Do you believe in predestination ?

[rwe2156]

Not if you don't mix up salvation with election as being the same under the same rules...

Is salvation for anyone who wants it and election God’s instrument to those he calls to higher purpose? If so, then I ask “Who wants it?” Or maybe “Who can want it?”

What is the natural state of man? Does he have the ability or desire to respond? This is where most people part company - we are robots? man has no autonomy? some people are condemned to damnation (double predestination)? It’s really Deism at its core, the result is a man centered Gospel, with all its emotional appeal, gimmicks and ritualism - a fraudulent Gospel that rubber stamps people with a counterfeit salvation.

Yes, I t must be God as a separate being with limited power, more an observer than the orchestrator, is He wringing his hands hoping the man will be converted, shouting with joy when the angel rings the bell?

The prelude to Jesus’ response to Nicodemus was Jn 2, that He knows what is in a man. “How is one born again?” What is flesh is flesh what is spirit is spirit - they are not only different, they are mutually exclusive. Who? The answer is who knows? The Spirit moves in ways we will never understand.

Once you accept man in his natural state in incapable of accepting the Gospel, you have embarked on climbing the mountain of God’s Sovereignty in salvation.

Prior regeneration is necessary to believe. We commonly call this a “prepared heart” - the Parable the Sower. Who prepares the heart? This is a supernatural act no man can achieve.

If salvation hinged solely on a decision of man, who can be saved? Maybe the real question is not election but “who can resist?”

We’re not talking about quitting smoking but unfortunately most of modern evangelical theology promulgates a gospel that appeals to broken, spiritually inert people with formulas and rituals, gives the stamp of approval (church membership) and never expects one single thing in terms of sanctification, as long as you attend, you never will be questioned or rebuked.

 

[Brightfame52]

Craig goes on to write:

predestination isn’t determined by the predestinated, but by the Predestinator. These things are the works of God. They are unilateral and unconditional. It is His right to apply these to whomever He will as His is the power to do as He pleases. How presumptuous for men to think it could be any other way. We have proved by the word of God predestination is only applied to those which God has foreknown and elected unto salvation. It cannot be affirmed by the word of God that predestination (not to mention foreknowledge and election) is based on foreseen works or faith. That idea is foreign to the word of God. Rather, predestination, the Greek, proori prooridzO, means, to determine beforehand. So God determined beforehand the destiny of those He foreknew and elected. In other words predestination sets the course of certain ones so that they shall surely receive the gift of everlasting life and positively come to faith in God’s only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Listen, apart from the work of God no man can come to Christ because of sin. (Jn.6.29, 44) Man is dead in trespasses and sins. How few there are which grasp that man is really this dead. Well-meaning men pump just enough life into the man so that he can do something, anything. For this reason they have created one of the greatest contradictions in the word of God and one of the sharpest divisions there is among those of the true faith of Jesus Christ. They have made faith the moving cause for God’s foreknowledge, election and predestination. There is no better way to display the awesome greatness of God than by His public display from eternity past to eternity future that He can do what He pleases, when He pleases, and how pleases to whom He pleases. If you are one that knows Jesus Christ died for your sins, was buried and rose again from the dead there can be no greater comfort for you at this present time than to believe every word of God. Receive it all just as it is written and be blessed.

 

[Brightfame52]

Predestination is grounded in God alone and its #1 Unto Adoption

# 2 Why, because it pleased Him

#3 Its to the Praise of His Glory

Eph 1:5-6

5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,

6 To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.

God can boast/glory about this for all eternity

 

[Blade]

HAHA this can be very hard to understand and I can see how some believe it. I prayed once haha you know what I mean.. it was well I wanted to help my wifes faith. I wanted Him do to something in about 3-5mins from when I asked. As I started to pray...something I said I NEVER have before I said "you already knew what I was going to ask and you already put into motion the answer". Yes people were part of it. For everything to fall into place would have taken hours of days to turn out exactly as I asked. Never since He found me did I get a answer like that .. mind blowing.

So I can now understand how one could believe. Every one of us on that day I prayed had a free choice. Granted I personally believe that prayer that thought to ask for what I did came from Him? HAHA Yeah had to be me. You could get lost in all this. I will say that prayer I had no doubts what so ever not one.. I just knew.

Well think about how God treated Adam and Eve before and after the fall. Don't eat of this tree or after asks "who said you were, did you eat of the tree". Or with LOT..God said who can not lie.. said "I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry against it that has come to Me; and if not, I will know.” God didn't already know? He can't lie He said if not I will know. Something to think about.

There is haha so much to this GOD we can't ever here understand

 

[Brightfame52]

John Gill writing on Eph 1:5 predestination says:

Having predestinated us,.... Predestination, taken in a large sense, includes both election and reprobation, and even reaches to all affairs and occurrences in the world; to the persons, lives, and circumstances of men; to all mercies, temporal or spiritual; and to all afflictions, whether in love or in wrath: and indeed providence, or the dispensations of providence, are no other than the execution of divine predestination; but here it is the same with election, and is concerned with the same persons, and has regard to a special blessing, the elect are appointed to, as follows;
unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ unto himself; by which is meant, either the grace of adoption, which is an act of the Father's love, a blessing provided and secured in the covenant of grace; and is of persons to an inheritance, to which they have no legal right; and is entirely free, there being no need on the adopter's part, and no worth on the part of the adopted: or rather the inheritance they are adopted to; which exceeds all others, is incorruptible, undefiled, and fades not away; and lies among the saints in light, and belongs to all the children of God: and this they are predestinated unto by God the Father, who takes them into his family, puts them among the children, and gives them a goodly heritage: and that "by Jesus Christ"; or through him; for both the grace of adoption, and the kingdom and glory they are adopted to, come by and through him as Mediator; through his espousing their persons, assuming their nature, and redeeming them from under the law and its curses; through his giving them a power and privilege openly to be the sons of God; and through faith in him, whereby they are manifestly such: the phrase "unto himself", either refers to God the Father, who has chosen, set apart, formed and reserved his people and children for himself, for his peculiar treasure, and for his own glory; or to Jesus Christ, that he might have some brethren, and they be conformed to him, and he be the firstborn among them, and in all things have the pre-eminence; and that they might be with him, and behold his glory, and he be glorified in them: and this act of divine predestination was

according to the good pleasure of his will: the will of God is the rule of all his actions, and of all his acts of grace and goodness; and the good pleasure of it appears in the predestination of men to grace and glory: and from hence it is manifest, that foreseen faith, holiness, and good works, are excluded from being the moving cases of predestinating grace; and that it is wholly to be resolved into the good will and pleasure of God; the view in it being entirely as follows,

 

[Rapture Bound]

Divine Foreknowledge - A Comprehensive Examination :


(1) "Foreknowledge - How Could God Know The Future (Part 1 of 2)"
< https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgSriOp2gFc >

(2) "Foreknowledge - How Could God Know The Future (Part 2 of 2)"
< https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62LkIxJofcQ >


Arminianism and Molinism on Divine Foreknowledge :

https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1703&context=honors

[The following has been extracted from the above linked article, and was written by Nathan Justice as a Senior Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation in the Honors Program at Liberty University in the Spring of 2017].

"At their core, Arminianism and Molinism agree about the proper definition of
divine foreknowledge. Both camps hold that the biblical evidence supports God’s
completely and infallibly knowing the future; the difference arises when one addresses the implications of this definition.

Arminians hold that divine foreknowledge alone is sufficient to explain God’s providential control over creation and the coherent conjunction of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. However, it was shown that divineforeknowledge alone is incapable of supporting a strong theory of providential control, since it eliminates God’s ability to deliberate between options.

By contrast, Molinism establishes a basis for strong providential control through its affirmation of divine middle knowledge, and it coherently maintains God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. Additionally, Reformed Molinism conjoins Robert Kane’s event-causal libertarianism with Molinism and Reformed soteriology to produce the most biblically consistent and philosophically/theologically coherent view available."


A Molinist View of Election Or How to Be a Consistent Infralapsarian - Ken Keathley :

https://philarchive.org/archive/FREITL

[The following is the concluding statement of the above linked article made by Ken Keathley - Senior Professor of Theology and the Jesse Hendley Chair of Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina].

"Sometimes Molinism is described as inconsistent Calvinism, but one could argue that it is the other way around. Perhaps infralapsarian Calvinism is inconsistent Molinism. So I say to my infralapsarian brethren, that in regard to the concept of permission, Molinists have simply taken the steps you want to take, or at least you want to appear to have taken. If you wish to be consistent, you have a choice: either supralapsarianism or Molinism. '

I am thankful for the contributions that Calvinists are making to Southern Baptist
life. They are right to call Southern Baptists away from pragmatic methodologies and
reaffirm that salvation is a sovereign work of God. However, the decretal approach to
election taken by Calvinism seems to create more problems than it solves.

Molinism does not provide an explanation as to why God created a world in which it was possible for sin to enter, but it is not necessary to do so. Molinism is a defense, not a theodicy. A theodicy is an attempt to explain why God ordained the world he did. A defense is much more modest. A defense simply attempts to demonstrate that it is logically consistent to believe that a good and sovereign God can purpose to create a world like ours. Molinism accomplishes this. If one is going to do justice to the doctrine of God, he must affirm both God’s sovereignty and his permission. Molinism presents a forceful affirmation of both."


William Lane Craig explains how the Arminian perspective of God's "Simple Foreknowledge" does not account or allow for Divine Providential control :

Watch @30:32 - 34:00 mins. < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWly0PlaTMI >

"Proponents of Simple Foreknowledge of the future, without Middle Knowledge, can make no good sense of God's Providential planning of a world of free creatures. For logically prior to the Divine Decree, God has only Natural Knowledge of the possible scenarios and no knowledge whatsover of what would happen under any circumctances.

Thus logically posterior to the Divine Decree, God must consider Himself extraordinarily "lucky" to find that this world happened to exist. "What a break", we can imagine God saying to Himself ... Herod, and Pilate, and all those people, all reacted just perfectly. Actually, the situation is much worse than that, for God had no idea whether Herod, or Pilate, or the Israelite nation, or the Roman Empire would even exist posterior to the Divine Decree.

Indeed God must be astonished to find Himself existing in a world out of all the possible worlds that He could have created, in which mankind falls into sin and God Himself enters human history as a substitutional sacrificial offering to rescue them. Now of course I'm speaking anthropomorphically here, but the point remains, without Middle knowledge God cannot know prior to the Creative Decree what the world would be like.

If the defender of Simple Foreknowledge goes on to say that God's foreordination of future events is based upon His Simple Foreknowledge, then this trivializes the doctrine of foreordination, making it a "fifth wheel" which carries no weight ... since the future, by definition, cannot be changed once God knows that an event really is future ... there's nothing more left for foreordination to do ... foreordination becomes a redundancy. And surely there's more substance to the Biblical doctrine of foreordination then the triviality that God decrees that "what [ever] will happen will happen ..."