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John 14:15<<God said that everything He created was good>> Yes. Good, NOT perfect. I don't believe you can be PERFECT unless you are always humble and always making logical decisions to trust God and obey God.
THERE IS TRUTH AND UNDERSTANDING IN THIS VERSE BECAUSE IT SAY EXACTLY WHAT I SAID. Which was;
Job 8:20
Behold, God will not cast away a perfect man, Neither will he uphold the evil-doers.
So now you ask how is there truth and understanding in this verse. Because it says that He will not uphold evil doers but and here is the truth, How is Satan and His minions still abroad in the earth unless God sustains them for His purpose. That is the whole argument in a nut shell. Can you dispute the truth and will you leaning to your own understanding? Think hard before you answer if you can.Nothing can just spring up in God's creation for it has to be sustained by Him in order for it to exist.
I have exhaustively answered your assertations with Scripture, now, please answer me this;THERE IS TRUTH AND UNDERSTANDING IN THIS VERSE BECAUSE IT SAY EXACTLY WHAT I SAID. Which was;
So now you ask how is there truth and understanding in this verse. Because it says that He will not uphold evil doers but and here is the truth, How is Satan and His minions still abroad in the earth unless God sustains them for His purpose. That is the whole argument in a nut shell. Can you dispute the truth and will you leaning to your own understanding? Think hard before you answer if you can.
hismessenger
This doctrine makes God the author of sin. This charge is, I am aware, strenuously denied by all Calvinists, but what other construction is it possible to give the assertion of Edwards: "The decrees of God are none other than His eternal doing that which is done.38 Or of Dwight: "It is metaphysically proper to say, God wills all things into existence; that they are produced by His choice, in the sense that any effect is produced by its efficient cause."39 If such language, indeed, if the doctrine of Absolute Divine Sovereignty, in any aspect, does not make God, not only the author of sin, but the chief and only sinner, it is, to say the least, very misleading.
To reconcile this doctrine with the divine perfections has been the problem of the centuries. To punish a moral being for that which it is not possible to avoid; to ordain and impose a life of sin, and remand the sinner to hell for leading it would doom the memory of any earthly sovereign to an immortality of shame. Has God done it?
A common and convenient mode of meeting the difficulty is to relegate the whole matter to the inscrutable will of God--assume that He can do nothing wrong, and to ask us to adore the wisdom and goodness which dooms men to a life of sin and an eternity of despair, without affording them the poor consolation of knowing why. Calvin charges with presumption those who even dare to inquire. "The will of God," he asserts, "is the highest rule of justice; so that what He wills must be just for the very reason that He wills it." Man, he claims, knows too little of God to question the wisdom of His counsels. "The Christian," he says, "may open his ears and heart to all addressed to him by his Lord, with this moderation, that as soon as the Lord closes His sacred mouth, he shall desist from all further inquiry.''40
This is a convenient mode of dealing with the problem, but neither satisfactory nor safe--one which in the end will prove a weapon of double edge. Ultimate reliance upon one's own intuitions is the basis of all faith and religion. He who looses confidence in himself is adrift, and can have confidence in nothing. How can I believe in the existence of God without relying upon the faculty by which He is apprehended, and by which the proof of his existence is weighed? If I am not competent to say, "Making a man steal, and then punishing him for stealing is unjust," I am not competent to pronounce any of the ways of God just. If my intuitions are unreliable in the one case--they can not be trusted in the other.
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Do you not mean that Satan is a puppet whom God controls?
And then you answer someone's question for him ...?What do you mean by sustain?
I'm sorry, but I would absolutely hope that God completely restrains Satan. Otherwise the Judgment is going to be an absolute riot.Do you not mean that Satan is a puppet whom God controls?
What do you mean by sustain?
Do you not mean that Satan is a puppet whom God controls?
WHO WILL RISE UP? by JED SMOCK--Confrontational Evangelism on Campus
I looked for the word sustained in the bible dictionaries and they give examples of what it is but do not explain it. So Here is the Websters defintion from my unabridged versionWhat do you mean by sustain?
Rom 9:22 [What] if God, wanting to show [His] wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction,
The evil doesn't create confusion for God. It is only man who is confused. God uses the evil for His purpose. The evil is created, for if and when God ends the tribulation, evil will no longer exist for the creation will be complete in itself.
So if you can understand sustain you must understand that in order for it to be here and remain, it had to be created and sustained by Him for His purpose and nothing else by what we may think or say.Nothing can exist apart from Him in this creation................! For it must be sustained by Him.
If God is all that is good, evil was necessary to give mankind freewill.
Freewill is necessary if God desired true love and not robots. Now, if this evil was necessary, God must have created it,
Unless He created beings who could create their own disobedience.since He is the only one who could.
Thus we have the birth of God's opposite, Satan.
I would agree with you if you had said "cannot commit acts of disobedience"You cannot know evil in the presence of God since he is almighty.
Beside from the question of two choices verses two things to chooseThus there were two trees in the garden of Eden; life and knowledge of good and evil. It symbolizes two choices that mankind was given. Either be free of evil and exist with God or know of evil and be cast out from God.
This was God's dilemma. How do we obtain knowledge of evil and thus obtain true love and still exist in His presence?
Agreed. It is the Perfect Sacrifice of God becoming a Man and dying onThe answer of course is through Jesus.
If god was all that was good, then we would be construde as polytheist, rather than monotheist.If God is all that is good, evil was necessary to give mankind freewill.
Hold it, since when is freewill [eg;free choice] evil?Freewill is necessary if God desired true love and not robots. Now, if this evil was necessary,
You are saying that it was gods will that Adam sinned, as god 'created' that choice?God must have created it,
Then, praytell, how could the Apostle write thus;since He is the only one who could.
Satan was not always known as Satan, but he recieved his new name upon becoming depraved of the Light of Christ. He was known as Lucifer before he fell and took a third of the angels with him.. His birth was Glorious, as he was annointed of God before he chose to sin by looking away.. That annointing no longer remains, friend. God is NOT pleased with him. And God is the Allmighty, Soveriegn One.Thus we have the birth of God's opposite, Satan.
That's not the choice as expounded in the Scripture I read.. The choice is to either abstain, as God commanded, for thier own good, or to partake in unbelief at what God had said about it.You cannot know evil in the presence of God since he is almighty. Thus there were two trees in the garden of Eden; life and knowledge of good and evil. It symbolizes two choices that mankind was given. Either be free of evil and exist with God or know of evil and be cast out from God.
It's not a dilemma to God, for He has provision for us should we chose unwisely, which we did, and so came our Saviour.This was God's dilemma.
Again, it's not knowledge of good and evil that's makes us crooked, but the CHOICE to sin in unbelief, or not.How do we obtain knowledge of evil and thus obtain true love and still exist in His presence?
The answer is always in and through Jesus.The answer of course is through Jesus.
Nope, but asked another question before I could respond in kind. It wasn't a statement but a question, ergo the question mark at the end of the sentenceAnd then you answer someone's question for him ...?
Sure don't seem like God has any enemies, according to the majority of the posters on this thread.I'm sorry, but I would absolutely hope that God completely restrains Satan. Otherwise the Judgment is going to be an absolute riot.
And if God completely restrains Satan ... the sole distinction we're talking about is when. Puppetry is an aspect of your position on Satan, too. It's just a question of when.
As to how God deals with the wills God has Himself made, the Calvinist position is quite clear:
... does not act in people as if they were blocks and stones; nor does it abolish the will and its properties or coerce a reluctant will by force ... Canons of Dordt
So then, it's only 'puppetry' when the unregenerate are concerned?So, not puppetry.
What do you call it when all the evil works of Satan, his evil host, and every wicked and vile sin ever committed through men and nature is committed because God said so and takes the initiative to do it in and through His creation?In point of fact, puppetry is a constant and a ridiculous smear repeated ad nauseum by anti-Calvinists for hundreds of years. It's not the case for Calvinists. Making such a statement is offensive to Calvinists. You should be clear that when you're making such a statement you're forming an attack. Calvinists see God working with persons as persons.
So, now they intend to [attempt] aboish the doctrine of free choice?This is constantly reiterated, and actually recent philosophical discussions about free will have turned to precisely, exactly this argument as a reason why libertarian free will and incompatibilism are problematic.
Compatibilism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
What relationship?So far you have discussed what Scripture says about the character of Satan (that he was a murderer from the beginning, chose to sin, etc.), and his relationship to human beings (that he tries to deceive them, etc.).
However, it seems you are refraining from telling us what you think Satan's relationship to God is. Does Satan fall within or without God's omnipotent power and sovereignty over His creation?
I'm still waiting on the Lord... You?Also, I am still waiting for your substantive reply to the verses I posted earlier in this thread. You still have not shown how you understand them in concert with the beliefs about evil you have propounded through out this thread. I pointed this out to you in my post #184.
Job 8:20And to correct a misconception, I said that God sustains evil and there are many forms of evil which includes sin as well as disobedience to the will of God, which is the greatest sin we can commit.
No.. Jesus is 'the bar' now set, by which men everywhere will be Judged.Evil is the balance by which we are righteously judged.
hismessenger
Isaiah 50:1c said:Because of your sins you were sold; because of your transgressions your mother was sent away.
2 Thessalonians 1:6-9A simple but true and direct question which can not be sidestepped.
If God were to end the creation in the next instant where would evil be?
hismessenger
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