Does God determine how long I live?

[Jesus_is_Saint]

Does God determine how long I live?
If God determines I will live until 60, which mean no matter how good I take care of my health, I still will die at 60.
Right?
If God determines I will live until 90, even though I commit suicide I will not die.
Correct?

 

[Ken Rank]

Does God determine how long I live?
If God determines I will live until 60, which mean no matter how good I take care of my health, I still will die at 60.
Right?
If God determines I will live until 90, even though I commit suicide I will not die.
Correct?

I don't know if anyone can prove that God determines the years, but, what we do know is that God, who exists outside of time, simply knows how long your days are. See, all the things that mark time like the rotation of the earth (1 day) or the orbit of the moon (1 month) or the orbit of earth around the sun (1 year) are things God created and He existed before that. He is the beginning and end and knew in the beginning what He will know in the end... so.... just as a lamb was slain before there was sin (Revelation 13:8) I think God simply knows when your last breath will be taken. Can He prolong that? Sure, we have an example of Him adding, what was it, 15 years to a life? But even then, I imagine, He knew before He created anything that He would do that, too.

Both predestination and free will exist in Scripture. And instead of choosing one of them over the other like so many do, we just need to wait on Him to show us how both can exist in Scripture. I think the answer rests in "which set of eyes are we looking through?" See, if we see through God's eyes, the eyes that can see the end from the beginning, we are predestined. But if we look through ours, and we don't even know if our next breath is our last... it is free will. I am saying that to say that if you determine to commit suicide, I imagine it will work and He will have known you would do that before He said, "Let there be" about anything.

 

[~Anastasia~]

Does God determine how long I live?
If God determines I will live until 60, which mean no matter how good I take care of my health, I still will die at 60.
Right?
If God determines I will live until 90, even though I commit suicide I will not die.
Correct?

I think what you describe makes us something like puppets.

God KNOWS before you were created how long you will live. And He determines how long a man's days are on earth - you won't live longer than He determines.

But He has also given us free will. Just as we can reject Him despite His will that we repent and be saved, we can also reject our physical lives and commit suicide, though it is a terrible sin.

He could intervene in such an event and keep us alive through the attempt anyway - in whatever cases and for whatever reasons He knows, not I. But He can also let our will prevail, and we may die sinfully against His will by our own hands.

 

[Radrook]

The book of Ecclesiastes indicates that unforeseen occurrences are usually at work instead of God's direct hand.

Ecclesiastes 9:11
I returned to see under the sun that the swift do not have the race, nor the mighty ones the battle, nor do the wise also have the food, nor do the understanding ones also have the riches, nor do even those having knowledge have the favor; because time and unforeseen occurrence befall them all.
NWT

 

[Daryl Gleason]

Psalms 139:16 indicates that he does indeed determine how long we live, though the KJV doesn't render this clearly.

The NIV, for example, says this: "Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."

In Christ,
Daryl

 

[pdudgeon]

Does God determine how long I live?
If God determines I will live until 60, which mean no matter how good I take care of my health, I still will die at 60.
Right?
If God determines I will live until 90, even though I commit suicide I will not die.
Correct?

not quite.
man still has free will.
so yes, the leingth of every man's God-given life is determined.
So if (for example) God determined that a person should live to be 100, He can arrange for circumstances and events to work together to make that posible.
but because of free will, man can deliberately cut short his own life by deciding to reject what God has in store for him, and deliberately take his own life instead.
Or he can refuse any help offered, or go against good advice and decide to take the trip instead of delaying, or even to walk across a street on a red light, putting himself and the drivers around him at grave risk.

For a person to risk going into known danger deliberately in rebellion against God is to test God's will against their own, and is ill advised at best, and a grave sin at worst.

 

[smithed64]

I don't know if anyone can prove that God determines the years, but, what we do know is that God, who exists outside of time, simply knows how long your days are. See, all the things that mark time like the rotation of the earth (1 day) or the orbit of the moon (1 month) or the orbit of earth around the sun (1 year) are things God created and He existed before that. He is the beginning and end and knew in the beginning what He will know in the end... so.... just as a lamb was slain before there was sin (Revelation 13:8) I think God simply knows when your last breath will be taken. Can He prolong that? Sure, we have an example of Him adding, what was it, 15 years to a life? But even then, I imagine, He knew before He created anything that He would do that, too.

Both predestination and free will exist in Scripture. And instead of choosing one of them over the other like so many do, we just need to wait on Him to show us how both can exist in Scripture. I think the answer rests in "which set of eyes are we looking through?" See, if we see through God's eyes, the eyes that can see the end from the beginning, we are predestined. But if we look through ours, and we don't even know if our next breath is our last... it is free will. I am saying that to say that if you determine to commit suicide, I imagine it will work and He will have known you would do that before He said, "Let there be" about anything.

Yeah it was Hezekiah"

Isaiah 38:5"Go and say to Hezekiah, 'Thus says the LORD, the God of your father David, "I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; behold, I will add fifteen years to your life.

I agree about the predestination part. We have the right to choose. God knows what will happen no matter what we choose. Both of these are true in the Word. But there is no man explanation that makes sense to me about it. So, because they are both true. And God is in it. I'll just wait and ask God when I get Home to find out what was going on about it.

 

[Daryl Gleason]

With respect, if you feel that our right to choose has any effect on God's plans, even to the changing of the day of our own death, please consider Ecclesiastes 8:8.

Again, the KJV is not entirely clear, so I will offer the ESV rendition this time: "No man has power to retain the spirit, or power over the day of death. There is no discharge from war, nor will wickedness deliver those who are given to it."

In Christ,
Daryl

 

[Uber Genius]

Does God determine how long I live?
If God determines I will live until 60, which mean no matter how good I take care of my health, I still will die at 60.
Right?
If God determines I will live until 90, even though I commit suicide I will not die.
Correct?

ah... NO

This idea is known as fatalism and is false.

It presumes a causal relationship between what God knows and what free agents choice.

God doesn't necessarily know that you will die at say 60. His knowledge is contingent on when you die. So if you die at 61 his knowledge would change.

The confusing part is that his knowledge is chronologically prior (before) and logically posterior (after).

So your free actions influence what God knows.

Martin Luther and many of the various church leaders over the last 2000 years have been mistaken about fatalism. But it is false from both a philosophical standpoint as well as a Biblical one.

Look at all the prophecies that are conditioned on humans choosing and action. "if" is a statement that can't exist if fatalism is true!

 

[Uber Genius]

But there is no man explanation that makes sense to me about it.

Have you looked at molinism?

God has knowledge before creating of the future outcome of a near-infinite number of potential worlds.

He can examine what the free creatures choose in every one of those worlds. He can also enter into history however he likes, to steer it to his ends. But generally speaking he doesn't manipulate men's choices.

Once he finds a world that accomplishes the amounts of good, and those who will become disciples of Jesus that he wants, he creates that particular world.

Now agents still act freely as he knew they would. The outcome will occur as God saw so it that and only that sense is it predetermined, but men's actions are free.

 

[smithed64]

Have you looked at molinism?

God has knowledge before creating of the future outcome of a near-infinite number of potential worlds.

He can examine what the free creatures choose in every one of those worlds. He can also enter into history however he likes, to steer it to his ends. But generally speaking he doesn't manipulate men's choices.

Once he finds a world that accomplishes the amounts of good, and those who will become disciples of Jesus that he wants, he creates that particular world.

Now agents still act freely as he knew they would. The outcome will occur as God saw so it that and only that sense is it predetermined, but men's actions are free.

Yeah, I've read about it. I like what spurgeon had to say.


*********************************************************************************

The system of truth is not one straight line, but two. No man will ever get a right view of the gospel until he knows how to look at the two lines at once.

I am taught in one book to believe that what I sow I shall reap: I am taught in another place, that “it is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.”

I see in one place, God presiding over all in providence; and yet I see, and I cannot help seeing, that man acts as he pleases, and that God has left his actions to his own will, in a great measure.

Now, if I were to declare that man was so free to act, that there was no presidence of God over his actions, I should be driven very near to Atheism; and if, on the other hand, I declare that God so overrules all things, as that man is not free enough to be responsible, I am driven at once into Antinomianism or fatalism.

That God predestines, and that man is responsible, are two things that few can see. They are believed to be inconsistent and contradictory; but they are not. It is just the fault of our weak judgment. Two truths cannot be contradictory to each other.

If, then, I find taught in one place that everything is fore-ordained, that is true; and if I find in another place that man is responsible for all his actions, that is true; and it is my folly that leads me to imagine that two truths can ever contradict each other.

These two truths, I do not believe, can ever be welded into one upon any human anvil, but one they shall be in eternity: they are two lines that are so nearly parallel, that the mind that shall pursue them farthest, will never discover that they converge; but they do converge, and they will meet somewhere in eternity, close to the throne of God, whence all truth doth spring.

 

[Greg J.]

Does God determine how long I live?

Yes.

If God determines I will live until 60, which mean no matter how good I take care of my health, I still will die at 60.
Right?

You and others affect how long you will in direct ways, but have limited control.

If God determines I will live until 90, even though I commit suicide I will not die.
Correct?

Nope. You will die. It means you were in error when you thought God determined you would live until 90.

 

[Uber Genius]

Now, if I were to declare that man was so free to act, that there was no presidence of God over his actions, I should be driven very near to Atheism; and if, on the other hand, I declare that God so overrules all things, as that man is not free enough to be responsible, I am driven at once into Antinomianism or fatalism.

Spurgeon was a great preacher and theologian, too bad he didn't spend more time in philosophy class, he wouldn't have allowed "mystery" to substitute for "incoherence." But to be fair to him, it wasn't until the late 1960s that molinism was revived in theological and philosophical circles.

I highly recommend William Lane Craig's site Reasonablefaith.com or Alvin Plantinga Free will defense. Alvin is reformed and is back at Calvin college teaching occasionally.

 

[smithed64]

Spurgeon was a great preacher and theologian, too bad he didn't spend more time in philosophy class, he wouldn't have allowed "mystery" to substitute for "incoherence." But to be fair to him, it wasn't until the late 1960s that molinism was revived in theological and philosophical circles.

I highly recommend William Lane Craig's site Reasonablefaith.com or Alvin Plantinga Free will defense. Alvin is reformed and is back at Calvin college teaching occasionally.

I've read Reasonable faith and visit His site regularly. Love His debates. Just have a few things I need to study out about molinism before I commit to it.
So, agreeing that predestination and choice are both true and both of God. Then I feel no conviction in staying there for now.

 

[Grafted In]

Yes. And how He manages to weave that into free will is beyond my understanding.

 

[Jesus_is_Saint]

Similar question, if God wants me to live a middle-class life, no matter how I strive, I will not be a millionaire, right?

 

[Daryl Gleason]

Similar question, if God wants me to live a middle-class life, no matter how I strive, I will not be a millionaire, right?

There may be those who say that free will has an effect on this, but for those who understand that free will is subordinate to the sovereign will of God (and the incredible peace that comes from this knowledge), the answer to your question is "right". See Ephesians 1:11, for example, among others.

This is actually a good thing: see Proverbs 30:7-9 and James 1:9-11.

In Christ,
Daryl

 

[Jesus_is_Saint]

If God knows that if I become very rich, I will divorce my wife, having many women, live sinful life and forget God, lose my salvation. And so, God decided to preserve me and not allow me to become very rich like Trump , therefore, I try to do business but my business closed down after some time. And God just gives me a job to live an ordinary life, not rich nor poor, just enough to have a small house and car.
Is it possible God determines to do so on me?

 

[Daryl Gleason]

Well, I can't presume to guess what God knows about the possibilities for your life.

What I can say is that you're right where he wants you at this moment, based on who you are at this moment. I can also say that you are a work in progress (Philippians 1:6), so where you are a year, a month, or even a week from now may conceivably be a very different place.

Also, if you have unfulfilled hopes and dreams in your heart, these were given to you by God so that you might go before him, pray about them, and seek his wisdom concerning them (James 1:5).

May I ask if you have received the holy spirit (Luke 11:13 and context)? I ask because if you have not, this single thing could be the most transformational experience you may ever have, and it enables many, many other things in the future.

In Christ,
Daryl

 

[Jesus_is_Saint]

I was baptized and received the Holy Spirit,
I know He is with me.