- Dec 27, 2015
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This is a vexed question for me. I make the claim that on the night my father died, nearly 40 years ago now, he appeared in my room in the unit I was living in at the time.
I felt something like a shake on my back, turned over in bed, and he started to materialise near the door. Most of the time he was looking over my head at something behind me with a look of awe on his face, but at other times he was trying to hide his face behind his "hands" (bearing in mind he was a spirit only at that time, yet he still had human form).
At the end he gave this terrifying scream, and it was obvious that something was coming for him. His fear was so great I started to scream myself, even though I couldn't see what was there.
Then he just disappeared, and I was left sitting up in bed wondering "What the hell was that?" Four days later my uncle turned up to tell me he'd died, but it was a mess as he'd been dead for four days before being found.
As far as I'm concerned it was him, and I've been through all the spiritual counselling and so on.
However at one point he cried out, "I always was doomed! I didn't really have any choice!"
Now I was an atheist at that time, not becoming a Christian till nearly four years later, but I argued back saying "That can't be right!" He replied, "Oh, it's right, all right, you can see that from here!"
Later in the same exchange though he admitted, "I was WILLING!" (to continue doing the cruel, vindictive, stupid, bad tempered things he'd done all his married life, and to basically wreck his own family).
So while God may wish all men to be saved, as one of the posters above has stated, viz. ....
1 Timothy 2:3:4 NIV "This (Prayer) is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth."
... God is also the ultimate realist, and He knows many will refuse His offer. Some won't even think about it, and others will persist in their way of life until it's too late eg. my father.
I suppose the question should be "Does God actively desire some men (and women) should be lost?". I don't know - the way Christ spoke about Judas before the betrayal indicated Judas was lost even then, well before the event.
Yet without the betrayal, Christ would not have been crucified, and many would not have been saved. Was Judas's betrayal of Christ a part of God's active will?
I'm afraid I'm not God's psychiatrist, so I really don't know. What I do know, based in part on personal experience, is that both predestination ("I always was doomed! I didn't really have any choice!") and free will ("I was WILLING!") come into play.
I have an anecdote which indicates God's got more control than we think. My father died in January 1979. In late 2005 (26 years later) I was driving a cab part time at night (until I got sick of the drunks). The address where my father died was 7 Rivington Street, Nundah.
One night I happened to be in Nundah, and gravitated to Rivington Street. This got me thinking about some of the things he said the night he died (things which concerned the future). So I prayed for a "sign" that these things could be trusted. I seemed to get this sense that I should know better than to ask for "sign" ("a wicked and adulterous generation ..." etc.) but I persisted.
I don't think it was that shift, but the next shift when I pulled up to the cab rank in the city, and waited my turn for a customer. Eventually a bloke came to the car, a bit the worse for wear, hopped in the back, and just said "Nundah!"
I said "Whereabouts in Nundah?" He replied, "Just drive! I'll tell you where to go!"
So away we went, turned here and there, and ended up at 6 Rivington Street, Nundah, almost opposite the unit where my father died.
As far as I'm concerned I got my "sign", since Brisbane is a city of over a million people, and even the way it was set up seemed to me to have a sense of divine cynicism ("Just drive, I'll tell you where to go!").
Now that has me intrigued - I had free will where I drove, there were traffic lights, other traffic, other cabs, radio calls, and of course I had to wait my turn at the cab rank. But somehow God managed, despite all our democratic free wills, to bring this particular bloke to my particular cab within a single cab shift to give me the "sign".
How much control has He got?
I felt something like a shake on my back, turned over in bed, and he started to materialise near the door. Most of the time he was looking over my head at something behind me with a look of awe on his face, but at other times he was trying to hide his face behind his "hands" (bearing in mind he was a spirit only at that time, yet he still had human form).
At the end he gave this terrifying scream, and it was obvious that something was coming for him. His fear was so great I started to scream myself, even though I couldn't see what was there.
Then he just disappeared, and I was left sitting up in bed wondering "What the hell was that?" Four days later my uncle turned up to tell me he'd died, but it was a mess as he'd been dead for four days before being found.
As far as I'm concerned it was him, and I've been through all the spiritual counselling and so on.
However at one point he cried out, "I always was doomed! I didn't really have any choice!"
Now I was an atheist at that time, not becoming a Christian till nearly four years later, but I argued back saying "That can't be right!" He replied, "Oh, it's right, all right, you can see that from here!"
Later in the same exchange though he admitted, "I was WILLING!" (to continue doing the cruel, vindictive, stupid, bad tempered things he'd done all his married life, and to basically wreck his own family).
So while God may wish all men to be saved, as one of the posters above has stated, viz. ....
1 Timothy 2:3:4 NIV "This (Prayer) is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth."
... God is also the ultimate realist, and He knows many will refuse His offer. Some won't even think about it, and others will persist in their way of life until it's too late eg. my father.
I suppose the question should be "Does God actively desire some men (and women) should be lost?". I don't know - the way Christ spoke about Judas before the betrayal indicated Judas was lost even then, well before the event.
Yet without the betrayal, Christ would not have been crucified, and many would not have been saved. Was Judas's betrayal of Christ a part of God's active will?
I'm afraid I'm not God's psychiatrist, so I really don't know. What I do know, based in part on personal experience, is that both predestination ("I always was doomed! I didn't really have any choice!") and free will ("I was WILLING!") come into play.
I have an anecdote which indicates God's got more control than we think. My father died in January 1979. In late 2005 (26 years later) I was driving a cab part time at night (until I got sick of the drunks). The address where my father died was 7 Rivington Street, Nundah.
One night I happened to be in Nundah, and gravitated to Rivington Street. This got me thinking about some of the things he said the night he died (things which concerned the future). So I prayed for a "sign" that these things could be trusted. I seemed to get this sense that I should know better than to ask for "sign" ("a wicked and adulterous generation ..." etc.) but I persisted.
I don't think it was that shift, but the next shift when I pulled up to the cab rank in the city, and waited my turn for a customer. Eventually a bloke came to the car, a bit the worse for wear, hopped in the back, and just said "Nundah!"
I said "Whereabouts in Nundah?" He replied, "Just drive! I'll tell you where to go!"
So away we went, turned here and there, and ended up at 6 Rivington Street, Nundah, almost opposite the unit where my father died.
As far as I'm concerned I got my "sign", since Brisbane is a city of over a million people, and even the way it was set up seemed to me to have a sense of divine cynicism ("Just drive, I'll tell you where to go!").
Now that has me intrigued - I had free will where I drove, there were traffic lights, other traffic, other cabs, radio calls, and of course I had to wait my turn at the cab rank. But somehow God managed, despite all our democratic free wills, to bring this particular bloke to my particular cab within a single cab shift to give me the "sign".
How much control has He got?
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