Is God really and fully omnipotent?

Jehovah told Abraham: “I am God Almighty (Omnipotent).” (Genesis 17:1) Being almighty—omnipotent—Jehovah can use his power to overcome any obstacle to the fulfillment of his promises and purposes. Jehovah is also all-knowing, all-wise—omniscient. He therefore can foresee whatever he wishes to foresee. These two qualities make it impossible for Jehovah to fail.  Isaiah 14:24 "Jehovah of armies has sworn, saying: “Surely just as I have figured, so it must occur; and just as I have counseled, that is what will come true".

Isaiah 48:9 “I shall check my anger . . . I shall restrain myself,” Jehovah told the apostate Israelites.  Such statements help us see that God sets a perfect example in never abusing power. It is a fact that no one has greater power than God. That is why we refer to him as the all-powerful One, the omnipotent One. He rightly applies the title “Almighty” to himself. (Genesis 17:1) Not only does he have unlimited strength but he has all authority because of his position as the Sovereign Lord of the universe, which he created. That is why no one can presume to check his hand or say to him, “What have you been doing?” Daniel 4:35.

Because of God’s position as the omnipotent Creator, earthly life is his to give and his to take away. Indeed, humans lack the perspective legitimately and knowledgeably to question God’s use of force. Man must learn to conform his thinking to God’s. “Are not the ways of you people the ones that are not adjusted right?” Jehovah asked. Ezekiel 18:29; Isaiah 45:9.

God also lives by his own laws and priciples.  He sent his son to redeem mankind not because he had to but out of love.  The redemtion of mankind legally required a perfect human sacrifice, that is what justice and legality demanded.  He wasn't going to spare himself the pain just because he was God, but stuck to his principles at great cost to himself and his Son. 

Are seeking a theological explanation or a plain explanation?

"why is it necessary to show us love in such a painful way? "

Free will. The connection of the 2 is a paradox, but the fact remains they do connect at some point. Just like we can't fully understand infinity, or the concept, so probably we here lack the abiblity to grasp it.

Well I can fully understand Infinity, its not too hard.

One possible reason is that he was mad at us for the whole fall thing and finally decided to give us a second chance.

Another is that in the OT many people sacrificed animals to get in to heaven. God sent down a pure blood to be sacrificed and it opened heaven for all.

Another thing to think about is that if Jesus is god, then he really didnt sacrifice anyone at all.

Really though you wont find the answer you are looking for.

Sure, if god was Omnipotent, then he could have done it the easy way. But at the same time, if he can do anything he wants, then he apparently wanted to do it the complicated way.

But the question is still there: if He can do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING then why is it necessary to show us love in such a painful way?

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You're also forgetting God's omniscience. He's all powerful, but also all-knowing. I don't think this sentence is so much questioning the power of God as much as it's questioning how he uses that power. We must realize, though, that for humans to understand God's ways is just about as reasonable as a cockroach understanding Einstein's ways.

He loves us and does not want us to suffer, yet many times we suffer. Why can He not just say, "Here is love. Here is mercy. Here is happiness."? This is how most Christians say He brought the universe into being: "Here is water. Here is earth. Here is light. Here is life." Why can't He just do the same with us? "Here is salvation. Here is knowledge. Here is eternal life for all." If He is really all-powerful then why do people go to hell? Can't He just make them righteous?

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This is when you come into the problem of evil, and the answer is free will. God isn't just going to "make" someone be righteous, since if God forces someone to be righteous, that person is not truly righteous at all, since he has no choice in the matter. There's no reason to praise someone for being righteous if they really had no other choice. Similarly, there's no reason to condemn someone for being unrighteous if they had no choice but to be unrighteous.

God has given people free will, and there's nothing wrong with free will in and of itself. In itself, it's morally neutral (much like a hand is morally neutral). The pivot point comes in how you use what you've been given. Some people use their freedom to reject God while others use that same freedom to accept Him. Without free will, true love cannot exist. Forced love is not love at all, but rape.

But couldn't we exercise our free will this way?:

God: "Do you want to be happy?"
Anyone: "Yes."

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Ah, and here's the misconception a LOT of humans have. People seem to think for some odd reason that our purpose of living is happiness. People see it as an unconditional right. This is not true. Show me in the Bible where it talks about God's main concern being the happiness of His people. Happiness may be a good thing, but when it comes to God and His purposes, it's the top priority. The top priority demonstrated in scripture time and time again is God's desire for people to come to know Him. Now whether people come to know more of God through disaster or pleasure is only a means to an end, that is, getting to know God.

Furthermore, I think that without evil, we would not truly know what "good" is. "Good" would be a word without meaning to us, just as if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. “Dark” would be a word without meaning, since we would have never known light to say that there is none. Knowledge of what good really is would appear to be a fortunate side effect that emerges from having to deal with people's rejection of God and His ways (people using their free will).

In my opinion, God cannot be omnipotent OR all knowing. According to the laws of physics, and Godel's theorem.

jodrey...suffice to say that god is a complicated fellow and is delighting in messing with our heads...

In my opinion, God cannot be omnipotent OR all knowing. According to the laws of physics, and Godel's theorem.

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So you don't think God, the author of the laws of physics, can transcend physics? That seems rather nonsensical. It also depends on how you define "omnipotence." Some people see God as having the sort of omnipotence to do "anything," whereas I see omnipotence as being better defined as being able to do "anything possible." Asking God questions like whether or not He can create two mountains without a valley in-between is nonsensical, since two mountains having a valley in-between is a necessary truth (by its very definition). This goes for omniscience as well. There are plenty of absurd questions that are unanswerable simply because of the nature of the subjects in the question. Things like "What does the number 2 smell like" is nonsensical simply because of definition.

As far as Godel's theorem goes, as I recall, it has nothing to do with disproving God's omnipotence or omniscience. He talks about Axioms, but those are nothing more than "obvious" statements about natural numbers. If you're more fluent in knowledge of Mr. Godel's theorem, please, do elaborate.

Yeah im with feral, if gods omnipotent, then he sure must be bored as he seems to definatly like to do things the hard way and to mess with the poor little human brains.

Just because you create something doesn't mean that you can trancend it. If a person builds a cage for themselves, their status as creator of the cage doesn't unlock it for them. Besides, who said God wrote the laws of physics, the laws of physics apply to all matter, and God must be made of something or he wouldn't exist.

I have more on Godel's theorem by the way, but I have to go get it first.

Ok I have it. Godel's theorem also states that there is an infinite amount of knowledge in the universe, and that it is impossible for all of it to be recorded because every time you record something you create new information, and you need something more to record it on. God would have to consist ENTIRELY of knowledge even if he is infinite, there would be no room for any other part of him, and since there obviously ARE other parts of him, he can't know evrything. That doesn't make him any less powerful though, if he knows all the IMPORTANT things, then that's all that matters.

Just because you create something doesn't mean that you can trancend[sic] it. If a person builds a cage for themselves, their status as creator of the cage doesn't unlock it for them.

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Ah, but there's no reason for God to "cage himself" inside of the laws of physics. Besides, if you are creating something, it is necessary that you transcend it during the creation process (It's hard to be bound by something not yet created).

Besides, who said God wrote the laws of physics, the laws of physics apply to all matter, and God must be made of something or he wouldn't exist.

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But God doesn't have to be made out of matter. In fact, the spiritual and the material are two completely separate things in the world. Simply because the natural world is made up of matter does not mean the creator of that world is made up of the same substance any more than a baker of cookies is made up of doe.

Ok I have it. Godel's theorem also states that there is an infinite amount of knowledge in the universe, and that it is impossible for all of it to be recorded because every time you record something you create new information, and you need something more to record it on. God would have to consist ENTIRELY of knowledge even if he is infinite, there would be no room for any other part of him, and since there obviously ARE other parts of him, he can't know evrything. That doesn't make him any less powerful though, if he knows all the IMPORTANT things, then that's all that matters.

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Oh, that old fallacious argument. It basically says “If you know something, then you must know you know that same thing, and you must know you know you know that same thing, etc.” It’s nonsensical, since that same argument applies to knowledge of anything. According to this, I must be pure knowledge, since I know that I know something, and I know that I know that I know that same thing, all the way to infinite.

Trying to understand God’s knowledge solely by the use of ours is utter folly. It is like a cockroach trying to understand the knowledge of humans, and even put limitations on human knowledge, by comparing human knowledge to its own.

But the baker and the cookies are both made out of the same chemicals, just arranged differently and there are more in the baker. Besides, "Spiritual" matter must share some of the characteristics of normal matter because God can interact with our world and we can interact with his.

If spiritual matter were completely seperate then neither God nor Humanity would have any idea the other existed

I will leave Godel's theorem to rest right now, I know there is an answer to what you said somewhere, but I don't feel like digging through his collected works at the moment so I'm going to come back to it later. But there is a perfectly resonable explanation that answers what you said about him