Originally posted by cb
Evil tyrant? Why? If God created you, and knows whats best for you...why do you hate him if you deny him and things do not go your way? If you were a child, and ran into the road to spite your parents, would you hate them because you got hit by a car?
Hell is not a torture chamber. it is absence from the love and joy and purpose that God has for you. An absence that you yourself chose.
Originally posted by cb
Unworthyone-
maybe so. but don't give up telling him the good news.
Why is God an evil tyrant? I dont know, I didnt write the Bible.Originally posted by cb
errrrrrrrrrrrr...................
i'm not even going to touch what was said after the following comment:
"A person 'chooses' to go to hell, in the same way that a person 'chooses' to be tortured and killed for refusing to submit to the will of an evil tyrant."
Evil tyrant? Why?
If my parents were omniscient and omnipotent, and they did nothing to help me.. I wouldn't be very happy with them.If God created you, and knows whats best for you...why do you hate him if you deny him and things do not go your way? If you were a child, and ran into the road to spite your parents, would you hate them because you got hit by a car?
The Bible disagrees with you.Hell is not a torture chamber.
Originally posted by Neo
Why is God an evil tyrant? I dont know, I didnt write the Bible.
If my parents were omniscient and omnipotent, and they did nothing to help me.. I wouldn't be very happy with them.
The Bible disagrees with you.
Originally posted by cb
The bible in no place shows God as being an "evil tyrant". Just, yes. Evil? No.
If they knew that I would run out into the street anyway, and they were capable of stopping it, and they did nothing, I'd be upset with them. Id be even more upset with them if they completely abandoned me for making a mistake, like the biblical God does. But, human parents aren't omniscient and omnipotent like God, and good parents would never abandon their children.You would be unhappy with your parents if you chose to run out in front of a car after they had just forbidden it?
Maybe the fire and brimstone part is symbolic, but I don't think the part about Hell being a place of eternal torment and suffering is supposed to be symbolic.It doesn't actually. The language is symbolic. We just miss it, because we didn't live in first century Palestine.
Are you saying that God was a fool to allow us the responsiblity to determine our own destiny? That he should have tweaked the universe so that every single individual would choose God? Isn't this contradictory to God's purpose in having a relationship with us? What is God freely chose, by His own Free will, to give us our own free will? By allowing you to make the choice that you will make, God is respecting you.
Romans 9:20-26 - But who are you, O man, to talk back to God "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?'" Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?
What if GOd, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known bore with great patience the objects of his wrath - prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory - even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? As he says in Hosea: "I will call them 'my people'who are not my people; and i will call her 'my loved one' who in not my loved one" and "It will happen that in the very place where it was said to them, 'You are not my people' they will be called 'sons of the living God'"
Ephesians 1:4-5 - For HE CHOSE us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.
John 6:37 - All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me i will never drive away.
John 6:44,64-65 - No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me drawws him and i will raise him up at the last day...For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would vetray him. He went on to say, "That is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him"
Romans 3:10-12 - As it is written: "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is noon who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.
Eph 2:4-9 "But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast
Originally posted by s0uljah
This is total BS. God wants everyone to CHOOSE to go to Heaven.
Because He doesn't want robots.
This makes no sense at all. It is illogical to think we have free-will, but expect everyone to be saved anyway.
Originally posted by DrLao
Why couldn't God have created a universe where everybody freely chooses heaven?
Now, you hold to a calvinsitc view point, which I do not. That would mean that God creates people for the sole purpose of sending them to hell, and then blames them for not choosing him all thru scripture. I feel very strongly that this is not what is taught at all. It would make God a liar.
Originally posted by unworthyone
Choice requires alternatives.
And if we all chose heaven would be the alternative?
********Originally posted by unworthyone
Neo's heard all the arguments. He doesn't care.
The alternative would still be there, but no one would choose it. If suddenly every person who has 'chosen' hell vanished from existence, would that negate your freewill?Originally posted by unworthyone
Choice requires alternatives.
And if we all chose heaven would be the alternative?
Originally posted by DrLao
We don't have any alternative anyway. God created us as we are, knowing full well what choices we were going to make. If an alternative is needed, then why didn't He create everyone to choose heaven except for one person?
Originally posted by Neo
The alternative would still be there, but no one would choose it. If suddenly every person who has 'chosen' hell vanished from existence, would that negate your freewill?