created elect people to be vessels of his mercy so he might eternally make known his mercy, glory, and wisdom (Romans 9:23, Ephesians 3:10, Ephesians 1:8,11).
God wants these aspects of his nature to be made known to both humans and angels (Ephesians 3:10), neither of which group yet knows experientially the full extent of God's qualities and abilities (1 Corinthians 2:9; 1 Peter 1:12b). For example, the full extent of God's wrath won't be known to humans and angels until Satan and his fallen angels and all of unsaved humanity are cast into the eternal suffering of the lake of fire and brimstone (Matthew 25:41,46, Revelation 20:10,15, Revelation 14:10-11), and saved humans and holy angels go forth from the city of New Jerusalem on the new earth to witness the suffering of the unsaved in the lake of fire (Isaiah 66:24), the eternal hell (Mark 9:45-46), and realize by seeing it, not only the extent of God's wrath, but by it, by way of contrast, the extent of God's mercy toward them (Lamentations 3:22-23). Just as "up" can't be eternally known for what it is without the eternal coexistence of "down", so God's mercy can't be eternally known for what it is without the eternal coexistence of his wrath.
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The elect are those individuals, whether Jews or Gentiles, who were chosen (elected) and predestinated by God before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4-11; 2 Thessalonians 2:13), before they were born (Romans 9:11-24), to become initially saved by faith at some point during their lifetime (Acts 13:48b). This initial salvation is possible only because of Jesus' sacrifice (Romans 3:25-26), which was also foreordained by God before the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8; 1 Peter 1:19-20).
Everyone on his own is wholly corrupt (Romans 3:9-12), and so it is impossible for people on their own to ever believe in Jesus and the gospel and be initially saved (1 Corinthians 15:1-4, John 20:31; 1 John 5:13) through their own will (Romans 9:16, John 1:13, John 6:65) or their own intellect (1 Corinthians 1:18 to 2:16). Unsaved people can't understand the gospel (1 Corinthians 2:14; 1 Corinthians 1:18) because only initially saved people, who have received the miraculous gift of some measure of God's own Spirit, can understand it (1 Corinthians 2:11-16).
The nonelect can't ever believe in Jesus and the gospel and be initially saved, even when they are shown the truth (John 8:42-47, John 10:26, Matthew 13:38-42), because the ability to believe in Jesus and the gospel comes only to the elect (Acts 13:48b) wholly by God's grace as a miraculous gift from God (Ephesians 2:8, John 6:65; 1 Corinthians 3:5b, Romans 12:3b, Hebrews 12:2) as the elect read (or hear) God's Word the Bible (Romans 10:17, Acts 13:48, Acts 26:22-23), just as the ability to repent comes only as a miraculous gift from God (2 Timothy 2:25, Acts 11:18). Satan blinds the minds of unbelievers so that on their own they can't repent and acknowledge the truth of God's Word (2 Corinthians 4:4; 2 Timothy 2:25-26).
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Short Timer said in post 3963:
Salvation, or lack thereof depends on "Rightly dividing the word" . . .
In 2 Timothy 2:15b, "rightly dividing the word of truth" refers to how the Bible was originally written down in manuscripts which had no spaces between the words, no punctuation, and no distinguishing capitalization or non-capitalization. That is, it was just an unbroken stream of upper- or lower-case letters. So, for example, Genesis 1:6-7 would have looked like this:
andgodsaidlettherebeafirmamentinthemidstofthewatersandletitdividethewa
tersfromthewatersandgodmadethefirmamentanddividedthewaterswhichwere
underthefirmamentfromthewaterswhichwereabovethefirmamentanditwasso
This meant that those who studied the Bible (2 Timothy 2:15a) had to rightly divide between the words in order to arrive at the correct meaning. So, in the above example, if one mistakenly divided "watersandletitdividethewaters" into the words "water: sand, let it divide the waters", one would come away with the mistaken idea that Genesis 1:6-7 refers to God creating sand bars, instead of him creating the atmosphere (the firmament, the 1st heaven, in which the birds fly: Genesis 1:20b) to hold water up in the air (such as in clouds), above and separate from the water in the ocean.
